Labour (or the Conservatives) lose the general election.

Gordon Brown (or David Cameron) resigns as party leader.

With much of the rest of their frontbench team also discredited, the party elects a non-MP – the (ex) Mayor of London – as its leader.

A sitting MP then resigns so the new party leader can stand in a by-election for Parliament.

With me so far?

Now imagine that in the by-election the other main parties do not put up candidates but rather give the new party leader a free pass into Parliament.

Pretty unthinkable, isn’t it?

Yet curiously that’s just what political tradition in Canada dictates. Not only is it common enough for new party leaders to come from outside the existing ranks of MPs for their to be a tradition of how to treat them, but it is also common for the main parties to give new leaders a free pass to Parliament.

If you look through the electoral and Parliamentary rules, Canada is in many ways very similar to the UK. Both are Parliamentary democracies for a start. Yet whatever the rules and structures say, political culture makes – in this respect – for a massively different system. What is common in one country is unthinkable in another.

Is there any lesson in all this? Perhaps. When talking about Parliamentary reform, we often concentrated overwhelmingly on the details of what the rules say. But that isn’t the only thing which shapes how the system works.

The result, courtesy of ALDC:

LD Nich Starling 630 (54.5; +24.3)
Con 471 (40.8; -3.0)
Green 54 (4.7; +4.7)
[Other (0.0; -26.0)]
Majority 159
Turnout 31%
LD gain from Con
Percentage change is since May 2007.

This is a big swing from the Conservatives, (who have previously taken voters for granted here) in a ward from Chloe Smith MP’s Norwich North constituency.

Taverham North had the lowest turnout of any ward in last year’s Norwich North by-election, and will shortly form part of the new Broadland Constituency. This is the third by-election gain in Broadland constituency in the last five months, and bodes well for local Liberal Democrats in the coming General Election.

In the meantime…

2 Big Stories

Clarke fails to toe line on party pledge

David Cameron last night overruled Ken Clarke, after the shadow business secretary appeared to backtrack on a Tory commitment to spell out details of a core tax policy ahead of the general election.

The Conservative leader acted after Mr Clarke told a London event that the party could not decide until it was in power whether it would reverse the one percentage point rise in national insurance that is due to take effect in April.

The Tory former chancellor said the party needed to have “the reins of power” before it could make Budget decisions such as the potential tax reversal. “We will only know if we can afford it in the [first emergency] 50-day Budget,” he told a business audience. “The Budget is not just something you knock off for a TV programme.” [FT.com]

RMT rail signal workers to take strike action

Railway signal workers have voted in favour of strikes in a row over jobs and safety, the RMT union has said.

The strikes are over Network Rail plans to cut jobs and for more maintenance work to take place over the weekend.

The RMT said 54% of its members backed strikes, and it will announce walkout dates on Thursday if further talks with Network Rail fail.

The threat of a national stoppage has happened as talks continue to avert a strike by British Airways staff. [BBC]

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that caught my eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• Daily Fail considers criminalising a generation by Caron Lindsay:
  

  At the time of writing, 64% of the respondents to the poll are in favour of prosecution. Those of a more socially liberal disposition, you know what to do! I love it when Fail polls don’t give them the result they want. Childish, I know, but I think it’s important to challenge the ridiculous bile they print.

• Hard sell tactics
  Jackie Pearcey compares Gordon Brown to a salesman who has outstayed his welcome.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

• Janet Nunn - http://allaboutbartonleclay.blogspot.com – ultra-local blogging from Bedfordshire covering the sorts of issues the media rarely touch these days.
• John Leech MP - http://johnleechmp.wordpress.com – he’s been blogging since November, but is new on the aggregator.
• LibDemTV - http://libdemtv.blogspot.com – existing Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson goes multimedia.
• Mathew Hulbert - http://mylibdemlife.wordpress.com – a new member chronicles life in the party.
• Tom King - http://eachwishresigned.blogspot.com – music, politics, religion and a rather nifty banner graphic.
• James Taylor - http://liberalthought.wordpress.com – back blogging after a seven month pause.

