Author Archives: Mark Pack

Mark was the Liberal Democrat Head of Innovations until June 2009 and is now Head of Digital at MHP Communications. He blogs at www.markpack.org.uk and is on Twitter as @markpack. He likes chocolate. Lots of it.
Follow @markpack

Opinion: Adonis’s complaint – Ashdown was not mind-numbingly stupid with the memory span of a goldfish

By Mark Pack | Thu 16th May 2013 - 9:51 am

Andrew Adonis’s account of the days after the public voted in a hung Parliament in 2010 have already received a rightful savaging by Andrew Stunell. Given that we already know the Mandelson/Balls preparation for coalition talks with the Liberal Democrats was a quick cup of tea, you might think that not even Andrew Adonis’s account could make Labour’s preparation for a hung Parliament look even more amateurish or non-existent. Yet his 5 Days In May manages that.

His book kicks off with a complaint from Peter Mandelson that his attempt to sound out Paddy Ashdown on a

…

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged andrew adonis and andrew stunnell | 7 Comments

An open letter to Jeremy Browne MP…Part 2: Problems at the Home Office

By Mark Pack | Mon 22nd April 2013 - 10:25 am

Dear Jeremy,

In part 1 I explained why the Interception of Communications Commissioner is a failed regulator and one the Home Office should be fixing, yet your civil servants have been reluctant to do so. That should give a pause for thought about the proposals Home Office civil servants keep on pushing to extend the ability of the government to snoop on what we do online.

So too should the way in which the Home Office regularly changes its views of what counts as being in the national interest or vital for the fight against crime, and indeed makes outlandish claims …

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged draft communications data bill, freedom of information, information commissioner, Interception of Communications Commissioner, jeremy browne and Mark Pack | 3 Comments

An open letter to Jeremy Browne MP on civil liberties… Part 1: The failed regulator

By Mark Pack | Sun 21st April 2013 - 10:00 am

Dear Jeremy

I doubt that in amongst all the ludicrously large number of issues that pass across the desk of a minister, and a Home Office one no less, you will have noticed a small victory I scored over the Home Office recently.

But I hope you’ll give a pause for thought to the implications of the ruling the Information Commissioner made in my favour over the Home Office (decision notice reference FS50469527).

Partly it’s because of what it says about the never-quite-dead proposals for a huge expansion of monitoring of our online activity. Partly it’s because of what the case reveals …

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged draft communications data bill, freedom of information, home office, information commissioner and Interception of Communications Commissioner | 3 Comments

Opinion: A radical approach to welfare – forget changing benefits

By Mark Pack | Sat 13th April 2013 - 11:47 am

The word ‘radical’ is to welfare reform what a pot of paint is to a wall full of cracks. The less you really know what to do to fix things, the more you slap it about all over the place in the hope that it will cover up things.

When you peer carefully at the detail of what is said after the roaring demand for radical reforms, you see what usually follows is either an absence of quite what form the radical action should take (‘radical, radical, we must be radical; just please don’t ask me how’) or simply by a …

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged welfare reform | 19 Comments

What the Liberal Democrats believe

By Mark Pack | Sat 30th March 2013 - 5:30 pm

“Tell me more about what the Liberal Democrats believe”. Whether it’s a possible new member, a potential council candidate or a new office volunteer asking, I’ve always found over the years that one of the trickier questions to answer. Not because of the inherent question, but rather because of the paucity of materials available to conveniently answer it.

There’s always been a simple short 1 or 2 sentence answer to hand (such as the slogan of the day or an extract from the preamble to the party’s constitution) or a really long answer available, such as Conrad Russell’s superb An …

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged david lloyd george, economic liberalism, history and liberalism | 40 Comments

Opinion: Are you a man?

