Author Archives: Antony Hook

In recent days Liberal Democrats have united against reported Home Office plans for the state to acquire unprecedented power to search private online communications. As Mark Pack noted, resistance to this has even won Nick Clegg rare praise from the Daily Mail.

Many Liberal Democrats have the necessary habit of not just debating how society ought to be, but carrying liberal values into effect in daily life. Many Lib Dems who are passionate about education, including myself, serve as school governors. Likewise, party members volunteer as neighbourhood watch coordinators, Citizens Advice …

Jack Newfield once wrote, “We learned that we shall not overcome. The most compassionate leaders our nation could produce had been assassinated. The stone was at the bottom of the hill and we were alone.”

Those words of penetrating despair referred to the deaths of two leading American liberals in 1968. In the aftermath Richard Nixon seized the presidency and Democrats fell into a dark period of infighting and indecision that lasted off and on until at least 1992.

No-one in our party, in our country has been killed. Yet there is a sense of loss. MPs we …

Part of our shared European heritage is Ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, where Hephaestus (called Vulcan in Rome) was the god of fire and controller of volcanoes. He was born after his mother was impregnated by a spark from a fire.

Thousands of years later, in last Thursday’s debate, Nick Clegg provided a spark to our national imagination that was more potent than any of us dared to dream.

Now we read that our opponents will try to make Europe the issue of the general election. The same strategy failed badly …

The Press Association reports a claim in the Interim Report of the Speaker’s Conference that more women MPs would “boost trust”.

This is an irrational assertion. For every male mortage-flipper or questionable expense-claimer – like Geoge Osborne, Elliot Morley or David Chaytor – there are plenty of female examples – Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears, or Margaret Moran.

It seems to me that trust depends more on how MPs behave than what gender they happen to be.

Liberals should argue for people to be appraised as individuals not simply reduced to groups in which we happen to …

Last week, we called for readers to set out the reforms they felt were most desperately needed to our moribund political system – familiar and new ideas alike. Antony Hook responds.

Liberal Democrats have traditionally supported the idea of Citizens’ Juries and reforming MPs’ funding is a perfect case to apply this policy.

A citizens’ jury is empanelled in the same way as the juries who decide thousands of our criminal cases and civil disputes every year: 12 people at random from the electoral register. They can hear evidence and arguments from every interested

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