By Iain Roberts | Published 13th March 2010 - 10:47 am
A good conference rally is fun to attend and tricky to report on, simply because there should be nothing new. The audience ideally leaves reminded of the key messages and enthused to fight the good fight – there’s plenty of time for controversy over the rest of the weekend.
As in Bournemouth, the rally took on a glitzy feel: dry ice, bright lights, (relatively) slick presentation.
Lorely Burt opened procedings with a few jokes, and promise of holding her seat in Solihull, where the Lib Dems overturned a 9,400 Tory majority last time round.
The Liberal Democrats will centre their campaign on joint appearances by Nick Clegg, leader, and Vince Cable, Treasury spokesman, in an attempt to project a blend of youth and experience.
A clutch of former Lib Dem leaders will be deployed in the regions. Paddy Ashdown is taking a hands-on role directing the Lib Dem’s defence of the south-west heartlands. Sir Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy will be touring seats in Scotland and the north.
The article also lists Chris Huhne (“pugnacious, quick-footed”) and Lynne Featherstone (“sound media performer”) as ones to watch in the Liberal Democrat campaign.
By NewsHound | Published 26th February 2010 - 12:45 pm
Over in The Times, former Lib Dem leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown argues that though there are reasons to be cheerful in the latest news from Afghanistan, battlefield success alone won’t win the war. Here’s an excerpt:
… we do, at last, seem to be getting our act together on the battlefield. We are now following the right military strategy — protecting the people, not chasing the enemy. We have limited our aims to the achievable and matched our resources to our objectives. … it is now possible to turn the momentum on the battlefield in our favour in the next few
By NewsHound | Published 23rd January 2010 - 12:15 pm
Over at The Times today, former Lib Dem leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown has an article arguing that the the Ministry of Defence is not fit for purpose, branding it sclerotic, inefficient, hamstrung by inter-service rivalry, and resistant to change. Here’s an excerpt:
While the American Army under General Petraeus has developed a culture of listening, and learning, to troops, whatever their rank or experience, the culture in the MoD is that you don’t take lessons from junior officers. The ministry needs to become a learning institution if it is to become effective.
The adaptation to counter- insurgency operations seems to have been
By Stephen Tall | Published 17th January 2010 - 7:04 pm
Eric Pickles has, we hear, labelled Paddy Ashdown “frail and confused”. It seems an odd charge for the lifelong political hack and current Tory chairman, Mr Pickles, to level against Paddy – a former Marine, diplomat and spy, who’s placed himself in danger in service of his country more times than Eric’s had hot dinners (no mean feat).
Here’s a picture of Eric.
And here’s a picture of Paddy (taken just last week, I believe).
By Philip Young | Published 19th December 2009 - 10:21 am
Vince makes the front page of the Daily Express, Nick scores two page leads in the Mail, Huhne forces a Tory U-turn, Paddy bazookas a Brigadier, Bob Russell biffs a Bishop and The Telegraph’s Deputy Editor says George Osbourne is a childish prat … A few press clippings you may have missed, in our Newspaper Review of the Week.
“Tories lack clarity” – Simon Heffer, columnist: Daily Telegraph, 16.12.09
“Do the Tories enunciate a clear alternative that will benefit not merely their supporters, but also the country? Not yet. It’s not just that George Osborne seems to have no clear plans to …
By The Voice | Published 11th December 2009 - 1:50 pm
From the BBC:
Ex-Army chief Gen Sir Richard Dannatt has been accused of a “terrifying misjudgement” in agreeing while still in service to be a Tory adviser.
Former Lib Dem leader Lord Ashdown told BBC Question Time the appointment had broken the convention that the military should be independent of politics…
Lord Ashdown said the UK had to face up to the fact that it would be engaged in Afghanistan for “decades”, while stressing that this did not mean troops would be based there indefinitely.
“It takes a lot of time to build peace after war,” he said.
The 1997 general election turned out to be a once in a generation opportunity for many local Liberal Democrat campaign teams to gain a Parliamentary seat from the Conservatives. At the tail end of a by then deeply unpopular Conservative Government, the election saw unprecedented numbers of seats falling to the party. A few seats that were not quite gained from the Conservatives in 1997 did subsequently fall in 2001 and 2005, but it was the 1997 election with the Conservatives in government that was the main opportunity. Nearly every campaign that missed then did not subsequently win.
Paddy Ashdown, the party’s former leader, is moving on from writing his own memoirs and into fiction. No prizes for guessing the subject matter. Ashdown, a former Special Boat Squadron operative and (alleged) spy, is penning a novel which is expected to combine boats and, er, espionage. He is currently fine-tuning the central character – obviously not based on himself – and the dialogue, but work is said to be progressing well.
