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
Vince started off with two big advantages, and two big disadvantages.
First, the advantages: he understands the economy, and how to convey a message to voters, like no other British politician. He looks the part – a very reasonable, persuasive bank manager – but he can also twist the knife with a turn of phrase that leaves its victim sprawling and the audience smiling.
The second advantage was a much simpler one: he was stood in the middle of the set, and – as a tall man – was able to dominate the proceedings, by turns interrogator, at other times umpire. But always in control.
Liberal Democrat Voice is running a special appeal to raise funds for five of the party’s very best general elections candidates – all of whom have a real chance of winning but need your help NOW to ensure they do win.
Today we’re highlighting the campaign of Sal Brinton, Lib Dem candidate for Watford …
Watford nearly proved to be one of the shocks of the 2005 General Election, as Sal Brinton took the Lib Dems from a distant third place to a very close second. Just 1,148 votes separate Sal from Labour Minister and
It’s only a few hours since shadow chancellor George Osborne launched the Tories’ plans to cut Labour’s proposed increases in employers’ National Insurance, and already you can start to hear the sound of it unravelling.
First up, Vince Cable, the Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor:
This is school boy economics. When you have a £70bn permanent hole in the Government’s finances you simply can’t propose cutting tax revenue unless you spell out exactly how you are going to pay for it. The Tories say they are going to pay for a cut in National Insurance through ‘efficiency savings’, but haven’t a first
Happy Monday morning afternoon, everyone, on the day in history when the Royal Albert Hall was opened by the Royal Victoria (1871), Dr John Pemberton brewed the first batch of Coca-Cola in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia (1886), and voters in Washington DC became eligible to vote in presidential elections (1961).
And now let’s move forward half a century, to the present day …
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 162nd weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (21st-27th March, 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:
Just four months ago, the Tories’ non-dom candidate for Richmond Park, Zac Goldsmith, promised that his party would “ring in era of integrity” – and insisted no new nuclear power stations would be built under a Tory government.
… that if the party sticks to its existing policy, it would never allow the building of a new nuclear power station. He said Tory policy “was to give a green light to nuclear power as long as there is no call on the taxpayer, not just in terms of building, but maintenance, security and disposal of
There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader …
Here’s Lib Dem MP for Somerton and Frome David Heath promoting the Lib Dems’ campaign to axe the beer tax. What do you think David, or his companion, might be saying to each other, or thinking about each other?
So the polls are narrowing, the Tory lead tottering along within the range of 2-7%. As we all know, the Tories need to poll at around 40% to be sure of a working majority, or else they will have to significantly out-perform their national ratings in the key marginal battlegrounds.
And if they don’t succeed? Well, that will clearly be a disaster for David Cameron’s leadership which has been predicated on the fact that he’s the Tories’ talisman. A hung parliament with a minority Labour/Tory government, perhaps with the tacit consent of the Lib Dems, appears at this stage the …
Today’s BBC Daily Politics / ComRes poll asking which of the three major parties’ leadership teams is more trusted to steer the economy through the current downturn has caused a bit of a stir – it shows Labour’s duumvirate of Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling out ahead of the Tories, an about-turn on three months ago.
Here are the results:
Putting your party allegiance aside, who do you trust most to steer Britain’s economy through the current downturn?
Gordon Brown & Alistair Darling 33% (+7% on Dec 2009)
David Cameron & George Osborne 27% (-6%)
Nick Clegg & Vince Cable 13% (-6%)
Don’t know
Here’s a bit of fun speculation, at least if you’re not a Tory. Let’s suppose most of the last 10 days’ polls are right, and David Cameron’s Tories are destined to have fewer MPs than Labour in the House of Commons (even if they win more votes) – what would the Tories do?
Ah, the old tricks are always the best. Readers may recall during the Henley by-election campaign, the Tories issued an empty threat to sue the Lib Dems “unless the Lib Dems withdraw a leaflet and remove claims from their website by noon”. Of course, they didn’t do it but a gullible media ran with the story anyway.
