Tag Archives: nick robinson

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Earl Grey

By Mark Pack | Published 29th April 2011 - 9:24 am

Nick Robinson has returned to the radio for a second series of his short portraits of British Prime Ministers and in the list this time is Earl (Charles) Grey, one of the figures I’ve previously highlighted as a forgotten Liberal hero.

Robinson’s piece is history as light entertainment – so it starts off with the connection between Grey and the tea that we now know as Earl Grey and then moves on to his high profile affair before getting stuck into the more serious aspects of his record. But as a quick canter through his life in a style that …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged 1832 great reform act, charles grey, forgotten liberal heroes, history, philip salmon | 5 Comments

Lib Dem response to Labour’s letter to broadcasters

By Mark Pack | Published 25th April 2010 - 7:34 pm

Nick Robinson has reported:

I’m told that Labour has asked the two other big parties to sign a joint letter to broadcasters criticising them for covering the debates and the polls too much and claiming that the news bulletins had “failed to deliver the usual specialist examination of specific policy areas”. The Lib Dems and the Tories have refused to sign. The BBC has yet to receive the letter.

Here’s the party’s official response to the request from Labour:

We have discussed your proposal, however, we do not think that it is appropriate for political parties to seek to dictate the nature

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Posted in News | 4 Comments

Dear Nick Robinson…

By Mark Pack | Published 9th April 2010 - 9:20 am

Dear Nick,

Sorry to be boring and quote things like numbers and evidence.

But on the 10pm news you said, “I think both sides agree the Tories have won the politics of the first week”.

I’d have thought the public should get a look in on this and you know what the public’s verdict is?

By a slim lead (within the margin of error, to be fair) the public says that the Liberal Democrats have run the most impressive campaign so far (see http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2566).

Makes the idea that the Tories have won the politics look a bit different, I’d have thought?

Yours,

One of those horrible …

Posted in General Election | Also tagged bbc | 4 Comments

John Hutton was right: Gordon has been ‘a fucking disaster’. But who else was there?

By Stephen Tall | Published 23rd December 2009 - 10:50 pm

At long last, what was widely known in Westminster Village circles has rippled out beyond: John Hutton was the cabinet minister who told the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson in 2006 that Gordon Brown would be ‘a fucking disaster’ in the role of prime minister. Well done to BBC Radio 4′s Eddie Mair for wringing the admission from a reluctant Mr Hutton.

But it prompts two questions.

First, if this was Mr Hutton’s view – albeit one from which he has subsequently resiled, in public at any rate – why did he choose to become one of the 308 Labour …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged david miliband, eddie mair, gordon brown, john hutton, john reid, new labour | 2 Comments

PMQs: Nick tackles Gordon on Labour’s “suffocating and shameful culture of secrecy”

By Stephen Tall | Published 25th November 2009 - 9:05 pm

Ah, the joy of PMQs – Nick asks Gordon a question, Gordon fails to answer a totally different question to the one Nick asks. It’s a regular pattern, but today it was clear to everyone that the Lib Dem leader had floored the Prime Minister over the issue of Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

Nick laid the trap neatly, asking the simple and straightforward question:

It is vital that the Iraq inquiry, which started its work this week, is able to reveal the full truth about the decisions leading up to the

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged david cameron, gordon brown, james macintyre, nick clegg, sir john chilcot | 1 Comment

What does the future hold for British political blogging?

By Mark Pack | Published 12th October 2009 - 12:20 pm

Predictions that the next general election will be the one in which the internet will make a huge impact have regularly come and gone. Post-Obama ready yourself for another such clutch of predictions, but underneath this punditry froth the internet has got on with quietly shifting the way politics works. It’s been more at the unglamorous organisational end (imagine trying to organise a campaign without email) than at the eye-catching systems-shattering dramatic end beloved of pundits, but it’s been a major change nonetheless.

Following in the footsteps of email, blogging has also established a firm place in the logistics of politics, even if its impact on the overall style and conduct of politics is less clear and less dramatic. Blogs have become a key news medium for people involved in or significantly interested in politics, they have become a key part of the flow of news to and from journalists and for some MPs and candidates they reach local audiences large enough to be a significant factor in their election efforts.

Posted in Online politics | Also tagged alastair campbell, blogging, ConservativeHome, featured, guido fawkes, iain dale, john prescott, LabourList, london reconnections, mike smithson, norfolk blogger, paul waugh, politicalbetting.com, uk polling report | 5 Comments

Mainstream media in “using the word liberal” shock – will meltdown follow?

By Alix Mortimer | Published 19th December 2008 - 3:00 pm

To while away those last precious hours before you head off for after-work drinks (the week of Christmas itself doesn’t really count as “work”, does it) some links from yesterday and today’s coverage of Nick Clegg’s first anniversary. I’ve chopped out a few excerpts for each which I find particularly telling in one way or another.

Allegra Stratton for the Guardian

The Good:

[Clegg] hasn’t done badly, pulling off some fundamental repositioning of his party this year. At this year’s Lib Dem conference the party membership voted through a programme of tax cuts, beginning with cuts for low earners, and

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Posted in News | Also tagged david cameron | 12 Comments

Who do you think’s the best political journalist in Britain?

