The possibility of general bureaucratic bungling comes from the fact that so many people still have not been ‘processed’. Regardless of assurances that nobody has (yet) been excluded, many people have had objections to their application, most seemingly trivial; and hundreds of people still do not know if they can attend. Some of those will not have booked travel or accommodation, and face paying over the odds due to others’ incompetence.

But it appears that something more sinister is afoot, with more than one member being contacted this weekend by the police with demands for details of their passports in order to attend Conference. Let’s be clear, there is NO reason whatsoever that they need this information, nor that a member of a political party should be required to provide it or face being barred from participating in the sovereign decision-making body of that party not by Conference Committee, but by unaccountable bureaucrats acting for the police.

GMP (and Conference Committee) evidently need reminding that the May 2010 General Election result killed off compulsory ID cards and the database state – or did it?

It now appears, sinisterly, that people who happen not to have a passport produced in the post-Blair era of security paranoia and the database state are having their accreditation made more difficult and responses are being delayed. It is unclear whether Conference Committee was ever told about this.

I’ve always enjoyed a good working relationship with my local police. As a local councillor I held regular meetings with the neighbourhood team. I served on the Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnership. I’m still a member of my local NAG. Evidently the common-sense, consensus policing of Reading is non-existent in Greater Manchester, where interference in the internal processes of a political party appears to be considered fair game.

It should be the job of the Conference Committee ‘appeal process’ that people well-known to the
Party, such as Liberal Youth executive members, who are having their accreditation blocked should
be supported. The Conference Committee Chair (and whoever else is involved) should point out
that these people are not coming intent on causing any disorder greater than, perhaps, the moving
of a procedural motion. They should also not leave Party staff – who didn’t take these decisions –
exposed at what is already a frantic time of year in the Conference Office.

A number of LGBT members, specifically transgender members, are being discriminated against. I am told that the process discriminates against trans members such that they cannot register under
the police system and are being offered a separate process. That is appalling. I have asked for the assessment of the equality impact of the process to be published. I am not alone in doing so.

Equally appalling is the fact that the vast majority of members have been forced to lie to the police in order to get accredited. Principally this is because the ‘date of joining’ information requested is not held anywhere. In my case it’s a year out.

Meanwhile, on a planet many light years from freedom, a very, very small number (indeed) of people calling themselves Liberal Democrats take the ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’ view of the likes of John Reid. The company they keep speaks volumes.

To prevent this ever happening again, Conference Committee should be empowered to work with our ministers in Government to prevent further police interference in the legitimate business of a
legitimate political party.

I have tabled an amendment to the Accreditation motion (F9) which gives a much clearer instruction
to Federal Conference Committee as far as the intrusion and bungling of the accreditation system is concerned: never again.

Finally, I would like to hear from Lib Dem members who are still facing being barred from Conference, or who have simply heard nothing; I will give them help and advice, and make representations on their behalf so they can do what they should in any case be entitled to do. Contact me at gareth [at] garethepps.org.uk

“I am a Liberal and I am against this sort of thing”. With those words (reputedly) Clarence Henry Willcock, usually called Harry, refused to show his identity card to a British policeman on 7 December 1950. This triggered a sequence of events that helped cause Winston Churchill to decide to abolish identity cards in Britain, thirteen years after they were introduced as an emergency war measure in 1939 and seven years after the war had ended.

Willcock was named by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as one of his liberal heroes in 2007:

The liberal argument put forward by Harry and others in opposition was a fundamental one; it was an argument about liberty and the relationship between the individual and the state. For them, the imposition of ID cards was intolerable because of the power it gave to the state, a power which was inevitably abused.

Harry Willcock had been, the police said, driving his car “erratically” along Ballard’s Lane in North London when he was stopped and asked to show his identity card. Willcock was charged and convicted at Hornsey Magistrates Court both for his refusal to show his card and for his driving. He lost his appeal against the former (Willcock v. Muckle), but in making his judgement Lord Goddard criticised compulsory identity cards and warned that they “tend to make people resentful of the acts of the police”.

