Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall. He writes a fortnightly column for ConservativeHome and 'The Underdog' column for Total Politics magazine. He edited the 2013 publication, The Coalition and Beyond: Liberal Reforms for the Decade Ahead, and is a Research Associate for the liberal think-tank CentreForum. He was awarded the inaugural Lib Dem ‘Blogger of the Year’ prize in 2006, was a councillor for eight years in Oxford, including a year as Deputy Lord Mayor, and appears frequently in the media in person, in print and online. Stephen combines his political interests with his professional life as Development Director for the Education Endowment Foundation, though writes here in a personal capacity. Follow @stephentall
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 26th October 2013 - 10:25 pm
Here’s Lib Dem energy secretary Ed Davey highlighting one of the many flaws in Ed Miliband’s promise to freeze energy prices in today’s Guardian interview:
We’re 18 months from the May 2015 election so I thought it’d be useful to keep a running check on how candidate selection is going in our held and key target seats…
Below is the list as I currently understand it. If I’ve missed re-selections of current MPs or selections in seats where our MPs are retiring or in our top 50 targets, do please say so in the comments and I’ll update the list.
Here’s the full list of the 57 MPs elected as Liberal Democrats in May 2010:
Danny Alexander, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey
Norman Baker, Lewes
Alan Beith, Berwick-upon-Tweed
Five days after it was pre-briefed, Nick Clegg finally made his speech on A Liberal Vision for Education at Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets.
(Morpeth is, by the way, a fantastic school. I visited it for my day-job 18 months ago, and was shown around by two of its pupils, Vanessa and Mahir: the transformational progress of London schools in the past decade is one of the modern wonders of Britain.)
Which politician (or combination of politicians) would the public most trust to run the British economy? That’s the question YouGov asked, and here are results courtesy the PLMR blog:
Overall David Cameron has the single best economic trust figure (35%) followed by Ed Miliband (30%). As you might expect this breaks broadly on party lines: 91% of Tory voters trust their party’s leader; 76% of Labour’s trust theirs. The current Coalition partnership – Cameron and Clegg – are trusted by 29%, with Tories less enthusiastic and Labour supporters overwhelmingly hostile.
By Stephen Tall
| Tue 22nd October 2013 - 10:15 am
Nick Clegg’s speech on free schools – setting out the policy approved by the Lib Dem conference last March – has ruffled feathers. Apparently he and David Cameron even had lunch yesterday to discuss this ‘bombshell’ announcement (which in fact won’t be made until a speech this Thursday).
My view (as I set out here on Sunday) is that schools should have the freedom to appoint teachers who lack formal qualifications, though I’d expect these to be the exceptions not the rule in the vast majority of state-funded schools. But I don’t think it’s at all surprising that Nick …
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 20th October 2013 - 11:05 am
No-one should be that surprised by Nick Clegg’s decision to distance the Lib Dems from Michael Gove’s schools policies — specifically that every teacher should be qualified and that every school should teach the national curriculum. After all, what Nick is due to set out in a speech this week is the policy that was voted for overwhelmingly by the party’s conference in March this year.
Here’s what the adopted policy – Every Child Taught by an Excellent Teacher – says about teachers in all schools having qualifications:
All classroom teachers, including in academies and free schools and Further Education
Here’s the full list of selection contests in the coming month availabele for Lib Dems on the approved parliamentary candidates’ list, together with the closing date for applications. Some top targets for the party are among them…
Much excitement among Tories today at the arrival of a new Ipsos-MORI poll showing them drawing level with Labour – 36% apiece – among those who say they’re certain to vote. The explanation’s not too hard to hazard a guess at: the return of economic growth is gradually feeding through into a feel-good factor. (For more on this, see this excellent post by YouGov’s Joe Twyman: ‘“It’s the long term trends, stupid”: the Conservatives, Labour and the economy‘.)
However, it was some of the underlying IPSOS-Mori data concerning perceptions of the leaders which caught my eye… (All the graphs below …
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 16th October 2013 - 10:25 pm
“If someone as well as their home has substantial other assets, money in the bank, shares or whatever, should they be expected to use those assets to pay for care? Or should we say, we will always defer the costs of selling their home? If you’ve got a vast amount of money in the bank, you’re quite wealthy, it’s desirable that we protect that money but the scheme has to be affordable. If together with owning your own home, you have more than £23,000-odd in the bank, the question is should you be expected to use that money. You are
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 16th October 2013 - 10:00 pm
Here’s the key question Labour was asking a few months ago: Who do you trust? The Police or Andrew Mitchell?
