Author Archives: Stephen Tall

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.
Stephen Tall

Coming soon … the BBC’s nine Cabinet Contenders’ debates

By Stephen Tall | Wed 17th March 2010 - 9:50 am

In case the 4.5 hours of Prime Ministerial debates featuring Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown and David Cameron were not enough to sate the appetite of even the most politically-obsessed television viewer, the BBC has revealed plans to broadcast nine Cabinet Contender debates. Digital Spy reports:

… the nine Cabinet Contender debates will see Labour ministers, their Shadow rivals and Liberal Democrat counterparts discussing the key issues ahead of the general election. … The Daily Politics host Andrew Neil will front the Cabinet Contender debates on BBC Two in the two weeks before the election date, which is still to be

…

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Stephen Tall

The 24 Lib Dem MPs who are 100% liberal

By Stephen Tall | Wed 17th March 2010 - 9:20 am

Lib Dem Voice launched our new website – How Liberal / Authoritarian is your MP? – at the party’s spring conference on Friday.

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.

24 Lib Dem MPs 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. Here is the roll-call of liberalism:

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Stephen Tall

Was 6th October the day it started going awry for the Tories?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 16th March 2010 - 7:40 pm

The opinion polls are up-and-down day-in-day-out at the moment, making it almost impossible to say with any confidence whether we are firmly in hung parliament territory, or whether the most likely result is still a Tory victory at the coming general election. But one thing is beyond doubt: the last six months has seen a substantial narrowing in the Tories’ opinion poll lead.

In October 2009, the Tories were polling at around 42%, Labour at 28% – a convincing Tory lead of 14%. Last month, the Tories were at 39%, Labour at 31%, a 3% swing from the …

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Stephen Tall

Colin Firth on why he’s stopped voting Labour and now supports the Lib Dems

By Stephen Tall | Tue 16th March 2010 - 4:15 pm

The book ‘Why vote Lib Dem’ – edited by Danny Alexander MP, with a foreword by Nick Clegg, and contribututions from 26 individuals – is selling fast.

Its publisher (one Iain Dale, Esq) reports that it “is outselling Why Vote Conservative by a factor of 9 and Why Vote Labour by a factor 25. Indeed, so popular is the LibDem book that we have almost sold out of the entire print run, meaning that we will have to reprint after only ten days of sales.”

He speculates that one reason might be the Lib Dems’ minor coup in persuading …

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Stephen Tall

Nick Clegg on winning people over for deficit reduction

By Stephen Tall | Tue 16th March 2010 - 2:55 pm

Nick Clegg addressed the ippr this morning to set out his approach to the single biggest problem facing all three major political parties in the coming weeks and months: how to keep the support of the British people given the need for huge public spending cuts to tackle the deficit.

We’re re-printing Nick’s speech in full, below, but here are the key points which struck me:

  • Re-iterating Vince Cable’s five conditions to take account of before cutting public spending: the rate of growth; the level of unemployment; credit conditions; the extent of spare capacity in the economy and the cost of Government borrowing.
  • A clear statement “that the conditions will be right for cuts from 2011-12, but not before.”
  • A clear statement of the level of cuts needed: “at some point in the next eight years the government is going to have to stop spending as much as 10% of what it spends today.”
  • A promise that the Lib Dems will follow the example of Canada’s Liberal Government in the 1990s and undertake “a massive consultation about every last line of public spending”.
  • A cash limit on public sector pay rises of £400, ensuring that the lower your salary, the higher percentage pay rise you are eligible for.
  • In addition, Nick sets out once again the party’s four key election campaign pledges: fair taxes, the £2.5bn ‘pupil premium’, a sustainable economy, and a fair political system.

The sharp eyed will notice no mention of “progressive austerity“. Nor indeed does Nick use the term “savage cuts” – though for all the embarrassment and mockery with which that phrase is identified, it’s the reality of what all the parties would have to implement in their own ways if elected to government.

