Author Archives: Mark Valladares

I’m a veteran Party bureaucrat, having joined the old Liberal Party at university. And, perhaps not entirely surprisingly, I’ve held a range of positions since then - everything from Secretary-General of the Young Liberals to being a member of the ALDE Party‘s Financial Advisory Committee. Returning Officer, Presidential consort, committee secretary, you name it, I’ve probably done it. These days, I’m the Chair of the Parish Council for a (very) small rural village in Suffolk’s Gipping Valley, and a member of the East of England Regional Candidates Committee.
Mark Valladares

Does a political party really need a manifesto or… what is policy for?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 18th July 2011 - 10:21 am

On Saturday, I found myself in an all day meeting of the strategic body of a campaigning organisation, and I found myself thinking something that hadn’t previously shown a fin in the ocean that is my political consciousness – is having policy spelled out to the nth degree really a good way to run a society? Indeed, how many people care about the details?

I am a member of a political party, and therefore have more of an interest in ideas of governance than most. But, like most members of political parties, I have an awareness of our policies, rather than …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 14 Comments
Mark Valladares

House of Lords Reform: the Joint Select Committee calls for evidence

By Mark Valladares | Fri 15th July 2011 - 1:41 pm

Whilst the News of the World scandal has drawn virtually all of the attention, the clock has started ticking on the work of the Joint Select Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill. Comprising twenty six members appointed from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, it is charged with considering the draft Bill and reporting by 29 February 2012.

At its first meeting, which took place on Monday, such decisions as how often it would meet were discussed, but the key decision was to proceed with a Call for Evidence. This represents your …

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Mark Valladares

Opinion: Liberal Bureaucracy – Killing Your Party With Its Song?…

By Mark Valladares | Tue 12th July 2011 - 3:13 pm

This is quite a hard post to write. After all, I’ve been a party bureaucrat for more than a quarter of a century, from my embryonic days as Secretary General of the Young Liberals, via incarnations as a Returning Officer, a member of the English Candidates Committee and stints as Regional Secretary in both London and now the East of England.

Once upon a time, I took the view that, if I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, campaign, what I could do was do the boring, yet necessary stuff that enabled the Party to fulfil its organisational obligations, thus freeing up people …

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Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | 15 Comments
Mark Valladares

Local parties should start early when it comes to AGMs

By Mark Valladares | Sat 25th June 2011 - 1:15 pm

Yes, I know that it’s only June, but have you given any thought to your Local Party’s AGM?

The Party’s Constitution specifies that it should take place between 1 October and 30 November, so it isn’t as far away as you might think. And there are things that can be done now that will help to make it more successful than might otherwise be the case.

Firstly, have you decided upon a date yet? Apart from the limitations on timing noted above, you don’t want to clash with your Regional Conference, so you might want to rule that out. Is a weekend …

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Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 4 Comments
Mark Valladares

You! Yes, you! Ever thought about being a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate?

By Mark Valladares | Sun 29th May 2011 - 1:57 pm

At March’s Federal Conference, a motion was passed setting up the new Candidate Leadership Programme, designed specifically to identify and develop candidates from currently under-represented groups (i.e. everyone other than white men).

Candidates will be given structured support, development and training all the way through to the General Election, and it is particularly aimed at those wanting to take part in competitive seat selections. Further information and application packs will be available from late June.

So, what’s the hurry, I hear you ask? The catch is, you’ve got to be an approved candidate to get a place, and if you aren’t …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters and Selection news | Tagged and | 26 Comments
Mark Valladares

Mark Valladares writes: ELDR Council, Dresden 2011: it was the best of times, it was the wurst of times…

By Mark Valladares | Fri 27th May 2011 - 2:07 pm

Last week, I described ELDR Council as being rather like our Federal Executive. I was wrong, but I’ll come back to that…

Having dropped Ros off at a VIP lunch, I made my way to a room in a distant and poorly signposted corner of Dresden’s shiny new Congress Centre, cunningly designed to make it virtually impossible to tell which floor you are actually on, for a delegation pre-meeting. It was agreed that there was very little in the way of controversy to be expected.

