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

The European Union deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

By Mark Pack | Sun 14th October 2012 - 10:50 am

Something I wrote back last autumn is rather applicable to my views of the Nobel Peace Prize going to the European Union:

Sat on a shelf a few metres away from me is a box containing the various military medals won by my relatives over previous generations. The medals criss-cross Europe, coming from different countries, over the three wars that had a German-French conflict at their centre. To British eyes that count of three wars may seem odd at first, but for the German and French politicians building new European structures in the aftermath of the Second World War, their

…

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged and | 39 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg blocks Tory bid to opt out of European policing measures

By Mark Pack | Sun 14th October 2012 - 8:25 am

More on the story here.

Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Conservatives campaign plans: lots of leaflets, limited number of Lib Dem seats

By Mark Pack | Sat 13th October 2012 - 4:45 pm

LetterboxDuring the week I blogged about how it looked like the Conservatives would be throwing their national kitchen sink at only around 10 Liberal Democrat held constituencies.

That compares to 38 seats won by the Lib Dems in 2010 in which the Conservatives finished second, and would mean quite a few Liberal Democrats MPs not facing an all-out nationally-backed challenge in their seat – undoubtedly good news for the party.

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Posted in News | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Hello again Sandy, farewell Ed and David – Parliamentary selection news

By Mark Pack | Sat 13th October 2012 - 10:50 am

Three pieces of news on the selection front for the 2015 general election: congratulations to Sandy Walkington, reselected from a field of five in St Albans, and farewell to Ed Fordham and David Rendel, who have decided they won’t go for re-selection in, respectively, Hampstead & Kilburn and Newbury.

Posted in Selection news | Tagged , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

At this rate, I’m going to be launching the Save Andrew Mitchell Fan Club

By Mark Pack | Sat 13th October 2012 - 9:25 am

The Andrew Mitchell Gate-Gate story started off simply enough: politician does stupid thing, bungles apology and faces heavy pressure to quit. Add to that what I’ve heard from people who have worked with him, and it all seemed a straight forward story of a person with an unpleasant streak getting found out.

But you know what? The longer this has gone on, the more sympathy I have with him. Hard to believe, but consider two salient facts.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 39 Comments
Mark Pack

Are you a member of Unlock Democracy? Please help improve it

By Mark Pack | Fri 12th October 2012 - 1:25 pm

In the spring and summer I blogged about how underwhelmed I was by the exceptionally tight campaigning restrictions for Unlock Democracy’s internal elections which blocked contact between candidates and voters (the irony given the organisation’s name!), leaving just a fairly uninformative booklet to guide my votes:

Now having the ballot mailing for the council and for the related limited company in front of me, things are even worse. Why? Because I’m left with almost no decent information on which to decide how to cast my vote. Sure, I’ve got a

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

David Cameron: the pro-Europeans’ secret weapon

By Mark Pack | Mon 8th October 2012 - 11:24 am

Writing for the European Council on Foreign Relations, YouGov’s Peter Kellner highlights an important polling finding:

In July this year, YouGov asked this question: ‘Imagine the British government under David Cameron renegotiated our relationship with Europe and said that Britain’s interests were now protected, and David Cameron recommended that Britain remain a member of the European Union on the new terms. How would you then vote in a referendum on the issue?’…

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Posted in Europe / International and Polls | Tagged , , , and | 11 Comments
Mark Pack

How not to do an interview: Grant Shapps demonstrates

By Mark Pack | Sun 7th October 2012 - 8:09 pm

1. Running away from Michael Crick rarely works.

2. Running away from Michael Crick whilst he has a camera crew in tow even more rarely works.

3. Running away from Michael Crick into the wrong room and then having to turn around and walk back past the camera even more rarely works.

4. Running away from Michael Crick into a wrong room for the second time takes the odds of success into the realms of the never never.

5. But if you are going to do that, remember not to turn round at the end and give a short answer sounding out of breath and without looking at camera or questioner. Because that always looks so convincing.

All of which means of course no-one would ever do 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Oh, hang on:

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

What do the academics say? The benefits of uninformative photos

By Mark Pack | Sun 7th October 2012 - 10:50 am

Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. Today – a little study from New Zealand about how even an uninformative photo helps convince people about the truth of a statement.

The British Psychological Society’s blog has details:

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Posted in What do the academics say? | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

News snippets from the Conservative conference: tax, Europe, migration and more

By Mark Pack | Sun 7th October 2012 - 10:28 am

Conservative Party logoTrouble ahead on tax as Osborne opposes a mansion tax:

We are not going to have a mansion tax, or a new tax that is a percentage value of people’s properties.

Before you rush to spot the loophole in that – what about adding extra higher bands to Council Tax? – he opposed that too. Given Osborne made much of his reputation as was by opposing changes to inheritance tax, perhaps it is on capital gains tax that there will be room fro an agreement with the …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

A flagship borough: 25 years of a Liberal Democrat Sutton Council

By Mark Pack | Fri 5th October 2012 - 9:45 pm

Look round the room at the next Liberal Democrat event you attend and ask yourself how many people in the room will have their names recorded in places that future political historians can find. A few, certainly, especially if they have been elected to public office.

