Over at LabourList, Nick Clegg pens a powerful post in favour of the strides taken in recent years to enshrine equal rights for gay people. Here’s an excerpt:

Like many people, in 1997 I hoped that with the right cast into the political wilderness a permanent victory for gay rights was in sight. But discrimination still lingers in the statute book, and homophobia still festers in homes, offices and classrooms. Gay rights, like all minority rights, should by now have become unquestionable. But in practice they are still too often treated like privileges, falling in and out of favour with politicians. David Cameron’s recent apology over Section 28 is a prime example. Leadership is about speaking out on issues when they matter, not simply when you judge public opinion has moved. …

I am determined that the Liberal Democrats will remain outspoken and steadfast in our defence of gay rights, from backing same sex marriage to stopping the deportation of gay asylum seekers to countries were homosexuality is punishable by death. There has been much progress in recent years, and much to celebrate. But as long as homophobia still rears its ugly head in workplaces, in classrooms, and even in the home – politicians must continue to speak out in favour of the values of gay rights. For me, it is quite simply one of the touchstones of what a liberal society should be: open, tolerant and free of prejudice.

You can read the article in full HERE.

We don’t do an LDV Daily View 2 x 2 round-up on Saturdays, so instead here’s an open thread. What stories have caught your eye? What issues are on your mind? Are you mourning Andy Murray’s Wimbledon semi-final defeat? Are you looking forward to the cooler weather? Or have you spotted an interesting political story, perhaps even one connected to the Lib Dems? And what do you make of Sarah Palin’s decision to step down as Alaskan governor? Discuss away in the comments below…

Welcome to this Friday edition of our new LDV feature rounding up some of the best/worst/most curious political videos. This week, in the absence of any contemporary videos grabbing my attention, I thought we’d take a trip down memory lane, and revisit party election broadcasts of the 1980s from each of the three main parties.

Labour party election broadcast 1987

The ‘87 Labour campaign has gone down in the history books as presentationally slick. You might doubt that from the first two minutes of this 10-minute film (yes, TEN MINUTES: what sort of attention span do these people think we have?) – a bizarre montage presumably meant to show Mrs Thatcher to be a heartless monster, but actually leaves the impression that she’s a damn sight more Prime Ministerial than Neil Kinnock. Stick with it (or fast forward) to the end, and it closes with a shot of the male-dominated Labour shadow cabinet in a dark, dour room. You look at it, and think, ‘Thank God that lot didn’t end up running the country.’ Just a shame which lot actually did.

Tory party election broadcast 1983 Read more »

West Wing devotees will be familiar with the concept of ‘take out the trash day’ – it even has its own Wiki entry:

The title refers to the Friday press briefing wherein the White House releases information about several sensitive stories, thereby preventing discussion and reducing any probable impact in the media.

Donna: What’s take out the trash day?
Josh: Friday.
Donna: I mean, what is it?
Josh: Any stories we have to give the press that we’re not wild about, we give all in a lump on Friday.
Donna: Why do you do it in a lump?
Josh: Instead of one at a time?
Donna: I’d think you’d want to spread them out.
Josh: They’ve got X column inches to fill, right? They’re going to fill them no matter what.
Donna: Yes.
Josh: So if we give them one story, that story’s X column inches.
Donna: And if we give them five stories …
Josh: They’re a fifth the size.
Donna: Why do you do it on Friday?
Josh: Because no one reads the paper on Saturday.
Donna: You guys are real populists, aren’t you?

So here goes with our Friday round-up… Read more »

Those lovely people at Wikio have emailed The Voice with their list^ of the top blogs in the UK in June 2009.

(Lib Dem blogger Jennie Rigg has already published the list of top 30 politics blogs: below is the full list for all blogs, though there’s considerable overlap between the two owing to the dominance of politics blogs in Wikio’s weightings.)

Ranking by Wikio.

^ Here’s the Wikio explanation of their ratings: Read more »

2 Big Stories

Is homphobia still rife on the Tory benches?

That’s the allegation from Labour cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw:

Ben Bradshaw has said “a deep strain of homophobia still exists on the Conservative benches”. Mr Bradshaw, one of three gay men currently in the cabinet, made the comments as a new poll suggested more gay people were turning to the Tories. Chris Bryant, another gay minister, said: “If gays vote Tory they will rue the day very soon.”

For what it’s worth I suspect that equality for gay people is the one area where the Tories have genuinely changed over the years – though there have been recent allegations from prominent Tories themselves that perhaps attitudes haven’t changed as much as they might wish to believe. And of course it’s a very recent conversion. As recently as 2003, David Cameron voted for the retention of Margaret Thatcher’s infamous section 28, an action he apologised for just a couple of days ago.