Willcock himself made good use of the attention his case generated, founding the Freedom Defence Committee to help the campaign against ID cards and other wartime controls and taking part in a series of publicity stunts, such as tearing up his own identity card on the steps of the National Liberal Club. His campaign was joined by others such as the British Housewives’ League.

When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister again in 1951, he abolished identity cards – with the cost-savings of doing so being stressed in an echo of twenty-first century debates – and being praised by Liberal Party leader Clement Davies for taking this action.

Willcock was not quite an ordinary person who suddenly stood up against authority and won – for he had been active and prominent in Liberal politics (and an independent councillor) and opposition to identity cards did not start with him. However, his act of individual defiance provided a catalyst – even if the exact motivations (why then? how pre-mediated was the act?) are now lost to history.

The legacy of Clarence Henry Willcock as a campaigner is a successful one. As an election candidate it was rather less so, for he finished third as the Liberal candidate in Barking at the two general elections preceding his fame, and the ending of identity cards by a Conservative Prime Minister did not bring the Liberal Party electoral benefits.

Achieving policies without achieving electoral success is a reminder of both how campaigning outside the ballot box can bring results but also that for a political party that in itself is not enough for a successful future.

Harry Willcock is remembered in a plaque on the wall of the National Liberal Club in London:

Further reading: Harry Willcock: The Forgotten Champion of Liberalism by Mark Egan in the Journal of Liberal History.

For the other posts in this series see our Forgotten Liberal Heroes page.

The documents are to be scrapped by the government under the Identity Documents Act 2010.

Tom Brake MP, Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Policy Committee on Home Affairs, Justice and Equalities told Lib Dem Voice,

After yesterday’s annoucement of the cut from 28 to 14 days pre-charge detention, this is the second really big step in restoring the balance between civil liberties and security concerns.

This delivers yet another Lib Dem commitment in Government.

All personal information supplied during the process of applying for an identity card, including photographs and fingerprints, will be destroyed by 21 February 2011.

The Register reports that physical equipment holding the data will be physically shredded and degaussed (a method of erasing magnetic storage media):

The actual dismantling of the systems and the destruction of the personal data will be a mere £400,000, though. Which seems like a bargain compared to the £330m Labour spent on the scheme, of which £41m went on “developing the policy, legislation and business case for the introduction of identity cards”.

Refunds will not be given to those who obtained ID cards, and the Passport and Identity Service recommends that people securely destroy their cards.

The MEN reveals how:

* Senior Whitehall officials were urged to email friends and relatives encouraging them to buy cards because of fears about the level of demand
* UK and overseas border guards refused to recognise the cards – with one traveller chased through an Italian airport after trying to use one as ID
* The Home Office discovered the cards could stop some credit cards from working properly

As the BBC reports, equipment is having to be destroyed because it looks like data was wrongly stored on it:

Destruction of [some] equipment might have been avoided if the data it collected had been stored centrally as it was meant to be. But there is evidence that some was accidentally stored locally, the document reveals, so off to the dump it must go…

However, other data which it was promised would not be stored centrally did end up being stored in just that way:

Anti-ID card campaigners often warned about the dangers of storing all of the ID data in one place – making it potentially vulnerable to hacking, only to be assured by ministers from the previous government that this would not happen.

So it is fascinating to read that there are two separate locations in the UK where all of the biometric and biographical information gathered by the ID card scheme is, or has been, stored.

Although Labour’s ID cards plans may be in the political – and soon technological – graveyards, this news – which has only come to light because of the detailed organisation for ending ID cards plans – leaves us an important lesson for the future. Regardless of public promises made about how data will be stored and safeguarded, reality often turns out differently. No security is perfect; no staff list is impervious to wayward staff; no technological plan is resistant to change and modification.

That is why the very acts of deciding not to gather some data, or not to collate different sources into one place, is so often an important firebreak that protects our privacy.

Now, thanks to some persistent questioning from No2ID National Co-ordinator Phil Booth, we know that of the nine people who featured in the glossy advertising telling us how ID cards had transformed their lives and possibly cured cancer, all but one were government employees.