Here’s what Nick said:

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Stephen Tall

The 39 Labour MPs who are 100% authoritarian

By Stephen Tall | Tue 16th March 2010 - 8:22 am

Lib Dem Voice launched our new website – How Liberal / Authoritarian is your MP? – at the party’s spring conference last weekend.

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.

39 MPs recorded a score of 100/100, meaning they had voted on the authoritarian side of the argument in each and every one of the 10 Commons debates we looked at. All 39 of them are Labour MPs, and here is the roll-call of authoritarianism:

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo Special: Lib Dem Birmingham spring conference – Nick & Vince uncut

By Stephen Tall | Mon 15th March 2010 - 8:15 pm

Yesterday, LDVideo brought you some of the media reportage from the party’s spring conference. Today, for those of you who want to re-live it all unexpurgated, here are Nick and Vince’s conference speeches in full …

First, here’s Nick:


(Also available on YouTube here).

And here’s the 3-minute video which introduced Nick:

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Stephen Tall

Evidence based, Left Foot Forward? Not if you’re ignoring the actual evidence

By Stephen Tall | Mon 15th March 2010 - 5:55 pm

The Labour-supporting Left Foot Forward blog prides itself on being evidence-based. But not, it seems, when the evidence doesn’t support the conclusion they’ve already written.

That seems to be the only explanation for their slanted weekend posting that Lib Dem tax policy “fails the fairness test”, which appears to rest on two points: 1) that people who don’t pay tax won’t benefit from tax-cuts, and 2) ignoring completely the redistributive wealth tax rises that Vince Cable and the Lib Dems are proposing.

Perhaps the authors, Tim Horton and Howard Reed, hoped nobody would notice the sleight-of-hand; or at least that it …

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Stephen Tall

Daily View 2×2: 15 March 2010

By Stephen Tall | Mon 15th March 2010 - 10:15 am

Happy Monday morning, everyone, and welcome to the Ides of March edition of the Daily View. (I hope David Cameron is watching his back: the Tories don’t do loyalty).

Alongside the assasination of Julius Caesar today marks the anniversary of the first Test cricket match between England and Australia (1877); the registration of the first internet domain name, symbolics.com, 25 years ago; and the 70th birthday of Frank Dobson. O frabjous 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:

…

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Stephen Tall

A reply to Tom Harris: Lib Dems wait for the voters to speak. (It’s called democracy, and we kind of like it).

By Stephen Tall | Mon 15th March 2010 - 7:45 am

Labour MP Tom Harris, bless him, is clearly feeling a little bit insecure, as the Lib Dems enjoy a successful conference with a spring in their step and the full glare of the media spotlight. Tom’s blog is a good, fun read – but like his Tory equivalent Iain Dale, he has a bit of a tribal blind spot when it comes to the Lib Dems.

Here’s what Tom has to say about Lib Dem shadow schools secretary David Laws declining to take the media bait asking whether the party would back Labour or the Tories in the …

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Posted in General Election and Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 33 Comments
Stephen Tall

Things can only get better for the Lib Dems, as D:Ream’s Brian Cox defects from Labour

By Stephen Tall | Sun 14th March 2010 - 6:15 pm

Time was when you were asked to name a Lib Dem celebrity backer you would have been hard-pressed to think beyond Barry Norman, Liz Kershaw and Barry Cryer (all of whom are stars, of course). Then came Sandi Toksvig, Floella Benjamin and Brian Eno; perhaps also Daniel Radcliffe. And last month, the Observer named Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Colin Firth, Kate Winslet, Andrew Motion, Razorlight, and the Kooks. Suddenly, it’s al looking a bit more A-list, a bit more contemporary.

And now comes today’s news from The Sunday Times, ‘D:Ream is over as poster boy Brian Cox deserts Labour: …

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Stephen Tall

Nick Clegg’s speech delivers on all fronts

By Stephen Tall | Sun 14th March 2010 - 4:45 pm

If Nick Clegg sounded a little hoarse from a sore throat throughout his leader’s speech to the Birmingham spring conference then it’s not surprising: he has been omnipresent in the media this week, winning the Lib Dems more coverage than I can remember outside of an election campaign.