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

The prospective Tory general election candidate for the Western Isles has made a hugely embarrassing gaffe by backing a spoof harbour in a landlocked village.

Conservative hopeful Sheena Norquay confusingly insists that developing the fictional port at Achmore in the middle of the barren Lewis moor is a top priority.

The 22-year-old hopeful unexpectedly stressed one of the main island issues is “the building of the harbour wall at Achmore.”

However, the policy is a complete nonsense as no such harbour exists.

Achmore is a dry land village is located in the centre of Lewis, surrounded by hills and moor, and is the furtherest inhabited community in the Hebrides from the sea.

Ooops.

(If you read the full story it does sound as if the candidate unwisely decided to stop talking to the press after making the gaffe, making the final story worse, and didn’t have back up from the party to help her out. There are lessons there both in how to handle the media and also about supporting candidates.)

But in a new report from CentreForum, the liberal think tank, we argue that the two parties’ similarities are being wildly overstated, as are the chances of them working together in a formal coalition if the Tories are returned as the largest party in a hung parliament.

In the early days of David Cameron’s leadership, the prospect of a thawing in Lib Dem – Tory relations looked plausible. The election of a self-styled ‘liberal Conservative’ should have increased the likelihood of meaningful co-operation between the two parties. But four years on, that co-operation has been conspicuous only by its absence.

In part, this is down to a deep rooted mutual mistrust – policy positions may be ever changing, but the culture of a party, and the core instincts of its members and supporters, are not. In part, this is a simple result of electoral imperatives – as long as the success of each party depends on the failure of the other, co-operation will prove difficult.

But it is also the result of something more fundamental: the belief, held by virtually every Liberal Democrat, that the Conservative party has not been engaged in as fundamental a re-invention as David Cameron would like voters to believe. The Lib Dem view is that the Conservatives – with their regressive inheritance tax policy, their ardent Euro-scepticism, their failure to translate their rhetorical commitment to the environment into hard policy, and their refusal to countenance far-reaching constitutional and political reform – are simply not as liberal as they claim.

For all these reasons, it is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which the Lib Dems could enter a formal coalition with the Conservatives. Not only would they have to exact a political price (in the form of electoral reform) that the Tories will never pay, but Clegg and his colleagues believe that, in the absence of fixed term parliaments, the conditions needed to give a coalition even a fighting chance of survival are simply not in place. The threat of Prime Minister Cameron calling a second election at any stage, blaming the junior coalition partner as he did so, would hang over every negotiation the parties entered into.

It would be a mistake to assume from this that the Lib Dems would, in a hung parliament in which the Conservatives were the largest party, simply revert to ‘business as usual’ opposition. With politics set to be dominated for the foreseeable future by the need to tackle the UK’s massive structural deficit, the over-riding objective for the Liberal Democrats will be to demonstrate that they are part of the solution, not the problem. In a hung parliament, the Lib Dems would wield significant political power, but would have to use that power sparingly. They would almost certainly remain on the opposition benches, but would increasingly have to think and act like a governing party.

The rules of the game could be about to change dramatically.

Julian Astle is Director of CentreForum, the liberal think tank.

‘The Independent View‘ is a slot on Lib Dem Voice which allows those from beyond the party to contribute to debates we believe are of interest to LDV’s readers. Please email if you are interested in contributing.

LDV has identified 10 key votes from the 2005-10 Parliament – ranging from ID cards and freedom of speech to freedom of information and trial without jury – in order to rank all MPs according to how liberal or authoritarian their record is. All MPs are marked out of 100: the higher their score the more authoritarian they are. The lower their score the more liberal is their voting record.

On Wednesday, Lib Dem blogger James Graham posed the question, “Have you calculated what the average score for each party is?” Well, today, James, your luck is in. Here are the mean scores for all the political parties represented in the 2005-10 Parliament:

Labour = 79
SDLP = 63
UUP = 35
Sinn Fein = 27
Respect = 21
DUP = 15
SNP = 13
Independent = 12
Plaid Cymru = 8
Conservative = 7
Liberal Democrats = 3

This confirms the Liberal Democrats as the most liberal party in the House of Commons when measured according to the party’s voting record on a range of key liberal/authoritarian issues.