According to an official police report, Conservative Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell said to a police officer:
“Best you learn your f***ing place … you don’t run this f***ing government … you’re f***ing plebs.”
Andrew Mitchell is denying it. But he won’t admit what he said. And David Cameron is choosing to believe the word of a Tory MP over the word of a hard-working police officer.
LibDemVoice’s surveys of party members signed-up to our discussion forum have been running for close to four years now. (I posted yesterday the final set of figures from our most recent poll.)
Our surveys are a way of testing members’ views on a variety of hot topics. And as they’ve been running throughout the first three-and-a-half years of the Coalition they’re also an interesting record of changing views on how the Coalition is regarded within the party.
If you would like to take part in the LibDemVoice surveys, there are simply two steps you need to follow: 1) Be a current Lib …
This week the Lib Dems got #WhyIamIn trending on Twitter to launch the party’s campaign to show the positive benefits of British membership of the European Union. Nick Clegg takes up the cause in his weekly letter, making the point you’ll hear a lot between now and next May’s Euro elections: “Only the Liberal Democrats are, unambiguously, the party of ‘In’.” As I pointed out this week, it’s not just a cause the vast majority of the party passionately believes in — it’s also smart electoral politics. Here’s Nick’s letter in full…
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Almost 700 party members responded – thank you – and we’re publishing the full results.
Apologies: I failed to publish our regular Coalition tracker survey results owing to the general hecticness of conference season. However, here they are now… Please bear in mind, though, the figures below are a month old. All comparisons are with our most recent survey conducted in July 2013.)
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 12th October 2013 - 11:55 am
I posted earlier the most recent ratings by Lib Dem members of the party’s government ministers. Here’s how those affected by the reshuffle have done over the three-plus years we’ve been running our members’ surveys…
Sacked
Michael Moore (Secretary of State for Scotland, May 2010 to Oct 2013)
Jeremy Browne (Minister – Foreign Office, May 2010 to Sept 2012; Minister – Home Office, Sept 2012 to Oct 2013)
David Heath (Deputy Leader – Commons, May 2010 to Sept 2012; Minister …
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 12th October 2013 - 10:45 am
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum in September to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Almost 700 party members responded – thank you – and we’re publishing the full results.
Apologies: I failed to publish this list owing to the general hecticness of conference season. The reshuffle reminded me it needed doing as this is the last time this exact list will be published… Please bear in mind, though, the figures below are now a month old.
LDV asked: How would you rate the performances of the following leading Liberal Democrats and government ministers?
Full results are published below, but here’s two key lists for those who want to cut to the chase… (with comparison to July 2013 ratings in brackets)
Elected in 1997 by just 130 votes, David has been re-elected a further three times with increasing majorities – by 2010 it had grown to 1,817. However, there’s no doubt that his decision to retire will make the scrap to hold this seat against the Conservatives even tighter in 2015.
Update: Saturday AM
The Frome Standard reports David telling a constituency meeting last night:
By Stephen Tall
| Fri 11th October 2013 - 11:45 am
I wasn’t too impressed by the timing of Sarah Teather’s announcement — on the eve of the party’s conference — that she wouldn’t be standing as a Lib Dem at the next election. But I was impressed by her performance on Channel 4 News last night.
Invited on to talk about immigration in her first television interview since that news broke, Matt Frei decided instead to search for cheap and easy headlines — does she think Nick Clegg’s a sell-out, is she in touch with Lord Rennard? etc — to her evident frustration.
She deals with it well, though as she’s commented today: “I agreed to do Channel 4 last night hoping for a thoughtful space to articulate some of my views on immigration and public discourse. Sadly Channel 4 were doing the Westminster thing and trying to make everything personal and titillating. But that is Westminster I guess. One of the challenges of trying to make arguments from inside the party political space! But I got to make some points anyway.”
Perhaps the silliest proposal in a generally thread-bare Queen’s Speech in May was the Conservatives’ plan to ‘look busy’ on immigration.
