Tag Archives: gordon brown

Opinion: One year on from Tuition Fees: why I’m still a Liberal Democrat

By Harry Matthews | Published 9th December 2011 - 12:51 pm

It’s one year on from the vote on Tuition Fees, so I thought I would lay out some reasons why I, as a student, am still a Liberal Democrat after our great ‘betrayal’.

Although our ministers are having to make tough choices, Liberal Democrats have won a major victory – having a tax cut for the low paid, rather than the very rich, as the Tories would have preferred. Raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 is a good way to correct the disaster Gordon Brown created when he scrapped the 10p tax band. Plus it is a tax cut …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , | 25 Comments

Brown at 10: the authoritative account – which lays into Ed Balls

By Mark Pack | Published 30th November 2011 - 3:54 pm

When it first came out Brown at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge was extremely well received for its authoritative detail and the revised paperback edition maintains that standard well. With Seldon being one of the founders of the modern school of contemporary history, it is no surprise that the book follows the thorough, heavily documented approach contemporary historians strive for – with over 1 million words of interviews recorded for posterity (even if many are, for the next 30 years, withheld from public view) and extensive access to private diaries.

The huge depth of research is accompanied by …

Continue reading »
Posted in Books | Also tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

The weekend debate: What if Gordon Brown Were Still Prime Minister?

By Carl Quilliam | Published 19th November 2011 - 7:55 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

Over at the New Statesman Guy Lodge has posed the question, ‘What if … Gordon Brown was leading the Eurozone crisis?’, and come up with quite a flattering answer for our former Prime Minister.

He believes that Gordon Brown would have shown more leadership than David Cameron and George Osborne in the Eurozone crisis, and crucially would have more credibility to deal with Nicolas Sarkosy and Angela Merkel.

Is he right?

What if the Lib Dems had propped up Gordon Brown in …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , | 29 Comments

Opinion: Labour’s problem

By George Kendall | Published 13th October 2011 - 2:25 pm

There’s been nothing dramatic about this conference season apart from a few gaffes, but under the surface, I think the Labour conference was significant.

While I enjoyed the Lib Dem conference, I don’t think the journalists did. Whenever I passed a well-known TV presenter, they had a face like thunder. They were looking for factionalism and controversy, but all they found was Lib Dems facing up to a difficult situation with determination and loyalty. That makes dull TV, so they must have been tearing their hair out.

The Tory conference was more entertaining.

Theresa May’s remark about cats, and the more recent

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference, Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , | 35 Comments

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 …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , | 19 Comments

Vince Cable’s speech to LibDem conference

By Vince Cable MP | Published 19th September 2011 - 4:39 pm

You can watch Vince’s speech to the Lib Dem conference here…


(Available on the BBC website here.)

Or you can read the text in full here…

Continue reading »
Posted in Conference | Also tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Chris Rennard writes… Can we tell what will happen in four years?

By Chris Rennard | Published 21st August 2011 - 2:55 pm

Four years ago, David Cameron was on the run.

The Conservatives had ‘thrown the kitchen sink’ into winning the Ealing Southall by-election in the summer of 2007 and they had raised expectations of a Tory victory based on the appointment of a well known local Asian businessman as ‘David Cameron’s Conservative candidate’ in a seat with a lot of Conservative Councillors.

But on polling day, the Conservatives not only failed to win the by-election (or even overtake the Lib Dems), but they fell from second place to third in the parliamentary by-election in Sedgfield following Tony …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , | 22 Comments

Explaining Cameron’s Coalition: politics as seen through the eyes of MORI polls

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd August 2011 - 10:24 am

Explaining Cameron’s Coalition is the latest in the series of general election analysis by MORI’s Robert Worcester and Roger Mortimore, this time joined by two other authors. The book is therefore very much the tale of the 2005-2010 Parliament and subsequent general election seen through the eyes of MORI’s opinion polling, with an often pungent analysis which certainly fits Robert Worcester’s happiness to point out when he got predictions right and others got them wrong.

Though there is a smattering of references to polling results from other firms, the great strength of the MORI data is that many of the …

Continue reading »
Posted in Books, Polls | Also tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Opinion: Do we really want to risk another media mogul running the country?