Unsurprisingly, Labour’s allies in Northern Ireland, the SDLP, are the second most authoritarian party. Sinn Fein and the UUP are quite closely matched in terms of their views on liberal / authoritarian issues, together with George Galloway of Respect.

I’ve treated the Independents as a group because of how they’re categorised. In reality, though, the seven MPs have little in common, ranging from Old Labour’s Bob Wareing and Clare Short to former Tories Bob Spink and Derek Conway. It’s worth noting that the two Independent MPs elected as Independents – Dai Davies and Richard Taylor – both have impeccably liberal credentials, scoring zero.

Do please use How Liberal / Authoritarian is your MP? and its built-in social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to spread the news about how liberal or authoritarian your MP is.

For two weeks now Full Fact has been trying to find out the basis of Gordon Brown’s claim that 300,000 businesses in the UK have been provided with direct cash-flow help from the Government.

In a piece published on 4 March, Full Fact examined the claim made by the Prime Minister in a speech to the Welsh Labour party. Despite numerous requests, emails and phone calls neither BIS, HMRC, Downing Street, The Treasury nor the Labour party were able to say where the figures came from.

But with Mr Brown again using the claim during yesterday’s PMQs, Full Fact has revisited the investigation, but to no avail.

Despite assurances our request was being looked into, there has been no response from the Labour party. Downing Street insisted it was a matter for the Treasury. The Treasury press team, apparently now questioning the need to respond to requests from online media outlets, insisted this was not a press inquiry and referred us to the ever-engaged public inquiry line.

So nearly two weeks, and a helluva lot of phone calls later, we are no nearer to an explanation. Our search for the facts behind the figure is not over, we are determined to provide you with the information. Stay tuned for the next update.

Don’t forget, by the way, you can now sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox – just click here – ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

1. Election appeal – can you make a donation to help these 5 Lib Dem candidates today? by Stephen Tall on Lib Dem Voice.
You can still make a donation, y’know.

2. A conservative Liberal on Chris Davies MEP’s blog.
A warm welcome to the Lib Dems to former Tory leader in Europe, Edward McMillan-Scott.

3. By-election results: 11 March 2010 – Tory holds weakening by Helen Duffett on Lib Dem Voice.
And, even better, the Lib Dem vote strengthening.

4. Hardcore porn director stands as Lib Dem PPC by Julian Harris on Liberal Vision.
Hurrah for Anna Arrowsmith for helping put the liberal back into Lib Dems.

5. Real Liberal not Fake Tory on David Grace’s Disgruntled Radical.
Not impressed by Nick being impressed by Maggie.

6. Adam Boulton: Kampfner defection should worry Labour on Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England.
Yes, indeedy: a warm welcome to John Kampfner, the week’s other defection to the Lib Dems.

7. Lib Dems set for major breakthrough – The Independant on Qurban Hussain’s Standing up for Luton.
Today Luton South, tomorrow the country.

And now to the five blog-posts that come highly recommended regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. As is now traditional we’re using the LibDig bookmarking website for party members to select some of the posts from the seven days in question which you’ve most ‘dug’. But, remember, if you want to highlight a Lib Dem blog article published in the past seven days – your own, or someone else’s – using the steam-powered method of e-mail all you have to do is drop a line to (providing the web-link and author, and any tagline comment you care to have published).

8. A little fact Iain Dale didn’t mention by Mark Pack on Lib Dem Voice.
“The shocking piece of text saying that Anna Arrrowsmith supports Labour is … six years old. Yes verily, it’s shocking news that the party has selected as a candidate someone who was a Labour supporter six years ago ” (Submitted by andrew.reeves via LibDig).

9. Guest post from Hugh O’Donnell MSP on the Venezuelan motion in Holyrood on Andrew Reeves’ Running Blog.
“Lib Dem MSP takes on hero of the left Hugo Chavez and shows the big difference between liberalism and socialism – a real respect for people.” (Submitted by caron via LibDig).