Yes, the party that claims to want to cut back red-tape for small businesses decided to try and tie-up private landlords in it by imposing a legal duty on them check the immigration status of new tenants and lodgers. It’s an, erm, interesting approach to regulation, I guess: out-sourcing it to people who’ll have no way of validating the information they’re given.
However, the Tories’ grand plans have been scuppered thanks to the Lib Dems, as The Guardian …
I missed it yesterday, but have just caught up with Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander’s (rather flailing) attempts on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme to justify the second stage of the Coalition’s ‘Help to Buy’ scheme for folk wanting to buy their own house. You can listen to it here or below.
There are two stages to ‘Help to Buy’. The first, announced by George Osborne earlier this year, offered anyone purchasing a newly built home costing less than £600,000 the opportunity to apply for a 20% government-guaranteed loan with just a 5% deposit. The Economist explains the rationale:
The basic economic thrust makes sense. Rental rates are high in Britain, meaning punishing payments to landlords. Given that a mortgage can be cheaper, wider home ownership could put more disposable cash in Britons’ wallets. In an economy where private consumption accounts for four-fifths of spending cutting housing costs in this way is likely to boost GDP. And since this part of Help to Buy is tied to building, it should work even if the new nests end up in the hands of buy-to-let landlords: a bigger housing stock should drive down rents, and provide jobs for the workers that build them.
The big problem comes with the second stage of ‘Help to Buy’, which breaks the explicit link with new-build housing. From this month, pre-owned property also qualifies. If widely taken up, it will stoke demand among eligible buyers but do nothing to increase supply: a recipe for house price inflation in many areas, especially London and the south-east. That will be good for the equity of home-owners like me, but rubbish for those not yet on the housing ladder who find themselves once again priced out of the market. Here’s The Economist again:
The prospect is unnerving, especially since the new part of the scheme may well distort banks’ incentives by driving a wedge between what they lend and the risks they face. With the housing market already rampant in London—up 20% annually in the trendiest parts of the city—and pepping up in the rest of the country too, Help to Buy is adding heat to a market that does not need it.
The Coalition appears to be banking on the winners from the scheme being happier and more numerous than the losers. Depressingly, there’s a chance they’re right. After all, Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Right to Buy’ did serious damage to the country’s social housing stock, but was (unsurprisingly) highly popular with those it helped. That said, the latest polling on ‘Help to Buy from YouGov suggests the public, post-credit crunch, is more alert to the dangers of house price inflation than it was: by 58% to 17%, voters reckon the new scheme risks creating a housing bubble.
Danny thinks it’s all worth the risk: “Our housing market has to be opened to a wider range of people,” he says. Don’t we all? The way to do that, though, is by increasing housing supply, not by the kind of blatant market-manipulation the Coalition (rightly) slams Ed Miliband for when he makes similarly ill-thought through promises to fix energy prices.
Nick Clegg’s decision to reshuffle Jeremy Browne out of the Home Office and Norman Baker in has triggered a mini-furore, with plenty on the authoritarian right outraged at his appointment to the Home Office given he’s the author of a book suggesting MI5 covered up the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly.
The best riposte I’ve seen has been from Jonathan Calder over at Liberal England:
Some will question Norman’s conspiracy theories about the death of David Kelly. To that, I would merely point out that in an
Four quick thoughts from me on what today’s Lib Dem reshuffle means..
1. Nick feels secure enough to be ruthless.
Sacking both Michael Moore and Jeremy Browne is not something Nick would have been able to contemplate a year ago. Then – with the economy still mired in recession, his apology video still fresh in the memory, and Vince reminding everyone he stood ready, willing and able should the need arise – Nick was vulnerable, in need of allies. Now – with the economy recovering, Eastleigh defended and all key conference votes won – Nick feels able to asset himself.
No sooner do we report Norman Baker’s promotion to the home office than the Prime Minister tweets out the news of his replacement: Baroness (Susan) Kramer, the first Lib Dem candidate for the London mayoralty and later MP for Richmond Park — in which role she helped lead opposition to Labour’s proposals for a third runway at Heathrow. More recently she served as a Lib Dem peer on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
Jeremy Browne has always been a bit of a marmite character within the party: an Orange Booker economically, but not a social libertarian. He was regarded as having had a successful stint in his first government post at the Foreign Office (although unless you accidentally start a war I’m not sure what the criteria for a bad stint are). His move to the home office, replacing Lynne Featherstone, was intended to reduce the number of clashes with Home Secretary Theresa May.