As the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) admitted yesterday in response to an FOI request

We can confirm that eight of the nine people quoted on the website at the time either worked for the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), the Home Office or another government department or agency

The Register has the story, along with the key question – who was the one person found to promote ID cards not on the government payroll?

To show that cuts in Westminster are nothing new, the cost of the bell was reduced by recycling the metal from the previous, faulty bell:

George Mears, then the master bellfounder and owner of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, undertook the casting. According to foundry records, Mears originally quoted a price of £2401 for casting the bell, but this was offset to the sum of £1829 by the metal he was able to reclaim from the first bell so that the actual invoice tendered, on 28th May 1858, was in the sum of £572.

If you’d like to know what Big Ben itself has to say today, you can follow it [him?] on Twitter: @big_ben_clock.

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:

• David Laws knows the last digit of Pi and Simon Kaye knows it. Read his (and the broadsheets’) review of David’s defence of Government cuts.
• My First Lib-Dem meeting: Boris Pomroy describes his first time – do you still remember yours?

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.

2 Big Stories

Sir Menzies Campbell to defy party line on tuition fees

Liberal Democrat Sir Menzies Campbell is set to rebel on the party policy of abstaining on tuition fees in England under the new coalition government.

The former party leader – who is also Chancellor of St Andrew’s University – told the Daily Politics he had never voted against the party before, but he could not go back on a pledge he had signed. [BBC]

ID cards scheme to be scrapped within 100 days

The £4.5bn national identity card scheme is to be scrapped within 100 days, the home secretary, Theresa May, announced [Thursday].

The 15,000 identity cards already issued are to be cancelled without any refund of the £30 fee to holders within a month of the legislation reaching the statute book.

Abolishing the cards and associated register will be the first piece of legislation introduced to parliament by the new government. May said the identity documents bill will invalidate all existing cards. [Guardian]

We have become conditioned to believe that the policies we develop will never be implemented. A good intellectual exercise but nothing more. Yet here we have a programme for government of which we can be proud. It contains an extraordinary list of Liberal Democrat commitments on which we fought the general election.

Right from the start the speech grabs attention:

My Government’s legislative programme will be based upon the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility.

Who would have dreamt of those words introducing the Queen’s speech just a few weeks ago?

But the substance of the speech doesnt disappoint either. Of course there is compromise. But this is in the nature of coalition Government. Far better to have the chance to make a real difference than to remain pure but irrelevant.

The Speech recognises the absolute importance of tackling the deficit. Unless public finances are put in order, so much of what we want to achieve falls by the wayside. But beyond that central objective this is no “lowest common denominator” compromise. It is ambitious, inspiring and genuinely radical.

The real achievement of the negotiating teams on both sides was to have created a coalition agreement of substance which is intellectually coherent and substantial. The Queen’s speech also reflects that.

So we see the commitment to a fairer and simpler tax system. The Government is committed to raising the personal allowance to £10,000 during the course of this Parliament.

The political and constitutional reform programme will deliver what so many of us have campaigned for throughout our adult lives.

This is what brought many Liberal Democrats into politics. We have the potential now to modernise the way this country is governed: to disperse power rather than hoard it at the centre, to clean up politics and to make Parliament more democratic.

So there are commitments to devolve greater powers to councils and neighbourhoods, introduce fixed term Parliaments, legislate for a referendum on the Alternative Vote, giving citizens the right to recall their Members of Parliament where they are guilty of serious wrongdoing, reform of funding of political parties and a reformed second House “wholly or mainly elected on the basis of proportional representation”.

Just read those last few words again and let it sink in.

And remember also that Labour came to office in 1997 promising so much on constitutional reform – but delivered so little. 13 years in power. Yet the hallmark of that Government turned out to be a resistance to reform and an even greater centralising of power.

And remember just how nonchalant Labour was about the steady erosion of our freedoms, our civil liberties. This Queen’s Speech addresses that as well. A commitment to restore freedoms and repeal unnecessary, intrusive laws. Scrapping Identity Cards, ending child detention.