By mid-afternoon, we were all ready to go, and we took our seats on the centre-left …

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Mark Valladares

There is a corner of a foreign field that is forever… ELDR Council

By Mark Valladares | Thu 19th May 2011 - 9:53 am

Welcome to Dresden, the capital of Saxony, famous for being the last place mentioned by a Liberal minister at the dispatch box before the Coalition. Admittedly, on that occasion, he was announcing its carpet-bombing, but I’m optimistic that this visit will be rather less traumatic for all concerned…

So, why are a dozen or so Liberal Democrats gathering here? The Council of ELDR (the European Liberal Democrats) – think of it as the European equivalent of the Federal Executive – is holding its first meeting of its current two year term, hosted by the FDP, and a delegation of people for …

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Mark Valladares

Everything you ever wanted to know about… Policy and the Parliamentary Party (part 3)

By Mark Valladares | Thu 3rd March 2011 - 2:43 pm

In the first two parts of this mini-series, I looked at how policy is made, and how its creation is managed. Today, I want to look at its failings, the implications of those failings, and how future policy making might be shaped.

As a party of perpetual opposition, our inclusive but often ponderous policy-making regime allowed members to influence core policy, in the knowledge that it would be a means of attacking the Government, but was unlikely to be applied. Occasionally, that led to somewhat populist ideas being espoused but, if a Government did something in a field where our policy was obsolete, or overtaken by events, our spokespeople had a set of principles to fall back on.

Such an arrangement worked, for the most part, especially in small Parliamentary Parties. However, its weaknesses became more apparent as Labour’s mania for legislation produced a plethora of technical changes in need of detailed scrutiny.

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Mark Valladares

Everything you ever wanted to know about… Policy and the Parliamentary Party (part 2)

By Mark Valladares | Sat 5th February 2011 - 11:55 am

(This is the third column from Lib Dem Voice’s Party Bureaucracy Columnist Mark Valladares – for Part 1 see here.)

Ah yes, the Federal Policy Committee, or FPC for short, a body of twenty-nine members, consisting of Nick Clegg, as Leader, one other MP elected by and from the Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons, one MP each elected by and from members of the Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons representing constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales respectively; one Peer elected by and from the Parliamentary Party in the House of Lords; one MEP elected by and …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Mark Valladares

Everything you ever wanted to know about… Policy and the Parliamentary Party (part 1) – at the beginning was the word

By Mark Valladares | Thu 20th January 2011 - 1:47 pm

A fortnight ago, the question was put to me, “How do you influence the Parliamentary Party?” At the time, I indicated that this was a very complex question – normally shorthand for “You don’t think that I’m going to touch that with a bargepole, do you?”. But not this time… So, how do Liberal Democrats make policy?

The sovereign policy-making body of the Party is the Federal Conference, and policy motions can be submitted by State Parties (England, Scotland and Wales), the regional parties in England, local parties, Specified Associated Organisations (e.g. Liberal Youth), any ten conference representatives or the Federal …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 7 Comments
Mark Valladares

Everything you ever wanted to know about the internal workings of the Liberal Democrats but were afraid to ask…

By Mark Valladares | Thu 6th January 2011 - 12:25 pm

Welcome to my new column, a humble bureaucrat’s contribution to internal Party debate and participation. When Mark Pack invited me to become a columnist for this august website, I was a mite surprised but, after some thought, realised that this might be an opportunity to help people to take a greater role in their Party. So here we go!

The Party’s internal workings are varied and strange. Indeed, so strange are they that when Ros Scott asked for an organogram before taking office as President two years ago, she was moved to remark, “Shouldn’t the boxes be joined to each other?”. …

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Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , and | 17 Comments
Mark Valladares

Some final reflections on the Second Chamber

By Mark Valladares | Thu 22nd July 2010 - 11:27 pm

I hope that readers of Liberal Democrat Voice have enjoyed today’s series of pieces on the House of Lords – I know that I’ve had a lot of fun writing, editing and commissioning the various postings. However, I’d like to finish with a few serious points.

Firstly, I am of the view that we need to value our Peers more and, whilst that may seem like special pleading, I’m convinced that, by doing so, everyone gets to benefit. For instance, there are parts of the country, my own county of Suffolk for example, where we don’t have an MP, but do …

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Mark Valladares

The House of Lords does social media

By Mark Valladares | Thu 22nd July 2010 - 2:57 pm

Much is made of our MPs and their use of social media. Steve Webb and Facebook, Jo Swinson and Duncan Hames announcing their engagement via Twitter (we only had Facebook in my day…), the increasingly sophisticated websites, all of these serve to connect Parliamentarians to the communities they serve. However, on the red benches, the need to reach out is heightened by the relative lack of coverage for their activities in the mainstream media, and there is increasing use of social media to achieve that.