10. My bad dog experiences and what I would do by Darren Bridgeman on the Bracknell Blog.
“A story of a dog attack and people who are scared of dogs, and some ideas on how to solve the dangerous dog problem” (Submitted by dazmando via LibDig).

11. Tony McNulty and other errant MPs are in for a shock on Mark Thompson’s Mark Reckons.
The POWER2010 campaign has him (and others) in its sights.

12. Lib Dem PPC Caught…Campaigning on Nick Thornsby’s blog.
The shocking news that Lib Dem PPC, Jeremy Hilton, is trying to attract publicity to his campaign.

And that’s it for another week. Happy blogging ‘n’ reading.

Featured? Add this to your blog post!

<a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/top-of-the-blogs-the-golden-dozen-160-18414.html"><img src="http://www.libdemvoice.org/images/golden-dozen.png" width="200" height="57" alt="Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice" title="Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice" /></a>

Here are some extracts from his speech:

Labour has spent 13 years trampling over people’s privacy. From allowing children’s fingerprints to be taken at school without their parents’ consent; to making us a world leader in CCTV; to wasting vast sums of taxpayers’ money on giant databases that hoard our personal details. And now we hear that ministers want pensioners to swap their bus passes for ID cards.

“The Government’s staggering record on losing private data – leaving it in pub car parks and on commuter trains – just makes matters worse.

“And there’s an even bigger issue at stake: Labour’s flagrant disregard for our privacy flies in the face of hard won British liberty. It betrays a deep distrust of the British people, as well as an obsession with controlling every aspect of everyday life from Whitehall.

“Those same reflexes underpin this Government’s obsession with law-making. Since 1997 they have flooded the statute books with nearly 4,300 new ways of making us criminals. Some of them are completely bizarre, like ‘disturbing a pack of eggs when directed not to by an authorised officer’, and ‘causing a nuclear explosion’, as if we needed a new law for that. 

“And where do all these new laws get us? Only one in a hundred crimes ends in a conviction in court.

“The Conservatives talk a good game on privacy, but scratch beneath the surface and it’s clear they can’t be trusted to roll back Labour’s surveillance state. Just look at their plans to make it even easier for the police to watch and record people getting on with their daily lives, all in the name of cutting red tape.

“Only the Liberal Democrats will bring an end to the endless snooping on innocent people.”

Wavertree’s Labour candidate, Luciana Berger fell to pieces in the first debate of the Election campaign, which saw Colin Eldrigde for the Liberal Democrats and Conservative, Andrew Garnett attack the Londoner from both sides.

In a filming for ITV1s ‘Party People’, the three candidates were grilled by presenter Rob McLoughlin over their policies on crime and the economy.

When given 30 seconds to sell themselves in the debate at Riley’s Snooker Hall near Picton Clock, Berger froze, clasping her hands over her head repeatedly saying: “Sorry, can we start again?”

Following the re-take, which say Colin Eldridge reiterate his pitch on fairness for the electorate, the 27-year-old Labour hopeful spoke in an unconvincing manner about her confidence in the party.

You can read the full story here and find out how to help Colin Eldridge here.

Meanwhile, in Northampton South, a seat that on the new boundaries should a marginal Labour seat with a narrow majority, the Labour candidate has already conceded defeat:

Labour’s candidate for the Northampton South seat in the General Election has reportedly said he is merely a ‘paper candidate’ in the contest.

The former leader of Waltham Forest Council, Clyde Loakes, was announced as the Labour party’s candidate for the Northampton South seat at the end of 2008…

But yesterday, his local newspaper, the Waltham Forest Guardian, reported that he had “admitted he is merely a ‘paper candidate’, with no realistic prospect of winning the parliamentary seat”.

The newspaper quoted the politician as saying: “It is no longer classed as a marginal seat. I am doing this for the experience.”

You can read more here and also in the Waltham Forest Guardian, which reports:

Relations between Cllr Loakes and Northampton South constituency party activists have broken down amid anger at the amount of time Cllr Loakes has spent away from the area.

