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
Pushed for time, but want to keep up-to-date with how the campaign’s going? Here are today’s must-reads ….
Cameron adviser discloses cuts detail (FT.com)
Anyone who heard David Cameron’s BBC Radio 4 Today Programme interview today will have heard him squirming when asked to confirm the report in the Financial Times today that the Tories’ tax-cuts could lead to the loss of 40,000 jobs.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Sir Peter Gershon, the former government adviser who has provided the blueprint for the Conservative leader’s efficiency plans, disclosed for the first time how the party’s proposed £12bn savings should
On the day that the Lib Dems tried to smoke out the Tories’ true position on whether they’ll jack-up VAT by 3% – annual cost to the average household, £389 – to pay for their unfunded tax-cuts, David Cameron was joined by a man worth £45m who rather likes the Tories’ promise to cut taxes for the wealthiest at the expense of everyone else.
Full marks to Lib Dem HQ who were smartly on the case to splice the two stories memorably together:
Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson had his own pithy take on it:
YouGov in the Sun … CON 40% (+3%), LAB 31% (-1%), LIB DEM 18% (-1%)
All moves are, of course, within the margin of error. So, yes, it could be the Tory lead has widened. Or it might have not. That’s the joy of polls – read into them what you choose.
This latest survey hasn’t yet made it into Anthony Wells’ UK Polling Report ‘poll of polls’, but it’s not going to make a huge difference, I don’t think, so here’s the score as of 8th April:
During the election campaign Lib Dem Voice is each day highlighting six blog-posts from the Lib Dem Blogs Aggregator which we think are well worth reading.
Here’s our pick from 8th April …
Help the Labservatives choose their next Cabinet (Caron Lindsay)
Highlighting the latest instalment of the Lib Dems’ fantastic Labservative bit of mischief: “in a radical act of benevolence, their leader Gorvid Camerown has offered you the chance to help choose his next Cabinet.”
The Digital Economy Bill #debill (Andy Strange)
Depressed by Parliament’s failure to respond to voters’ concerns: “The Liberal Democrats, despite our
For the past week, the Tories have been decrying Labour’s plans to raise National Insurance, pledging to reverse the rise but with a startling lack of clarity about how they will pay for it – beyond vague talk of ‘efficiency savings’, the kind of fantasy finance David Cameron and George Osborne would be quick to scorn if other parties tried it on.
Today Nick Clegg is showing that NI cuts may be popular with business – but they have to be paid for by someone, and the most likely people to pay the price of the Tories’ cuts will be …
It will be almost like old times for the Lib Dems, with former leader Charles Kennedy joining Nick Clegg to launch the Lib Dems’ Scottish campaign – as CK himself tweeted earlier today. Here’s how the BBC reports it:
Mr Clegg will get the Scottish campaign under way in Glasgow along with Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott and senior party figures, including Charles Kennedy.
The party – Scotland’s second biggest in Westminster terms –
Three new polls tonight, and there’s good news for the Lib Dems – we’re up in all of them:
YouGov in the Sun … CON 37% (-3%), LAB 32% (n/c), LIB DEM 19% (+2%)
Populus in the Times … CON 39% (-1%), LAB 32% (+2%), LIB DEM 21% (+1%)
Angus Reid in the Express … CON 37% (-1%), LAB 26% (-1%), LIB DEM 22% (+2%)
Of course, all these changes are within the +/-3% margin of error so we should be very careful about reading anything too much into these increases unless they are sustained in the coming days. Still, it’s nice to see …
During the election campaign Lib Dem Voice will each day be highlighting six blog-posts from the Lib Dem Blogs Aggregator which we think are well worth reading.
Here’s our pick from 7th April, the first full day’s campaigning …
Lynne on the joys of standing for re-election: “It’s been an absolute privilege and a joy to be the MP in Hornsey & Wood Green, representing the constituency where I went to school, where I got married and where I have worked for many years.”
