Author Archives: Mark Pack

Mark was the Liberal Democrat Head of Innovations until June 2009 and is now at Blue Rubicon. He also lectures at City University and is co-author of 101 Ways To Win An Election. He blogs at www.markpack.org.uk and is on Twitter as @markpack. He likes chocolate. Lots of it.
Mark Pack

Conservative candidate arrested and then cleared in election fraud investigation (UPDATED)

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st May 2010 - 6:08 pm

The Express & Star reports:

A Tory election candidate has been arrested on suspicion of postal vote fraud in the first West Midlands Police operation of its kind linked to the 2010 polls.

Gulfam Wali was held by detectives probing claims that postal votes in the Walsall ward where he stood for election were inappropriately used.

The 32-year-old, of Neale Street, Birchills, Walsall, who failed to get elected in Pleck ward, was arrested by detectives from West Midlands Police’s specialist economic crime team.

He was held on suspicion of personation, which is an allegation that votes have been cast in other people’s names.

You can …

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: international development

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st May 2010 - 3:20 pm

Welcome to the twelfth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

International development has been one of the totemic policy areas which David Cameron chose to show how he was changing the party. As a result, just as a promise to increase spending on the NHS was used to argue that the party was changing in its attitude to public services, so too a commitment to increase spending on international aid was used to argue that the party was leaving behind its ‘nasty party’ roots.

Whatever …

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Mark Pack

Capital Gains Tax: an outrageous list of advice

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st May 2010 - 12:29 pm

In a shocking list of advice being given out about capital gains tax, MPs were told:

“Don’t forget to claim expenses”

“Become a butterfly and flit between homes”

“Exploit personal allowances and minimise rates” and more.

The advice urges people to make use of “a range of little-known tax breaks” and quotes a tax advisor saying, “It is possible to reduce a tax bill of a few hundred thousand pounds to virtually zero”.

Oh wait. Hang on. That’s a list of advice that was written for the public and not just MPs, wasn’t it? And the list was written by the Daily Telegraph. Ooops.

Hat-tip: …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Danny Alexander & the Telegraph: not paying something that’s not due is not a story

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st May 2010 - 10:40 am

So here are the facts as we know them (and see his statement that Helen blogged):

  • In 1999 – 2006 he and his wife owned one property (in London)
  • In 2005 he became an MP
  • In 2006 he bought a house in his constituency. That house has been designated his main home for Parliamentary expense purposes.
  • In 2007 they sold their property in London and bought another one. They haven’t paid capital gains tax on the sale.

Capital Gains Tax rules says that you don’t have to pay Capital Gains Tax when you sell  your main home. If that was all they said then …

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: government transparency and immigration

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the eleventh in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

Unlike the nearly all of the rest of the document, both of these sections lift very heavily from Conservative Party policy, with little of the Liberal Democrat manifesto featuring. However, whilst in the immigration section that means policies which will leave many Liberal Democrats uncomfortable, in the government transparency section this is good news – for truth be told, the Conservative manifesto was rather better than the Liberal Democrat manifesto in this regard.

Our manifesto …

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Mark Pack

STV and gender balance: if it’s good enough for MPs…

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st May 2010 - 9:20 am

Last week I pointed out that AV is being used for both the Labour leadership contest and for the election of select committee chairs in the Commons, which could make for the fun sight of Labour MPs who have happily used it in both those contests then turning round and explaining how they think it’s really a terrible system for the public to use.

What I missed then (but now realise) is that the election for the Commons Deputy Speakers will also see two features in use because MPs have adopted them but which I suspect a fair few …

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: families & children and foreign affairs

By Mark Pack | Sun 30th May 2010 - 6:20 pm

Welcome to the tenth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

If you have been following this series of posts, you’ll be familiar by now with the mix of statements in the families and children section: a strong showing of Liberal Democrat policies, some amenable Conservative policies and then a couple of tricky points.

So we have policies which would happily fit in a Liberal Democrat manifesto such as maintaining “the goal of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020”, supporting “the provision of free …

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Mark Pack

Is the Mail on Sunday in a different time zone? Or how it got a string of facts wrong

By Mark Pack | Sun 30th May 2010 - 2:18 pm

The Mail on Sunday appears to have made a basic and repeated series of factual errors in a piece today about Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone.

In the piece the paper repeatedly claims that Lynne has sent tweets in the middle of the night: “1am tweets”, “one post, made at 1:38am…”, “at 12:29am…” and so on. There’s even a screenshot apparently verifying this pattern of middle of the night tweets.

Except, if you take a look at the Twitter website and look up the tweets in question you see they are all time-stamped with different times. Take the two in …

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Mark Pack

Another Labour councillor resigns – this time in Barking

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th May 2010 - 10:40 pm

Following Labour’s trouble in Redbridge, where a Labour candidate was elected and has then had to resign because they were a council employee and so barred from standing, the same again has happened in Barking.

This time it is Goresbrok ward, where Labour’s victory was particularly notable because it involved ousting BNP councillor and GLA member Richard Barnbrook.

By-elections are due in both councils.