Row over ex-Speaker Martin’s peerage

Michael Martin might have resigned as chair of the House of Commons, but controversy continues to dog him. First of all, there was the question of his pension pay-off, then whether he should be appointed to the House of Lords
, and now the allegation that the House of Lords vetting panel pointedly noted that candidates should “enhance rather than diminish” the second chamber. The claim has prompted a furious retort from ex-Speaker Martin’s ertswhile Labour colleagues:

Sixteen MPs are calling for chairman Lord Jay to withdraw the comments. They have signed a Commons motion saying they were “dismayed” to read about the comments in the Guardian newspaper – adding Mr Martin had “served this House so well as an elected member with great integrity, charm and good temper”.

There’s an easy way to avoid such problems with appointments to the Lords, as Lib Dem blogger ‘Costigan Quist’ observes:

Over the years, democracies have developed quite a good way of getting round this problem. It’s called voting. It’s a really clever idea where candidates stand for election, the people vote and the winners get elected. Perhaps we should give it a try.

2 must-read blog-posts

Iain Dale and political morailty (Jonathan Calder)

Noting the top Tory blogger’s double-standards as he tries to “position himself as an arbiter of political morality” for the Norwich North by-election.

Should Early Day Motions be scrapped? (Mark Thompson)

Whilst I can see that it could be argued that they are a waste of money, at the same time I know it is a good way for campaigns to get a foothold. I know that some electoral reform campaigns have used the “Lobby your MP to sign EDM …” to help gauge parliamentary support and give them more traction.

If this week’s weather hasn’t got you all hot ‘n’ bothered, then what better way of remedying that than by watching tonight’s Question Time (BBC1 and online, 10.35 pm)?

David Laws, the Lib Dems’ children, schools and families, will be the party’s representative. The QT website gives his impressive pre-Commons bio: “Before his election to Parliament in 1997, he had a career in economics and business, during which he was vice president of JP Morgan, and head of US Dollar and Sterling Treasuries at Barclays de Zoete Wedd. He left in 1994 to take up the role of economic adviser to the Liberal Democrats, and from 1997 to 1999 was the party’s director of policy and research.”

Joining David on the panel will be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the House of Commons Harriet Harman MP, the former leader of the Tory party Iain Duncan Smith MP, the musician and songwriter Jarvis Cocker, and the journalist and columnist Peter Hitchens.

As per last week, we’re continuing to trial a new way of contributing to the open thread, via Facebook’s Live Stream Box, below:

If you’re tuning in, you can join the simultanous online Twitter debate here at #bbcqt, or the LDV debate in the thread below. Meanwhile Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson will be liveblogging events via CoverItLive at his own blog.

The Eastern Daily Press has produced an intriguing analysis of last month’s local elections results, attempting to estimate how voting then might map across to the Norwich North by-election to be held later this month:

Calculating party support ahead of the by-election is difficult due to division boundaries overlapping constituency ones.

An approximation would give a line-up based on the June 4 results of: Conservatives 10,656 (40.1pc); Labour 4,953 (18.6pc); Lib Dem 4,371 (16.5pc); Green 4,251 (16.0pc); Ukip – standing in only four seats – 2,106 (7.9pc); BNP 228 (0.9pc). …

Labour, Lib Dems and Greens will be seeking to establish themselves early in the campaign as the main challenger to the Tories.

This compares with an ICM opinion poll last week (with a high margin of error) suggesting the Tories (34%) and Labour (30%) out front, with the Lib Dems on 15% and the Greens on 14%.

Of course not only do the local county boundaries not overlap directly with the constituencies, but the way folk vote in Parliamentary elections is often different than in local elections – just ask the Lib Dem PPCs in Liverpool city! My guess is the opinion poll figures will prove more accurate than an analysis of local election results, but we’ll see soon enough.

Here are the allegations, as summarised in a Lib Dem press release issued this afternoon:

George Osborne used his second homes allowance on a London property and then switched it to a large farmhouse in his Cheshire constituency of Tatton. He bought the Cheshire residence ten months before he won his Tatton seat in 2001. Instead of taking out a mortgage on the farmhouse he increased the mortgage on the London property which he bought for £700,000 in 1998.

He designated the London house his second home, even though it was his main residence, so he could claim mortgage interest payments. Two years later he took out a separate £450,000 mortgage on the farmhouse, made that formally his second home, and has since claimed £100,000 on it. It is claimed that Mr Osborne was able to reduce the mortgage on his London home to less than £200,000 before he sold it for £1.48million in 2006, making a £748,000 profit. He did not pay capital gains because he had declared it his main home since 1998 with the tax authorities – despite the two years it was formally designated as his second home with Commons officials.

