Tag Archives: charles kennedy

Was there a Clegg coup? Review of The Clegg Coup – Britain’s First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George by Jasper Gerard

By Mark Pack | Published 23rd November 2011 - 9:54 am

Many book titles reveal little about what their book contains, either providing but a banal name for its contents or a clever, clever name which obscures rather than reveals. However, The Clegg Coup – Britain’s First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George by Jasper Gerard has a title which is revealing in two aspects. First, the way general accuracy in the book is marred by detailed slips – for whilst the general point of the title is true, with the May 2010 coalition being the UK’s first peacetime coalition in Westminster since before 1939, the title does not use the …

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Book review: Peace, Reform and Liberation – “the first port of call for anyone wishing to learn more about Liberal and Liberal Democrat history”

By Iain Sharpe | Published 16th November 2011 - 10:25 am

There has long been a need for a single volume history of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat parties covering the entire period from its roots in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century to the present day.

While Liberal history has received plenty of attention from historians, previous studies of the party have been limited to a specific eras or themes. In many ways of course the party has several histories. This includes the origins of the Liberal tradition in the Whigs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the heyday of Liberal government in the middle of the nineteenth century, the party’s decline and near extinction between the 1920s and 1950s, its recovery in the second half of the twentieth century, and now the challenges of governing in coalition with the party’s historic enemies, the Conservatives.

So it is welcome that the Liberal Democrat History Group has sought to fill a gap with Peace, Reform and Liberation.

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Opinion: The failings of This Week

By Mark Hofman | Published 23rd October 2011 - 9:25 am

As we kick back and relax from a hard day’s work (or job seeking as is so often the case), we would expect our licence fee funded BBC to reflect our views, those of 23% of the electorate according to last year’s poll (the national election).

However, a glance at our daily political programming would suggest that the BBC is still pandering to the cosy duopoly of Labour and the Tories.

Perhaps this cosy duopoly is most evident on Thursday nights with “This Week” (BBC 1 11.30pm ish), promising “politics with attitude and without the spin”. Andrew Neil (ex-Conservative party employee and …

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Opinion: Who will sort out our colossal National Debt?

By Stuart Bonar | Published 9th October 2011 - 9:56 am

The one group I’d most expect to be drawing up a roadmap to a debt-free Britain would be true-blue Tories. Some of them at least understand the problem. In a new book by five Conservative MPs - After the Coalition: a Conservative Agenda for Britain,  dubbed by the Independent as the Bible of the new Tory right wing, there is an entire chapter on the National Debt and the risk it presents.

As I have argued elsewhere, it is wrong to think that debt doesn’t matter… that so long as you can keep getting enough out of Peter to pay Paul then …

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LDVideo at Conference | CK on Nick, the DPM’s last year, and party leadership contest rules explained

By Stephen Tall | Published 22nd September 2011 - 7:55 am

Were you at Birmingham and so missed out on how the Lib Dem conference was reported? Not at Birmingham and so missed out on seeing Lib Dem MPs and government ministers up close and personal? We hope these videos will help (re-)connect you…

Charles Kennedy on Nick Clegg


(Available on the BBC website here.)

Nick Clegg’s highlights over the last 12 months

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LDVideo | Election archive special… 1992

By Stephen Tall | Published 27th August 2011 - 6:15 pm

Last weekend — in a desperate attempt to offer our readers an alternative to The X-Factor — we highlighted some clips from elections of yesteryear: first, the 1960-70s, then the 1980s. Today, we’re scrolling forward to the video footage of the 1992 general election…

Paddy Ashdown on the campaign trail

(Available on YouTube here.)

Don Foster wins Bath from Chris Patten (from 3:05)

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Independent View: Catch21 is helping demystify Parliament

By Laura Cronshaw | Published 9th August 2011 - 12:48 pm

Here at Catch21, our sole aim is to engage and inform our vibrant and vocal electorate, in the ever changing world of politics. To provide discussion, discourse and good old debate in on-trend topics, and to enable the freedom of opinion and understanding to reach out from the House of Commons into our own comfortable common rooms.

In 2009, Catch21 set up the Uni-Q project, a political discussion show that gave students a chance to air their own political opinions whilst grilling willing MP’s. Mirroring the format of BBC Question Time, Uni-Q set off touring colleges and universities across the …

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LibLink | Charles Kennedy MP’s views on the AV referendum, health reforms and Murdoch

By Helen Duffett | Published 3rd August 2011 - 11:53 am


Video also available at YouTube.

Charles Kennedy MP’s latest video diary is online now at http://www.catch21.co.uk. Catch21 is a production company which produces shows with the purpose of encouraging and invigorating an informed and politically active young electorate. It’s a charity run for and by young people and regularly features video diaries by MPs and Peers in its i-MP slot.