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Mark Pack

Deputy Leadership contest: how the MPs stack up

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th May 2010 - 9:32 pm

The following list of MPs backing different Deputy Leader candidates only lists those who have declared their support in public so far. If you spot any more, please do post up a comment along with the source of the information and I’ll update this post as news comes in.

Tim Farron (11)

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: equalities and Europe

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the ninth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

The equalities section continues a theme common throughout the coalition document: if this section was presented to Liberal Democrat conference as the party’s policy in this area, people would be generally pretty happy with it. It doesn’t include everything the party wants, but that is balanced out by it being a list of policies which the government is actually going to put into practice rather than being just a policy motion wish list. Added …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: environment, food and rural affairs

By Mark Pack | Thu 27th May 2010 - 7:01 pm

Welcome to the eight in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

Despite the importance of rural constituencies to the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary ranks, DEFRA (Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs) is one of the few government departments with no Liberal Democrat ministers. That makes the wording of the coalition agreement on policy in this area particularly important.

In content it is very similar to the energy and climate change section; that is, a long list of Liberal Democrat policies, with some amenable Conservative ones added …

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Mark Pack

Deputy Leadership: runners, riders, rules

By Mark Pack | Thu 27th May 2010 - 6:01 pm

So far, the Deputy Leadership election looks to be shaping up as a contest between Tim Farron and Simon Hughes. Tim is the one public candidate so far and there’s plenty of chatter about other possible candidates. In particular, there is an impetus from some quarters for a female candidate to balance out the all-male Cabinet team. However, that is rather muted by both the Party President (Ros Scott) and Chair of the Parliamentary Party (Lorely Burt) posts being held by women and the combination of circumstances, such as being a minister or holding a marginal seat, which rules out …

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Mark Pack

One post-coalition election won in London, another on its way

By Mark Pack | Thu 27th May 2010 - 3:45 pm

The prophets of doom had an off day this week with Camden Liberal Democrats winning the delayed Haverstock election. They held all three seats against a Labour challenge and even scored a small swing from Labour compared to the last Camden council elections.

The next election test in London will be south of the river in Lambeth for, as the Evening Standard reports,

A London Labour councillor has been arrested by police on suspected child porn charges. Toren Smith, 42, was arrested at his home and questioned before being released on bail. His computer was seized for further examination. He has resigned

…

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Mark Pack

Tim Farron runs for deputy leader; Campbell and Munt back him

By Mark Pack | Thu 27th May 2010 - 1:14 pm

News from the Tim Farron campaign camp:

Following the announcement by Vince Cable that he will be stepping down as Deputy Leader to concentrate on his new role as Secretary of State for Business, Tim Farron MP has been urged by colleagues to stand for the position of Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Commenting Tim said:

“Having served as Vince Cable’s PPS during his eight glorious weeks as acting leader, I am fully aware of what a difficult act he will be to follow and I’m so grateful to Vince for what he has achieved in the role.

“His new …

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: energy and climate change

By Mark Pack | Thu 27th May 2010 - 12:45 pm

Welcome to the seventh in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

The ultra-quick summary of this section: a long list of Liberal Democrat policies – and then a bit about nuclear.

The longer version is that however questionable the Conservative Party’s commitment to green issues looked at times before polling day (particularly when Conservative Party conference was expressing its opposition to green taxes), out of the negotiations has come a firm commitment from the Conservatives to back a long, long list of green measures. Many of …

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Mark Pack

More details of Lord Lester’s libel reform bill released

By Mark Pack | Thu 27th May 2010 - 9:20 am

Yesterday I covered the news that Liberal Democrat Lord Lester is going to table a bill to reform libel law. He’s now released details of what approach the bill will take:

  • Introduce a statutory defence of responsible publication on a matter of public interest;
  • Clarify the defences of justification and fair comment, renamed as ‘truth’ and ‘honest opinion’;
  • Respond to the problems of the internet age, including multiple publications and the responsibility of Internet Service Providers and hosters;
  • Protect those reporting on proceedings in Parliament and other issues of public concern;
  • Require claimants to show substantial harm, and corporate bodies to show financial loss;
  • Encourage the speedy settlement of disputes without

…

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: defence and deficit reduction

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th May 2010 - 4:45 pm

Welcome to the sixth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

Despite the importance of the two areas, these are two of the shortest sections in the agreement, reflecting how there are a small number of dominating issues.

For defence there is the Trident compromise – it will be replaced unless there is a better value for money alternative. What the wording leaves unclear is the extent to which any alternative has to meet Trident like-for-like in terms of destructive power and constant instant availability. Whether …

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: culture, Olympics, media and sport

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th May 2010 - 12:20 pm

Welcome to the fifth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

It’s rather a mouthful of a title for this section, but it reflects the diverse remit of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Almost inevitably it is made up of a disparate shopping list of policies without any clear thread running through them.