Fast forward a couple of years, and it seems Labour’s Roberta Blackman-Woods is apeing the Tories’ tactics. Here’s what Politics.co.uk has to say:
Roberta Blackman-Woods MP (City of Durham) has instructed solicitors to inform the Liberal Democrat candidate that she must apologise for
For the delectation of LDV’s readers, you might be interested in clicking on the following two links:
1. Mark Thompson interviews Anna Arrowsmith
The Mark Reckons blog carries an interview with the Lib Dems’ candidate for Gravesham in Kent, Anna Arrowsmith, who shot to prominence last week owing to her successful career as the UK’s first female director of pronography.
2. Total Politics interviews Paul Walter
The Lib Dem blogosphere’s very own Burbler-in-Chief Paul Walter is profiled here by Total Politics magazine. Find out Paul’s least favourite blogger, his political idol, and what would be the one thing above …
Oh dear. You’d have thought a party funded by non-doms like Lord Ascroft and Zac Goldsmith would at least have the money to throw at professional, vote-winning advertising. Thankfully, though the Tories may preach value-for-money to others, they show zero signs of putting it into effect themselves.
Example One: Political posters
The Tories, after all, are the party which brought us the most famous British advertising slogan of all times: Labour Isn’t Working.
Yet their most recent attempt – the confused and confusing “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS” – brought universal derision thanks to the weak message, the air-brushed Dave image, and the crowd-sourced satirical efforts courtesy mydavidcameron.com.
The result: the Tories have sidelined advertising agency Euro RSCG just weeks before polling day, and reverted to the tried-and-tested M&C Saatchi.
Example Two: Online campaigning
Time was the Tories were lauded as the party which ‘got’ Web 2.0: they dominated the blogosphere, had thrown money at their Internet strategy. Those days seem so far away now.
This week, the Tories launched CashGordon, a doomed exercise which can perhaps be filed under, ‘It seemed a good idea at the time’. (Or, alternatively, ‘This is what happens when you let kids run the place.’)
First came the news that the Tories’ CashGordon had used an off-the-shelf template developed by a US anti-healthcare lobbyist. Not great timing in the week President Obama is being praised to the skies for defeating US anti-healthcare lobbyists.
Then it dawned on the Tories that perhaps allowing anyone to post a Tweet to their site without moderation wasn’t perhaps such a great idea – Twitter users flooded the site with obscene messages, and code that allowed the site to be hacked and redirected.
And then the final humiliation: the exposure that the girlfriend of Samuel Coates, the Tories’ online campaigning guru, had phoned the employers of a Twitter user threatening litigation against him for tweeting to the site.
The result:CashGordon dies a miserable death.
Example Three: Fundraising videos
Tory blogger Iain Dale highlights today the video of Tory candidate Anthony Calvert, intended to inspire donations to his campaign to unseat Labour’s Ed Balls. Here’s the video:
Finally, on tax, the other gross disappointment in this Budget was the failure to make our tax system fair. Under Labour, the bottom 10 per cent. pay a staggering 48 per cent. of their income in tax, while the richest pay 34 per cent. The Chancellor took pride in saying today that he would make no big announcements on tax. How can he look at a system such as that and say, “Let’s have more of the same”?
Yes, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: David Cameron’s bewildered, stumbling, confused, squirming, befuddled, painful TV interview with broadcaster Martin Popplewell is now available to view on YouTube – over 17,000 people have watched it to date.
The Tory blogger Iain Dale loyally attempted to gloss over Mr Cameron’s dire performance, desperately claiming “I think the inherent problem with the interview was that Cameron didn’t know if he was giving a print interview or a film interview”. Sure thing, Iain – I can see exactly how the confusion arose. After all which senior politician hasn’t wondered, when being interviewed two metres away from a three-person camera crew, “Is this being filmed?”
And Paul Staines’ right-wing Guido Fawkes blog decided to ignore it altogether. Quite right, Paul: much better to devote yourself to your forlorn campaign to persuade people Vince Cable doesn’t understand economics. Good luck with that one – I think your crusade has a way to go.
