LDV is hoping to bring a series of podcasts from the campaign trail this April in the run up to a big set of local elections across the country.  (If you don’t know who’s having elections, Keith Edkins has a handy trailer.  “Cheshire West and Chester” sounds like a clumsy name for a local authority!)

You can use this to promote your local campaign, appeal for help, and tell us what’s happening in your neck of the woods.

There are two ways to take part: volunteer to take part in a telephone interview or just get on the  blower to the Podcast Hotline on 020 7617 7221.

Either way, please drop me a line on

Topics you might like to cover if you’re going it alone on the Podcast Hotline: how’s your campaign going?  How many hundreds of thousands of leaflets are you putting out? What are the themes of your campaign and your key messages?  Are you hoping to hold, increase, fight fire or wipe-out a third party? Do you need outside help? What are the other parties?  Any fringe candidates putting their heads over the parapet?

Lib Dem Voice is exactly what it says it is: “an independent, collaborative website run by Liberal Democrat activists, where any individual inside or outside the party can express their views.”

In particular, we welcome Opinion pieces from party members - whether you’re an activist, councillor, MP, peer or prefer to cheer from the sidelines - and we publish a number of articles each week by different authors on a range of subjects.

We also have a slot, labelled The Independent View, reserved for those with no affiliation to the party, but whose articles we know would be of interest to our readers - so who you’d like to see on LDV’s pages.

If you’ve got something to say, and want a platform which allows you to address tens of thousands of readers, including key opinion-formers, why not submit it to Lib Dem Voice? There’s some brief guidance notes here.

Don’t forget, if you’re a party member you can register for the Lib Dem Voice members’ forum - in which case you get to read and post on a rich variety of topics which don’t always make it into the public blog. Here’s a selection of the currently active threads to whet your appetites:

* PPCs for the next General Election
* [ Poll ] Cannabis or Skunk?
* Great article on Vince in today’s Guardian
* Artwork for leaflets
* Do you web 2.0?
* Berwick on Tweed
* Blogging help required

(Disclaimer: though LDV’s forum moderators do our best to ensure membership is restricted to party members only, no forum is 100% safe. So, if you are posting something a little, erm, controversial, do count to 10, and think about it first…)

Last month, we asked if you’d promote LibDemVoice.org to your colleagues in your local party.

We have refreshed the artwork a little, and are now able to offer an extra inducement.

Every copy of a members’ newsletter including one of our ads (available in a wide variety of sizes) received in London by the end of March will be entered into a free prize draw for one of our exclusive LibDemVoice mugs. Don’t forget to include your name and the address where your mug sent.

We also have a choice of three formats - PNG image file, Adobe PDF, and PagePlus, the party’s preferred DTP packaging.

• LDV promo - PNG
• LDV promo - PDF
• LDV promo - PPP

You may have noticed that next to people’s comments is a small picture of themselves.

If you want a picture to appear next to your comments you need to do two things.

1. Visit Gravatar.com, create an account and upload a picture.
2. Post a comment, ensuring that your email address that you’ve used on Gravatar is the same one that you’ve put in the comment field.

Feel free to post test comments below.

We at LDV are delighted to announce two new regular columns will be gracing our pages in the months to come:

Lib Dem blogger, Jonathan Calder (aka Lord Bonkers) will be editing a new ‘Top of the Blogs’ feature, The Dirty Dozen, each month rounding up some of the best articles posted to non-Lib Dem political blogs. Introducing it on his own site, Jonathan writes:

I aim to keep a balance between pointing to interesting postings that we Lib Dems may have missed and laughing at the folly of our opponents. If you see any suitable posts on Labour or Tory blogs, please .

Mike Smithson, editor of one of the most popular political websites in the country, PoliticalBetting.com, will be writing a monthly column for LDV. Mike was a founder member of the Liberal Democrats and stood for Parliament at the 1992 General Election. He was elected twice as a County Councillor in Bedfordshire and has also been a Borough Councillor in Bedford. We await his thoughts on the Lib Dems with keen interest.

Our thanks to them both.

Some 2,300 of Iain Dale’s blog-readers voted in a wide-ranging end-of-year survey across 33 categories, including Lib Dem Blog of the Year. Here are the results:

1. Lib Dem Voice 34%
2. Norfolk Blogger 21%
3. Lynne Featherstone 12%
4. Liberal England 8%
5. Quaequam Blog! 8%
6. Cicero’s Songs 6%
7. Peter Black 6%
Others 5%

We at LDV towers are, of course, touched to the hearts of our bottoms; congrats, too, to the other six blogs.

Bless Iain Dale. He’s worried that if Lib Dems don’t speak through Lib Dem Voice they have nothing to say. Here’s a hint, Iain: cast your eyes down the Lib Dem Blogs Aggregator, and you’ll see we party members have plenty to talk about. There have been (by my count) seventy-three - yes, count ‘em, 73 - leadership blog postings since the result was announced just 10 hours ago.