For most, however, their contribution to a political party slips away through the cracks of the historical record, disappearing as the direct personal memories people have of them fade and then end with death.

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Posted in Books, Local government and London | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Fri 5th October 2012 - 9:03 pm

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. However if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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Mark Pack

Michael Gove declares war on curves (square corners are OK though)

By Mark Pack | Thu 4th October 2012 - 12:25 pm

Bizarre micro-management at its worst, courtesy of Michael Gove.

Now, it’s easy to see why he’s keen to seen if schools can be built at lower costs. It’s also easy to see how a bit more standardisation between different new school designs could reduce costs.

So looking for more standardisation in design? No problem.

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 17 Comments
Mark Pack

How progressive is the new tuition fees system?

By Mark Pack | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 12:25 pm

University campusThe Institute For Fiscal Studies (IFS) has been running its calculators and slide-rulers over the new system, and here are some of the key points that it has concluded:

  • “The new system eventually saves the taxpayer around £760 million per year, driven by a dramatic cut in direct public funding to universities.”
  • “But for universities, this cut is more than offset by almost £15,000 in additional fee income per graduate – a 140 per cent rise over the old system. Thus the total amount spent – from both private and public sources – on higher education is expected to increase as a result of these reforms.”
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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 38 Comments
Mark Pack

You don’t have to go to conference to be a conference rep

By Mark Pack | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 10:25 am

Vince Cable and Paddy AshdownNot only do you not need to be a conference rep to go to conference, you don’t need to go to federal conference to become a federal voting conference rep.

It’s often assumed that it is only worth becoming a conference rep if you are going to go to conference, and as a result local parties further away from the venues in particular often do not elect a full slate of conference reps. However, whilst this is the primary role for voting conference …

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Posted in Conference and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

A graph, a dip, a policy: why the nursery premium is so important

By Mark Pack | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 2:25 pm

Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton saw the a motion passed calling for the party to investigate the practicalities of introducing a ‘nursery premium’. At first glance this sounds like an obvious extension of the party’s existing pupil premium policy. Delving more closely into the data, however, shows that it is more than simply an obvious extension; it’s necessary to remove what is a bizarre anomaly arising from how other policies fit together.

Here is the extra assistance which is given for the education of children from the most deprived backgrounds in England for each age band from 1 year-old to 18 years-old:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

It’s not Vince you should be texting Ed

By Mark Pack | Sun 30th September 2012 - 7:25 pm

Ed Miliband’s text messages to Vince Cable may have got him in trouble with his own political party and even resulted in party officials taking away his mobile phone.

They also have been text messages sent to the wrong person if Ed Miliband’s serious about preparing the ground for future Labour-Liberal Democrat cooperation.

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

Are you a Liberal Democrat conference rep who went to Brighton?

By Mark Pack | Sun 30th September 2012 - 12:50 pm

If so, I’ve got a question for you. Below is the text of an email sent out by 38 Degrees following their lobbying campaign around Liberal Democrat conference.

The lobbying itself – over the climate change debate – was pretty well done, in particular firing up supporters to want to lobby the Liberal Democrats – but doing so without throwing the sort of brickbats at the party that would make the lobbying less likely to be effective. (It’s a common problem with lobbying campaigns: you whip up an audience by saying the target is evil, and then found the said recipient …

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Posted in Conference and News | Tagged and | 23 Comments
Mark Pack

Labour health policy descends into mess on first day of conference

By Mark Pack | Sat 29th September 2012 - 8:48 pm

At a Q&A session, Labour leader Ed Miliband said:

I think what would be not sensible is for us to come along and say, ‘well, Andrew Lansley, now Jeremy Hunt, they’re changing all the arrangements, have these new clinical commissioning groups and so on, and we’re just going to reverse it all back and spend another £3bn on another top-down bureaucratic organisation.

So Labour wouldn’t just reverse all the Health and Social Care Act changes? That would mean quietly forgetting some of the rhetoric about how the passage of the Act would kill the NHS, but it’s easy to see why …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 20 Comments
Mark Pack

A longer watch for the weekend: Martin Lewis on tuition fees

By Mark Pack | Sat 29th September 2012 - 9:25 am

24 minutes and 1 second of the financial advisor and consumer champion Martin Lewis talking about the tuition fees system, how it works and what people get wrong about it:

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Posted in News and YouTube | Tagged , and | 78 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg’s speech: analysis from Matthew Parris, Lance Price and myself

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th September 2012 - 11:50 am

On Wednesday night Radio 4’s The World Tonight lined up the three of us to talk about Nick Clegg’s speech to the Brighton conference. You can listen to our discussion, along with interviews with other conference attendees here:

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Posted in Conference and News | Tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg: re-elect Tim Farron as Party President

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th September 2012 - 8:50 am

Neither is quite so gauche as to say it explicitly, but you hardly have to peer between the lines to work out what message is meant to be imparted by a piece from Nick Clegg praising Tim Farron’s record as President, especially when it’s contained in a leaflet handed out at conference by Tim’s re-election team and with a form asking people to sign Tim’s nomination papers tucked inside.

