Tag Archives: european union

What Lib Dem members think about Europe, Cameron’s ‘veto’, and the Eurozone

By Stephen Tall | Published 11th February 2012 - 7:55 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 570 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Party members split over the future of Europe

LDV asked: Which of the following options would be your ideal future for the UK and the European Union?

    46% – The UK should remain a full member of the EU and work towards ever closer union, economically and politically.
    40% – The UK should remain a full member of the EU but reject working towards ever

…

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Posted in Europe / International, LDV Members poll | Also tagged , | 6 Comments

Liberal Unionism in 2012

By William Hobhouse | Published 13th January 2012 - 4:00 pm

There’s no escaping history in our party, and current debates of nationalism, unionism and secession should prompt Liberal Democrats to delve back into the Gladstonian past.

The Liberal Party split over the Union. Gladstone favoured Home Rule for Ireland, Liberal Unionists didn’t, and ultimately joined the Conservative Party. This cemented the Conservative Party as the party of the Union, and it is a position the Conservative Party still holds.

The purpose of this article is, however, to challenge the Conservative Party’s stranglehold over being British.

The existing Conservative argument goes that a Conservative Britain is a Britainthat stands proud and takes no nonsense …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , | 26 Comments

DPMQs: LibDem MPs enjoy an untroubled post-questions lunch

By Paul Walter | Published 22nd December 2011 - 10:03 am

Time was when Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions was the closest you got to bloodsports in the House of Commons. The DPM would be tethered, red-faced and growling, to the dispatch box, as Labour MPs taunted him and propelled all sorts of bile at him, augmented by the odd tactical nuclear missile rear-launched by the Tory swivel-eyes.

We’ve come a long way in a few months. Now, DPMQs are relatively sedate affairs. The DPM is well in control and there is little mischief from the Labour benches. Well, none that would spoil LibDem MPs’ lunches.

Indeed, at least four MPs found it difficult …

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Opinion: The Tory Party has mutated. It is for us to say Europe is our hope for the future

By Antony Hook | Published 20th December 2011 - 12:53 pm

David Cameron’s renunciation of a Treaty not even yet fully negotiated was the culmination of a process that began around 1992.

In 1992 a small group of Tory ultras, “the Maastricht Rebels”, began fighting their party’s traditional pro-Europeanism. It has taken 19 years to make their fringe views a normal Conservative Party and conservative press position. 1992 has led to 2011 like a river flows to the sea.

Anti-Europeanism’s hold on a major political movement has caused a poorly informed anti-Europeanism to take hold among many of our fellow citizens in the UK, as it has among some of …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 25 Comments

Tim Farron MP writes: Sorry Dave, but you’re no Mrs. T…

By Tim Farron MP | Published 16th December 2011 - 2:00 pm

I have yet to watch Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Margaret Thatcher. I’m sure it will be fascinating, but I just fear that it might also be a bit too painful – I find it hard to divorce my views on the politics of that era from my memories of avoidable hardship experienced by the community I grew up in. Then again, perhaps I should try and get over my Thatcherphobia and view her record a bit more dispassionately. Where better to start than Mrs T’s record on Europe?

Sat behind me in Parliament, amongst the ranks of my valued coalition colleagues, …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , | 22 Comments

Europe: good news, but not big news

By Mark Pack | Published 15th December 2011 - 8:27 am

Into my inbox yesterday came an email from London Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford, welcoming a sensible new decision which the European Parliament has made that will  give the public better information and – thanks to that better flow of information – make the relevant market work more efficiently. Just the sort of good news that liberals should trumpet: giving people power and fixing market failures.

But. And it’s a big but.

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Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged | Leave a comment

PMQs: Miliband 1 Barn Door 1

By Paul Walter | Published 14th December 2011 - 12:53 pm

It was the last pre-Christmas Prime Minister’s Questions today and we saw the return of Nick Clegg loyally sitting at the PM’s right-hand side.

Ed Miliband started on the economy, and the news that unemployment is up again. He quoted David Cameron’s words when he came to office, saying that jobs would be “uppermost”. “What’s gone wrong?” asked the opposition leader.

Cameron’s main thrust during the 2010 election campaign was that new private sector jobs should lead the economic recovery and more than replace lost public sector jobs. Miliband did a good job of exposing that this bright idea has allegedly failed. …

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

Nick Clegg – Europe: Britain is stronger, better, greater when we lead

By Helen Duffett | Published 12th December 2011 - 3:17 pm

Nick Clegg has emailed party members this afternoon, following the EU summit last Thursday:

Support for Europe has always been a cornerstone of what our party stands for. Recent days have been tough for pro-Europeans in our country, but I am clear that it is in Britain’s national interest to remain at the heart of Europe.