Cllr Loakes admitted there are “complex issues” with the constituency party.

The Liberal Democrat interest in Northampton is much more in the Northampton North seat, where the excellent Andrew Simpson is standing. But this sort of bad coverage for Labour in the local Northampton media will do no harm at all. You can find out how to help Northampton Liberal Democrats here.

On it I intend to put up any interviews or other sorts of footage involving Lib Dem members and candidates that I can generate. I am also happy to post any relevant footage from other Lib Dem activists that might be of interest more widely.

You can see Lib Dem TV here.

At the end of the detailed, albeit censored claims, provided on the Parliamentary website, is an invoice to the tune of £1,654 for “delivery of a leaflet in Hull North Constituency during September and October 2007″.

Looks legit doesn’t it? However there’s is an oddity about it. You see, there appears to be no such company as J W Shipley Distribution, either solvent or dissolved, listed on Companies House. An advanced search for all companies with “Shipley” also throws up nothing. Curious!

There is, however, an “independent” member of Humberside Police Authority called John Shipley who happens to be a local Labour Party activist in Hull, who also stood for the Labour Party in Hull during the 2002 elections.

I tried to contact Mr Shipley yesterday for confirmation that the invoice was from him but as yet have had no response.

So is a Labour MP claiming Parliamentary expenses to pay a Labour member to deliver leaflets? Well, although he may not have responded, I’ve been speaking to Liberal Democrats in Hull who confirm they personally saw Labour activist (and frequent election agent) John Shipley out delivering the leaflets in question.

Rum indeed. Investigations are, as they say, continuing…

Denis Healy is the Liberal Democrat candidate in Hull North. To find out how you can help him, see www.denishealy.org.uk

My local MP will soon cease to be Sarah Teather (Lib Dem, Brent) and soon will be Ed Fordham (Lib Dem PPC, Hampstead & Kilburn). Boundary changes mean that the tiny triangle of estate that I call home is being cut and pasted into the new Hampstead & Kilburn constituency. So, it feels a little like moving home.

But looking at the wider picture – change is coming.
Let me tell you what I believe. What I believe so strongly that I’m willing to get up at dawn and go to bed in the early hours every day.

It’s not just my belief.

I see it in the papers. I see it in people’s faces. I hear it from them as they tell me that for years they’ve voted for one party or another – but no longer.
I watch as hundreds of volunteers pile through the door at the local Lib Dem office – concerned by their current local MP’s (Lab, Glenda Jackson) lack of interest in their home – and the two main party’s disregard for the best interests of the country.
I see it on the internet – where polls point to an increase in Lib Dem voters following our spring conference.
I hear it on the radio.
I feel it on the street.
I see an elderly, deaf man who signs to me that Ed Fordham of the Liberal Democrats has his vote.

It would be so very ‘politics’ to repeat Nick Clegg’s messages from his speech on Sunday – but they are winning votes.

Not because Nick went out to find out what voters wanted, so that he could promise them ‘education, education, education’ or ‘halve child poverty by 2010′ and fail to deliver, or even prioritise, these.

No. Nick made these commitments because it’s what Britain needs. Britain needs fairness. Everyone likes a tax break – but a break for the poor, a charge on the rich. Isn’t it simple? It’s a concept dating hundreds of years – yet Labour (the self appointed ‘Party of the many’) have completely failed to implement it.

Britain needs a boost – a return to a diversification of our income – ‘not just betting on things – but making things’. I don’t claim to be a financial whizzkid – I leave that to Vince Cable. And I can ‘leave it to him’.
I don’t need to be suspicious that he’s going to favour the strong over the weak, or plough Britain’s limited money into new wars, or failed initiatives.

I can sit back and let the expert do his job. It’s a nice feeling.
Britain needs a decent schooling reform, reform founded on basic principles that will stand up to the test of time.
Britain needs to wake up to the reality of climate change – and actually act on it.
Regardless of what other countries are doing, we need to make an investment and make a change. Once, we led the world. Now, Labour want to lead where it suits them, and work by committee where it doesn’t.
Well, it’s not working – and unless we act now, it’ll never work. It’ll never have a chance to work, because there won’t be a planet left for it to work for.