Perhaps the best known source of commentary comes from Lords of the Blog, a collaborative …

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Mark Valladares

Pay attention, there’s more than one Parliament, you know!

By Mark Valladares | Thu 22nd July 2010 - 7:40 am

One of things that has bothered me for longer than I care to remember is the Party’s fixation on the green benches at the north end of the Palace of Westminster, almost to the total exclusion of anything, and everything, else. As a bureaucrat deep within the Party’s structures, I long for the day when more and better people come forward to be Local, Regional and State Party officers, candidate assessors, returning officers and trainers. But we bureaucrats are not alone in being overlooked in favour of the Commons…

Down the corridor, there are seventy-nine Liberal Democrat Peers (with Richard …

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Posted in Parliament | Tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Valladares

Today’s guest editor, in his own words…

By Mark Valladares | Thu 22nd July 2010 - 12:05 am

When the inestimable Mark Pack wrote to a number of bloggers looking for volunteers to guest edit Liberal Democrat Voice for a day, there was an initial chorus of ‘sounds interesting, get back to me when I’m sober’. My response was:

I, on the other hand, am sober. Sober enough to realise that Mark’s offer might not suit my particular skill set. Unless, of course, you want a day enriched by constitutional and organisational minutiae…

Back came the response;

“Thanks for offering to guest edit Lib Dem Voice for a day. Would a day in the week of Sat 17 July – …

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Posted in Site news | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Mark Valladares

If English Council meets and nobody knows, did it really meet?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 5th July 2010 - 2:20 pm

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, but whilst most people heading for London were on their way to Pride, or Lords for the cricket, or Wimbledon for the tennis, a few dozen hardy Liberal Democrats were heading towards the St Alban’s Centre near Chancery Lane station for the first of 2010’s two meetings of English Council.

Unusually, the first item on the agenda was a speech by the Party President, Ros Scott, who talked about the challenges facing the Party in the weeks, months and years ahead, as well as some of the work being done at Federal level to address …

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Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , , , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Valladares

The English Party welcomes careful, and discreet, participants…

By Mark Valladares | Tue 8th June 2010 - 2:20 pm

Yes, it’s that time once again when one of the Party’s least visible, yet most important internal bodies, English Council, gathers for the first of its two scheduled meetings in 2010.

On Saturday, July 3rd, 125 or so representatives from the English Regions will gather in central London to hear speeches from the Party President, Ros Scott, and the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, Andrew Stunnell MP. However, the key business for debate will be the proposed ratification of the new Selection Rules for Parliamentary Candidates, and this will be the only opportunity to debate …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 11 Comments
Mark Valladares

Your LDV guide to the new Parliamentary selection rules

By Mark Valladares | Mon 31st May 2010 - 1:20 pm

There has, for some time, been genuine concern about the way that the Liberal Democrats select their Parliamentary candidates. How they are approved, how the process whereby candidates are selected has become more and more out of touch with modern campaigning methods, let alone questions of diversity, all of these have come under attack in recent years.

In fairness, those concerns have been reflected within the English Candidates Committee and action has been taken to remedy some of the most obvious problems. Before the last General Election, a new approval system was launched, designed to reflect the need to test those …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 6 Comments
Mark Valladares

Diversity and representation – instead of whinging, why don’t we do something about it?

By Mark Valladares | Wed 19th May 2010 - 3:37 pm

I have a reputation for being a bureaucrat. Gradualism is my watchword, and has been for most of the twenty-five years that I’ve been a Liberal and then Liberal Democrat. However, suddenly, I have become an old man in a hurry. Alright, old relative to most of you at least, but still in a hurry. So, imagine I’ve sprouted an Old Testament beard, donned a white flowing robe and found a nice stout staff and harken to my words. I have a few jobs for you to do…

First, do you want to be a candidate at the next General Election? …

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Posted in Op-eds | 22 Comments
Mark Valladares

From our Correspondent in Barcelona – the ELDR Congress reviewed

By Mark Valladares | Mon 23rd November 2009 - 2:03 pm

Last week, LDV published a preview by Lib Dem blogger Mark Valladares of this year’s ELDR (European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party) Congress in Barcelona. Here he reports back on its outcomes …

And so the 30th ELDR Congress in Barcelona is over, and most of the delegates have returned to the four corners of Europe from whence they came. They will have done so in good spirits after what was a pretty successful gathering.