By Mark Pack | Tue 12th March 2013 - 10:55 am

Are you a man? Have you been or might you be on a fringe meeting panel at Liberal Democrat conference? If the answer to both is yes, I’d like your help…

At the Spring conference just gone in Brighton, I nearly ended up being a speaker on an all-male panel – and one taking place on International Women’s Day no less. The subject – technology and politics – is one where there are a good few female experts in the party, and it was only Olly Grender’s last minute addition which saved my blushes from Mark Thompson’s quite reasonable intention to turn up and put us all on the spot about what was an all-male panel.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged 2013 brighton spring conference, equalities, mark thompson and olly grender | 16 Comments

Inquiries into Rennard allegations must be as public as possible

By Mark Pack | Tue 26th February 2013 - 10:55 am

The party’s investigations into allegations against its members are traditionally internal, confidential affairs. There are good reasons for this, particularly as confidentiality can be necessary for people to be willing to given evidence and as the simple existence of an allegation can kill someone’s political career, even if the allegations are subsequently found to be groundless.

They are often so confidential, in fact, that the last time I was asked to provide evidence for an inquiry, I did not know what the precise allegations were, who was investigating them, who the range of people being investigated were, whether or not the …

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged lord rennard and party policy and internal matters | 8 Comments

How Ofsted outperforms the Department for Education in the email stakes

By Mark Pack | Wed 20th February 2013 - 5:55 pm

Yesterday I blogged about how only a third of emailed newsletters and circulars sent out by the Department for Education to schools and teachers are read by the recipients.

I also mentioned that you could choose who to blame for the low readership rate:

Who is to blame for this? If nothing else I suspect these figures are a good test of your political instincts: are you already thinking the blame lies with Michael Gove and the Department for Education for not making their messages more compelling or with the teachers who aren’t reading them in greater numbers?

One way of helping …

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged education, michael gove, ofsted and schools | 8 Comments

Two-thirds of email newsletters sent to teachers and schools by the Department for Education are not read

By Mark Pack | Tue 19th February 2013 - 10:55 am

Only a third of emailed newsletters and circulars sent out by the Department for Education to schools and teachers are read by the recipients according to new figures I have secured following a Freedom of Information request to the Department.

In 2012 the Department sent out 148,182 such emails, with their systems recording 49,504 of them as having been read at least once (33%).

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged department for education, michael gove and schools | 16 Comments

What Google reveals about the current state of play in Eastleigh

By Mark Pack | Sun 17th February 2013 - 5:34 pm

The search results thrown up by Google often provide a neat little insight into what angles of a story are dominating coverage and people’s attention. The angles that get the most prominent coverage and the most interaction and responses are the ones that rise to the top of the search results. So what do they tell us about the current state of play in the Eastleigh by-election?

Continue reading »

Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged eastleigh, featured, google, john o'farrell, Maria Hutchings, mike thornton and stephen tall | 7 Comments

The real political battle isn’t Conservative vs Labour or Cameron vs Miliband

By Mark Pack | Mon 11th February 2013 - 11:53 am

Skim the political news – or brace yourself and watch some of festival of braying adults that is PMQs – and you could easily think that British politics is primarily a contest between Cameron and Miliband, Conservative and Labour, to be top dog. You could – and you would be wrong. It’s a diversion from where the real action is.

The real political contest is both elsewhere and not one single contest. It is not about Conservative versus Labour, except by incidental outcome.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured | 13 Comments

Maria Hutchings, Eastleigh Conservative candidate, plays hide and seek with the media

By Mark Pack | Mon 11th February 2013 - 8:50 am

One of my favourite moments from the 1997 general election campaign came when I was stood on a street corner in Harrogate, talking to a report about the challenge from Lib Dem candidate Phil Willis, who was trying to take the seat from the Conservatives. Suddenly, the journalist looked over my shoulder, muttered ‘excuse me’ and ran off down the street, partially dignified, chasing a van that had driven past behind me.

The reason? The van was that of the Conservative candidate, Norman Lamont, who had been spending the whole campaign trying to avoid talking to the press. The result? Much of the press coverage was dominated by stories of journalists trying to track him down around the constituency.

Continue reading »

Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged eastleigh, featured, Maria Hutchings and Norman Smith | 1 Comment

+++ Neck and neck: first Eastleigh constituency poll

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th February 2013 - 6:46 pm

1st Eastleigh poll puts Con + LDs within margin of error: C34 LD31 Lab 19 UKIP 13 (Ashcroft poll)

— Mark Pack (@markpack) February 7, 2013

That 3 point gap is within the margin of error on the poll, and so it is, as they say in the US about such results, a statistical dead-heat.