Gordon Brown has today announced one of his election pledges: Labour has no plans to make our tax system fairer. Or has he put it: Labour will hold the basic income tax rate at 20 pence in the pound.
Lib Dems, too, are committed to keeping the basic rate of income tax at 20p. But, unlike Labour, the party would make a priority of lifting the personal tax allowance to £10,000, ensuring millions of low-earners and pensioners will stop paying taxes altogether.
It’s a question that’s been playing on the minds of Lib Dems for some time: how can the party translate the popularity of the party’s deputy leader and shadow chancellor Vince Cable into votes for the Liberal Democrats?
Of Vince’s popularity there is no doubt. Two recent opinion polls (one for PoliticsHome.com, the other by Ipsos Mori) showed him well in front of his Labour and Tory rivals for the Treasury post, Alastair Darling and George Osborne.
And it’s not just members of the public. Just this week, a group of non-Lib …
General election campaigns are, perhaps, the worst possible time to judge politicians: they’re frantic, break-neck affairs when serious thought takes a back-seat.
But, still, you really do have to wonder at the sheer breath-taking effrontery of Gordon Brown’s decision to trumpet his political reformist credentials on the very same day as his government kills off measures to improve our democracy.
Gordon Brown tonight sanctioned the abandonment of measures on constitutional reform including the alternative vote, reforms to phase out hereditary peers, and plans to give the backbenches powers over the parliamentary agenda.
Highlighting the launch of the party’s campaign in Watford, where the Lib Dems’ Sal Brinton is aiming to oust Labour. (You can donate to her campaign here).
The Guardian cannot resist a journalistic stand-by cliche, though, claiming the launch was “overshadowed” by Nick and Chris Huhne appearing “to suggest they had conditions for who they would support should there be a hung parliament.” Overshadowed is journalese for: this is the story …
Lib Dem Voice doesn’t usually obsess about polls – we round them up on a monthly basis when you can see trends, but we don’t try and read huge significance into every statistical blip. General elections, however, are different.
Like it or not, all of us who are political obsessives will be slavishly following every twist ‘n’ polling turn for the next four weeks. If we move up a single point, it will be because the public loved Steve Webb’s latest pension proposals. If we drop a point, it will be because the media has been ignoring us (again).
Ignore anyone who tries to point out the reality that polls will fluctuate, and trying to pin ups and downs on any specific campaign incidents is to imagine that the British public is paying anywhere like as close attention to politics as we are.
Caveats firmly in place? Check. So let’s get on with our poll-sessing.
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 163rd weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (28th March – 3rd April, 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can now sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox – just click here – ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
Today marked the official start of the general election campaign. And today’s the day you could help ensure the Lib Dems get the best possible result – by making a donation to support the Lib Dem Voice election appeal.
Thanks to the support of LDV readers, we have just crossed the £1,000 threshold – a terrific response. But the candidates in our five battleground seats will need more than that to help get their campaigns off to a flying start.
Here are some examples of what your gift could do to help the party get its message across:
* £10 will pay for a Focus newsletter for 500 houses
* £25 will buy 2,000 tabloid-style newspapers
* £50 pays for a dozen super-size election garden posters
* £100 will cover a Focus leaflet for a whole ward
* £250 will pay for 10,000 addressed letters to be delivered by volunteers
It’s one of the most famous party election broadcasts of all time – John Cleese’s classic 1987 appeal to the British public to reject the extremism of left and right as represented by ‘Loony Labour’ councils and Mrs Thatcher’s Tories, and opt for the reasonable party of the centre, the SDP/Liberal Alliance.
For those who’ve never had the chance to enjoy it, please scroll to the bottom of this post, and re-live it in all its glory. (And wonder at the fact that party election broadcasts used to be 10 minutes long – yes, that’s right, 20 years ago political parties were foolish enough to believe the public actually had an attention span).