The Liberal Democrats have calculated that if Mr Osborne had paid tax for those two years, he would have been liable for £54,948. David Cameron has banned his MPs from flipping their homes and avoiding paying capital gains tax.

Here’s the story in The Times:

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, is to be investigated by a sleaze watchdog after revelations in The Times over his second-home allowance claims. … [John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards] is to look into a complaint about Mr Osborne’s claims for a second-home allowance after it emerged that he had taken out a mortgage on his constituency home that was nearly £5,000 more than its purchase price.

… Mr Lyon said he would look into a claim that “Mr Osborne claimed for mortgage payments that were not necessarily incurred, contrary to the rules of the House”.

“Since your complaint involves allegations relating to events of over seven years ago, I have consulted the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges and they have agreed to me initiating an inquiry into this part of your complaint.” He said that he put the claims to Mr Osborne, adding: “When I have received his response, I will consider best how to proceed.”

And here’s what Lib Dem Treasury sokesman Lord (Matthew) Oakeshott has to say about the allegations:

George Osborne should know that you can’t tell the taxman one story and the fees office another. We asked him to come clean and pay the taxpayer back weeks ago but he did nothing.

“This is a real test of David Cameron’s leadership – he needs to make his Shadow Chancellor pay back the tax he’s dodged. It looks like Cameron has either got one rule for the Notting Hill set and another for the knights of the shires, or that George Osborne is simply too close to chop.”

John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, today told the House that his new deputy speakers should be elected by MPs.

From the BBC:

In a statement, he told MPs he wanted two deputy speakers from the government side and one from the opposition side.

He is believed to be concerned that following his own election by secret ballot last month the three deputies should also be elected.

Mr Bercow indicated he had consulted party whips, who normally appoint the deputy speakers, about the plan.

It is thought that Mr Bercow is looking to implement the changes – or to start the process of change – after the summer recess.

Electing the deputy speakers could raise a question of political balance – traditionally the Speaker and his three deputies have been chosen to reflect the strength of the various parties in the Commons.

The three current deputy speakers are Conservative MPs Sir Alan Haselhurst and Sir Michael Lord, who were both among the MPs defeated by Mr Bercow in the contest to be Speaker, and Labour’s Sylvia Heal, who did not stand.”

Followers of Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone’s blog can’t have failed to notice her latest campaign – to bring in mandatory anonymous job applications “to end the subliminal discrimination that creeps in with some applications being discarded because of the names on them.” Specifically Lynne wants employers to remove names and replace them with a number on application letters/forms – otherwise “we end up with people not being discarded from the first sift of applications because their name shows they are black, female or old”. Lynne explained further:

… initial findings [from research by the Department of Work & Pensions] are of significant discrimination. And whilst it is clearly early days and the DWP is going to do more work – it seems clear to me that – first – those who argued there isn’t a problem which needs fixing in particular need to look very closely at what the DWP has been finding, and second – here is a simple proposal which costs business nothing but could actually deliver enormous benefits in removing discrimination in the job market.

Removing such discrimination is not only important in itself – but by providing people with equal opportunities to earn their living, it opens up all sorts of other knock-on benefits in terms of social cohesion and economic efficiency, which we all benefit from.

What do Lib Dem Voice readers think? Is Lynne right to pursue this campaign as the party’s equalities spokesperson? Or do you think it’s unworkable – and, if so, why? Here’s the question:
Do you support the idea of job applications being made anonymous?

And here are your options:

Feel free to continue the debate in the comments thread below…

2 Big Stories

The news has a state vs public ownership flavour at the moment:

Passengers to pay price for crisis on the railways
“A series of big projects are in grave doubt after the collapse of the highest-earning franchise exposed a deepening hole in the rail budget.

National Express East Coast is to be renationalised after the parent company refused to honour a pledge to pay the Department for Transport £1.4 billion in the years to 2015.

The DfT will have to accept a much lower sum when it puts the franchise back out to tender and is likely to be forced to pay up to £500 million a year to other rail companies that have been hit by the recession and can recoup most of their losses from the taxpayer.” [Times]

Sale of Royal Mail stake shelved by ministers [FT]
Peter Mandelson told peers yesterday that there was “no prospect” of part-privatising Royal Mail at present, despite the postal services bill having already gone through the Lords.

“Market conditions have made it impossible to find a partner on terms that would make it value for money to the taxpayer,” the business secretary told the Lords. “When market conditions change . . . we will return to the issue.”