What is clear is that this is a contest between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. Nigel Farage was right it would seem to back out of fighting the seat – and Labour too are clearly out of it in Eastleigh.

The Labour vote share is particularly interesting as we’ll see how well the party can do at squeezing a clearly third-place Labour in a Parliamentary by-election. The pre-2010 record is of course very good …

Continue reading »

Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged eastleigh, featured and nigel farage | 47 Comments

Majority back same-sex marriage

By Mark Pack | Sun 3rd February 2013 - 2:49 pm

Wedding rings From the polling published this weekend:

Would you support or oppose changing the law to allow same-sex couples to marry?
Support: 55%
Oppose: 36%

Amongst Conservative voters the results are 44% – 49% (which is a statistical dead heat, when you remember to factor in the margin of error).

Interestingly, the majority support comes despite the lead-up to the question being a tadge inaccurate:

Continue reading »

Posted in Polls | Tagged equalities, featured, same sex marriage and yougov | 46 Comments

New university data shows everyone was wrong about tuition fees

By Mark Pack | Thu 31st January 2013 - 8:25 am

May I introduce you to my latest graph? It’s based on the new data just published about university applications in England and compares the application rate for university places from the most deprived parts of the country with those from the least deprived. As you might expect, the least deprived areas see a higher university application rate than the most deprived. But look what’s happened to that gap:

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged featured and tuition fees | 80 Comments

What do the academics say? Being local works

By Mark Pack | Thu 24th January 2013 - 10:25 am

Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. Today – it’s the effect of being local on a candidate’s election chances, courtesy of an article in Political Geography :

In this paper, we the British General Election of 2010 and the British Election Survey, together with geographical data from Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail, to test the hypothesis that candidate distance matters in

Continue reading »

Posted in What do the academics say? | 4 Comments

What do the academics say? The incumbency effect for MPs

By Mark Pack | Tue 22nd January 2013 - 11:25 am

Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. Today – the incumbency benefit sitting MPs can build up, based on an analysis of the 1983-2010 general elections:

This note adapts two models commonly used to estimate the incumbency advantage that US members of Congress enjoy – the ‘slurge’ and the Gelman-King Index – to provide comparable estimates for UK MPs. The results show that

Continue reading »

Posted in What do the academics say? | Tagged Timothy Hallam Smith | 4 Comments

Three ways to make sure you’re talking sense on student numbers, tuition fees and all that

By Mark Pack | Fri 18th January 2013 - 9:52 am

Want to make sure your comments are grounded in solid evidence when talking about the impact of tuition fees on students numbers and the like in England? Prefer evidence that stands up to a little basic scrutiny over that which falls apart the moment you apply a critical rather than a closed partisan mind to it? Then there are three things to remember.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged martin lewis and tuition fees | 16 Comments

Government shifts to back full range of medical care for rape victims in armed conflict

By Mark Pack | Mon 14th January 2013 - 12:42 pm

Welcome news from the House of Lords last week, where Lib Dem peer and government spokesperson for International Development, Lindsay Northover, for the first time said the British government believes that girls and women raped in armed conflict are protected under international humanitarian law, even when domestic law in the country in question says something else.

What that means in practice is that the UK government is willing to fund the full range of medical care for the victims, including abortion where medically necessary – even if domestic law in that country …

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged international development and Lindsay Northover | 2 Comments

Danny Alexander fronts… a Liberal Democrat policy

By Mark Pack | Sun 13th January 2013 - 7:41 pm

Danny Alexander sometimes attracts a bit of criticism from party members for the number of times he’s done media appearances where he’s ended up spending much of the time defending Coalition policies which are predominantly Conservative. So good to see him out in the TV studios this morning fronting up a policy that the Liberal Democrats have strongly pushed for – and thereby emphasising the Liberal Democrat contribution:

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged Danny Alexander and pensions | 3 Comments

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Thu 10th January 2013 - 3:55 pm

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

Continue reading »

Posted in Site news | Leave a comment

Tim Gordon scorecard, 1 year on

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd January 2013 - 9:50 am

Last January I wrote an open letter to the party’s then new Chief Executive Tim Gordon, setting out four priorities. One year on, how are things looking?