For those who haven’t yet seen it, then, here is the footage of David Cameron going into meltdown in front of the TV cameras:
Channel 4 tonight broadcast excerpts from a quite extraordinary filmed interview with David Cameron in which the Tory leader appears utterly confused and clueless about his party’s position on the issue of gay equality. After stumbling over his own words, contradicting himself, and admitting he hasn’t got the answer, a visibly flustered Mr Cameron eventually pleads for the cameras to be turned off so that he can compose himself.
That Mr Cameron has run into trouble on the issue of gay equality is wholly predictable. (That he went into meltdown in front of the TV cameras a little less predictable). Lib Dem Voice has on three occasions this year highlighted the many contradictions between what Mr Cameron says his party believes, and how the Tory party votes:
Hmmm, well I have my doubts about this one. Not the idea: that’s obvious and right. Of course we need to build political consensus in order to carry through the tough spending cuts any party (or parties) which finds itself in government will have to implement.
Only myopic Labour/Tory tribalists will try and pretend a government with the support of one-in-five of the electorate can decimate (in that word’s literal sense) public spending to bring the deficit under control with any kind of legitimacy.
No, the problem I have with Nick Clegg’s idea is this: the name, ‘Council of Financial …
The Liberal Democrats have said if they won power they would stop the winter fuel allowance for people under 65. Anyone aged 60 can claim the allowance, worth £125 to £400, but the minimum age is due to rise to 65 in 10 years’ time.
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said his party would implement the change now – saving about £400m in public spending. He said just under £200m would be used to give extra winter help to about one million severely disabled people or those who are terminally ill. …
Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who was sacked by the British government for his outspoken commitment to human rights, has re-joined the Lib Dems.
Craig was a party member until 2005, when he chose to stand as an independent against Jack Straw. He stood again as an independent in last year’s Norwich North by-election. Writing of his decision on his blog, Craig says:
Politics is about the governance of society, and that entails people working together and collaborating their views. It is by definition a social pursuit, so to attempt to pursue it entirely alone to avoid
Seven Lib Dem MPs have announced they’re retiring at this year’s general election. All seven are men: of their replacements, four are women. Here’s the list in full:
John Barrett (LD) – Edinburgh West
Majority: 13,600 (30%) – second safest Lib Dem seat in the UK. Reason for leaving: to spend more time with his grand-daughters. Hoping to succeed him:Mike Crockart.
Colin Breed (LD) – South East Cornwall
Majority: 6,507 (13%). Reason for leaving: not stated. Hoping to succeed him:Karen Gillard.
David Howarth (LD) – Cambridge
Majority: 5,058 (11%). Reason for leaving: “to concentrate on my other life, as an academic.” Hoping to succeed him:Julian Huppert.
Nick Clegg was the subject of an hour-long feature interview with ITV’s Mary Nightingale on Sunday night – if you missed it, you can catch up courtesy of itv Player by clicking here. (It’s available online for the next 29 days).
Helen Duffett examined the 1950s-style newspaper previews of the Dead Tree Press, which focused on the shocking news that Miriam Gonzalez Durantez (Nick’s wife) has her own life, for LDV here.
Meanwhile MediaGuardian reports that over 1.1 million viewers watched last night. Okay, so it’s not as many as watched Gordon Brown be interviewed by Piers …
Happy Monday, everyone. And happy birthday to actress Reese Witherspoon (34), author James Patterson (63) and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (62). Now let’s find out what’s happening in the world …
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
Budget 2010: Giles Wilkes guides us through what to expect of Labour’s (last?) budget.
Anna was porn for the job: so says Lembit Opik in his political column for the Daily Sport (with thanks to James Graham for bringing us Lembit’s NSFW insights.
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.
With 15 polls already published so far in March, it’s time for a mid-month reality check on the state of the parties. Some parts of the media watch the polls with breathless excitement, investing even the smallest fluctuations with a significance well beyond what they can bear: a bad-tempered PMQs, a 24-hour Westminster Village row, an ad campaign – any and all of these are sometimes said to have affected the polls.
