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
… We’d say a big thank you to the 33,686 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in January.
That’s a small decrease compared to our Jan. ’10 figure of c.38,000, but then February is a shorter month – and we are up over 40% on the equivalent figure for Feb ‘09 of c.24,000.
This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 March 2009 – 28 Feb 2010) to 316,939, almost 40% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 228,076.
This morning’s admission by the Tories’ single biggest donor, Lord (Michael) Ashcroft, that in the 10 years he has been a voting peer he has been registered as a non-dom to avoid paying tax on his non-UK income has generated a lot of comment today.
Let’s start with the facts. Lord Ashcroft, through his company Bearwood Corporate Services Ltd, is the biggest donor to the Conservative party, having given a total of £5,137,785.15. Lord Ashcroft made further personal donations of £111,726.09.
Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable named him as a ‘non-dom’ in the Commons in December 2009, asking Harriet Harman to introduce legislation “so that non-doms such as Lord Ashcroft can leave Parliament immediately”. The Sunday Times Rich List 2009 estimated Lord Ashcroft’s fortune at £1.1 billion.
Conservative donor and deputy party chairman Lord Ashcroft has admitted he is “non-domiciled” for tax in the UK. He said he agreed with David Cameron that anyone sitting in the Lords must be “resident and domiciled” in the UK.
He said he expected “to be sitting in the House of Lords for many years to come”, suggesting his status would change if the Tories win the election. Mr Cameron said, in another statement, he was “pleased” that Lord Ashcroft had decided to clarify his position.
Lord Ashcroft has donated millions of pounds to the Conservatives in recent years, much
It’s Monday morning. It’s the 1st March, and the question everyone’s asking is, “Where the hell did January and February go?”. For our Welsh readers, meanwhile, may we wish you a very happy St David’s Day. On with the day’s main news …
Result of LDV poll on Tories’ evaporating lead
Yesterday LDV ran an insta-poll asking our Twitter followers and site readers what you thought was the main reason why the Tories’ opinion poll lead has shrunk so fast. Here’s what the 147 of you who voted told us:
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 28th February 2010 - 9:30 pm
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 158th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (21st-27th February, 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:
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 28th February 2010 - 3:45 pm
Let’s begin with the positive: Inside Out, Peter Watt’s autobiographical account of his two years as Labour general secretary during the handover from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown, is an entertainingly gossipy book which, at 200 pages, doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s packed with anecdotes and throwaway remarks which cast a new – and rarely flattering – light on Labour’s senior dramatis personae. In short, well worth reading.
But does Peter Watt come out of it well. Hmmm, there I’m less sure. Here are the five aspects of the book which struck me …
Thing 1: Tribalism
The over-riding impression of Inside Out is quite how tribal politics is. And not just tribal between parties – that’s, at least in part, to be expected – but also within parties. For example, the very New Labour Peter Watt boasts of exploiting the rift between Blair and Brown when hacking for the post of general secretary, accumulating a motley collection of votes on Labour’s National Executive Committee from “trade unionists, people on the hard left and passionate Blairites”.
Mr Watt presents the traditional mea culpa at the end of the book (“tribalism turns good men bad”), but it’s easy to be sage after the event: what politics needs is for its participants to recognise this when they’re in leadership positions, not when they’ve shed them.
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 28th February 2010 - 2:15 pm
Today’s YouGov poll in the Sunday Times suggests the Tory lead over Labour has amost disappeared, and that Labour may even end up the largest party after the general election (which would reflect the exclusive LDV election prediction published here at the start of February).
Nor is today’s poll a flash-in-the-pan. None of the last 12 polls has shown the Tories reaching 40%, the psychologically crucial hurdle most feel they need to be able to clear to be sure of a working Commons majority. Only one of those polls has shown Labour below 30%, and – sigh of …
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 28th February 2010 - 10:20 am
Wondering how to show your support for the Lib Dems at this election, but reluctant to sport a rosette? Well, The Guardian has come up with eight options for the fashion-conscious party supporter. Though it probably helps to be a lady. (Or else a male transvestite). Options range from £8 to £695:
Secondly, here’s Nick Clegg responding to questions posted to Facebook (Facebook.com/nickclegg) and Twitter (@Nick_Clegg) in his latest online Q&A session with voters, and covering a variety of topics: support for carers, voter apathy, voting Lib Dem, military pay, the ‘Robin Hood Tax’, democratic accountability, Scottish independence; the hunger strikers and rights of children at Yarl’s Wood detention centre, and (forget biscuits) whether he prefers tea or coffee.
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 27th February 2010 - 8:15 am
Here’s your starter for ten as we continue our new Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
All liberals will happily sign up to the concept of free speech. But the practise of it often makes us uneasy. JS Mill summed up the dilemma by asserting that while all opinions should be aired, one can’t “shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre”. In other words, freedom of speech must be tempered by individual responsibility. The inevitable question then arises: who should exercise that responsibility: the individual, or should it be regulated by the state in some way?
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 25th February 2010 - 7:00 pm
Bonuses for bankers: can they be justified? That’s the question everyone’s asking following RBS’s announcement that it made eye-watering losses of £3.6bn, but paid out bonues to staff worth £1.3bn.
Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable is dubious:
It’s hard to understand why £1.3bn is being paid out in bonuses when RBS continues to make losses. RBS rewarding individual bankers is like a football team paying their striker for scoring when they’ve just been relegated.