The first responsibility of any Lib Dem leader’s speech is to forget that he is talking to the party faithful in the conference hall – they will vote for the party regardless – and to pitch directly to the wider public watching the speech live or on news bulletins.

The second …

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Posted in Conference, General Election and Op-eds | Tagged and | 12 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo Special: Lib Dem Birmingham spring conference

By Stephen Tall | Sun 14th March 2010 - 1:58 pm

Welcome to the latest instalment of LDVideo, where we highlight some of the best, most interesting political videos avalable on the internet. Today we focus on the Lib Dem spring conference in Birmingham, which has concluded today …


Nick Clegg states, “I am not the kingmaker”:


Vince sets out how the Lib Dems will cut public spending – but not this year:

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Posted in Conference and YouTube | Tagged | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Telegraph: country’s first female director of adult films selected as Lib Dem parliamentary candidate

By Stephen Tall | Thu 11th March 2010 - 10:20 pm

Here’s the story, Female adult film director runs for parliament with Lib Dems, which presumably earned its place in the Torygraph thanks to the titillating headline it teed-up:

Anna Arrowsmith, managing director of adult film company Easy on the Eye, will stand for the party in Gravesham, Kent. Under her pseudonym Anna Span the 38-year-old has produced around 300 pornographic films. She has specialised in “women friendly” films, with titles like Where’s the Rent Boys aimed at female erotica enthusiasts.

Mrs Arrowsmith asked the people of Gravesend not to judge her on the sins of her industry and pointed to her

…

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Stephen Tall

Did someone make this National Nick week?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 11th March 2010 - 9:35 pm

This morning, up with the larks, LDV covered Nick Clegg’s feature interview in The Independent. But we’ve been hard-pressed to keep up with the Lib Dem leader’s media appearances: Nick is also in this week’s Spectator, as well as The Economist. That, plus a forthcoming one-hour ITV special and the leaders’ debates: truly, the media are spoiling us with this surfeit of Cleggyness.

The Spectator interview has stirred up Sunder Katawala at the left-leaning Liberal Conspiracy, who speculates that Nick’s comments will “be a major talking point at the LibDem spring conference in Birmingham this weekend, where …

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Stephen Tall

John Kampfner backs the Lib Dems – your LDV reader

By Stephen Tall | Wed 10th March 2010 - 9:40 pm

As LDV reported early yesterday, former New Statesman editor John Kampfner – author of the fantastic Blair’s Wars – has declared his intention to vote for the Lib Dems at the coming general election, and called on all fellow progressives who might once have voted Labour to join him.

Later in the day, the party issued an email from John to all members and supporters explaining his decision:

Today I launched my pamphlet, Lost labours, with Nick Clegg.

As somebody who has a long involvement with the Labour party, including editing the New Statesman magazine, I have been

…

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Stephen Tall

5 reasons Nick Clegg should rule out a coalition now

By Stephen Tall | Wed 10th March 2010 - 8:45 am

With most polls showing the next election could result in a hung parliament, there has been various speculation about what the Lib Dem position would be. I think it’s time for Nick Clegg to make an unambiguous statement that the party would not enter a coalition with either Labour or the Tories. Here are my five reasons why Nick should spell this out clearly and simply now …

1. A coalition is a non-starter, so let’s just rule it out now

It’s quite simple: the majority of party members will not for a single moment entertain the idea of a coalition with …

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Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #159

By Stephen Tall | Mon 8th March 2010 - 7:45 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 159th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (28th Feb – 6th 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:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Election appeal – can you make a donation to help these 5 Lib Dem candidates today?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 8th March 2010 - 10:50 am

The next general election, if it held as widely expected on 6th May, is less than two months away. In which case, there is less than eight weeks for the Lib Dems to work for every vote we can in order to put an end to Gordon Brown’s disastrous Labour Government, and make sure David Cameron cannot wreak havoc at the helm of the Tories.