13 years of Labour Governments reminds us that we need to trust people more and empower local communities if we want to improve our country.

There are other aspects of the programme which particularly please me. It seeks to enhance the role of social enterprises and co-operatives in public services. On health, it commits to reducing health inequalities. I am thrilled that the coalition agreement commits to elected health boards. Before the election I argued the case for establishing a commission to determine how best to reform the funding of care for elderly people. That is in the Queen’s speech. On Royal Mail, having taken proposals through party conference back in 2006 for injecting private finance and for establishing a John Lewis style employee trust, we now have the chance to deliver on this!

On education and on climate change again Liberal Democrats can be enthusiastic about this programme. Look at the substance of education reforms. They are completely consistent with what we argued for in the election campaign. And the commitment to the pupil premium will make a real difference.

The road ahead is going to be challenging and there will inevitably be hard choices. What I am sure of is that a Government with Liberal Democrat policies hardwired into its fabric is the best way to secure real change and help build a fairer Britain.

Norman Lamb MP is the Chief Parliamentary and Political Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister.

The struggle isn’t yet over. The Home Office has contingency plans in place for its identity scheme, and there are entrenched authoritarians that will decry innocent people being removed from the DNA database or giving up powers for random stops and searches. With plans for biometric passports, and a civil service ethos of data-sharing there will be future challenges. Already threats loom on new horizons, for instance The Political Parties and Elections Act allows for the creation of another national population database, and from 2011 onwards, and the Electoral Commission will, “report annually to Parliament on the progress of the voluntary collection of personal identifiers – National Insurance number, signature and date of birth – from electors, to make sure that the conditions are appropriate before any move to compulsory provision of identifiers”.

Supporters of ID cards such as Epstein have already pounced on administrative problems with implementing an ‘antiquated Victorian’ voting system (that has successfully worked for many year with minimal electoral fraud) to extol the virtues of an electronic voting system with compulsory biometric fingerprinting and individual registration.

As much as the new coalition will have to be on its guard for such pitfalls that lie ahead, it can now bring onside the pressure groups, academics and campaigners that came together in events such as the convention on modern liberty to offer guidance and advice. Whatever the dangers, things looks promising for Liberty. Of course we will remain vigilant, eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty yet with talk that a ‘Freedom Bill’ or a ‘Great Repeal Bill’ will form part of the program of government, the greatest prize of freedom and liberty seems in reach.

He’s replying to Tim Horton’s suggestion that the Liberal Democrats have seen a “rightward shift” under Nick Clegg, at the expense of the party’s progressive credentials.

Webb responds with the £10,000 tax allowance, smarter public spending (including introducing the pupil premium and scrapping ID cards) and the Lib Dems’ fairness in politics agenda:

We have argued for an effective cap on political donations, so that no political party in Britain can be bought by sectional interests: the two old parties have, not surprisingly, resisted.

Being a progressive is partly about tax and spend, and the Lib Dems have a good story to tell. But it is also about breaking open a decaying political system which has protected vested interests for too long. Only we can do that.

You can read the full piece at the Guardian website.

Opposition to ID cards has grown since 2006 when only 33% opposed the idea.

You can read more about the Liberal Democrat opposition to ID cards over on the Freedom Bill website.

The results are from the State of the Nation Survey 2010, a new poll of 2,288  people aged 18+ conducted by ICM for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust 20 January – 7 February.

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:

• Biometric data

How many people have had theirs taken under the Terrorism Act 2000, and how successful have they been at getting the samples destroyed? Lord Eric Avebury has put down a Parliamentary Question.

• Will libertarian bloggers ever grow up?

Jonathan Calder wants libertarian bloggers to widen their repertoire beyond “Get out of my room Mom!”

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.

2 Big Stories

Liberal Democrat MEP celebrates French equality win

Since August 2007, French couples in a Pacte Civil de Solidarité (PAC) have enjoyed the same rights in relation to tax and inheritance laws which had previously only applied to married couples. However, due to a legal anomaly, British civil partnerships were not recognised under French law, meaning couples living in France were liable for a 60% inheritance tax and were treated like any other unmarried couple.