Government insiders admitted that “political reasons” had been behind the decision to shelve the sale.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

% rise!
Willie Rennie on the real decisions to be made on public finances.

Garden posters in Norwich North
More musing on election signage from Nich Starling.

On Tuesday evening I blogged about the speech given by Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission, criticising her comments about turnout in British elections:

I was rather surprised at the introduction to your speech earlier today to the UCL Constitution Unit where you painted what seems to me a very misleading picture of what is happening to turnout in British elections.

I appreciate that is a fairly strong criticism, so I hope you won’t mind me justifying it by taking parts of your speech and commenting on them in detail.

You can read my detailed comments in the original blog post. Today I received a response from her, which she’s given me permission to quote:

I’ve just been passed your post on LibDem Voice which I read with interest.

You’re right, of course, that turnout in Wales in the European Parliamentary elections was the second lowest since 1979, not the lowest. Thanks for picking that up. It should have been spotted it at our end, it wasn’t and it has been corrected. We obviously shoudn’t have given the wrong figures.

But I’m disappointed that you seem to have missed the key point I was making – and indeed made more than once in the speech last night – which is that all of us who are committed to the vital importance of democratic politics and elections, and who want to defend democratic politics as a public good can, in my view, take some comfort from fact that the gloomy predictions about turnout made prior to the elections weren’t fulfilled. I said:

this turnout, against such a backdrop, does show a continued faith in democratic politics with people wanting to have their voice heard.

I don’t deny that there are at every election a range of factors which can influence this. As you point out, for example, the combination of a local council election with a General Election clearly makes a big difference. But I simply don’t think that we can always seek to explain or excuse turnout on that basis. The stark fact remains that it is still the case that the UK continues to have lower than average turnout at European Parliament elections. 34% is a lot worse than 43% across Europe as a whole and is something that we shouldn’t just accept. And for turnout to be mostly 40% or below at county council elections simply illustrates the huge challenges we all face as we try to encourage participation in democracy – for our part by ensuring there are no barriers in people’s way when they want to register to vote, and for yours by being active within a political party.

I hope we can agree on my key thesis: that there is no room for complacency, and that we all need to work to rebuild confidence and commitment to the electoral process.

Credit is due for responding within 24 hours, which reflects well on the Electoral Commission compared with some of the other people and bodies that have been criticised on this blog in the past.

As for the gist of the response, I would have rather seen the Commission admit it had painted an inaccurately bleak picture, though I would agree that an accurate picture is still not a happy one.

It will be interesting to see what comments the Commission makes in future on turnout, and whether the Commission (or any journalists) start reporting the good news, such as rising turnout in London. Not only was turnout in 2009 sharply up (when compared on a like-for-like basis, i.e. with 1999 rather than 2004, when there were other elections on the same day) but it was also sharply up last year in the London Mayor and Assembly election.

Two years of sharply rising turnout figures in a row? That’s not a story I’ve yet seen anyone else report.

From the Lib Dems 4 Parliament site, here are the PPC selections closing during July:

* North East Hampshire – PPC (07 Jul 2009)
* Basildon and Billericay – PPC (10 Jul 2009)
* South Basildon & East Thurrock – PPC (10 Jul 2009)
* Thurrock – PPC (10 Jul 2009)

See libdems4parliament.org.uk/events/ for more details.

Apologies, dear reader, but I’ve been busy at work rather than watching Prime Minister’s Questions (so that you don’t have to). I will catch up with it later, but I have read the Hansard transcript. And if today’s PMQs is remembered for anything, I suspect it will be for this quite sublime Prime Ministerial line:

… total spending will continue to rise, and it will be a zero per cent. rise in 2013–14.

Yes, you read that right: 0% counts as a rise in total spending in Gordon Brown’s eyes. The Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh (admittedly not a Labour cheerleader) sums up his performance today:

It was worse than that: it was bad in an inept, jaded, so-grey-I-make-John-Major-look-colourful kinda way. This was a man with the stench of decay around him.

Don’t forget that the economy and figures are supposed to be Brown’s strong suit. If he turns in a performance like this, it suggests that the only real reason for keeping him – namely a possible economic recovery for which he will claim credit – is disappearing fast.

If I were a Labour backbencher watching today, I would have my head in my hands.

That’s certainly how it read.

When Nick Clegg’s turn came, he also asked about public spending, linking the issue (in his supplementary) to his newly-adopted policy of scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons system. It was in his first question, though, that I think Nick did best, skewering the tortured efforts of both the Labour and Tory parties to avoid levelling with the British public how they will respond to the economics of recession. Full Hansard transcript of Nick’s exchanges with Gordon follow: Read more »