What’s most striking about the Cleese message is the deliberate emphasis on the Alliance as a moderating force in British politics. An honest broker in whom the British people could place their trust to ensure neither Labour nor Tory narrow-mindedness could wreak wilful destruction. Cleese commits the Alliance to breaking up the cosy rules of British politics that have so well suited the Labour/Tory duopoly for so many years.
Breaking the cosy rules of two-party politics
It’s two decades since this broadcast, but the themes are starkly familiar.
For example, there’s the Alliance pledge to halt petty partisan tribalism by agreeing to work with the other parties where we agree with them.
Well, Vince Cable early on called for a ‘government of national unity’ to help the nation through its worst recession in 60 years. More recently, Nick Clegg urged the formation of a cross-party Council of Financial Stability to agree the timetable and scale of deficit reduction.
Example two from the Cleese broadcast: the Lib Dems are the only party not beholden to special interests.
Spool forward two decades, and Labour still is in hock to the unions, desperately reliant on Unite, Unison and the GMB to finance its general election campaign. And does anyone really believe the Tories – the party of non-dom peers and candidates like Lord Ashcroft and Zac Goldsmith – will stand up to their “pinstriped Scargill” friends in the City?
Yet Nick Clegg has pledged to take tough action on those banks which break promises to lend money to businesses and householders, while Vince Cable has made it plain how the Lib Dems would intervene to make unions and businesses sit down and talk. It’s a lot easier to arrive at the correct solution if you’re not worried whether it will affect your party’s cash flow.
Not everything has stayed the same in the last quarter of a century, of course. Both Labour and the Tories have tacked further to the centre (not least because of the desire to pick up those voters who were attracted to the Alliance).
But the fundamental point remains: Labour and the Tories are complacently content for politics to stay the same, to see-saw between red and blue. It’s an argument the Lib Dems have freshened up in the past week, with the launch of the party’s subversive Labservatives campaign, a Web 2.0 successor to the Cleese broadcast.
A moderate square for the radical circle
It’s an interesting campaigning dilemma for the Lib Dems. In many ways, we’re party which has the most radical manifesto: a Lib Dem government would re-cast the taxation system, and re-mould the political system. Yet our natural voter base, and the party’s general disposition, is moderate, incremental, pragmatic.
Is this such a bad thing? Not really. The only way in which you can attract support for a radical manifesto is to win trust that your programme will work and is better. It’s at least in part why the party adopted community politics: prove to people you can fix the drains, repair the roads, run the council … and they might just trust you to run the country, too.
Well, it’s just the same at national level. At this election, the Lib Dems have the opportunity to position ourselves squarely in the centre of the key debate which will determine most people’s votes: the economy.
Don’t trust Labour to target government waste? Don’t trust the Tories to cut public spending wisely? Well, the Lib Dems are the party you can trust – and Vince Cable is the guy you can trust – to act as a moderating influence on the extremist tribal dogma of the other two parties. And by doing so, we can make the argument that only the Lib Dems have the vision to transform politics for the better.
Welcome to this latest LDVideo instalment, and today as a special holiday treat we’re highlighting four political video clips showing the Tory leadership team at their most embarrassingly gaffe-prone.
First up is this one from Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne, committing a diplomatic faux pas by referring to “the Sarkozy box” used by the diminutive French president when speaking from behind lecterns. (Yes, it’s sort of funny. But when you’re hoping to be this country’s chief finance minister, it really is better to avoid needlessly antagonising world leaders – as David Cameron might also learn) …
Happy Easter Monday, everyone, on the day in history when (in 1621) the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, Massachusetts on a return trip to England – as Eddie Izzard once remarked of the Pilgrims, “They set sail from Plymouth and landed in Plymouth – how lucky is that?”
Just 55 years ago, Winston Churchill quit as Prime Minister, handing over the reins to Anthony Eden. Meanwhile the sports fans among you might like to know that 1904 witnessed the first international rugby league match, played between England and the fantastically named ‘Other Nationalities’ team of Welsh and Scots.