Well, maybe. But most poll movements are within the margin of error, so it is only looked at over a reasonable period of time that you can detect whether there has really been any significant movements between the parties. So let’s look at the polls published in March to date, in chronological order of publication, to see if we can detect any trends:
It was last summer that Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe first indicated he would be backing the Lib Dems at the election, coming out as a party supporter in an interview in Attitude magazine.
Now, it seems, Daniel’s endorsement is official according to the Daily Prophet Mail:
In next month’s US edition of Vogue, Radcliffe – who will be able to vote for the first time at the General Election – discusses his affiliation to the party. ‘I’ll be voting Lib Dem, without a shadow of a doubt,’ he said. ‘Nick Clegg rang me and we had a good
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 161st weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (14th – 20th March, 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:
LDV has identified 10 key votes from the 2005-10 Parliament – ranging from ID cards and freedom of speech to freedom of information and trial without jury – in order to rank all MPs according to how liberal or authoritarian their record is. All MPs are marked out of 100: the higher their score the more authoritarian they are. The lower their score the more liberal is their voting record.
Over two-thirds of Lib Dem MPs recorded a score of 3/100 or fewer, meaning they had voted on the liberal side of the argument in at least 9 of the 10 Commons debates we looked at. So 3/100 is the cut-off point I’ve used to see who qualifies as liberal in terms of their voting record.
57 of those who qualified are Tory MPs (a little under one-third of their total MPs), along with two Independent MPs, Richard Taylor and Dai Davies, and John Mason of the SNP. Especial credit, though, should go to those two Labour MPs – John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn – for defying their whips in order to vote on the liberal side of the argument (though neither are likely to be too afeared of their party’s whips).
Here is the roll-call of those non-Lib Dem MPs who have voted in a liberal way most of the time:
LDV has identified 10 key votes from the 2005-10 Parliament – ranging from ID cards and freedom of speech to freedom of information and trial without jury – in order to rank all MPs according to how liberal or authoritarian their record is. All MPs are marked out of 100: the higher their score the more authoritarian they are. The lower their score the more liberal is their voting record.
On Wednesday, Lib Dem blogger James Graham posed the question, “Have you calculated what the average score for each party is?” Well, today, James, your luck is in. Here are the mean scores for all the political parties represented in the 2005-10 Parliament:
Welcome to the (conference-belated) Golden Dozen, and our 160th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (7th – 13th Mar 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, usually courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget, by the way, 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:
LDV reported earlier this morning on the BBC story that leaked Cabinet Office documents suggest Tory shdaow foreign secretary William Hague was aware of, and approved, the terms of the deal under which Lord Ashcroft gained his place in the upper house.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning, Mr Hague was forced to concede he had made a “mistake” when he said that Lord Ashcroft’s promises upon becoming a peer would have cost him “tens of millions of pounds” with its clear implication that Lord Ashcroft would end his non-dom status when he became a …
LDV has identified 10 key votes from the 2005-10 Parliament – ranging from ID cards and freedom of speech to freedom of information and trial without jury – in order to rank all MPs according to how liberal or authoritarian their record is. All MPs are marked out of 100: the higher their score the more authoritarian they are. The lower their score the more liberal is their voting record.
Yesterday we noted the 24 Lib Dem MPs who recorded a perfect zero score of 0/100, meaning they had voted on the liberal side of the argument in each of the 10 Commons debates we looked at. Today we’re publishing the full results for Lib Dem MPs:
David Garlick 1p on Incone tax whilst raising the threshold on basic tax charges....
Andy Hyde The Cheshire West by-election was a poor result for Reform, the other Tory Cllr in the ward defected to Reform last Winter, they had the usual Farage letters et...
Kevin Hawkins Unfortunately nine by-elections are too small a sample to prove anything. Next week there are fifteen by-elections in England & Wales. We may have a more re...
Jen I think Terry Stacy has been upgraded from an MBE to an OBE....
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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
David Garlick 
Andy Hyde 
Abrial Jerram 
Kevin Hawkins 
Jen 