By Stephen Tall | Published 19th November 2008 - 5:55 pm

That’s the question Total Politics put to journalists, MPs and the magazine’s Facebook fans – and below, courtesy of The Guardian’s Politics Blog, are the top 20.

As ever with such lists, there are some curiosities – for example, that neither Andrew Neill nor Matthew D’Ancona make it into the premiership. And, personally, I’m a fan of Philip Stephens in the FT. Who do you think’s missing, or been over-promoted?

Posted in News | Also tagged adam boulton, andrew rawnsley, total politics | 4 Comments

The financial crisis: what will be the impact on Labour?

By Stephen Tall | Published 13th October 2008 - 7:26 pm

Yesterday I looked at the impact of the current financial crisis on the Lib Dems, the one party which correctly anticipated the credit crunch and its impact. Inevitably (if frustratingly) much of this will depend on the extent to which the public blames Labour for the mess the UK currently finds itself in, or the extent to which they credit Labour if the Government’s bail-out package helps rescue the UK from amidst the debris of the current global crisis.

In short, what the Lib Dems have to say is unlikely to have any immediate positive or negative impact on …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged david cameron | 2 Comments

Is 42 days dead?

By Stephen Tall | Published 6th October 2008 - 1:16 pm

The BBC’s Nick Robinson thinks it is in spite of the Labour Government’s official denials.

The Lib Dems’ shadow home secretary Chris Huhne wrote here on Lib Dem Voice back in the summer explaining why detaining without trial terrorist suspects for 42 days was wrong both in principle and in practice:

Detention without charge for terrorist suspects has already risen from 7 days, to 14 days, to 28 days just since 1997. The sad truth is that ministers are using this simple number as a proxy to persuade the public that they are tough on terror. In fact, such

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Posted in News | 12 Comments

Should the report of a Prime Minister’s speech be 42% journalist talking?

By Mark Pack | Published 23rd September 2008 - 8:37 pm

That’s how Nick Robinson’s piece for BBC TV on Gordon Brown’s speech to Labour Party conference broke down. The 4 minute 50 second piece was 42% Nick Robinson speaking, and only 58% Sarah or Gordon Brown speaking.

Add to that the preceeding and suceeding segments – more BBC journalists and presenters talking about the speech – and what you are left with is reporting largely made up of journalists talking about what someone else has said.

Some context and analysis is certainly useful and interesting – but should Nick Robinson have really taken up 42% of the core piece of coverage rather …

Posted in News | 6 Comments

Conference: curtain up!

By Alix Mortimer | Published 13th August 2008 - 11:15 am

Wilkommen, bienvenu, welcome…

In just under one calendar month’s time, folks, many of you and all of me will be struggling down to Bournemouth on the Friday night trains for what promises to be a fascinating conference. Over the next month, we will bring you sneak previews of the policy motion debates, straight from the teeming brains of the people who drafted them, and for a conference count-down fix while we wait for the main thing I can but recommend the preliminary agenda with its rather fetching picture of Bournemouth-at-dusk.

…im Konferenz, a la conférence,

…

Posted in Conference, News | Also tagged chris rennard | 8 Comments

Down and dirty with the tabloid press

By Alix Mortimer | Published 13th June 2008 - 11:35 am

Kelvin MacKenzie’s phone must be in meltdown. Good! BURN him, BURN him! Ahem. The former Sun editor and fervent supporter of a 42-day detention limit has indicated that he will stand against David Davis in the forthcoming Haltemprice (how quickly we’ve all learned to spell that) & Howden by-election – putting many Lib Dems into the extraordinary position of not only hoping David Davis wins, but actively considering hitting the doorsteps to help him do it.

Yes, yes, Davis is a distinctly unreliable “libertarian” with some nasty socially conservative stances, but who can resist the idea of kicking Rupert Murdoch in the nuts? For

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Posted in News, Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged haltemprice & howden by-election | 32 Comments

What’s going on in the Conservative Party?

By Mark Pack | Published 12th June 2008 - 3:50 pm

The media are increasingly turning to reporting strains within the Conservative Party over David Davsis’s dramatic resignation. For example, Nick Robinson on David Davis’s resignation:

David Cameron has lost control of his strategy. This was not his decision. He was not asked for his agreement. He was informed late last night by David Davis that he was going to do this come what may. That he was going to resign and trigger this campaign. This is not a campaign that Mr Cameron wants, it is not part of his strategy and indeed, I am told by senior Tories who know

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Posted in News, Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged haltemprice & howden by-election | 7 Comments

BBC left hand, meet BBC right hand

By Mark Pack | Published 23rd May 2008 - 10:53 pm

Two journalists, talking on different TV news programs, Friday 23rd May. One says he can’t find any signs of a plot to oust Gordon Brown. The other says that people are already plotting, with talk of gathering signatures and names of possible candidates.

A mite unfortunate really for the BBC’s reputation that I saw these two reports within 90 minutes of each other, one being Nick Robinson on BBC News 24 and the one being BBC2′s Newsnight. Perhaps the Newsnight team could point Nick in the direction of the plot

Posted in News | 1 Comment

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