By John Roffey | Published 30th July 2011 - 1:21 pm

If there is one thing that the Murdoch affair has confirmed it is that politician’s lust for power knows no bounds. The acquisition of power has been likened to a heroin rush and judging by the extent that Blair, Brown and Cameron, particularly, have been prepared to jump to Murdoch’s commands – we must believe this to be true.

Although it is likely that an attempt to clean up politics will take place over the next few years, now that it has been made so clear that a media giant can have such an impact on the government of a nation …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , | 27 Comments

Who is Ed Miliband?

By Mark Pack | Published 21st July 2011 - 12:26 pm

Authors of the best accounts of the New Labour years delved deeply into the rival Brownite and Blairite versions of events before coming to their own conclusions. Those who did not frequently ended up with embarrassingly lopsided and inaccurate accounts.

Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre, the authors of Ed: The Milibands and the making of a Labour leader, have avoided making the next generation’s version of the same mistake by talking to both sides of the Miliband family, even returning more than once to the conundrum of when Ed told David he was going to run against him for leader. …

Continue reading »
Posted in Books, Op-eds | Also tagged , , , | 16 Comments

The Independent View: The bigger picture on privacy

By James Baker | Published 16th July 2011 - 1:35 pm

Amongst the frenzy of the phone hacking scandal Philip Virgo has recalled operation Motorman. This investigation by the Information Commissioner and follow-up report What Price Privacy Now studies and provides details of the illegal trade in personal private information. Rather than being limited to the phone hacking scandal, the report suggests this trade was widespread between newspapers, private investigators and corrupt officials.

This report was presented to the previous government that failed to act upon it and halt the illegal trade in personal information. It is with unfortunate irony that members of that previous government including Lord Prescott …

Continue reading »
Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hughes, Farron and Foster write to Rupert Murdoch – full text of letter

By Helen Duffett | Published 13th July 2011 - 6:53 am

Simon Hughes, Tim Farron and Don Foster have written to Rupert Murdoch about the proposed take-over of BSkyB by News International.

They ask Murdoch to respond to public opinion by changing his commercial strategy in the UK: withdrawing his News Corporation bid for BSkyB and concentrating all his efforts on cleaning up News International.

The letter in full:

Proposed take-over of BSkyB by News International

Ever since the report of our Information Commissioner ‘What Price Freedom?’ and the conviction and imprisonment of Goodman and Mulcaire in 2006, there has been growing concern about the policy and practices of UK newspaper titles owned

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Government takes action over ‘vulture funds’

By Mark Pack | Published 16th May 2011 - 7:52 pm

When Labour were in power, Liberal Democrats regularly attacked the government for its inaction over so-called vulture funds (that is, in this context, financial funds who buy up debt from poor countries and try to make a profit out of it). For example, then International Development spokesperson Lynne Featherstone said,

Gordon Brown has said this is immoral but so far it’s been all talk and no action.

The Government needs to take a stand and use its influence in the IMF to help devise an internationally binding system to ensure companies can’t prey on heavily indebted developing countries in this way.

The

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Sharon Bowles named most influential Brit in global financial regulation

By Mark Pack | Published 6th February 2011 - 8:55 am

Sharon Bowles, Liberal Democrat Euro-MP for South East England, is the highest placed British person in the GFS Power 50 list of the most influential figures in global financial regulation.

Sharon BowlesThe list is voted on by readers of Global Financial Strategy, and Sharon Bowles came out twentieth due to her role as Chair of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. This committee of MEPs has an important role in debating and amending European-wide financial regulation, including new rules on bank capital and bankers’ bonuses.

Sharon Bowles came ahead …

Continue reading »
Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Opinion: Brown was deceived by his “friends” – let’s hope the Coalition is more careful!

By Nick Hollinghurst | Published 2nd January 2011 - 10:55 am

In days of old, when Brown was bold (well, in 1992 anyway) he gave a stirring speech, as Shadow Chancellor, calling for a “powerful alternative to free-market thinking”. He clearly explained why regulations and strong institutions were needed to bring the City under control. Then, five years later he was catapulted into power by the Labour landslide, becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tony Blair’s government.

Tony Blair naively developed an undue admiration for what he romantically saw as the swashbuckling and flamboyant world of supposedly successful entrepreneurs, whose company he found flattering.  Gordon, alas, similarly fell for a charm offensive launched by the very people he once …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , | 14 Comments