No one can be sure what will happen, what the results might be. But one thing’s for certain. Labour and the Tories will have the advantage of being bank-rolled by the unions and big business and folk like Lord Ashcroft. There’s only one way to level the playing field, and that’s for all of us who want the Lib Dems to have the best chance possible to dip into our pockets and give what we can to the party.

That’s why Lib Dem Voice is running an election appeal to promote making a donation to the party. We have identified five Lib Dem candidates standing in five seats, all of them in real need of a helping hand. Any donation you can spare – £10, £100, £250, or any amount inbetween or higher – will make a difference.

To make a donation to the Lib Dem Voice election appeal fund to be shared equally between LDV’s five profiled candidates, please click here.

Here are the five we are asking you to help us get behind:

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Stephen Tall

Nick and Vince: the party’s dual leadership for the election campaign

By Stephen Tall | Mon 8th March 2010 - 8:15 am

Visitors to the Lib Dem website – www.libdems.org.uk – will notice a new ‘splash’ page has recently been put up to greet them. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s worth highlighting for two reasons:

1. The emphasis on fairness and the party’s policy – unique among the three main parties – of cutting income tax for the majority of British people by raising the tax threshold to £10,000;

2. The emphasis on the dual leadership of Nick and Vince. It’s hard to imagine Labour producing a similar image of Gordon …

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Stephen Tall

Nick Clegg accuses Tories of “crude form of blackmail”

By Stephen Tall | Mon 8th March 2010 - 7:15 am

As the prospect of a hung parliament looms larger, it’s crystal clear the Lib Dem leadership is determined to shoot down early Tory claims that the financial markets will react badly to no one party having an overall majority.

Last month, it was deputy leader Vince Cable – regarded by many voters as the best choice of Chancellor – who stressed that “Our own approach to fiscal policy is at least as robust as that of any other party.”

And now today, in a speech to party workers, Nick Clegg will accuse the Tories of ‘a crude form …

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Stephen Tall

LibLink: Nick Clegg – Your choice: the old politics, or the new

By Stephen Tall | Sun 7th March 2010 - 8:48 pm

Over at the Independent today, Nick Clegg argues that the electorate is weary of two-party wrangling and tactical voting. The voters, he says, are ready for a third option, one which breaks new ground. I guess that would be us, then. Here’s an excerpt:

This election could be an election of renewal, when the old politics finally passes its sell-by date and a new era of pluralism and accountability is ushered in. The one advantage of a crisis – economic, political, social – is that it can open the door to a new way of doing things. It can make the

…

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Stephen Tall

Pollwatch – State of the Leaders: Clegg +14%, Brown -24%, Cameron +9% (Feb. 2010)

By Stephen Tall | Sun 7th March 2010 - 4:25 pm

Yesterday, Pollwatch looked at the state of the parties in January; today it’s the turn of the party leaders.

As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Only two polling companies – YouGov and Angus RS – 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 three polls published in February asking for the public to rate the three major party leaders:

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Posted in Op-eds and Polls | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top Lib Dem asks: was Ashcroft’s peerage given under false pretences?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 7th March 2010 - 3:35 pm

Today’s Telegraph reports that Lib Dem peer Lord (Matthew) Oakeshott has called for all documents relating to Tory donor Lord (Michael) Ashcroft’s peerage to be made public to establish whether the Queen conferred the honour under false pretences:

Lord Oakeshott, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, wrote to Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, urging him to publish all relevant papers as a matter of urgency, to make clear whether the monarch had been misled. … William Hague, the former Conservative leader, said that he discovered only a few months ago that Lord Ashcroft had enjoyed ”non-dom” tax status for the last 10