Graham Watson pointed out the ridiculous situation that many people faced: “Up until now, the practicality of French law has meant that British civil partners living in France would have to dissolve their partnership and enter into a PAC in order to secure the same rights as French couples. This violated the idea of European citizenship and equality, and something had to be done.”

Watson asked the European Commission to press the French Government on the issue.
Ministers have now announced that British civil partnerships are recognised as equal to PACs, and reimbursements will be made to individuals who have made undue tax payments since August 2007. [PinkPaper.com]

Man can’t prove ID with ID card

Darren McTeggart tried to use the £30 card to pick up a replacement credit card from a branch of Santander – formerly Abbey – in Manchester, where the scheme was rolled out on a voluntary basis last year.

Mr McTeggart, one of the first people to get the card, said: “They said it was not on their list of approved ID.

“I sent an email to the head office, but they wouldn’t budge. The government has been pushing this card on TV and elsewhere so it beggars belief why the bank won’t accept it.”

Santander admitted they had made a mistake and a spokesman said: “We do accept them. This seems to have been a customer service issue and we are looking into it.” [Telegraph]

THE national identity card scheme was in chaos last night as an M.E.N investigation revealed some of the country’s biggest travel companies are telling customers that they can not be used instead of passports.

Some 1,736 people in Greater Manchester have bought the £30 cards after the Home Office promised they could be used to travel in Europe.

But customer service staff at nine major travel companies – including British Airways, Eurostar and BMI baby – told M.E.N reporters posing as customers that the cards could NOT be used instead of passports.

Eight of the nine companies later issued statements saying staff had given the wrong advice – and that the cards COULD be used after all. But Eurostar remained unsure. A spokesman said: “We are unable to confirm whether the ID cards are valid on Eurostar at this time.”

Eurostar remained unsure. Hmmm…

Still, with all this ID card failure going on, it’s hardly any wonder they’ve voted against them in Liverpool. Even the Labour party…

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

• Esther for Luton – What’s that all about then? asks Jeremy Rowe. He says, “I couldn’t honestly tell you that I’m any nearer to understanding what she believes or why she’s descended on Luton.”
• ID cards – the death knell? asks Lisa Harding

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.

2 Big Stories

Untouchable: Blair to give Iraq War evidence in secret

Key parts of Tony Blair’s evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War will be held in secret, sources close to the hearings revealed last night.

His conversations with President George Bush when he was prime minister, and crucial details of the decision-making process that led Britain into war, will fall under the scope of national security and the protection of Britain’s relations with the US.

But there are also suggestions by well-placed sources that anything “interesting” will also be shrouded in secrecy, leaving his public appearance containing little more than is already known. (Independent on Sunday)

China strikes back at ‘irresponsible’ US

China hit back at the US yesterday for belittling its commitment to tackling climate change as negotiations in Copenhagen on reaching a new agreement on global warming moved into a higher gear.

On the fifth day of talks, the United Nations published an official draft text from which countries are expected to produce an agreement next week.

A boost for a deal came when the European Union pledged €2.4bn ($3.5bn, £2.2bn) a year for the next three years to help poor countries cut their emissions and cope with the effects of climate change. (Financial Times)

Sunday Bonus

Cat playing table tennis. It’s the sport you’ve always wanted to see, isn’t it?

(Also on YouTube here)

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports. The cards were due to be trialled there – sparking trade union anger. … But Mr Johnson said the ID card scheme was still very much alive – despite Tory and Lib Dem calls to scrap it. He said the national roll-out of a voluntary scheme was being speeded-up – with London to get them a year early in 2010 and over-75s to get free cards.

Lib Dem shadow home secretary Chris Huhne wasn’t impressed:

This is another nail in the coffin for the Government’s illiberal ID cards policy, which will soon be so voluntary that only Home Office mandarins seeking promotion will have them. Airport workers did not want to be guinea pigs for this deeply unpopular scheme, which has now been reduced to nothing more than a second-rate passport.

