Category Archives: Op-eds

Opinion: Crime, transport and the battle for London Mayor

By Paul Haydon | Published 10th February 2012 - 11:30 am

Just six months ago today London was emerging from its third night of rioting, with a semblance of order only just beginning to take hold as a massive police presence descended on the city. The fear in the streets was palpable. We had been given a brief and terrifying glimpse of what sheer anarchy looked like, the rage and shameless opportunism of London’s marginalised youth provoking deep existential questions about what was wrong with our society.

Yet, as the contest for London Mayor begins to build up momentum, Ken and Boris’ campaigns continue to revolve around the same old topic …

Tagged brian paddick, crime, london mayoral election, riots | 1 Comment

Political clichés I dislike #2: ideological

By Mark Pack | Published 10th February 2012 - 10:25 am

I’ve previously written about my dislike of that venerable clichéd demand for “government to send a strong signal”. Government isn’t a bloody semaphore team, thank you very much.

Not even I’m willing to believe it was the power of that blog post alone (plus natty diagram) which cowed the political classes into giving up semaphoring addiction. Yet the phrase does seem to crop up rather less often now, perhaps because of a change from the Labour government’s love of telling people what to do?

But we have not arrived in a happy new post-Brown cliché free world.

Instead, the one that now has …

17 Comments

Opinion: The good, the bad and the ugly of the Lib Dems

By Scott Hill | Published 10th February 2012 - 9:41 am

This week has been something of a mixed bag for the Liberal Democrats. Aside from getting over the fact we have lost one of our most respected and feared heavyweights in Chris Huhne, we have been forced to accept that a serious reassessment of our position within government is required and necessary.

Needless to say, the ceaseless commentariat and Westminster gossips are not helping matters. There have been three stories – all different in topic and angle – that have focused attention on the junior coalition partner in recent …

Tagged chris huhne, Liberal Left, parliamentary boundary review | 34 Comments

Opinion – NHS Reforms: It is not too late to pull back from the edge

By Issan Ghazni | Published 9th February 2012 - 6:56 pm

If the Party is still licking its wounds and reeling from the catastrophic loss of public support over student tuition fees and the kicking received in the May 2011 local elections, then please be in no doubt, that the punishment it will receive from the electorate for its perceived co-operation in, and reluctant endorsement of, the demise of a much loved and unified national health service, will be on another planet entirely! And that will be despite the valiant efforts and guerrilla warfare carried out by our Peers led notably by Shirley Williams and others.

Essential to Cameron’s election campaign was …

Tagged NHS, nhs reform | 20 Comments

Ed Davey MP writes… Solar power for the many, not the few

By Ed Davey MP | Published 9th February 2012 - 4:27 pm

Some things in politics are symbolic. For dyed-in-the-wool environmentalists like the Liberal Democrats, solar power is one of these things – indisputably clean, green and cutting edge technology. The sort of thing Liberal Democrats in a government that aims to be the greenest ever should be unequivocally behind.

Our commitment to the environment was why I joined the party in the first place.

So I understand why many of you were confused and disappointed when the Government appeared to scale back the Feed in Tariffs that allow people to install solar panels in their homes and businesses, not least when our decision …

Tagged department of energy and climate change, feed-in tariffs, renewable energy, solar power | 26 Comments

Opinion – Twitter: powerful campaign tool or waste of effort?

By Alan Muhammed | Published 9th February 2012 - 2:55 pm

The simple tweet “F*ck” at 10am with the reply “Agreed” last Friday was the only source and all the evidence I required to know that Chris Huhne had been charged. Two words tied emotion with cognition. I followed Nick Clegg’s tax cut speech live through the medium of 140 character paraphrase: a sort of Focus-speak reduction I can only imagine would have the speech-writers crying. The utterance “Borgen – Danish West Wing” was all the persuasion necessary to watch it religiously.

Twitter is free, fast and tragic. And if it wasn’t powerful in facilitating the fall of …

Tagged connect, jamie matthews, julian huppert, Online politics, tim farron, twitter, victor chamberlain | 3 Comments

Opinion: Labour’s embracing of economic liberalism is to be welcomed

By David Thorpe | Published 9th February 2012 - 9:28 am

The first sign that man is moving from the reckless abandon of late youth to the windswept comfort of early maturity can be found in his reaction to the sight of falling snow. Where once it would have been an excuse to declare the days schedule defunct, this year it signalled only the onset of boredom.

