Author Archives: Andy Strange

Andy Strange

English Council, 15 June – our man in Luton reports…

By Andy Strange | Wed 26th June 2013 - 9:12 am

This is a report of the meeting of the Liberal Democrats English Council, held on Saturday at University College London.

The English Council is the governing body of the Liberal Democrats in England and meets twice a year to consider matters of importance to the English Party.

Speech from Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg at English Council - 15 June 2013The day started with a speech from the Deputy Prime Minister. Before heading off to chair meetings at the G8, Nick Clegg had stopped into University College London to give a message of optimism to …

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Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Andy Strange

What’s on the agenda for English Council?

By Andy Strange | Fri 7th June 2013 - 8:55 am

There will be a meeting of the Liberal Democrat’s English Council on Saturday 15th June at University College London.

The English Council is the governing body of the Liberal Democrats in England. It meets twice a year to consider matters of importance to the English Party.

Alongside the usual reports from officers and representatives of the English Party on other party bodies, the main business of the meeting will be to discuss the results of the recent local elections and think ahead to next year’s European election.

There will also be a number of minor constitutional amendments to be approved. These are:

* An …

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Andy Strange

Reporting back from English Council’s 17 November meeting

By Andy Strange | Tue 20th November 2012 - 3:29 pm

This is a report of the meeting of the Liberal Democrat’s English Council held last Saturday (17th November 2012) at University College London.

The English Council is the governing body of the Liberal Democrats in England and meets twice a year to consider matters of importance to the English Party.

Review of Police and Crime Commissioner elections campaign

The main topic of discussion at this meeting was how the English Party should respond to the Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

There was general agreement that the way the Party had handled the run up to these elections had been, shall we say, less than …

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Andy Strange

What’s on the agenda of the English Council’s meeting on 17 November…

By Andy Strange | Fri 9th November 2012 - 3:22 pm

There will be a meeting of the Liberal Democrat’s English Council this coming Saturday (17th November) at University College London.

The English Council is the governing body of the Liberal Democrats in England, meets twice a year to consider matters of importance to the English Party.

Alongside the usual reports from officers and representatives of the English Party on other party bodies, and a keynote speech from Stephen Lloyd the MP for Eastbourne, I think there are four items of note on the agenda.

Finances of the English Party

This meeting sees the annual decisions on the finances of the English Party being taken. …

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Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Andy Strange

Results of the English Party Elections 2012

By Andy Strange | Tue 9th October 2012 - 8:49 am

Last week the results of the elections for positions within the English Party were emailed to members of the English Council.

Given that for all of these positions, with the exception of the role of representative to the Federal Executive, the number of nominations matched or were less than the places available, all candidates were elected unopposed.

The results were as follows:

Chair of the English Party – Peter Ellis has been re-elected Chair unopposed.
Chair of the English Candidates Committee – Margaret Joachim has been re-elected Chair unopposed.
Representative to the Federal Conference Committee and to the Federal Policy Committee – Geoff Payne has been …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 15 Comments
Andy Strange

Reporting back from the English Council

By Andy Strange | Thu 28th June 2012 - 1:58 pm

The English Council, the governing body of the Liberal Democrats in England, meets twice a year to consider matters of importance to the English Party. The first of its meetings for 2012 took place at University College London last Saturday.

The meeting was brisk and business like — it ran a little over time but not unreasonably so — and had something of a studious atmosphere. This might have had something to do with the impressive environment of the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre.

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 2 Comments
Andy Strange

Changes to your local party boundaries are coming

By Andy Strange | Sun 3rd June 2012 - 11:25 am

Next year all Liberal Democrats in England are going to have to get used to new local parties. The coalition government’s plans to change the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies across the UK, assuming they get passed into law, will have implications for how we organise ourselves at a local level.

Traditionally Liberal Democrat local parties have been organised on a constituency basis. The local party would cover one or more parliamentary constituency. More recently a change was made to allow local parties in London to be based on borough boundaries, but for the rest of England local parties remained tied …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 18 Comments
Andy Strange

What does the English Council do?

By Andy Strange | Tue 22nd May 2012 - 2:52 pm

Liberal Democrats who want to understand how the party runs can easily become confused by the range of offices, executives, committees, subcommittees and working groups that they encounter. Some have grand sounding names and are made up of “the great and the good”. Others are little heard of with powers unknown. One of the most obscure is probably the English Council.

I confess to being a bit of a nerd when it comes to matters of party organisation, but even I have found myself asking – “what on earth does English Council do?”

Last year, through my regional party, I was elected …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 13 Comments
Andy Strange

Opinion: What’s the point of the Party President?

By Andy Strange | Thu 6th March 2008 - 7:45 am

Before I start, let me make one thing clear. This is not about Simon Hughes. It may or may not be useful to ask “What is the point of Simon Hughes?” but that is not what I am doing here.

No, I am concerned with the office and not the man. I want to question the nature of the role that the post of President of the Liberal Democrats plays within the Party. I want to know why we have a President of the Party.

Well, come on. Why do we?

Other than the Leader, it is the only post elected by an …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 7 Comments
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