“These expensive and intrusive plans should be ditched now. The vast amount of money would be far better spent on something that will actually fight crime and terrorism – ten thousand more police on the street.”

I’m all for Chris’s denunication of ID cards. But I do wonder about our oft-repeated line – first adopted, I think, when Simon Hughes was Lib Dem home affairs spokesman – that we would hypothecate the cash saved from ID cards for putting 10,000 more ‘bobbies on the beat’. Why do I wonder, I hear you ask?

Well, first, as I understand Vince’s line to be, the abolition of ID cards is one of the party’s plausible and cashable savings to help bring down projected government debt in the coming years. If that’s the case, we can’t also spend the saving on new police officers.

Secondly, the policy of putting 10,000 more ‘bobbies on the beat’ was adopted back when abolishing ID cards was held still to be a risky political view to take: Labour adopted them to be seen to be ‘tough on crime’, and were backed by the Tories. It was understandable, perhaps even canny, politics for the party to show that vanity projects like the ID card scheme have an opportunity cost, and that there is more than one way of being seen to be tough. But time has moved on. Opposing ID cards is now mainstream, and we don’t need to come up with a tough-sounding policy as political cover.

And thirdly, the policy is, at best, suspect. Is there actually any evidence that putting 10,000 more ‘bobbies on the beat’ would cut crime? Here’s what Guardian journalist Nick Davies had to say about the issue as long ago as 2003:

The heart of the whole problem is that the system makes a set of assumptions about the behaviour of regular offenders – that they are making rational calculations about their behaviour, that they are worried about getting caught and that they are fearful of being punished. Those assumptions may apply to the law-abiding majority, but they are overwhelmingly false in relation to the generation of adolescents, usually male, who are based in the wreckage of the old public housing estates, whose values have been distorted by a childhood in collapsing communities and broken families, and whose ambitions have been swallowed by the one style of life which offers them status, excitement, a decent income and the prospect of promotion – crime and particularly the blackmarket in drugs. These are the lifestyle criminals who commit 80% of recorded crime: patrols don’t inhibit them, detectives don’t catch them, prisons don’t deter them.

That article is one of four in-depth pieces Nick wrote challenging lazy media/political assumptions about how to cut crime on his insightful FlatEarthNews website under the ‘Media Falsehoods & Propaganda: Bobbies on the beat’ banner. It’s still recommended reading – even for Lib Dem shadow home secretaries.

2 Big Stories

Could Alan Johnson scrap ID cards?

Gordon Brown’s weakness means there is a set of senior Cabinet members who are now unsackable. If any of them were to take it upon themselves to indulge in a very un-Brownian desire to do something dramatic and decisive, it would be extremely hard for Gordon Brown to stop them.

Step forward then possibly, perhaps, just maybe Alan Johnson. (He is, after all, one of those who hasn’t acted dramatically or decisively to get Gordon Brown ousted.) The Sunday Times reports:

ALAN JOHNSON, the home secretary, has launched an urgent review of the £6 billion identity card (ID) scheme, paving the way for a possible U-turn on one of Labour’s flagship policies.

Johnson, who was promoted in Gordon Brown’s latest cabinet reshuffle, is understood to be “sympathetic” to critics who claim identity cards will undermine civil liberties.

The home secretary told officials that he wanted a “first principles” rethink of the plan, which was launched by Tony Blair following the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and has since been championed by Brown as a way of fighting terrorism.

“Alan is more sympathetic to the civil liberties arguments than previous home secretaries,” said an insider.

The Iranian elections

Although Lebanon’s recent elections saw a decisive victory for moderates, the official results from Iran show a landslide for the hardliners. These results have been disputed, but as so often the mainstream media coverage amounts to little more than “X says the elections were rigged, Y says they weren’t”, with little evidence presented to let you make a decision about who you think is telling the truth.

