Our place to talk – an independent website for supporters of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK.

The most-read independent website by and for Lib Dem supporters. Not paid for by trade unions or millionaires.

Advert

Author Archives: Max Atikinson

Last call for entries: Speechwriting competition – can the right words fend off protestors?

By Max Atikinson | Sat 26th February 2011 - 4:44 pm

Writing speeches with Paddy Ashdown sometimes happened at difficult times, like when we’d spent weeks preparing his announcement that he would run for the leadership in 1988 – only for it to dawn on us that we’d have to produce another one for the next day, then another, followed by almost a speech a day for the next three weeks.

Nor was it much fun when the party was at 4% in the opinion polls or, and this was probably the most difficult one of all, working on his first speech as High Representative to the parliament of Bosnia Herzegovina.
…

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged bosnia herzegovina, foreign policy, gadaffi, mubarak and speechwriting | 2 Comments

Most Read

Op-eds

A Proposed Alternative to Coalition: The Reserved Time Confidence Agreement (Owen Driscoll)
ALDC by-election report – 5 November (Charles Quinn)
Tom Arms’ World Review (Tom Arms)
Observations of an Expat: Post Election Worries (Tom Arms)
How Liberal Democrats can ride Britain’s youth wave on the pro-EU shift (Rupinder Singh)

Advert

Recent Comments

Jana
“ …to fix Britain’s broken water industry” Accuracy matters. Andy Burnham should be producing a plan for ‘England’s’ broken water industry....
PM
@ Alex, Of course when we were members of the EU the activities of all MEPs would have been of interest but this was only part of what should have been discu...
Matt (Bristol)
The bottom line is here, there still needs to be a degree of mutual trust and some kind of parliamentary management / policy coordination between minority and p...
Simon Robinson
This is a really good and well thought out idea, not just for how things might work for the LibDems in a hung parliament, but for how minority Governments with ...
Jason Connor
I agree Andrew Tampion, it was a callous and spiteful comment. There should be a referendum on EU membership so that it's a democratic decision. I agree wit...