[Charles] covers issues like the May elections where the Liberal Democrats lost all but 2 of their seats in Scotland, he says “it was a universally bad picture” and he also shares his views

…

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Top 10 tweeting MPs: congratulations to Lib Dem @julianhuppert in at No. 6!

By Stephen Tall | Published 31st July 2011 - 2:20 pm

Who are the top 10 Twitterers in the House of Commons? That’s the question the Mail on Sunday answers today, following a survey by Westminster Public Affairs.

The list looks not at number of followers, but at the volume of tweets each MP has sent out. Heading the list is Labour’s Kerry McCarthy with well over 27,000 tweets. Cambridge’s Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert — elected to Parliament just last year — comes in at number six, having sent over 10,000 tweets, and now with over 4,000 followers.

My Co-Editor Mark Pack has compiled a …

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Liberal Youth: appealing to Lib Dems everywhere

By Thomas Hemsley | Published 30th May 2011 - 5:23 pm

Conferences are a foundation stone of being a Liberal Democrat. There have been some really huge and important ones – Brighton, 2002, where we laid out a principled position on Iraq; Llandudno, 1981, where Shirley Williams and David Steel spoke passionately in favour of an alliance; Sheffield, 2011, when we opposed the NHS reforms. Conference is the best way for the membership to exert their influence over the leadership. Past leaders, from Steel to Ashdown, from Kennedy to Clegg, have often feared Conference for the skill and passion with which it has put its arguments. And so the tradition of …

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“Thursday is decision day” – Charles Kennedy’s eve of poll message to members and supporters

By Helen Duffett | Published 4th May 2011 - 5:53 pm

Charles Kennedy MP has emailed Liberal Democrat members and supporters with a “get out and vote” (and “get out the vote”) message, ahead of tomorrow’s elections and referendum:

Tomorrow you have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have your say on how we elect our MPs to Westminster. Important elections are also taking place across the country for the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament & local councils. Thursday is Decision Day.

When I was first elected in 1983, the idea of changing our voting system for Westminster elections seemed important, but the chance seemed remote. When the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly were established, neither

…

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Charles Kennedy: I’ve learned to love the coalition

By Mark Pack | Published 21st April 2011 - 7:54 am

In a piece for Prospect magazine, published today, former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy gives his backing to the coalition government. Though Kennedy didn’t vote in favour of the coalition last May, abstaining instead, he now backs it:

I admit that this coalition wasn’t exactly my preferred option. I’ve always considered myself in the reforming, centre-left tradition, so a centre-right arrangement puts my compass in a spin … But those of us who genuinely wanted to explore other routes—from a rainbow coalition to a minority tory administration— were sunk when figures like David Blunkett and John Reid were so against

…

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Charles Kennedy writes… Why Vote Yes – A chance for change we cannot miss

By Charles Kennedy MP | Published 20th March 2011 - 11:55 am

I’ve campaigned for electoral reform for as long as I can remember. I’m both President of DAGGER (Democratic Action Group for Gaining Electoral Reform) and the Liberal Democrat Group of the Electoral Reform Society, so you can imagine how I felt when I found out that we have a chance to change our outdated, broken electoral system and replace it with something better.

Let’s be clear: AV may not be perfect, but it IS better and fairer than First Past the Post. Even the ‘No2AV’ campaign know that, which is why they’ve resorted to making things up …

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Charles Kennedy to join Ed Miliband on a pro-electoral reform platform

By Mark Pack | Published 17th March 2011 - 8:55 am

It’s hardly surprising that Charles Kennedy and Ed Miliband would be appearing together to promote electoral reform. Kennedy has long been a supporter of electoral reform and by virtue of not being in government is seen by many in Labour as an easier figure to campaign alongside (even though one of Kennedy’s first acts on becoming party leader was to end the party’s then work in government with Labour). Ed Milband in turn is the author of Labour’s general election manifesto which not only pledged a referendum but also called for a change in the electoral system to follow from …

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Charles Kennedy MP: No2AV ads “shocking and outrageous”

By Helen Duffett | Published 25th February 2011 - 11:49 am

Charles Kennedy MP has urged Liberal Democrat members and supporters to take action by registering their disappointment and disgust at the advertising tactics of the No2AV campaign.

The No campaign recently took out a two-page advertisement in the Birmingham Mail claiming that a sick baby “needs a new cardiac facility NOT an alternative voting system”. The ad misleadingly implies that the public must choose between an alternative voting system and frontline services.

Here’s what Charles said in his email this morning:

Over recent days No2AV have published a series of ads in local papers that can be described as distasteful at best,

…

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