Tag Archives: paddy ashdown

EXCLUSIVE: Majority of Lib Dem members back Coalition’s benefits cap

By Stephen Tall | Published 8th February 2012 - 1:20 pm

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.

59% of Lib Dem members back benefits cap at £26,000 or lower

LDV asked: Under the Coalition government’s proposal the cap on benefits will apply to the total sum of all benefits a household receives, including income support, jobseekers allowance, child benefit and housing benefit. The government is setting the maximum at £26,000, the average earnings of a British family after tax. What do …

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Paddy Ashdown’s eight steps to winning a Parliamentary constituency

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd February 2012 - 8:25 am

In December 1976 Paddy Ashdown put to the local party in Yeovil a plan for winning the constituency for which he had been recently selected and where the party was third at almost every election. Thirty-five and a bit years on, it still reads as a pretty good plan.

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Opinion: What price democracy in the Lib Dems?

By Linda Jack | Published 2nd February 2012 - 6:02 pm

Over the past 21 months I have had many moments when I have felt close to despair about the behaviour of our parliamentarians. Sometimes, like voting in favour of tuition fees, they can rightly point to the Coalition Agreement – endorsed overwhelmingly – as Nick Clegg observed at the time – by a North Korean like Special Conference. Other times, like voting against party policy on Legal Aid and Welfare Reform – there is no such defence. Last night calls into question the fundamental values and principles of our party, not just in terms of flying in the face of …

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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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Ashdown, Glover and Williams on the party’s history

By Mark Pack | Published 25th January 2012 - 10:25 am

The latest edition of the Journal of Liberal History caries this account from me of the conference meeting which launched the new history of the party, Peace, Reform and Liberation. You can watch the meeting in full here.

It would be a brave person who walked up to Paddy Ashdown or Shirley Williams and told them to their face that they are history, or even old, but they are two of the most charismatic, interesting and thoughtful members of the living history class – people who have been around in politics long enough to be able to talk at first …

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The weekend debate: Should we do business with people who don’t share our values?

By Carl Quilliam | Published 14th January 2012 - 8:50 am

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

The weekend debates have been light on foreign policy so far, so for those foreign policy buffs out there here’s one inspired by our former leader.

Over at Ted talks, Paddy Ashdown has been discussing ‘the global power shift’ from the West to the rest and in particular to the nations around the Pacific rim.

He touches on a lot of areas, including what the future of global governance might look like, how long American power might remain dominant and the growth of …

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Posted in Europe / International, Op-eds | Also tagged | 16 Comments

VIDEO: Paddy Ashdown, Shirley Williams and Julian Glover on the Liberal Democrats, recession and The Guardian

By Mark Pack | Published 23rd December 2011 - 10:55 am

You can now watch again in full one of the best fringe meetings from the party conference, which saw Paddy Ashdown, Shirley Williams and the then Guardian editorial writer Julian Glover launch a new history of the party and its predecessors, Peace, Reform and Liberation.*

Julian Glover gave a very funny speech about his newspaper’s love/hate relationship with the party – “So there you have it, 150 years from The Guardian and the Manchester Guardian calling on the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats to be brave, radical; praising the party’s policies and then writing it off as irrelevant”.

Shirley Williams …

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Opinion: The coalition will now change; the Lib Dems must ensure it does so for the better

By Nick Thornsby | Published 15th December 2011 - 1:26 pm

When, earlier this year, David Cameron sanctioned the Conservative-dominated No to AV campaign to attack his until then unfailingly loyal deputy, he precipitated the end of coalition phase one. It had not meant to happen so quickly, but the Liberal Democrat reaction – the strategy of differentiation – soon followed.

The prime minister’s actions in Europe last week are a similar turning point. By pandering to the extremes in his party – by acting as Tory leader rather than prime minister, as Paddy Ashdown put it – David Cameron has forced Nick Clegg to once again rethink the Liberal Democrat approach …

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Opinion: Individuality on EU is the start of the Liberal Democrat recovery

By Callum Morton | Published 14th December 2011 - 8:55 am

Lib Dems would have winced when the news broke about Cameron’s EU veto, but it’s the biggest chance yet to express our party’s individuality.

