Tag Archives: lord ashcroft

Lord Ashcroft, Panorama and a herbivorous Liberal Democrat Peer

By The Voice | Published 1st February 2012 - 4:26 pm

Yesterday’s Press Gazette highlights that the Panorama programme broadcast, entitled Secrets of the Tory Billionaire, on Monday night may help the Independent defend the libel case brought against it by Lord Ashcroft.

In a development that you couldn’t make up, the Independent, in its own coverage of the programme, referred to Lord Ashdown when talking about the Conservative Party’s major benefactor.

This prompted our own Paddy Ashdown to write to the paper with, The Voice suspects, his tongue firmly wedged in his cheek

“It is one thing to misrepresent my position on the benefit cap as you did last week,

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Posted in News | Also tagged bbc, paddy ashdown, panorama, Press Gazette, the independent | 4 Comments

Campaign Corner: What campaigning books are worth reading?

By Mark Pack | Published 30th October 2011 - 4:50 pm

The Campaign Corner series looks to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Do if you have any questions you would like to suggest.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: I prefer learning by reading rather than by hearing people speak at training sessions. What campaigning books would you recommend?

Lots of possible answers, but in the spirit of Campaign Corner’s love of threes, here are just three, deliberately chosen as one each from the main party perspectives:

Posted in Campaign Corner | Also tagged deborah mattinson, featured, shaun roberts | 6 Comments

The best Conservative blog post of the week…

By Mark Pack | Published 28th October 2011 - 8:24 am

… came from Lord Ashcroft, taking to task fellow Conservatives for their obesssion with Europe:

f there is one thing that unites Conservatives it is the desire to win the next general election outright. Certain things follow from this. The first is that we need more votes at the next election than we received at the last. This means attracting people who voted for a different party last year. This in turn imposes two requirements: to address the things they care about most, and to show that we are changing the things that put them off voting Conservative in the past.

You

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Posted in Europe / International, Opposition watch | 5 Comments

Only 3% swing to Tories in key Con/Lib Dem marginals

By Mark Pack | Published 26th September 2011 - 8:55 am

The detailed polling by Lord Ashcroft published today on ConservativeHome brings some encouraging news for the Liberal Democrats. In a set of key marginals held by the Conservatives and where the Liberal Democrats were second in 2010, there has only been a modest swing to the Conservatives since May 2010.

In the eight seats polled, the Conservative Party has a lead of 8% compared to an actual lead in May 2010 of 2%. This swing of 3% is much smaller than national opinion polls show. The vote share figures are:

Conservative 39% (-2% on May 2010)
Liberal Democrat 31% (-8%)
Labour 19% (+6%)

Con lead …

Posted in News, Polls | Also tagged ConservativeHome, featured | 11 Comments

House of Lords reform: taking a look at the details

By Mark Pack | Published 18th May 2011 - 7:43 am

Yesterday Nick Clegg unveiled the Government’s proposals for reforming the House of Lords, an idea that David Cameron is on record as fully backing.

The mere idea of introducing elections for half of our Parliament is shocking enough for some (letting the public decide who rules them? what a radical idea) that the details have understandably so far got relatively little attention.

So what are the highlights of them?

First, the Lords will be small – 300. That makes sense given how enormous the combined number of MPs and Lords is in Britain at the moment compared with other democracies …

Posted in News | Also tagged constitutional reform, david steel, featured, house of lords, lords reform, nick clegg | 15 Comments

What can we learn from Michael Ashcroft?

By Mark Pack | Published 20th April 2011 - 10:27 am

Controversial Conservative peer Michael Ashcroft has done campaigners in all parties a service with the frankness of his book on the 2010 general election, Minority Verdict.

Though a short book, it contains some details of how the Conservative Party went about targeting swing voters in swing seats for last year’s contest. Aside from the subject’s inherent interest, this particularly caught my eye because part of what he recounts is the Conservative equivalent of what I was doing when working for the Liberal Democrats for much of the last Parliament.

The Conservatives took Mosaic data and then ran a detailed and expensive polling …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured | 5 Comments

The four best books on the British general election of 2010

By Mark Pack | Published 16th March 2011 - 10:25 am

Over the last few months, I’ve read (and mostly reviewed on this site) all the books I’ve found published so far about the 2010 general election and the subsequent coalition negotiations, not to mention a fair number about the political events leading up to the general election over the preceding years.

I’ve yet to read a book that is really bad, although many do have very similar content to each other. A few gems either have original content or present that common ground in particularly strong ways. So based on that here are my top four recommended books about the British …

Posted in Books, Op-eds | Also tagged chris huhne, david laws, deborah mattinson, dennis kavanagh, philip cowley | 3 Comments

The verdict of Liberal Democrat voters so far

By Mark Pack | Published 13th December 2010 - 8:55 am

“What annoyed me most was that they had intelligent policies and were not dogmatic, so I thought ‘how could you possibly go into coalition with the Tories?’”