…

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Stephen Tall

The LDV Friday Sunday Five: 7 March 2010

By Stephen Tall | Sun 7th March 2010 - 1:00 pm

It’s Sunday. It’s one o’clock. Which can mean only one thing: we must apologise for the late running of our regular Friday Five supplement. So, sorry. So sorry. Anyway, here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

1. Lord Clement-Jones on the Digital Economy Bill: web blocking amendment (205) by Tim Clement-Jones
2. How much of a battle does Bercow face in Buckingham? (16) by Helen Duffett
3. Lord Cashcroft and the Tory Banana Republic: your LDV reader (28) by Stephen Tall
4. NEW POLL: What’s the main reason you think the Tory poll lead has all but evaporated? (25) by Stephen Tall
5. Green Party candidate abandons Westminster bid to help Lib Dems win in Weston (15) by The Voice

5 active LDV Members’ Forum threads

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Posted in Friday Five | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Michael Foot RIP

By Stephen Tall | Sat 6th March 2010 - 9:25 pm

Welcome to this latest LDVideo instalment, this week highlighting three political video clips in tribute to former Labour leader Michael Foot, who died this week, aged 96.

First up, let’s see him as a young editor of the Evening Standard sticking up for freedom of the press after the Daily Mirror was censored by the Churchill government for attacking the conduct of the war:


(Available on YouTube here).

Secondly, here’s the BBC’s objectively affectionate obituary of Foot:

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Posted in YouTube | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Pollwatch – State of the Parties: Lib Dems 19%, Labour 31%, Tories 39% (Feb. 2010)

By Stephen Tall | Sat 6th March 2010 - 4:15 pm

A total of 19 (count ’em!) polls were published during February. Now, as our readers know, LDV doesn’t cover them with the same breathless excitements as other parts of the media. 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. Well, the past few weeks has certainly shown some movement, so let’s get down to business …

Here are February’s polls in chronological order of publication:

    * Con 39, Lab 30,

…

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Posted in Op-eds and Polls | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

IFS on Tories’ pupil premium policy: one in 10 schools could suffer 10%+ budget cuts

By Stephen Tall | Thu 4th March 2010 - 7:50 pm

The ‘pupil premium’ – the Lib Dem proposal to invest an extra £2.5bn in schools which could be used to cut class sizes, offer one-on-one tuition and provide catch-up classes – is a policy which Nick Clegg has passionately advocated for over seven years. It is now one of the party’s four key policies emphasising fairness – in this case, A fair start for every child – for the coming general election.

This week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies – the independent financial research institute often quoted by the party to validate its economic policies – published an …

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Stephen Tall

Lord Ashcroft – the three things which strike me

By Stephen Tall | Wed 3rd March 2010 - 8:45 pm

For the third day, the revelation that Lord Ashcroft has dodged paying full UK taxes for a decade with the complicit knowledge of the Tory leadership has been dominating the serious news media. And congratulations are due here to Chris Huhne and his research team for unearthing the estimate that the Tory deputy chairman has saved himself £127m in tax by maintaining his non-dom status despite promising to live in the UK as an ordinary resident.

It’s not been a pretty couple of days for the Tories. Here are three points which have struck me:

1. What does this episode say

…

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Stephen Tall

What links Colin Firth, Ken Macdonald, Brian Eno, Gurkha veteran Madan Kumar Gurung, Pam Giddy, Floella Benjamin and Duwayne Brooks?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 3rd March 2010 - 7:45 pm

Well, all six of them have contributed to the soon-to-be-published opus, Why Vote Liberal Democrat?, published this Thursday. To pre-order your copy from Amazon, please click here.

Here’s the party press release blurb:

Actor Colin Firth, former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald QC and musician Brian Eno have all contributed to a book entitled ‘Why Vote Liberal Democrat’. The book, which goes on sale on Thursday, covers topics as varied as fair taxes, gay rights, looking after our armed forces, political reform and the fight against climate change.

Other contributors include Gurkha veteran Madan Kumar Gurung, political reform

…

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