Since the tuition fee rise and EMA’s abolition, I haven’t liked Nick Clegg. Although I agreed with the coalition being formed, I didn’t agree with the coalition negotiation team he chose. I haven’t agreed with a lot of what he’s done as leader. And I’ve sat grumbling about it for months. But over the past few days my respect for Nick has significantly improved.

Why? Well I’m starting to see something different from Nick and our party. I’m …

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“An inept negotiating strategy placed in the hands of an inexperienced prime minister” – behind the scenes of Cameron’s ‘veto’

By Stephen Tall | Published 13th December 2011 - 7:45 am

“An avoidable disaster”: that is the verdict of the Financial Times’s Philip Stephens in a must-read article examining what went on behind the scenes of the Coalition’s strategy for approaching last week’s failed European summit. And his verdict on the Prime Minister and his advisers could scarcely be more scathing:

There was no great plan for a rupture. What some Tories now see as Mr Cameron’s Churchillian moment was rather the result of an inept negotiating strategy placed in the hands of an inexperienced prime minister.

So what did happen? On last night’s Newsnight former Lib Dem leader Lord Ashdown set …

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Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged , , , , , , | 38 Comments

LibLink: Paddy Ashdown – Europe’s free ride on the back of Nato is over

By Nick Thornsby | Published 2nd November 2011 - 6:53 pm

In today’s Daily Telegraph, former party leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown writes on the challenges facing Nato and the future of European cooperation on matters of defence.

Here’s a sample from Paddy’s piece:

These are confusing times for supporters of Nato. On the one hand, the alliance has completed its mission in Libya without a single casualty. On the other, its future looks less certain than ever in the face of fiscal austerity, increasingly uneven burden-sharing between members, and America’s dwindling faith in its utility.

The fact that the US feels this way is understandable. In 2000, America’s share of Nato defence spending was

…

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LibLink: Paddy Ashdown – ‘I used to think the party of Gladstone would end with Ashdown’

By Helen Duffett | Published 31st October 2011 - 2:23 pm

Today’s Telegraph has an interview with Paddy Ashdown, timed to promote his new TV documentary The Most Courageous Raid of WWII.

From the BBC:

Lord Ashdown, a former special forces commando, tells the story of the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’, who led one of the most daring and audacious commando raids of World War II… Lord Ashdown recreates parts of the raid and explains how this experience was used in preparing for one of the greatest land invasions in history, D-day.

As well as the documentary, Lord Ashdown’s Telegraph interview covers Europe, the Liberal Democrats and the art of compromise:

When Ashdown became leader

…

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LibLink: Paddy Ashdown – Libya’s path to democracy

By Nick Thornsby | Published 27th October 2011 - 10:28 am

Lord (Paddy) Ashdown recently penned a piece for the Guardian with some thoughts on how Libya should now move towards a functioning democracy following its liberation. The rule of law, in the short term at least, is more important than elections, according to Paddy.

Here’s an extract:

If there is one thing more fraught, more attended by failure and more difficult to do than fighting a war, it is building the peace which follows. Our modern wars are fought in weeks or months – but building the peace is measured in decades. Wars are violent and swift. Building peace is long, painful

…

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

LibLink: Paddy Ashdown – To be stronger, Europe must give away power

By Nick Thornsby | Published 25th October 2011 - 5:28 pm

Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown has a piece in today’s Times arguing that the European Union must reform if it is to regain public support and fulfil its original objectives.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

The reasons for European integration are not weaker today than they were when this all started; they are stronger. The EU’s founding fathers saw European integration as a means to avoid repeating our past and as the right response to postward turmoil. We should see it as the best means to assure our future and the right reaction to the global turmoil that we

…

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Posted in Europe / International, LibLink | Also tagged | 1 Comment

Opinion: The failings of This Week

By Mark Hofman | Published 23rd October 2011 - 9:25 am

As we kick back and relax from a hard day’s work (or job seeking as is so often the case), we would expect our licence fee funded BBC to reflect our views, those of 23% of the electorate according to last year’s poll (the national election).

However, a glance at our daily political programming would suggest that the BBC is still pandering to the cosy duopoly of Labour and the Tories.

Perhaps this cosy duopoly is most evident on Thursday nights with “This Week” (BBC 1 11.30pm ish), promising “politics with attitude and without the spin”. Andrew Neil (ex-Conservative party employee and …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , | 9 Comments