That quote, from a voter in a Liberal Democrat held seat, neatly summarises a view that is both held passionately by many Liberal Democrat voters but also irritates many Liberal Democrat members – for the obvious riposte is, “How can you both say we shouldn’t be dogmatic and also insist we rule out one party regardless of circumstances?”

It comes from a set of focus groups commissioned by Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft, along with two opinion …

Posted in Polls | 23 Comments

Paul Tyler writes… Party funding: dilemmas and delays

By Paul Tyler | Published 10th November 2010 - 10:58 am

Since so many of us have fought elections against extremely well-funded opposition candidates, Liberal Democrats are naturally and rightly exercised by the matter of campaign finance. Though Labour made some modest progress with its Political Parties, Elections and Referendums (PPERA) Act, back in 2000, the Act’s focus was transparency, rather than regulation.

When I chaired the party’s policy group on Better Governance in 2007, we set out an objective that no donor should be able to buy influence in the political process, and no party should be able to buy elections. This was the approach we took in the cross-party talks …

Posted in Op-eds, Parliament | Also tagged lord mcnally, party funding, political parties elections and referendums act 2000 | 4 Comments

Are the unions a bigger threat to the Lib Dems than Ashcroft was?

By Stephen Tall | Published 22nd October 2010 - 9:40 am

A Guardian headline today reads, Unions focus on Lib Dem seats in battle to save jobs. The story makes clear how trade unions will mobilise their resources to fight the budget cuts unveiled this by George Osborne’s comprehensive spending review — and in particular focus on Lib Dems:

The campaign is expected to focus on constituencies held by Liberal Democrat MPs who, unions believe, will be vulnerable to local pressure as many of the people who supported them did not vote for cuts on the scale revealed this week.

Nowt wrong with unions mobilising to protect their members’ interests: that, after …

Posted in News | Also tagged trade unions | 99 Comments

Opinion: what can Lord Ashcroft tell us about Lib Dem voters?

By Simon McGrath | Published 8th October 2010 - 2:42 pm

Lord Ashcroft has spent some the money he acquired through not paying his taxes on a fascinating poll of former Labour voters.

The poll looks at 2091 people who voted Labour in 2005 but for other parties in 2010, 47% of them voted Lib Dem. It provides a wealth of information on the attitude of these voters who it is crucial we retain in 2015, and how they differ from ex Labour voters who choose to vote for other parties.

The first issue looked at is why did they leave Labour. They are asked to rate a number of reasons …

Posted in Op-eds | 15 Comments

And another two peers quit the Lords rather than pay full tax

By Mark Pack | Published 6th July 2010 - 8:54 pm

I’d mentioned previously that Conservative peers McAlpine and Laidlaw have chosen to quit the Lords rather than have to end their non-dom tax status. With the deadline for making a final decision approaching they have been joined by a third Conservative peer – Lord Bagri – and a crossbencher – Baroness Dunn.

A fourth Conservative peer, Lord Ashcroft, has instead given up his non-dom status as has the Labour peer, Lord Paul.

UPDATE: Lord Foster has also quit the Lords in order to preserve his tax status, though from the Parliamentary records it doesn’t looks as if he was ever …

Posted in News | Also tagged baroness dunn, lord bagri, lord foster, lord laidlaw, lord paul, mcalpine, non-doms | 1 Comment

Ofcom rejects complaint from Lord Ashcroft over reporting of his tax status

By Mark Pack | Published 21st June 2010 - 2:50 pm

Ofcom’s judgement summary reads:

On 17 December 2009, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an edition of Today, its early morning news and current affairs programme, which included an item looking back at the preceding day’s activities in Parliament and discussed questions put to Ms Harriet Harman MP (who was standing in for the Prime Minister) during Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Harbottle & Lewis complained to Ofcom on behalf of Lord Ashcroft that the programme wrongly and unfairly stated that during Prime Minister’s Question Time the Liberal Democrats had accused Lord Ashcroft of tax evasion and therefore implied that he was guilty of a

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Posted in News, Opposition watch | Also tagged ofcom | Leave a comment

Looks like Lord Ashcroft flopped again

By Mark Pack | Published 10th May 2010 - 12:20 pm

Back in March I doubted how good Lord Ashcroft’s target seat operation for the Conservatives might actually be, pointing out:

Here’s his own account of his record supporting target seats at the 2005 general election:

The national swing from Labour to Conservatives was 3.2 per cent, yet the swing in the seats which we supported was 3.8 per cent.
Dirty Politics, Dirty Times by Michael Ashcroft, p.296

You read that right: by his own admission, all his expertise and money achieved was a paltry o.6 per cent extra swing.

Looks like my doubts were right because, as Anthony Wells points out:

The Conservatives performed

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Posted in General Election | 3 Comments

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