Here’s what I wrote (with introductory pleasantries skipped), with each of the four points followed by an update and a score. Read on to see how Tim has been doing…

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged chris rennard, featured, stephen tall and tim gordon | 12 Comments

Sometimes to win an argument, you need to adopt your opponent’s point of view

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd January 2013 - 8:50 am

Wedding bouquet Framing, that is the way in which a choice is presented, is often key to winning political (and indeed non-political) debates. Consider the following two statements, for example:

It’s dreadful that the government is letting private companies access more medical data about people.

It’s great that the government is letting medical researchers access more medical data about diseases.

They are both ways you could describe the current government’s actual policy. Whether the issue is framed as being about private companies or medical researchers and whether it is about personal data or information about diseases …

Continue reading »

Posted in Campaign Corner and LDVUSA | Tagged equal marriage | 7 Comments

Well done Liz Barker, Andrew Phillips, Chris Rennard and Ros Scott

By Mark Pack | Sat 29th December 2012 - 12:50 pm

Continuing today’s theme of congratulations, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) has picked 10 peers who “have most to contribute to debates on charity issues”, four of whom are Liberal Democrats.

Well done Baroness Liz Barker, Lord Andrew Phillips, Lord Chris Rennard and Baroness Ros Scott.

Posted in News | Tagged baroness barker, chris rennard, lord andrew phillips, NCVO and ros scott | Leave a comment

Congratulations, Caroline Pidgeon

By Mark Pack | Sat 29th December 2012 - 12:05 am

It’s great to see Lib Dem London Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon awarded an MBE in the New Years Honours.

She has been, is, and I’m sure will continue to be, one of the most effective London Assembly members of any party. Her MBE rightly recognises her skill and tenacity in holding to account the Mayor and providers of key public services in London.

Congratulations Caroline.

(Personally, I’d prefer it if we had an honours system which normally didn’t give awards to politicians at all, but as we do it’s lovely to see such a good …

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged Caroline Pidgeon | 13 Comments

A twin-track differentiation policy

By Mark Pack | Tue 18th December 2012 - 7:50 am

Here’s my take on yesterday’s speech by Nick Clegg, along with some further analysis from the IFS’s Paul Johnson and Conservative MP Robert Halpern, all via the World at One:

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged nick clegg, paul johnson and Robert Halpern | 1 Comment

Ad Lib: If you’re reading this, it’s not for you

By Mark Pack | Sat 15th December 2012 - 1:50 pm

The first edition of the new Liberal Democrat party magazine, Ad Lib, went out to all party members earlier this month. Future copies will only go to paying subscribers, so what to make of the first edition’s efforts to make people part with their cash for future editions?

Judging its contents I think requires bearing three main factors in mind: it’s a monthly publication, it’s one that is printed on paper and it’s probably not aimed at you.

Both the first two attributes are rather …

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged ad lib magazine, caron lindsay, jennie rigg, katy riddle, liberator magazine and nick barlow | 34 Comments

Nick Clegg: Time to rethink drugs policy

By Mark Pack | Fri 14th December 2012 - 2:01 pm

The Sun running a story about the attitude of politicians to drugs reform is fairly commonplace. A Liberal Democrat politician calling for the drugs laws to be reviewed is fairly commonplace. What is however rather less common – and so all the more significant – is for the former to feature the latter in a positive light as LDV mentioned earlier today:

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged drugs policy, featured, nick clegg and the sun | 1 Comment

Law Commission sets out details for review of election law

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th December 2012 - 12:50 pm

From the Law Commission’s website:

We have commenced work on reforming electoral law. We expect to open a consultation in late 2014. A report with recommendations to Government will be published in summer 2015…

The twin aims of the project are to ensure, first, that electoral laws are presented within a rational, modern legislative framework, governing all elections and referendums under statute; and second, that the law governing the conduct of elections and referendums is modern, simple, and fit for purpose.

More details are on the Law Commission’s website but it’s worth …

Continue reading »

Posted in Election law and News | Tagged Law Commission | 6 Comments