As I have made clear since Friday, I am bitterly disappointed by the outcome of last weeks summit, which ended with the UK in a minority of one. There is now a real danger that over time the UK will be isolated and marginalised within the

…

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Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged , | 22 Comments

It’s the Euro’s fate, not Britain’s fate, which is the key post-summit question

By Mark Pack | Published 11th December 2011 - 9:25 am

Sat on a shelf a few metres away from me is a box containing the various military medals won by my relatives over previous generations. The medals criss-cross Europe, coming from different countries, over the three wars that had a German-French conflict at their centre. To British eyes that count of three wars may seem odd at first, but for the German and French politicians building new European structures in the aftermath of the Second World War, their heritage was one of three wars – the Franco-German war of 1870 and then the two World Wars.

For them something drastic was …

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Posted in Europe / International, Op-eds | Also tagged , , | 30 Comments

Opinion: “The Pope…seceded with all his followers from the Church of England”

By Chris White | Published 11th December 2011 - 8:43 am

So says 1066 and All That (Sellar and Yateman – a prewar forerunner of ‘Horrible Histories’) when summarising the Reformation.

It’s a good line and we can smile at the vanities of sixteenth century isolationism, knowing that today’s politicians, and people, are much more sophisticated. Nor do we regard the continent as cut off if there is fog in the English Channel.

During the early hours of 9th December (mark that date) David Cameron, we are told, played a blinder and ensured that 26 out of 27 countries in the EU were rescued from their fiscal and financial folly by …

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Posted in Europe / International, Op-eds | Also tagged , , | 22 Comments

Europe: what Liberal Democrats have been saying today

By Mark Pack | Published 9th December 2011 - 7:02 pm

Nick Clegg:

I have said for months that it would be best to avoid arcane debates about treaty change altogether and if we had to proceed down that road, it would be best to do so in a way that did not create divisions in Europe.

The demands Britain made for safeguards, on which the Coalition Government was united, were modest and reasonable. They were safeguards for the single market, not just the UK.

There were no demands of repatriation of powers from the EU to Britain and no demands for a unilateral carve-out of UK financial services.

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Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged , , , , | 101 Comments

Opinion: Lynne Featherstone’s defence of evidence-based translational medicine is welcome

By Prateek Buch | Published 9th December 2011 - 4:00 pm

[Declaration: for the last nine years I worked in an academic research laboratory, developing therapies for inherited disorders that cause blindness. During this time I worked with animal models to help our improve our understanding of disease mechanisms and to act as a test-bed for new therapies].

The sparsely-attended adjournment debate on Wednesday secured by Conservative MP David Amess, saw a rare thing – a genuine discussion based around the merits of peer-reviewed scientific research and a robust defence of an evidence-based approach to translational medicine from Lib Dem Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone. For a biology nerd interested in the …

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Posted in Europe / International, Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

PMQs: Penguin in the menage à trois

By Paul Walter | Published 9th December 2011 - 10:45 am

The first big subject at Prime Minister’s Questions this week was Europe. Tory MP Andrew Rosindell asked if David Cameron would show “bulldog spirit” at the forthcoming summit. Later, similar points came from various Tory Eurosceptic MPs, including the Father of the House, Sir Peter Tapsell. He is always heard with great respect, despite his long-winded, rather pompous and, in this case, halting mini-speeches which have barely inquisitive constructions stuck on the end of them.

Ed Miliband started on Europe as well, asking if Cameron would fulfil his promise that treaty change might give the opportunity to “repatriate powers”. The Prime …

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

What are Lib Dem MEPs up to when it comes to money?

By Mark Pack | Published 5th December 2011 - 11:55 am

I’ve been wondering for a little time what the Liberal Democrat MEPs are pushing for when it comes to the European Union’s budget, which makes London MEP Sarah Ludford’s latest email update particularly timely:

No pro-European LibDem can be other than fully committed to reform of the EU. Any flaws in the way it is run overshadow its good work on everything from research to roaming charges, not to speak of the area I am passionate about, justice and civil liberties. I’m pleased therefore that a deal has been reached for the EU’s 2012  budget which overall represents no real terms

…

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Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged , | 2 Comments

LDVideo: David Laws interviewed by Mark Littlewood

By Nick Thornsby | Published 1st December 2011 - 5:57 pm

Last week, the Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Mark Littlewood, spent an hour talking to David Laws at the IEA’s Westminster headquarters. Before a packed room, Mark and David touched on a whole range of issues – taxation, Europe, the formation of the coalition, just exactly how liberal the Liberal Democrats are, and many more.

The hour-long exchange, which you can see below, is well worth a watch:

(Video also available on vimeo here.)

Posted in News, YouTube | Also tagged , , , , | 2 Comments