Step forward the online world, where there is much detailed argument available, including this blog post which – combined with the comments posted to it – gives a good flavour of the cases for and against the election results having been rigged.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

If David Cameron believes in first past the post, he should quit his job
From Mark Reckons:

David Cameron has spent a lot of time in the last few weeks talking about how great the First Past the Post electoral system is. He will not countenance any change from this even though MPs can end up elected with often much less than 50% of the vote in their own constituency.

What I find fascinating about this is that if you follow his line of reasoning to its logical conclusion then David Cameron should not be leader of the Conservative party at all. Instead it should be David Davis … [because] if this had been a First Past the Post election then David Davis would have been elected leader.

Twitter and politics
Euro-candidate and journalist Jonathan Fryer muses over the impact of Twitter:

Though a comparatively late convert to the practice (despite the proselytising of my friend, Stephen Fry), I’ve been finding it hugely useful in recent weeks and have noted how one can enter into dialogue with politicians of other parties as well as with journalists and bloggers of all persuasions, who are quite happy to ‘follow’ one on Twitter, but who might not wish to ask or accept to be one’s Facebook ‘friend’, in case that were seen to be some kind of endorsement.

Sunday Bonus

Don’t these US movie moguls have any respect for our heritage?

The latest Star Trek movie just isn’t right:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

Easy quiz question: Is the BNP racist? Easy to answer, but if you’re ever looking for some extra facts to back up your answer, take a look here.

The Lib Dems’ shadow home secretary Chris Huhne’s response is delightfully withering:

When even the father of ID cards spurns them, the idea is truly an abandoned orphan.”

He continues, equally splendidly:

Only the most profligate of governments would lavish billions on this programme in such a deep recession where hard choices are needed on public priorities. There is no face-saver with passports, which were becoming biometric in any case. It would be ridiculous to insist that people pay for new passports whether they need them or not.

“The Government should remember that the British state belongs to the British people and not the other way around.”

He’s also, depending on your point of view, EITHER courteously pointed out to the LDV team that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is mentioned in passing, OR has engaged in a massive blog link whoring project to stir it within the Lib Dems who will hate what Cameron had to say.

Here’s what their dear leader had to say about our dear leader:

ID: Do you think Nick Clegg is in the wrong party? [Lol lol roffle impish grin]?

DC: [pauses, winces] I don’t really know him well enough. I don’t know his views well enough.  I think it is very exciting what they are saying about education because our education policies are very close together. That’s a good thing. I’m a liberal Conservative so I think there is always going to be lots of common ground between liberal Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. If you look at what we are saying about decentralising power, passing power down to the lowest level, if you look at what we are saying about the environment, opposing Identity Cards, the priority given to education, I think there are a lot of people in the Liberal Democrat party who would agree with that, so that’s encouraging. Is he in the wrong party? I don’t know enough about his views about other things.

Oh, come off it!

For starters, people who become leaders of political parties are usually pretty sure they’re in the right party.  You might just as well have asked Cameron if he’d ever considered joining the Lib Dems or one of its predecessor parties, along with half his shadow cabinet.

So the question having been asked, what are Cameron’s options for response?

A) “No, he smells” – ruled out for “nasty party” reasons, ie the Tories are attempting to recoil from their previous odious public image, so can’t say nasty things about opponents in public.

B) “Hahah very funny can you ask me a real question?” – ruled out because this is an interview that will transcribed verbatim and put into the public arena, and it’s basically good manners to keep talking whatever the question.  (Alert readers may remember I once asked Iain Dale if he was evil, and he very kindly didn’t respond “hahah very funny can you ask me a real question” either.)

C) Oh yes, waffle waffle lovebomb, some  policy similarities.

Essentially Cameron said the only thing he could realistically have said when asked that question. Having established that how should we respond?

We could respond to the points policy by policy.  There’s the environment, a topic we’ve been campaigning on since our inception; one that has always featured in our manifestoes, most recently as the “green thread running through all our policies”. At the same election, the Friends of the Earth decried the Tory manifesto as

[...] giv[ing] the impression that the environment will not be safe in Conservative hands. It fails to say how a Tory Government would tackle climate change, the biggest threat the planet faces, and suggests that environmental protection will be towards the bottom of its priorities.