Britain needs hope – and Nick Clegg has given them that.

A vote for the Lib Dems isn’t just a vote for fairness. It’s a vote for anyone who wants to draw a line in the sand and move onwards.
It’s a vote for common sense.
It’s the common sense vote – and people are coming to their senses.

So, you can see – today is a good day to get up before dawn. To stuff letters into envelopes. To stand outside tube stations. To spend hours on the phone. To go to bed completely shattered.
Today is a good day to be a Lib Dem.

* Jack Holroyde is an active Lib Dem member and freelance campaigns manager for the third sector, who blogs at Hope is mine …

Political impartiality

Some organisations wish to be impartial, some are forced to be impartial. So does that mean if you are organising a local hustings you need to invite every candidate standing in that constituency? For a regional or national hustings does it mean you have to invite every party who is putting up a candidate in the election?

Not necessarily.

An organisation may have exact rules to cover this, but if it doesn’t then the Charity Commission’s guidance is sensible (or, if it is a charity, necessary) to follow:

• Charities are free to invite candidates and political party representatives to public meetings about issues on which the charity is campaigning, for example by inviting candidates to debate those issues, or to speak at a reception to launch the charity’s campaign. Trustees must not encourage support for any political party. One way of making sure that their charity does not do that may be to invite representatives from as wide a political spectrum as possible.
• However, inviting candidates from a wide spectrum can be difficult to achieve in practice. It does not mean that all parties have to be represented every time a charity does any work which engages with political parties. If a charity is uncomfortable engaging with a particular party, it should examine the reasons why. The trustees should make a decision based on whether such engagement would further or hinder the interests of the charity. For example, an event may be more manageable and more focused if all minority parties are excluded. If the charity is advised (for example by the police) that the presence of a particular candidate at an event will create a risk of disorder, that would be a good reason for not inviting them. It is also open to charities not to invite a representative from a political party which advocates policies which are in contravention of the charity’s objects, or whose presence or views are likely to alienate the charity’s supporters.

In other words, even if you are an impartial organisation governed by charity rules, you do not have to invite every single candidate or party. But you do have to have a good reason for not doing so.

Election expenses

UPDATE: by coincidence, the Electoral Commission issues new guidelines shortly after this post appeared. The following section has been updated to reflect the new guidance. The main issue, the ‘union loophole’, remains even after the updated guidance.

The other issue is one of election expenses. Regardless of who you invite (and non-charity, partisan bodies in particular may well wish to invite only a subset of candidates), does the costs of organising the hustings meeting count as an election expense?

Here is where the Electoral Commission’s guidance comes in – and note the difference between public meetings and those just for members of the organising body:

There are limits on how much can be spent by candidates on promoting their election. These limits include spending on public events which:

• the candidate attends, and
• promote electoral success for that candidate

If someone else has paid the costs of the event, this would be a donation to the candidate or candidates.

In our view, you will not be affected by these rules if:

• you have invited all the candidates in the constituency to attend – even if not all of them actually turn up, or
• your hustings is only open to members of your organisation

In other words, if – say – a trade union organises a hustings, only allows its members to attend and only invites the Labour Party candidate then it does not count as third party expenditure (no need for union to worry about amount of money spent on meeting) nor does it count against the Labour Party candidate’s expenses limit. That includes not just the direct costs of the meeting (e.g. hire of room) but also related costs. Quite how much publicity, for example, you could count as the cost of the hustings meeting is a question yet to be tested in the courts.

(For a public hustings, there are some circumstances in which you can avoid inviting all the candidates and still keep the costs of the event off the expenses records, e.g. if there are too many candidates for it to be practical to invite them all. Further details are in the Electoral Commission’s guidance.)