The list includes the not exactly controversial (Make a success of the Olympics! Make a success of other sports events! Try to get more sports events!) through supporting the status quo …

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Mark Pack

Lib Dem peer to table libel reform bill

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th May 2010 - 9:20 am

The Times Higher Education Supplement reports the promising news:

A Liberal Democrat peer is to launch a libel reform bill in the House of Lords that would offer greater protection for scientific debate against defamation claims.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill said he was introducing the private member’s bill in order to encourage the government to act quickly on libel reform. He said his aim was to trigger the formation of a committee to take detailed evidence on the topic. He added that he hoped the government would adopt the final version of the bill.

Both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems made

…

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: consumers and crime

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th May 2010 - 3:31 pm

Welcome to the fourth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

A brief section on consumer protection offers a handful of positive policies – such as strong consumer protection, more pressure on credit card companies to keep their customers fully informed and clearer food labelling – which could have featured in any party’s manifesto. There is also the well meaning but fantastically vague promise to “take forward measures to enhance customer service in the private and public sectors”. Make of that what you will…

The crime …

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: communities and local government

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the third in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

Traditionally Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have far from seen eye to eye over local government with devolving liberals and centralising conservatives taking fundamentally different approaches. However, this policy area offers a classic example of Cameron’s move to take his party towards a liberal centre-ground creating some genuine overlap in outlook where very little existed before. Large parts of the Conservative Party’s general election manifesto on devolving power could have been taken from previous Liberal …

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: civil liberties

By Mark Pack | Mon 24th May 2010 - 2:20 pm

Welcome to the second in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

The section on civil liberties is, with one exception, a straight forward listing of many policies the Liberal Democrats have long argued for. Whether by principle or pragmatism, David Cameron has taken the chance of a hung Parliament to firmly put the Conservatives on the liberal side of the liberal versus authoritarian divide. There certainly are some in his party who would rather be on the other side, but they have been sidelined …

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Mark Pack

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Mark Pack | Mon 24th May 2010 - 11:20 am

Five blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: banking and business

By Mark Pack | Mon 24th May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the first in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

For all the importance and controversy associated with banking reform, it is also one of the areas where cross-party agreement is easiest – because once you’ve decided that major reform is necessary, the differences of approach are essentially ones of pragmatic detail rather than principle. Some at the free-market or state control fringes may beg to differ, but it’s a debate about what will or won’t work rather than what political philosophers do or …

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Mark Pack

Understanding the election result requires understanding the previous five years

By Mark Pack | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 6:20 pm

The likely explanation emerging for the Liberal Democrat vote share in the general election coming in much lower than even the immediately previous polls suggested is that there was a late swing away from the party, partly due to Lib Dem supporters being less willing to turn out (see, for example, this from ComRes). It’s natural to slide from that into a general story about the party peaking after the first TV debate and then being in decline during the rest of the campaign.

However, there is a risk of missing the wider context – and is show by these …

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Posted in General Election and Polls | Tagged | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

How did uniform national swing do in 2010?

By Mark Pack | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 5:20 pm

The question of whether or not uniform national swing (UNS) calculations are a sensible way of trying to turn national opinion poll vote figures into seat estimates has been much debated in the last few months. So how did UNS do this time round?

Here is how the May 2010 result compares with a UNS projection based on the actual vote changes which occurred between 2005 (notional results) and this time:

Conservatives: 305 seats*. UNS prediction: 291 (-14)
Labour: 258 seats. UNS: 266 (+8)
Liberal Democrats: 57 seats. UNS: 62 (+5)

* Excluding Thirsk & Malton from calculations

In a close election the errors …

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Posted in General Election | Tagged | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Good luck to John Denham

By Mark Pack | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 3:08 pm

I’ve only heard John Denham speak in person once, but the time I did (earlier this month) it was immediately clear why he’s so often been rated by others as one of the better and more thoughtful Labour MPs.

So it’s good to see that he has become the new chair of Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform saying,

An AV referendum is on the agenda because of the work Labour electoral reformers have done. We have to make sure the Labour Party maintains its commitment to the AV referendum and to success in the referendum if and when it comes.

I much prefer …

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Mark Pack

Details of Cabinet Committees published

By Mark Pack | Sat 22nd May 2010 - 12:20 pm

The Cabinet Office website has details of all the Cabinet Committees and who sits on which.

What’s notable from the Liberal Democrat perspective is the depth of both Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander’s involvement in them. Danny sits on eight of the eleven committees whilst Nick is Chair, Co-Chair or Deputy Chair of five.

The role of Cabinet Committees has varied greatly over the years, but in a government where negotiating policy agreements is at the the heart of its day-to-day work, the committees will be more than just talking shops passing the time until the Prime Minister decides.

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Mark Pack

What standards should Counting Officers have to meet?

By Mark Pack | Sat 22nd May 2010 - 9:20 am

The Electoral Commission is currently consulting on its draft performance standards for Counting Officers in Great Britain, which will supplement the existing standards for Electoral Registration Officers and Returning Officers. Counting Officers are the people who administer a referendum in a particular area, much like in the London Assembly and Mayor elections the borough returning officers administer the election in their area on behalf of the London Returning Officer.

Here is the response I’ve sent in:

Dear Lindsey Taber,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the draft performance standards for Counting Officers.

My comments are as follows:

Performance standard 1: Skills and knowledge …

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Posted in Election law | Tagged | 2 Comments
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