It’s a subject that’s no stranger to LDV’s pages, either as we’ve reported “Conservatives set to drop green tax policies“, and the failure of the Conservatives to adopt most of Zac Goldsmith’s environmental policy, amongst many others.

So not for environmental reasons, then.  Devolution reasons, perhaps? Lib Dem Voice’s favourite fluffy elephant doesn’t think so:

More BLACK MAGIC from Ms Caroline Spell-person, Conservatory spokesperson for turning local councillors into eunuchs, with her plan to “give more power to local government” by, er, taking their powers away and giving them to mayors.

This promises to do the OPPOSITE of what it says on the tin.

The proposal to increase accountability will actually DILUTE it; the promise to return power to people will really move power IN to a new centre that is less representative and more remote; the plan to free local government from central government control will, in reality, SHACKLE local councils even further.

And of course this comes hot on the heels of last year’s bizarre Council tax policy where the Tories wanted to take Labour’s already draconian power to specify how much councils can raise, and er, make it even worse.  This coming on the top of other strange Tory tax policies such as tax breaks for dead millionaires, staying married for the sake of the accountants, and that complicated one about employment that the Labour party subsequently nicked.

So, that leaves education as the one Tory policy so good that it will woo Lib Dems to the dark side, starting with Clegg.

Hmmm.  That would be the education policy that sees the Tories seeing schools as places that should make a profit? (And why not? It works so well for public transport!) Or would that be the education policy the Tories, er, ripped off the Lib Dems in the first place, as Standard journalist Anne McElvoy pointed out last year?

Much of it still comes down to the hardest things to deliver of all: more consistent teacher quality, better incentivised and tirelessly pursued. The Lib-Dems’ spokesman David Laws first conceived the idea of greater financial incentives for those who improve underperforming schools: an ingenious application of market thinking ripped off wholesale by the Tories (just in case they think we didn’t notice). [...]

Until Mr Cameron can decide whether his vision is to set more [schools] free of central control or to boss them around even more with his own pet requirements, his claim to lead the next stage of the reform crusade will be flawed. He can do better than that – and for all our sakes, he should.

Finally there’s ID cards, and on that topic, you have got to be fricking kidding me?  The Lib Dems should consider joining the Tories because they oppose ID cards?  Hello? *knock on forehead* Is there anyone in there?  For the love of all that is holy, ID cards was a Tory idea in the first place! If you cast your mind back ten twelve years to 1995 you’ll see that the “Tory Right” was demanding ID cards whilst a young Tony Blair thought that might not be such a good idea. A weird decade long  balletic policy switch between the other two parties about which of them is now proposing ID cards is not a reason for any Lib Dem to change allegiance!

Anyway, that’s policy dealt with. Ultimately, we have quite good policy and the Conservatives erm, don’t.

But lets not forget the Smithson Lovebomb Backatcha Hypothesis. This is really quite elegant, a case of pointing out that since many in the Tory party are significantly further to the right than their leader, actually maybe it’s David Cameron who might be better off changing parties.

The Home Office has formally applied to widen the scope of ID cards for foreign nationals granted further leave to remain in the UK.

Regulations laid before Parliament last week mean that six more categories of applicant would have to provide their biometrics (fingerprints and photo) from 31 March 2009:

• Academic visitors granted leave for a period exceeding six months
• Visitors for private medical treatment
• Domestic workers in a private household
• United Kingdom ancestry (Covers people who are Commonwealth citizens, have a British grandparent and can demonstrate a link with the UK)
• Retired persons of independent means, and their partners and children
• Sole representatives (Overseas employees recruited by an overseas company to act as their sole representative in the UK)

These groups are expected to join the foreign nationals (students and those applying to remain in the UK on the basis of marriage) who received the first ID cards back in November. The student category is also being widened to include postgraduate doctors and dentists.

So to recap, unless you’re a British worker in a “sensitive” role, or a young adult in 2010, or a foreign national applying for leave to remain and even contribute to the economy, or don’t look old enough to buy alcohol, or are from Manchester then there’s nothing to worry about, right?