Personally, I think this wording leaves to large a loophole in the law for comfort, most obviously for trade unions but also for any mass membership organisation with a political intent. However, although I’ve discussed this issue with the Electoral Commission previously, the Commission has not called for the law in this area to be changed. Let’s hope a future election doesn’t make that look a mistake.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning, Mr Hague was forced to concede he had made a “mistake” when he said that Lord Ashcroft’s promises upon becoming a peer would have cost him “tens of millions of pounds” with its clear implication that Lord Ashcroft would end his non-dom status when he became a peer of the realm.

As Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb immediately tweeted:

Interview with Hague was incredible! He has to go! And did Cameron really not know until a few weeks ago?

And Lib Dem shadow home secretary Chris Huhne has issued the following statement also calling on Mr Hague to quit or be sacked:

William Hague promised the Prime Minister that before Lord Ashcroft received his peerage he would pay “tens of millions” in British tax, but then never even checked whether the promise was kept. He has treated the taxpayer with total contempt.
 
“It is utterly unbelievable to say, as William Hague did this morning, that he was not aware of the tax implications of these negotiations that dragged on for four months when he was kept informed by his closest loyalist, the Chief Whip.
 
“Mr Hague is guilty of a cynical cover-up for a shabby decision which has cost British taxpayers more than £100 million.
 
“William Hague is not fit for any role in Government, let alone that of Foreign Secretary. Lord Ashcroft must now meet his £100 million tax bill.”

This story isn’t over yet.

LDV has identified 10 key votes from the 2005-10 Parliament – ranging from ID cards and freedom of speech to freedom of information and trial without jury – in order to rank all MPs according to how liberal or authoritarian their record is. All MPs are marked out of 100: the higher their score the more authoritarian they are. The lower their score the more liberal is their voting record.

Yesterday we noted the 24 Lib Dem MPs who recorded a perfect zero score of 0/100, meaning they had voted on the liberal side of the argument in each of the 10 Commons debates we looked at. Today we’re publishing the full results for Lib Dem MPs:

=62 Richard Younger-Ross Teignbridge Liberal Democrat 12
=62 Mark Oaten Winchester Liberal Democrat 12
=58 Mike Hancock Portsmouth South Liberal Democrat 9
=58 Nick Clegg Sheffield, Hallam Liberal Democrat 9
=58 Matthew Taylor Truro & St Austell Liberal Democrat 9
=58 Charles Kennedy Ross, Skye & Lochaber Liberal Democrat 9
=44 John Hemming Birmingham, Yardley Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Roger Williams Brecon & Radnorshire Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Martin Horwood Cheltenham Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Bob Russell Colchester Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Colin Breed South East Cornwall Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Nick Harvey North Devon Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Malcolm Bruce Gordon Liberal Democrat 9
=44 Paul Keetch Hereford Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Edward Davey Kingston & Surbiton Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Norman Lamb North Norfolk Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Susan Kramer Richmond Park Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Paul Rowen Rochdale Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Danny Alexander Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey Liberal Democrat 6
=44 Mark Hunter Cheadle Liberal Democrat 6
=25 Sarah Teather Brent East Liberal Democrat 3
=25 David Howarth Cambridge Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Tom Brake Carshalton & Wallington Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Mark Williams Ceredigion Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Annette Brooke Mid Dorset & North Poole Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Julia Goldsworthy Falmouth & Camborne Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Greg Mulholland Leeds North West Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Lembit Öpik Montgomeryshire Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Steve Webb Northavon Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Simon Hughes North Southwark & Bermondsey Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Vincent Cable Twickenham Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Tim Farron Westmorland & Lonsdale Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Sandra Gidley Romsey Liberal Democrat 3
=25 David Laws Yeovil Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Michael Moore Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk Liberal Democrat 3
=25 John Thurso Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Jo Swinson East Dunbartonshire Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Menzies Campbell Fife North East Liberal Democrat 3
=25 Willie Rennie Dunfermline & Fife West Liberal Democrat 3
=1 Don Foster Bath Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Alan Beith Berwick-upon-Tweed Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Stephen Williams Bristol West Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Jenny Willott Cardiff Central Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Paul Holmes Chesterfield Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Dan Rogerson North Cornwall Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Chris Huhne Eastleigh Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Phil Willis Harrogate & Knaresborough Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Andrew Stunell Hazel Grove Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Lynne Featherstone Hornsey & Wood Green Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Norman Baker Lewes Liberal Democrat 0
=1 John Leech Manchester, Withington Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Evan Harris Oxford West & Abingdon Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Andrew George St Ives Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Lorely Burt Solihull Liberal Democrat 0
=1 David Heath Somerton & Frome Liberal Democrat 0
=1 John Pugh Southport Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Paul Burstow Sutton & Cheam Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Jeremy Browne Taunton Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Adrian Sanders Torbay Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Robert Smith Aberdeenshire West & Kincardine Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Alan Reid Argyll & Bute Liberal Democrat 0
=1 John Barrett Edinburgh West Liberal Democrat 0
=1 Alistair Carmichael Orkney & Shetland Liberal Democrat 0