By The Voice | Published 21st October 2009 - 6:14 pm
Over at The Independent, former Lib Dem leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown assesses the situation in Afghanistan in the light of President Karzai’s belated acceptance of the need for new, legitimate elections. Here’s an excerpt:
… no one should be in any doubt what the new vote will cost, not just in treasure but in blood. A new election may do something for President Karzai’s legitimacy, but it won’t alter the problem he poses if, as Mrs Clinton at least seems to expect, he is re-elected. What then?
Some say that Karzai II must be very different from Karzai I and the international
By The Voice | Published 5th September 2009 - 4:55 pm
Yesterday saw Gordon Brown’s statement on the UK’s continuing involvement in Afghanistan, in which he defended the government’s strategy, and maintained its goals were “realistic and achievable”. It earned short shrift from Nick Clegg:
The situation in Afghanistan is on a knife-edge. Yet today we have heard little in the way of fresh, new thinking from Gordon Brown. After pursuing an overambitious and under-resourced strategy for eight years it’s hard to believe that increasing the training of the Afghan police and army will now do the trick. We need a bolder change of strategy to turn things around. When it comes to Afghanistan, we need to do things properly or not at all.
By The Voice | Published 22nd July 2009 - 12:15 pm
Over at The Independent, former Lib Dem leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown argues that the history of the Afghan war is one of continuous mistakes, and outlines the key factors which can transform defeat into success. Here’s an excerpt:
I start from the proposition that the war in Afghanistan is one we have to fight and must win. The cost of failure there is just too great. It includes the certain fall of Pakistan and the possible emergence of the world’s first Jihadist Government with a nuclear weapon; the re-creation in Afghanistan of a lawless space open for the preparation and export
By Helen Duffett | Published 4th July 2009 - 2:17 pm
How do you become an MP?
MP also stands for Military Precision, so it’s no surprise that Paddy Ashdown’s campaign to become MP for Yeovil was long on discipline and short on creature comforts.
If you want to become MP you should get a safe seat. But if that doesn’t happen, and your only option is to campaign in a constituency where your party doesn’t seem to have much chance of winning, then you should definitely take some inspiration from the remarkable story in
Over at The Independent, there is an extract from former Lib Dem leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown’s speech to the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House examining the situation in Afghanistan. Here’s an excerpt:
… the chief reason for the fact that we are losing lives is not in the ineffectiveness of the Afghan government, who we love to blame, but in our own complete failure to have any coordinated international plan; in our inability to work together between the nations of the coalition; in our determination to see Afghanistan solely through the prism of the place in which we
By The Voice | Published 30th June 2009 - 11:41 am
Over at The Times, former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown has co-authored an article with former Labour defence secretary George Robertson – they were co-chairs of the IPPR’s Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, whose report was published today – arguing that old-fashioned thinking is hampering British security policy today. Here’s their all-encompassing introduction:
The global recession is likely to worsen the international security environment considerably. It is already making many weak and poor states weaker and, as both 9/11 and recent events in North Korea have shown, the consequences flowing from weak, fragile and pariah states are
By Stephen Tall | Published 12th June 2009 - 7:30 pm
Another instalment in our occasional series rounding up political videos doing the rounds – for this special Friday night edition, we’re delving back a little further into the archives to recall three of the great Liberal leaders of the past few decades.
First up, here’s the only clip I can find of Jeremy Thorpe, being questioned by a studio audience alongside Jimmy Saville (how times change):
By the way, if you’ve never seen Peter Cook’s magisterial ‘biased judge’ summing up from 1979 at the conclusion of the Thorpe trial, click here and enjoy 12 minutes of the finest satirical comedy ever staged.
Second’s up is David Steel, here represented by the famous excerpt from his leadership speech in 1981 – yes, that’s right, the “go back to your constituencies and prepare for government” one:
By Stephen Tall | Published 4th June 2009 - 10:20 pm
Ex-Lib Dem leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown is on duty for tonight’s BBC Question Time (10.35 pm, BBC1 and online), so we’re in safe – if lethal – hands.
Paddy will be joined by Labour leader of the House of Lords Baroness Royall (had you heard of her?), Tory shadow secretary of state for defence Liam Fox (y’know the one who tells those tasteful jokes about the Spce Girls), journalist and historian Sir Max ‘fusty-but-rather-wonderful’ Hastings, and ex-GMTV presenter Fiona Phillips.
If you’re tuning in, you can join the simultanous online Twitter debate here at #bbcqt, or the LDV debate …
The Telegraph suggests that “senior” Labour MPs and peers are considering breaking away from their party in disgust at Gordon Brown’s leadership and fear of a lurch to the left. Talks are apparently afoot to convince them to become Liberal Democrats. As usual with unattributed stories, it is impossible to tell whether there is any basis to the newspaper’s speculation – or whether it is entirely unfounded.
But assuming for a moment it is true, some will be tempted to question whether the party should welcome defectors from Labour. I’ve previously outlined why I don’t subscribe to the view …
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