In policy terms, the theme resolution, Liberal Answers For A New Prosperity, reasserts a conviction that a competitive business environment, married to an efficient, …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Valladares

From our Correspondent in Barcelona – the ELDR Congress previewed

By Mark Valladares | Wed 18th November 2009 - 6:55 pm

Yesterday saw the opening of this year’s ELDR (European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party) Congress, which will see a galaxy of European Liberal Prime Ministers, EU Commissioners, party leaders and officials, as well as your correspondent, converge on the Hilton Diagonal Mar hotel in Barcelona.

The theme of the Congress is ‘economic liberalism after the financial crisis’ and it is hoped that this will be an opportunity to develop a wider sense of the key themes of European liberal values and principles. And with Nellie Kroes, the scourge of the UK banking sector and Commissioner for Competition, taking part in …

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Posted in Europe / International | 1 Comment
Mark Valladares

Understanding campaigning diversity

By Mark Valladares | Mon 25th August 2008 - 1:53 pm

As part of Ros Scott’s campaign team, I’ve visited a lot of our Local Parties in the past year. Whereas, in the past, I had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of structures and personalities in London (almost anorakish), and an awareness that the rest of the country existed, I am suddenly obliged to process a lot of information and knowledge about the way the rest of the country views the centre. It isn’t necessarily pretty…

I’m an urban Liberal Democrat. Leaflet delivery is a matter of visiting closely packed houses and delivering about 150 leaflets an hour on foot. The approved …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 24 Comments
Mark Valladares

Opinion: What should the new leader do in his first 100 days? #5

By Mark Valladares | Fri 21st December 2007 - 10:23 am

We now have a new leader, Nick Clegg. For the last couple of weeks, Lib Dem Voice has been inviting party members to tell us what you think should be his top priorities. Four have so far taken up the challenge: Paul Walter, Linda Jack, David Morton and Mary Reid. Today it’s Mark Valladares’ turn…

So far, the suggestions that have come forward have been focused on what Nick needs to do with regard to the wider world. Don’t think for one moment that this bureaucrat dissents from much of what has been said thus far, but …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 5 Comments
Mark Valladares

European Selection: South East Selection Committee convened

By Mark Valladares | Sun 3rd June 2007 - 9:20 pm

The South East’s Selection Committee held its first meeting on Saturday afternoon, with Ken Cosslett (Regional Candidates Chair, South Central) elected as Chair and Mike Wheatley as Vice Chair.

The other members of the Selection Committee are Prue Bray, Vera Head, Chris Jennings, Season Prater, Jamie Sharpley and Margaret Ticehurst.

Mark Valladares, appointed as Returning Officer by English Candidates Committee, supported the Committee in discussions over the Selection Criteria to be used, the timetable and the content of the application pack.

It is intended that, as far as is possible, the Selection Committee will provide reports on progress as part of …

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Posted in News | 2 Comments
Mark Valladares

Critics take note – English candidate selection process is fair, not flawed

By Mark Valladares | Mon 20th November 2006 - 4:41 pm

Liberator 314 included a piece critical of English Candidates Committee and of the selection process generally. Sadly, but inevitably, the Collective are not alone in their criticism so, perhaps, we need to have an open debate on our processes, what they seek to achieve, how they work and what key failings need to be addressed in order to move things forward.

I’ve been involved in the selection processes of the party as a Returning Officer since 1989 and as a candidate assessor since 1995. In that time I’ve seen huge changes in the Selection Rules and the candidate approval processes, very few of which have simplified the processes to be followed. With that complexity comes frustration, and not just for those wanting to be candidates or wishing to adopt one.

Unexpectedly perhaps, I share some of those frustrations, as the system by which we select PPCs places a heavy burden on our Local Parties, especially the smaller, weaker ones. Our selection rules impose costs, both financial and human, and where the number of likely applicants is small, that cost is a disproportionate one. So how did we get into this mess?

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 9 Comments
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