But without further tarrying, let’s come right up to the present day … and as a Bank Holiday bonus, there’s a special musical video to rally the Liberal Democrats at the end.
2 Must-Read Chris Grayling-inspired Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
“No blacks, no Irish, no gays?” – Jock Coats, a gay, Lib Dem, Christian, argues in favour of the rights of B&B owners to discriminate: “We can’t end discrimination simply by state fiat, by making it unlawful, and I find it dangerous to try.”
Inside the mind of Chris Grayling – Alix Mortimer urges readers to stop taking their intellectual cues from Mr Grayling: “I’m all in favour of restoring our civil liberties, and I’m also in favour of easing regulation on small businesses, but my impression is that there are one or two slightly more pertinent places to start those processes? You know, just possibly?”
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
2 Offbeat LibDem Stories
Financial Times under misapprehension that Lib Dems only fighting 50 seats at general election
As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Only three polling companies – YouGov, Angus RS and Mori – this past month asked questions specifically to find out the public’s views of the three main party leaders. And each asks variants on the basic question – do you think Clegg/Brown/Cameron are doing a good job – to come up with their figures, so comparison ain’t easy. But, still, we don’t indulge in polls often, so here goes …
Here, in chronological order, are the results of the four polls published in March asking the public to rate the three major party leaders:
Welcome to this latest LDVideo instalment, and today as a special holiday treat we’re highlighting three political video clips showing Lib Dem leaders on top form at Prime Minister’s Questions.
First up, is Ming Campbell. Now Ming didn’t always have the happiest time at PMQs, but there were times when he hit his stride perfectly, and this was one such occasion, on 24th January 2007, when shaming Tony Blair’s failure to debate in the Commons whether troops should be withdrawn from Iraq:
March may have 31 days, but it saw an extraordinary 39 polls conducted. So frenetic has been the activity, we at Lib Dem Voice even published a mid-month report to keep track of their findings. And despite all the hyped-up headlines – both in print and online – of minor fluctuations signifying some grand new trend which will transform the electoral arithmetic, the reality is that remarkably little changed in March.
As you can see from the full list of polls conducted in March, in chronological order of publication:
Tories 39.0, Labour 29.0, Lib Dem 15.0 (Opinium)
Tories 38.0, Labour 33.0, Lib Dem 16.0 (3rd March, YouGov)
Tories 38.0, Labour 32.0, Lib Dem 19.0 (4th, YouGov)
Labour and Conservatives, Conservatives and Labour: same difference, as the Lib Dems’ rather fabulous Labservative website points out. Here are just three examples from the past 12 months of ways in which the Labservatives have blocked Lib Dem attempts to reform our broken political system …
The public’s right to sack MPs
The Liberal Democrats tabled an amendment in June 2009 to place a responsibility on the Secretary of State to review and report on procedures for constituencies to recall their MPs if they have been found guilty of misconduct.
Labour voted against these measures and the Tories refused to back them.
2010 marks the fourth year of Jo Swinson’s annual Easter Egg excess packaging report. (You can read LDV’s 2009 posting here). This year’s headline conclusion? “Some Easter egg manufacturers have drastically cut their excess packaging, while others are lagging far behind.”
Consumers are tired of excess packaging – they are tired of paying for it and tired of having to dispose of it. Easter eggs are a prime example – in many cases, the huge boxes contain more air than chocolate.
“Last year we saw Easter egg packaging reduced by a third, and companies such as Nestlé, Cadbury, Green and Black’s and Thorntons have made real efforts to cut packaging and improve recyclability. However, Guylian, Lindt and others are still producing grossly excessive packaging.
“The Government is clearly failing to enforce the law, which requires packaging to be reduced to the minimum necessary.”
