Author Archives: David Parkes

David Parkes

Opinion: 3 Liberal Criticisms of Stephen Tall’s defence of Tim Farron

By David Parkes | Wed 28th March 2012 - 3:58 pm

Lib Dem Voice co-editor Stephen Tall has produced his 3 liberal reasons to stick up for Tim Farron. Now Stephen is a man I respect and who writes a lot of sense, but on this occasion I beg leave to disagree.

To that end I thought I’d give 3 liberal reasons to criticise Stephen Tall’s defence of our party president Tim Farron. We are of course talking about the storm Tim Farron created by co-signing a letter to the Advertising Standards Agency urging the ASA to overturn a ban on a Christian group claiming prayer could cure medical conditions.

(1) …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 19 Comments
David Parkes

Opinion: Ed Miliband’s tuition fees announcement – more a headline than a policy

By David Parkes | Mon 26th September 2011 - 5:35 pm

On the eve of the Labour Party conference, Ed Milliband announced in an interview with The Observer, that he plans ‘to slash university tuition fees by a third’, by reducing the cap on tuition fees to £6,000. It’s a headline that appears to have been mistaken for a policy.

These past 15 months Labour has being decidedly light on policy. This surprised no-one. It was said of the previous Brown Government that Labour had run out of ideas; no-one seriously expected the ‘backroom boys’ who picked up Gordon Brown’s mantel to come up with new thoughts any time soon.

However, what …

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David Parkes

Opinion: Leading Labour figures guilty of the worst kind of opportunism

By David Parkes | Wed 10th August 2011 - 11:57 am

London burns and communities reel from successive nights of violence and looting, rumour is rife, facts are scare. All we know that peaceful vigil held for Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police on Thursday night, somehow was hijacked by an angry mob and his death became the catalyst of nights of violence, which have now spread to other parts of the capital and country.

What do we hear from Labour politicians? Calls for calm? Space for the IPCC to carry out their investigation into the shooting? No, instead we have them lining up to link the violence to the …

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David Parkes

Opinion: On Broken Promises

By David Parkes | Wed 1st December 2010 - 2:45 pm

I’m sure many of you, like myself, watched Vince Cable’s interview on the Politics Show last week where he denied breaking any promises to oppose a rise in tuition fees, with a certain feeling of discomfort. But now I think the time has come to discuss a change in narrative.

Lib Dem MPs and Ministers (including up until now Vince Cable,) have a reputation for giving straight-forward honest answers to journalists questions without coming across as evasive or revisionist. However, with the tuition fee pledge to deny a promise was ever made and as such never broken is not a …

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David Parkes

Opinion: Avoiding cynical electoral reform

By David Parkes | Thu 11th June 2009 - 11:00 am

At Prime Minister’s Questions this week, David Cameron hammered Gordon Brown over the reports that, faced with an almost certain general election defeat, Labour is finally ready to introduce some form of proportional representation into the electoral system.

Of course, the Conservatives are perfectly within their rights to complain that this seems like a rather cynical move. It’s been over 10 years since the Jenkins Commission recommended reform of the voting system to the AV+ System for Westminster, and we haven’t heard a sniff of it since.

The reason? Blatant self-interest by a sitting Labour government who surprised themselves with …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 11 Comments
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