Consequently I dusted down my new year’s resolution to ‘laugh a lot more’ and began thinking about Labour’s attitude to economics. I propose to look at the Labour leadership’s deeper economic instincts to provide a guide as to how they might actually run the economy.

Ed Balls

Tagged economic liberalism, economy, ed balls, ed miliband, orange book, vince cable | 21 Comments

Opinion: Jenny Willott is wrong on the Welfare Reform Bill

By George Potter | Published 7th February 2012 - 7:03 pm

On Sunday Jenny Willott wrote an article on LDV explaining the reasons behing Lib Dem MPs voting to reject the Lords amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill. However, I’m afraid that, as someone who has been campaigning on this for several months, I am not satisfied with her explanation and think that there are several flaws in her justifications.

For example, to put what Jenny said another way, 4 in 10 people affected by the time limit will lose ESA completely. That’ll be 280,000 people with long term illness or disability that prevents them from working. Those who lose it …

Tagged welfare reform | 36 Comments

Opinion: Calm Down, Dears!

By Zadok Day | Published 7th February 2012 - 4:57 pm

It’s a great shame that so many Liberal Democrats have reacted to the political downfall of Chris Huhne by bashing his successor. Ed Davey is an immensely capable minister and will do a wonderful job in his new position. Sadly, some have chosen this news to complain because a woman wasn’t promoted instead of a man. Gender balance is an issue that seems to divide opinion a great deal in the online world, for some reason, despite being hardly as controversial in the real world, where the principle is generally accepted that talent should be rewarded rather than the accident …

Tagged chris huhne, david cameron, edward davey, gender | 46 Comments

Opinion: Federal Policy Committee to the left of me, Tories to the right, where are the Parliamentary Parties? Stuck in the Middle with whom?

By Mark Valladares | Published 7th February 2012 - 11:18 am

Perhaps Stealers Wheel had it right… so it’s time to speak my mind, isn’t it?

I have been following the debate on internal party democracy with first interest, then frustration, and now a degree of numbing disbelief, as the Parliamentary Parties have taken significant flak from a cross-section of Party members and activists.

And yet, from my perspective of a reporter on events in the Lords, a very different story emerges to the increasingly popular one of rogue Parliamentary Parties trashing Liberal Democrat policy in an entirely unaccountable way. But let me tell you a story…

Once upon a time, a small, …

Tagged fpc | 58 Comments

Opinion: Gove’s message – “vocational” = “worthless”

By Lucy Care | Published 7th February 2012 - 9:09 am

Secretary of State for Education, Conservative Michael Gove, has downgraded the value of nearly all 14-16 vocational qualifications at a stroke. I felt angry when I heard this. However, it did little to reduce my respect for Mr Gove; I had very little anyway after ‘free’ schools, and his arrogant disregard of the role of Local Authorities to support ‘failing’ schools.

But having thought about this a little more, I am left perplexed by Gove’s decision. The impact goes against so much I thought was accepted wisdom.

Industry has for many years had a

…

Tagged academies, michael gove, vocational | 23 Comments

Opinion: Tories’ onshore wind farm opposition is based on a fallacy

By Terence Darby | Published 6th February 2012 - 3:24 pm

Only three days into the job and Ed Davey’s first political challenge has arisen – a demand from the unreconstructed Tory back benches for a halt to onshore wind farm development. The Tories are taking aim at the subsidies onshore wind farm receive to enable them to compete with fossil fuel, claiming that they’re unaffordable in a time of austerity – and in this, I’m sorry to say, they’ve been joined by two of our Welsh MPs, Roger Williams and Mark Williams.

While one expects the Tories to be at their most equivocal on green issues, it’s a bit worrying …

Tagged wind turbines | 22 Comments

Opinion: LibDems are the natural home for Blairites

By Luke Tyson | Published 6th February 2012 - 12:24 pm

There have been some high profile (if not high level) Blairite defections to the Tories. While there are some similarities between the Blair legacy and our coalition partners, the defectees seem to have overlooked or discarded one idea – joining the Liberal Democrats.

As Jonathan Powell says in his book, The New Machiavelli, and as was evident during his time in office, Tony Blair was strongly pro-Europe. He understood, as we do, that a) the largest common market in the world is something that we should be actively engaging with and leading, and b) there are threats and issues …

Tagged liberal democrats, tony blair | 30 Comments

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