You can read Jo’s full 2010 report here – here’s the executive summary:
The Tories’ pledged this week to reverse Labour’s National Insurance tax rises by increasing the UK deficit. Today Labour’s Lord Mandelson accused the Tories – seemingly without a trace of irony – of “peddling deception”.
The Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor Vince Cable is having no truck with the Labservative approach:
Labour and the Tories are as bad as each other. Under both their plans, public finances would be driven into the ground. Whether it’s for tax cuts or filling in the deficit hole, both parties seem to be in a competition to see who can come up with the
… We’d say a big thank you to the 58,552 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in March.
That’s a huge 77% increase on our Feb. ’10 figure of c.34,000, and we are up some 125% on the equivalent figure for March ’09 of c.26,000.
This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 April 2009 – 31 March 2010) to 345,223, over 45% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 237,536.
And no, this is not an April Fool joke, for those of a mischievous mindset – the former Democratic Presidential hopeful and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee has publicly stated he thinks the Lib Dems could win the election. Here’s how the BBC reports it:
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg could be the surprise winner of the UK’s general election, former US presidential candidate Howard Dean has said. Mr Dean praised Mr Clegg as a “young, dynamic leader”. And he said he could be the big winner from Britain’s first televised election debates, capitalising on disillusion with the
For the last month the opinion polls have been suggesting a hung parliament is the most likely outcome of the forthcoming general election. This has spooked some of those “pin-striped Scargills”, who would much rather their Tory friends were able to start slashing public spending without the restraining need to build consensus ahead of what will be inevitably painful cuts.
It’s an odd argument: in previous serious crises, whether war or depression, most people in Britan have recognised the need for petty tribal differences to be set to one side. After all, we are supposed to be all in this together.
But in the last day or so, there seems to have been a slight upswing in support for the Tories on the back of Alistair Darling’s third budget. It’s far too early to say yet that it’s a real trend, but still – it looks more likely this week than it did last week that the Tories will sneak back in with a slim majority.
And that’s the result that should worry everybody.
Thank you for your article in today’s FT, Now ‘Honest Vince’ plays fast and loose. It was very much a column of two halves, the first praising Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable, the second seeking to bury him.
I’m guessing the source for most of your attacks on the Lib Dems’ pledge to cut taxes by lifting the personal allowance to £10,000 was the Fabian Society’s recent hatchet-job, published via Left Foot Forward. A number of Lib Dem bloggers took its tendentious claims
If you did … then we’ve assembled all the Lib Dem blogosphere reaction in one handy-to-skim-and-click post so that you can catch up with all the post-match analysis.
The Labservative pitch is clear enough: Labour and the Tories are way too similar, and neither is capable of producing change. It’s a familiar enough Lib Dem campaign charge. It’s a pleasantly unfamiliar position for the party to be making the point in a wittily Web 2.0 way. Well done, Cowley Street!
Richard Coe The problem with all of our government, is that it is reversed engineered, we start with how much money have we got, what shall we spend it on.
Across govern...
Peter Martin "We-need-a-tax-rise.... "
OK but what sort of tax rise?
So far I've only seen mention of NI, VAT and Income Tax. The argument being that these...
Graham Evans While ultimately Starmer is responsible for the fiasco regarding defence spending, because the buck stops at the top, criticism of him lets the former Defence...
Tom Bailey The Bell Hotel in Epping Forest has been a problem hot spot for 2 years, with peaceful, and sometimes not so peaceful protests about migrants. In May there wer...
Graham Garvie An excellent and timeous article Lin. I often wonder if there is a direct correlation between the decline of the Christian church in the U.K. and it’s fundame...
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Lib Dems in the King's birthday honours 2026
From cinema to book shop
District council backs a parish council for Market Harborough
Pope Leo speaks for all liberals when he condemns racism, supports migration, and supports Ukraine
Richard Coe 
Peter Martin 
Graham Evans 
Tom Bailey 
Graham Garvie 