However, it’s not been a happy match. Despite an early success …
Here’s the full list of selection contests in the coming month availabel for Lib Dems on the approved parliamentary candidates’ list. Some top targets for the party are among them…
The following seats have selections in progress and are currently advertising for candidates:
I highlighted during Lib Dem conference season an interesting finding from Lord Ashcroft’s latest polling of marginal seats:
Lord Ashcroft – the former deputy Tory chairman and the man who spends more on polling than all the political parties combined – released his latest findings this week. 13,000 voters in the 40 Conservative seats with the smallest majorities were surveyed, including eight where the Liberal Democrats came second in 2010: Watford, St Albans, Oxford West & Abingdon, Harrogate & Knaresborough, Camborne & Redruth, Truro & Falmouth, Newton Abbot and Montgomeryshire.
Remember: these are seats which are potential Lib Dem gains in
I noted earlier this week that the Daily Mail’s attacks on Ed Miliband’s father have echoes of the smears the paper has peddled about Nick Clegg and his family over the years.
And on his ‘Call Clegg’ radio phone-in today the Lib Dem leader didn’t shy away from mounting a full-frontal assault on the Mail pointing out that what it represents is utterly opposed to the British values of decency, tolerance and fair play. Here’s how the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow reports it:
I missed David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative party conference today. Or, rather, I didn’t see or hear it, which isn’t quite the same thing as missing it.
Meh
But it sounds like, by missing it, I didn’t miss much. There were no dramatic announcements, no new initiatives. Yes, there was talk of the need to “nag and push and guide” young people to either “earn or learn” – the Department of Work and Pensions reports over a million people between the ages of 16 and 24 are …
The Labour party’s been enjoying a post-conference bump in the polls on the back of Ed Miliband’s bit of unexpected populism of promising a 20-month energy price freeze. At the weekend, Labour opened up an 11-point lead over the Tories, hitting 42%, its highest level since June.
Of course party conferences frequently distort the polls. We’ll see if the Tories also get a boost from their week’s exposure (or whether the row between the Daily Mail and Ed Miliband has overshadowed it). And then we’ll see if any of these spikes have any kind of long-lasting effect, or — as usual …
My colleague Andy Boddington has already (rightly) laid into the Daily Mail for its gratuitous insults against Ed Miliband’s father, Marxist historian Ralph.
The paper has form when it comes to smearing the families of party leaders. Let’s turn back the pages of history to… well, 10 days ago when the Mail tried to link Nick Clegg to fascism through his father-in-law:
Or we could roll back to December 2012 when the Mail splash on a desperately thin story implying some …
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 30th September 2013 - 8:15 pm
Who has made sure the Pupil Premium is being delivered in Government? Pretty straightforward question, you might think: the Liberal Democrats. Not if you’re George Osborne, though…
“I sit at that Cabinet table and I know who has really put forward the policies that are delivering a fairer society. The pupil premium to support the most disadvantaged children: that was Michael Gove’s idea, front and centre of the last Conservative manifesto.” (30 Sept 2013)
Erm… okay, George. Let’s take those two claims in order.
Kira Collins @Peter Martin
“ We should be encouraging them to use less energy. To do that, you should put standard rate VAT on energy and use the money to raise pensions,...
Simon Banks Why are we on the other side from the Tories? Because they stand for every kind of inequality, the gutting of local government and a narrow nationalism. We stan...
expats Vince Cable....Gordon Brown introduced formal fiscal rules in 1997 alongside the operational independence of the Bank of England: essentially, a commitment to b...
Nonconformistradical @Tristan Ward
Instead of posting such a long link may I recommend the use of https://tinyurl.com/ ?
Which reduced your huge link to https://tinyurl.com/eejs...
Tristan Ward "‘why can’t social care and NHS spending be treated as ‘investment’’. Of course, that wont wash".
It might wash if such spending can wash its face....
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Lib Dem Rutland plans cycle-path from Oakham to Rutland Water
Brexit and summer holidays
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Kira Collins 
Simon Banks 
expats 
Nonconformistradical 
Tristan Ward 