I want to make a pre-emptive defence in favour of those Lib Dem MPs (including Nick Clegg) at the higher end of the table: what their score in fact means is that they were absent from the House of Commons for 3 or 4 of the votes included in our ranking. In other words, none of them voted in an anti-liberal way. In fact the Lib Dems as a party voted unanimously on each and every one of the 10 key votes we identified; but not all Lib Dem MPs voted in each division.

Do please use How Liberal / Authoritarian is your MP? and its built-in social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to spread the news about how liberal or authoritarian your MP is.

Here’s what the BBC is reporting today:

Former Conservative leader William Hague was kept informed about the negotiations of Lord Ashcroft’s tax status, leaked papers have suggested.

He was said to be “satisfied” with the final outcome in July 2000, Cabinet Office papers seen by the BBC showed.

But that seems a little odd as,Hague claimed last November (and we reported), that he didn’t know the details the obligations placed on Lord Ashcroft, nor whether Ashcroft was a UK taxpayer.

Here’s the exchange between Andrew Marr and William Hague on 8th November 2009:

Marr “Does he pay taxes in the UK.”

Hague “I imagine that was the obligation that was imposed on him”

Marr “So you think he does.”

Hague “So I think he’s fulfilled what was asked of him. You can’t expect me to know the details of somebody’s tax affairs”

When there’s hard evidence of a party being dishonest over the status of its own largest donor, deputy chairman and peer, it seems reasonable to ask further questions.

About the best the wikipedia page for today can offer up is that John Updike was born today and the Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to transportation. Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube was disconnected and BSL was first recognised as an official British language.

2 Big Stories

Ashcroft’s lawyers silence ‘Panorama’

The Independent reports:

The BBC has shelved a Panorama documentary about the business affairs of the Tory billionaire Lord Ashcroft, because of a threat of legal action.

The Corporation has received what one insider described as “several very heavy letters” from Lord Ashcroft’s lawyers. There is now little or no prospect of the investigation being broadcast before the general election, if it goes out at all.

Plan to ban items from bins to boost recycling

The Guardian has a report on how Labour want to take even more responsibilities away from Councils, by legislating exactly what waste should be recycled:

Black bins for household waste could become a thing of the past under proposals to be published tomorrow to ban almost everything thrown away by households from being sent to landfill.

Paper and card, food, garden waste and plastics are all on a list of items that would have to be recycled, composted, or burned for energy. The move would represent a transformation in England and Wales, where about half of what people put in the bin at home or at work ends up in holes in the ground.

Presumably another stupid unenforceable Labour idea that will be floated and then dropped in fairly short order.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• Joe Otten kinda likes the slogan

Sure the Tory slogan has the word change. They want us to think that they are Barack Obama. But of course Obama is a Liberal and a Democrat. And where is their change? And who is it for? Sure the Labour slogan has the word fairness. But they’ve been in government for what seems like 30 years, and where is this fairness? So maybe it sucks to have a slogan that must be explained. At least – unlike the other parties – we have one that can be explained.

• Alex Folkes notes the post Conference Lib Dem poll boost

Turns out that when people hear more from the Lib Dems, they support us more. Who knew?

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.