But, ’tis true, unlike the Tory party we don’t rely on one lone mouthpiece, Tim Mongomerie, to give all Lib Dem activists a home in which to spout off: for the Lib Dem blogosphere speaks with many voices, not just one. It’s our curse - and, above all, our blessing. Thank you for pointing it out so clearly to your right-wing readership.

Hello, fluffy friends.

So… who wants to interview the Leader of the Liberal Democrats with me?

Such a lot has happened since last I wrote to you.

Sir Mr the Merciless has taken the LONG WALK; Mr Frown has shot himself in BOTH FEET; and Mr Balloon is still RUBBISH.

The Liberal Democrats will soon have a NEW Party Leader, either Mr Chris or Mr Nick, and you may have already read that I (OK, and some other people) went along to INTERVIEW both of them. I think that the interviews went RATHER WELL, and certainly showed both candidates at their best. The question is: do we want that to be the end of it? Because I am thinking that this might be something that is worth keeping going.

What is EXCITING is that BOTH candidates have said so too, and what is more, said so ENTHUSIASTICALLY. That is RIGHT: the new Leader of the Liberal Democrats (whoever wins) has agreed that we should carry on having a regular “Bloggers Interview Panel”.

What this would mean would be that several times a year, about half-a-dozen people – bloggers but otherwise normal Party members – will get to meet and quiz the person at the very top of the Liberal Democrats: ME!

Er, and the Party Leader.

Hopefully this will be a tremendous opportunity, a chance to open up a new dialogue between the top of the Party and the membership, and a lot of FUN.

The thing is: who gets to come along?

When we started this, and credit where credit is due, it was Sir Mr the Merciless who first invited us, the panel was made up of the people short-listed for the Liberal Democrat Blogger of the Year Award. When the Leadership Contest was called and we got in touch to organise our leadership interviews, we added other prize-winners to get a bit more diversity. And for a bit more gender balance we have added some more ladies too.

But increasingly it is looking less like a panel of nonimated Top Bloggers and more like some people I have, er, met.

That’s not very fair and it’s not very Liberal Democrat.

So, that is what I am here to ask you about. How do we arrange for a wider and more representative selection of the Liberal online community to be able to take part?

The FIRST important question is how many people would WANT to take part, who would want to have a crack at interviewing the Party Leader?

There are one or two obvious basic rules. Panellists would have to be party members; they would have to have a diary published on Lib Dem Blogs Aggregated, and they would have to write up the interview for their online diary.

The SECOND question after that is how do we get a reasonable panel out of the people who want to have a go?

What seems to work well is a panel of about a half-a-dozen people for each interview.

Continuity of panellists is an advantage, enabling people to follow up on points raised in earlier interviews, or just to develop a better relationship with the Leader and the other bloggers, but fresh ideas are also necessary. And we want to have a broad range of perspectives: young and old, North and South; ladies and gentlemen and elephants.

So here is my PROPOSAL. I think that each year we should pick a pool of about a dozen people, who will go on the panel. The Winner of the Blogger of the Year Contest gets a place, obviously. Perhaps the Winner of Best New Blog and Best Blog by an Elected Person should have places too, to get some different perspectives. Maybe even all the category winners! And at the same time we should run a poll or nonimations through Lib Dem Voice for another ten places. Add to that we will co-opt highest placed runners up, so that the pool always has at least two men and two women and two people who’ve not been on before.

Once we have our pool we can set up a rota, probably by drawing lots at the start – people can always do swapsies if they want to – to make sure that everyone gets at least a couple of goes on the panel.

I shall organise it and chair it and provide the DOUGHNUTS, but if I don’t get nonimated then I will BUTTON my TRUNK and won’t ask any questions.

Do you think that this sounds FAIR and FLUFFY? Please comment below!

Remember, my aim is to come up with a plan that will be OPEN and FAIR and bring in LOTS of people, but at the same time is EASY enough to be managed by a SOFT TOY.

Obviously there ARE other possibilities.

For example, I thought QUITE HARD about just organising the interview (subject to the Leader’s convenience) and then advertising the time and date here on Lib Dem Voice to make the invitation completely open to Lib Dem Bloggers.

That LOOKS like it would be more straight-forward and democratic, but it’s actually PRETTY COMPLICATED to think of a way of picking out the applicants that is both FAIR and SEEN TO BE FAIR by everyone who might want to take part. (I am not a one elephant Electoral Commission, you know!)

You might also want a say on whether there should be some sort of TERM LIMIT, like the Americans have for their Monkey-in-Chief and like you can’t win Blogger of the Year two years running. Personally I think NOT – if you are good enough to get nonimated time after time, then so you should be! And making sure there are two new people each time should keep things from becoming STALE! But you might DISAGREE!

