Two days after the Tories attempted to bury the embarrassing news of their decision to set up a new European Parliament grouping comprising some of the more, erm, eccentric right-wing elements on offer, and the cracks are, apparently, already showing (hat-tip: Liberal Conspiracy):

Hannu Takkula, a Finnish Centre party Euro-MP, was quoted as saying by party news website Verkkoapila on Wednesday that he would stay in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, one of the European Parliament’s political groupings.

The Conservatives and Reformists Group had said Monday that Mr Takkula would join the new group.

Does the un-defection …

The casual reader of this post – Duff-Verhofstadt drive to federal Europe sees its first Liberal casualty – over at The Yorkshire Guidon blog might not understand its full implication:

Former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt, in the running to lead the Liberals and Democrats group (ALDE) in the European Parliament, and his campaign manager UK Lib Dem MEP Andrew Duff make no secret of their desire to see a ‘federal Europe’. … Such Federalist credentials are impeccable and yet are starting to spook MEPs in the ALDE group. Today saw the first defection as the widely regarded Finnish MEP from

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced there will be a private inquiry into the Labour Government’s decision to go to war with Iraq. Beginning in July and reporting some time in 2010, the inquiry will cover the period July 2001 to July 2009 and be chaired by Sir John Chilcot.

Here’s Nick Clegg’s response to the Prime Minister’s statement:

I would like to thank the Prime Minister for his statement, and join him in paying tribute to our brave service men and women who have served our country in Iraq over the last six years.
And in particular to the 179

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A mere 72 hours after polls closed on 4th June, the parties and candidates contesting the 72 UK seats available for the European Parliament will know their fate later this evening. Let’s remind ourselves what happened five years ago, in 2004, when these seats were last up for grabs:

Conservatives: 27% (27 MEPs)
Labour: 23% (19)
Ukip: 16% (12)
Lib Dems: 15% (12)
Greens: 6% (2)
BNP: 5% (0)
SNP: 1% (2)
Plaid: 1% (1)
N. Ireland: 3 MEPs (1 each for DUP, Sinn Fein, Ulster Unionists)

What will happen this time? Will the Tories do better under David Cameron than they did under Michael Howard? Will Labour retain second …

English local election results will be pouring in throughout the day. Lib Dem Voice will try and keep you abreast of what’s happening across the country, as we did throughout Thursday night with our open thread – many thanks in particular to those commenting who were able to break the good news that the Lib Dems had taken majority control of Bristol City Council amid disastrous results for Labour. Please do keep the news coming in from wherever you live.

As at 9.50 am, the BBC results scoreboard is telling me that the Lib Dems are the only party showing …

Nick Clegg gets a lot of questions via Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Friend Connect, as well as through his website, NickClegg.com.

He’s just made a new YouTube video with answers to some of the questions he’s received through his social networks:

What does Nick think of compulsory voting? The Lisbon Treaty? Watch and find out:

And as today is Polling Day, Nick signs off with a call to get out and vote, whatever your views on the European Union.

Nick’s done a few of …

Lib Dem Voice doesn’t do polls. But if it did, we would draw readers’ attention to two rather different recent surveys of opinion.

On Friday, Populus suggested a surge for UKIP — who would relegate Labour to third place and leave the Lib Dems fighting it out with the Green party for fourth place.

Sunday’s papers will bring a new ICM poll putting us at 25% at Westminster and 20% in the European elections – in both cases relegating Labour to third place in the popular vote.

Are they both outliers? Political Betting’s sage Mike Smithson offers …

The party’s manifesto for the European elections is also available as an iPhone app. If you have access to an iPhone or iPod touch you can view it. Go to apps store and search for Liberal Democrats. The app is free.

And don’t forget, you can also get the party’s TV broadcasts (PPBs) using our iTunes feed.

Ahh, the European elections – those of you who’ve been paying especially close attention to the news in recent weeks may have caught a nano-second of coverage of the issues which will be decided by voters across the EU next week.

If so, you might have come across an analysis by the Open Europe think-tank – more about whom here – who this week published a ranking of all 785 Members of the European Parliament, scoring their record on promoting transparency and reform in the EU over the last five-year term.

The criteria Open Europe used for their scoring system are published here, and you can view the full Excel spreadsheet of all MEPs by clicking here. We’ve extracted the information relating to the UK’s 11 Lib Dem MEPs (out of 78), as below:

* Sharon replaced Chris Huhne on his election to the House of Commons in May 2005.

It is, I guess, to our group’s credit that more than half their number appear in the top 20. It’s certainly a relief to know that no Lib Dem MEP appears in Open Europe’s list of “MEPs arguably ‘Unfit for public office’”. However, two Tories and two Ukippers do make the EU-wide list of eight named and shamed:

Mr Ashley Mote MEP – United Kingdom – Independent, elected as Ukip
In 2007 Mote was convicted of 21 charges of benefit fraud84 for falsely claiming for than £65,000 in benefits. He was given a 9 month prison sentence, which he served, but because it was less than 12 months he was allowed to return as an MEP.

Mr Giles Chichester MEP – United Kingdom – Conservative
Giles Chichester paid more than £400,000 in European Parliament office expenses into a company of which he was a director.

Last week Kuwait’s 50-seat Parliament was up for election and, for the first time, the victors include women. Four of the sixteen female candidates who stood were elected, including Massouma al-Mubarak who has been the path-breaking female politician of Kuwait.

Back in 2005, when women were given the right to vote and to stand for Parliament, she didn’t become a Member of Parliament herself, but did become the first female Cabinet minister. She served in the Cabinet in more than one role, resigned as health minister after a hospital fire in 2005 killed two people, accepting ‘political and moral’ responsibility even …

We’re mid-way through the campaign for the European Parliament elections – though, as yet, discussion of Britain’s role in the EU has not been the, erm, dominant story. But, still, there have been five polls to date in May specifically asking for the public’s Euro voting intentions, so let’s check out what they’ve been saying:

Here they are in chronological order:

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The Eurovision Song Contest was last night but, Eurovoting and Eurovisual fans, you can still get your entertainment fix. (You’ll have to bring your own music though):

From The Register:

The European Parliament is treading bravely into the world of social networking in order to get the kids involved in the exciting world of European politics.

Bureaucrats have created profiles on popular social sites including Facebook, MySpace and photo sharing site Flickr. There will also be ad-word campaigns and banner ads on MySpace.

Elections run from 4 to 7 June, and the primary purpose of the campaign is to

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I was at the Vote Match European Election launch held at Apple’s palatial showroom on Regents Street this past Monday, drawn by the special guest appearance of Stephen Fry. Appearing in a tuxedo and bow tie, he did not disappoint as he opened with an apology for the rest of us being under-dressed for the event.

What I hadn’t expected was to discover that the collective consciousness of the 200 or so guests in the audience, on answering the 30 specimen questions by democratic show of hands, managed to produce a Liberal Democrat voter!

Following the success of Vote Match London …