Fifty years ago, the Labour MP for my home town of Lincoln was Geoffrey de Freitas. In those days, Lincoln was a very safe Labour seat and Geoffrey de Freitas was a very wealthy man.
In common with many MPs of that era, de Freitas did not maintain a home in his constituency (a practice that [...]

The June edition of Prospect magazine includes an article titled Liberalise or Die by Richard Reeves and Philip Collins (no, not that Phil Collins).
The authors argue that the Labour Party must abandon its centralising Fabian tradition and become liberal. No mention of the fact that a perfectly acceptable liberal party already exists.
The article has already [...]

Five Lib Dems have so far taken up the challenge to tell Nick Clegg what he should do in his first hundred days: Paul Walter, Linda Jack, David Morton, Mary Reid and Mark Valladares. Now we turn to Simon Titley…
The previous contributors to this series have bombarded the new leader with laundry lists of demands [...]

Vince Cable has deservedly won much praise for his recent performance as acting leader of the Liberal Democrats. He has set a high standard for next week’s victor to match. The danger is that we will treat Vince’s performance as an entertaining interlude before normal service is resumed. Instead, we should analyse and understand the [...]

A recent post on LDV speculated who would be in the new leader’s shadow cabinet. A more interesting question is who will occupy his kitchen cabinet.
Every political leader has one – a group of staff and unpaid advisors acting as an ‘inner circle’. At best, such groups provide leaders with a sounding board and confidential [...]

In the Liberal Democrats’ leadership election, for all the strategic analysis and policy debates among the cognoscenti, it is the ‘armchair’ members who will determine this election.
This majority will rely on the mainstream media to make its choice rather than the party’s internal media and grapevines (bear in mind that the average age of [...]