Author Archives: Stephen Tall

Which Lib Dem MPs received the most media mentions between 1st December 2007 and 29th February, 2008? To find out I trawled Lexis-Nexis’s online database of all UK national newspapers (and a huge number of regional ones), feeding in the names of each of our MPs in turn, and seeing how many returns were generated.

To qualify, the MP must have been mentioned either as a Liberal Democrat or Lib Dem. This will disadvantage those MPs who are working their regional media hard, but whose names do not appear under the party’s banners. Sorry, but them’s the rules.

Anyway, here’s the list in descending order of media mentions (with their Sept-Nov 2007 positions in brackets):

That, at any rate, is the finding of a YouGov poll published in yesterday’s Telegraph.

Among all voters, 34% chose Margaret Thatcher as the greatest post-war premier; for Lib Dem supporters the total was 27%. She was followed by Harold Wilson and Winston Churchill, with 14% of Lib Dem voters naming them as the greatest post-war PMs. Clement Attlee was highest-rated by 11%. Intriguingly, more Lib Dems chose John Major (albeit just 2%) than did Tories (a rather harsh 0%).

Asked to choose two of Mrs Thatcher’s greatest achievements, Lib Dem voters selected her status as the first female British …

No offence was intended… Lib Dem Voice forgot to remark yesterday upon the appearance of the new Politics Home website, Stephan Shakespeare’s grown-up, non-partisan successor to the Tory telly of 18 Doughty Street – a noble example of dumbing-up, as 18DS’s Fox News style is ditched in favour of a Bloomberg-esque design.

Actually, Politics Home’s approach is more akin to the USA’s indispensable RealClearPolitics – aggregating the latest news and political comment, rather than employing a team of original thinkers – but with two noteworthy add-ons.

First, its impressively dogged commitment “to log, summarise and transcribe every key …

… Herbert Asquith formally became Prime Minister, the last leader of a Liberal government. To mark the occasion, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has put up this webpage to Asquith and the dynasty that came after him.

That’s the stark question that’s being asked today by The Times’s Peter Riddell, following two post-budget opinion polls showing support for Labour below 30% in the wake of Alastair Darling’s damp squib of a budget.

This is the first time this year that Labour support has dropped below this level, and it only occurred four times last year. This is very dangerous territory for Labour, akin to the trough into which the Conservatives plunged in the mid-1990s.

As Mr Riddell notes, Labour has been here before – but at least under Tony Blair’s leadership, supporters could hope for the political tide …

Andy Sloan, who stood for the Lib Dems as a prospective MP in 2005 and had been a councillor in East Hull since 2006, has defected to the Tories.

A fortnight ago he voted against the Lib Dem council group’s proposed budget, proposing an amendment to increase gully cleaning, and launched a fiercely personal assault on Lib Dem leader Carl Minns, accusing him of being “tantamount to criminal” in his criticism of Labour’s handling of last year’s floods. He had resigned from the Lib Dem cabinet the month before citing personal reasons.

Update (11am, 12/3/08): I’ve just been sent the following press statement by the Lib Dem Yorkshire and Humber region:

On 3rd March 2008, the Executive Committee of the Yorkshire and the Humber Region Liberal Democrats voted to suspend Cllr Andy Sloan’s membership of the Liberal Democrat party, pending discussion of a motion to expel him from the party.

Complaints were received by party officials alleging that Cllr Sloan had brought himself and the Liberal Democrats into disrepute by launching an unprecedentedly vicious, personal attack on councillor colleagues in Hull, in particular Cllr Carl Minns.