We should also think about LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. So far we have held three of our interviews in LONDON. This is because it is CONVENIENT, what with all the MPs working in that big old CLUBHOUSE there. But it might not be convenient for YOU – especially if you are blogging from EDINBURGH. We would have to think CAREFULLY about how – as an AMATEUR organisation – we could make that EASIER.

We did, though, do our FIRST interview – with Sir Mr the Merciless – when we were in BRIGHTON at Conference, and this might be a GOOD place and time to organise future interviews. Conference, I mean, not just Brighton!

And we shouldn’t necessarily limit ourselves to JUST interviewing the Party Leader. There are three candidates for the role of Party President, for example. Nor should we forget that there are Liberal Party Leader’s in Wales and in Scotland as well, and a TOPPING candidate for London Mayor, and also Liberal Democrats actually IN POWER in councils across the country, including major cities like Liverpool and Newcastle.

I hope very much that you will agree that this is step forward in RECONNECTING people to their democracy. Hooray for the Liberal Democrats, leading the way again!

If you have ideas or would like to get involved, please leave me a FLUFFY MESSAGE in the comments column below.

If there are enough people who want a go, then I shall ask Mr Lord Deputy Stephen very nicely if he wouldn’t mind helping me to organise a POLL.

I think that this is going to be VERY EXCITING!

Love from
Millennium

(Read my Diary!)

* Millennium Elephant keeps an online DIARY, twice short-listed for Lib Dem Blog of the Year, which you can read here.

Don’t forget, if you’re a party member you can register for the Lib Dem Voice members’ forum - in which case you get to read and post on a rich variety of topics which don’t always make it into the public blog. Here’s a selection of the currently active threads to whet your appetites:

* Traffic: a liberal approach
* PPCs for the next General Election
* Creationist Theme Park - Is science under attack in Britain?
* Leadership Results
* The official ‘Thanks Vince’ thread
* The Problem with Gordon
* post Iraq - foreign policy

(Disclaimer: though LDV’s forum moderators do our best to ensure membership is restricted to party members only, no forum is 100% safe. So, if you are posting something a little, erm, controversial, do count to 10, and think about it first…)

Traffic levels here at The Voice have grown sharply all through the year.

We estimated last month that around 10-15% of those who will vote in the party’s leadership election are readers of this site - which is significantly higher than most (if not all) other Liberal Democrat blogs.

On the other hand, it still leaves plenty of room for growth. Which is where you come in, dear reader…

Alex Foster has put together a series of adverts and articles suitable for including in members and supporters newsletters. So (if you are a Liberal Democrat!*) why not download the promotional articles and put them to use in your local party’s newsletters and mailings?

* Or indeed if you are not, but are feeling particularly magnanimous.

EDIT: the version initially here has been superseded.

After spending all week working on this new theme, it’s time to launch our new look.

That’s the question Jonathan Calder asked on his Liberal England blog, following Simon Hughes’s endorsement of Nick Clegg on Lib Dem Voice this week. His piece sparked a lively comments thread, and has even prompted a story in today’s Pandora column in The Independent:

Simon Hughes has found himself on the receiving end of bitter cat-calls from Liberal Democrats after wading in with his views about the current leadership contest. This week Hughes posted some comments on the political website Lib Dem Voice, in which he came out strongly in support for the candidacy of Nick Clegg. …

Hughes’s comments have provoked fury among party officials who say that, as the party’s president, he really shouldn’t be seen to be taking sides so publicly. So far, other so-called Lib Dem grandees, including the acting leader Vince Cable and former leaders Charles Kennedy and Sir Menzies Campbell, have been maintaining dignified silences about their preferred choices. Although no one from Hughes’s office would comment about the uproar, supporters for both Clegg and his opponent Chris Huhne are said to be furious with the comments.

One of the likely candidates to replace Hughes as president when he stands down next year, Baroness Scott, says she would have kept her trap shut. “It is entirely a matter for the president but, personally, I wouldn’t have done it,” she tells me. “The job of the president is to act as a mouthpiece for the members. If, for example, there was a problem with the election, the president would not be seen as independent.”

For the record, Simon’s piece was submitted by Nick Clegg’s campaign team for LDV’s regular ‘Leadership Platform’ slot; so it would be a little surprising if his supporters actually were furious.