It is looking like it will be an uncontested re-election so far, but credit to Tim for still taking it seriously. …

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Posted in News, Party policy and internal matters and Party Presidency | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Miliband: Labour took my mobile phone away

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th September 2012 - 12:01 am

Ed MilibandWhat a bad year it is to be a political satirist. First there was the problem of the minister who met the Prime Minster, intending to resign – yet somehow the conversation ended without the PM noticing that a resignation was on offer. Hard for a satirist to top that.

And now we have the bizarre case of the Labour Party confiscating its own party leader’s mobile phone, as reported by Sky:

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg’s speech to conference: “A fair, free and open society”

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th September 2012 - 3:24 pm

Much of the pre-speech briefing was about how Nick Clegg’s conference speech would major on how the party is becoming one of government. This is not a message aimed at the party itself really, as the debate in Brighton has been over what to do in government, not whether or not to be in government. Much more, the message was aimed at the media who love to attack the party for pushing policies they disagree with, dressing up disagreement with them as meaning the party can’t be serious about government or taking tough decisions.

Instead, Clegg argued that the party is up …

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Posted in Conference and News | Tagged and | 76 Comments
Mark Pack

+++ Paddy Ashdown to chair 2015 general election campaign

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th September 2012 - 3:13 pm

Party leader speeches at conferences rarely contain completely untrailed and fresh news. Nick Clegg’s does: that Paddy Ashdown will chair the party’s 2015 general election campaign.

Although his name wasn’t one of those I speculated about previously, it is a logical choice because the party’s plan is to fight a 1997-style general election campaign, with a tough national vote share environment hopefully bucked by very effective Parliamentary by-election style campaigns …

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Posted in Conference and News | Tagged , , and | 14 Comments
Mark Pack

Another day at conference, another education policy launched

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th September 2012 - 10:34 am

BlackboardTax, tax and a bit more about tax: that’s been the main theme of the Liberal Democrat conference, from the slogan on badges and the banner outside the building through to the content of speeches and the main policy focus of the media coverage.

When it comes to new policy announcements, however, it is education that has had a strong showing.

First there was the news on summer schools:

Lib Dems announce further £100m for summer schools to help children catch-up
Mr Laws said: “All too often pupils who have made big progress

…

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Mark Pack

Danny Alexander: fairer taxes, with everyone playing by the same rules

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th September 2012 - 12:55 pm

Fairer taxes, crack down on tax avoidance, an emphasis on the mansion tax and a low-key, getting on with the work in hand delivery: that’s Danny Alexander’s conference speech in a nutshell.

Although not quite up there with his GMB speech (still well worth a read), it was an effective one as the delivery style matched the message.

Having often heard Danny Alexander talk in the past about action needing to be taken on tax avoidance and tax evasion, I noticed a change in emphasis this time, with more talk about what has been done. That’s a good sign of progress, …

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Posted in Conference and News | Tagged , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

That leaked campaign document which isn’t really a leaked campaign document

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th September 2012 - 12:31 pm

Over on The Spectator there’s a curious leaked document today, ostensibly a leaked internal party document setting out Liberal Democrat campaign weaknesses.

I say ostensibly because the document is a strange mixture. Some of its content is either wrong or distorted – such as the reference to the party having canvass data for only 2% of voters. That’s wrong, and I’ve seen evidence which shows it is wrong. However, the 2% figure has the phrase “functional political data” attached to it at one point. That sounds like a carefully crafted definition designed to talk down rather than talk up how much data the …

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Mark Pack

A public service announcement from the Committee for Political Consistency

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th September 2012 - 11:50 am

It is extremely important that documents from the police security team at high-risk terrorist targets are kept fully confidential, unless they are about an MP you do not like, in which case they must be leaked in full to the press, no questions asked.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Telegraph’s annual list of 50 most influential Liberal Democrats is out…

By Mark Pack | Mon 24th September 2012 - 5:58 pm

It’s Liberal Democrat conference, so it’s time for the latest Iain Dale / Daily Telegraph list of the 50 most influential Liberal Democrats. Of course our interest in covering the story on Lib Dem Voice is in no way related to two of the team appearing in the list…

In less than shocking news, Nick Clegg still tops the list at #1. Up to #2 is Vince Cable, followed by Tim Farron, Danny Alexander and then Nick Clegg’s Chief of Staff (and former double winning general election agent) Jonathan Oates.

Going further down the rankings finds the double blogger appearances:

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , and | 1 Comment
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