Don’t forget, if you’re a party member you can register for the Lib Dem Voice members’ forum - in which case you get to read and post on a rich variety of topics which don’t always make it into the public blog. Here’s a selection of the currently active threads to wet your appetites:

(Disclaimer: though LDV’s forum moderators do our best to ensure membership is restricted to party members only, no forum is 100% safe. So, if you are posting something a little, erm, controversial, do count to 10, and think about it first…)

The Times’s leading political commentator analyses the Lib Dem leadership race to date here. Well worth reading in full here, but simply for the sake of shameless self-promotion, here’s the bit which name-checks Lib Dem Voice:

Mr Huhne starts from having done well last year, though neither he nor Mr Clegg is well known among less-active Lib Dem members, the armchair voters. The choice is blurred by their similarities (both have foreign wives, were MEPs and went to public school and Oxbridge) and on policy. Attempts to claim big differences smack of pedantry and mean nothing to most voters. …

The contrast lies more in style and positioning. A thoughtful analysis this week by Stephen Tall, on the Liberal Democrat Voice website, concludes that the essence of the contest is: “purism (Huhne) versus pragmatism (Clegg)”. Should a leader “unite the party around core beliefs”, or “unite the people around a broader concept of liberalism – one which the party perhaps sometimes finds uncomfortable – in the hope it will give the party mainstream appeal and, in time, power?” …

The Lib Dems have picked up a bit in the polls, but any new leader will have a hard task getting heard. The choice between Mr Clegg and Mr Huhne boils down to who can best reach out beyond the party faithful.

Some interesting poll figures from the paper’s most recent Populus poll (conducted 2-4 Nov):

* 70% of those questioned would favour the Liberal Democrats if they had a strong and credible new leader
* 64% think there is so little difference now between Labour and the Conservatives that there is a real opportunity to make a breakthrough if the Lib Dems can develop some clear and distinctive policies
* 54% say that if no party has an overall majority after the next general election, the Lib Dems should be willing to support whichever has the largest number of MPs
* 34% think the Lib Dems should work with Labour to keep the Conservatives out of government

Liberal Democrat Voice is, and always has been, a website run by and for all party members no matter where they place themselves on the spectrum of liberal opinion.

In most party selection contests (eg, London mayoralty and European Parliament) LDV has voluntarily agreed to abide by party rules stating that endorsements of specific candidates, whether in articles themselves or in the comments fields, are not allowed. These rules do not apply to the current contest to succeed Ming Campbell as leader of the national Liberal Democrats.

Nonetheless, and as I hope you’d expect, LDV intends to remain wholly neutral during the ensuing leadership race, and will not of course be endorsing any candidate.
Read more »

If you’re a party member you can register to use the members’ forum - our place to say whatever’s on your mind without the danger of it being misquoted (or quoted out of context or quoted all too bloody accurately) on opposition leaflets.

Topics currently being discussed include:

It’s 12 months to the day since site creator, Rob Fenwick, uttered the immortal words: “Hi and welcome to Liberal Democrat Voice.” Since when LDV has gone from strength to strength, quickly establishing itself as the leading independent website for Lib Dem members and activists.

To commemorate the occasion, Rob has kindly sent us an electronic telegram (or “e-mail”, as he insists on terming it):

“My decision to create Liberal Democrat Voice arose (as decisions involving my giving time or money to the party usually do) out of a phone conversation with Mark Pack. I was stuck at Clapham Junction waiting for a badly delayed train home and, let’s be frank, he took advantage of a vulnerable commuter who’d simply phoned up because he was bored.

“I was also in possession of a hot tip - in Iain Dale’s language, an “EXCLUSIVE.” Simon Hughes was certain to be challenged for the Liberal Democrat presidency. My source was unimpeachable. I was good to go.

“Boredom and an extremely dodgy tip-off are perhaps not the most inspired foundations on which to build a website such as this, but I’m glad I did it, and even more glad that it is now in the hands of a first-rate team who are taking it further than I ever could. The message boards are more active, the site is more interesting. It feels now as if you - the community - own it. I hope there can be little doubt that it is a permanent fixture on the Liberal Democrat landscape.

“Most of all I’m glad that the users of Liberal Democrat Voice have a place independent of the party to air their views - be they a humble deliverer, or a member of our shadow cabinet.

“A very happy birthday, Lib Dem Voice! Now please, stop giving Mark Pack my phone number.”

The current management thanks Rob for what he began, as well as all those who have contributed along the way - whether by writing articles, comments, posts in the members’ forum, or simply for dropping by to read what’s here - and looks forward to another year of intelligent debate written by, and for, you, our Lib Dem readership.

Remember this site is here for you. If you’d like to contribute, do please get in touch.

Ah, it’s started up again

By which I mean comments appearing on this site which have all the following in common:

1. First time comment from someone
2. Minimal name information given
3. Person uses “us” or similar phrases to talk about the Liberal Democrats
4. Person says the party is heading for disaster, eats babies and doesn’t know how to make chocolate cake (I paraphrase slightly)
5. Person’s comments echo remarkably what Conservatives are saying

So I’ve had a bit of a clear out. If by mistake I’ve zapped a comment from you by mistake apologies - just get in touch to let me know. Oh, and if you are a Conservative, you’re welcome to comment on this site, providing (a) you don’t pretend to be a Liberal Democrat, and (b) it’s not just a string of abuse.