“While it is good news that RBS is meeting its mortgage lending target, its lending to business has fallen. The Government has to get a grip and
Five/six-figure gifts coming from the following: Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (£222.5k), Christopher Nicholson (£52.2k), Michael Brehme (£50k), Charles Brand (£25k), Brian Roper (£20k), Neil Sherlock (£20k), Susan Kramer (£15k), Richard Duncalf (£11.7k), Christopher Butler (£10.7k), Giles Wilkes (£10.25k), Richard Brindle (£10k), Stephen Dawson (£10k).
25 Parliamentarians contributed this quarter – those who gave £1k+ I spot-checked were:
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 24th February 2010 - 10:50 am
There’s a curious article in today’s Times by the paper’s chief political correspondent Sam Coates. Here’s how the report starts:
Voters are abandoning the Liberal Democrats in parts of their South West stronghold as dislike of Gordon Brown boosts support for the Conservatives. A tour by The Times of Lib Dem constituencies in the region found genuine signs of support for the Tories, with voters who backed the Lib Dems in 2005 now responding positively to the high-spending Tory campaign.
Conservative strategists believe the party is significantly more popular in swing seats that have been the target of campaign spending by
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 22nd February 2010 - 9:45 am
Happy Monday morning everyone. Just 213 years ago today saw the Last Invasion of Britain: look away now if you don’t want to know the result. We beat the French. The 22nd February is also the birthday of three of this country’s greatest entertainers: Kenneth Williams (1926), Bruce Forsyth (1928) and Terry Eagleton (1943).
But enough of such tarrying, and on with the main event …
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 21st February 2010 - 10:00 pm
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 157th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (14th-20th February, 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:
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 20th February 2010 - 4:45 pm
We published the results of our most recent survey of Lib Dem Voice’s 1,000-strong private members’ discussion forum – open to any party member to join – last week: you can catch up with what Lib Dem members thought about a variety of issues by clicking here.
In addition to the policy and party issues raised, we asked a couple of questions about party members’ blog-reading habits. Here’s what we learned …
By Stephen Tall
| Fri 19th February 2010 - 11:00 am
Well, there’s a turn-up: James Purnell – former secretary of state for work and pensions, the man who almost brought down Gordon Brown, and seemingly a strong contender for the Labour leadership after the next election – has announced he will be quitting Parliament at the general election. Here’s how The Times reports it:
Labour insiders said that he was telling his Stalybridge and Hyde local party that with regret he was standing down to seek new challenges. …
After his resignation Mr Purnell returned to the back benches and has played a big part in running the Demos centre-left
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 18th February 2010 - 7:15 pm
Blogging Labour MP Tom Harris has an interesting story today, revealing that Tina Stowell, the BBC’s head of corporate affairs “is not only a wannabe Tory candidate, but still has a live website proclaiming her love of all things Cameron.” But Tom doesn’t point this out in order to fulminate or demand her resignation:
And you know something? I don’t have a problem with this. I would much prefer to know the politics of someone I’m dealing with because at least you know where they’re coming from. She wants to become an MP? Good for her! I hope she
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 18th February 2010 - 3:53 pm
Nick Clegg has just tweeted his reaction to Sir Nicholas Winterton’s railing against moves to reduce first-class train travel by MPs – the Tory MP said he needed “peace and quiet” while travelling, and that standard class carriages are occupied by “a totally different type of people.”
The Lib Dem leader’s having none of it, slamming Sir Nicholas’s plea with an exasperated one-liner:
“Sadly some MPs still just don’t get it …”
Well quite. The Tories have been quick to disown Sir Nicholas, acidly dismissing “the out-of-touch views of a soon-to-retire backbench MP”.
The trouble is the Tory party does have a bit of form. As Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson reminds us, the Tory chairman Eric Pickles hardly covered himself in glory on the BBC’s Question Time last year when he defended his second home on the more-than-dubious grounds that as an MP he has to be in work on time. Let’s remind ourselves once again of that perfect moment of car-crash telly:
In the week when the big political issues were the Iraq war, electoral reform and MPs’ expenses – on all of which the Lib Dems have a distinctive contribution to make – the BBC chose to stuff the panel with an official Labour representative (Lord Falconer), and two former Labour MPs (Clare Short and George Galloway); and, for balance, an official Tory representative (Theresa May), and professional right-wing agitpropette (Melanie Phillips).
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 17th February 2010 - 2:02 pm
Bless Nick Herbert: he’s doing his best today to make the claim that the Tories’ attitudes to homosexuality have changed, and that gay people should trust the party. The trouble is Nick has to contend with the reality of the Tories’ voting record – which, as the Lib Dems have pointed out, shows what the Tory party really believes.
The voting records of current Tory MPs who are standing again in 2010 show that:
One in six voted against the repeal of Section 28 in 2003 – including David Cameron and a third of the Tory shadow cabinet;
By Stephen Tall
| Tue 16th February 2010 - 3:23 pm
A week ago, Lib Dem Voice invited the members of our private discussion forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 200 of you who completed it; we’ve been publishing the results on LDV over the last few days.
LDV asked, How would you rate the performances of the following leading Liberal Democrats? And here’s what you told us (with results from September 2009 – the last …
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 15th February 2010 - 9:40 pm
A month ago, LDV launched our comments policy experiment, appealing to our readers to ‘make nice’. As I explained at the time:
… though we reckon this site is better than most political blogs in offering a space where all can feel free to debate with mutual respect, it doesn’t always happen. And those few occasions when LDV’s comments become overly personal and abusive (and invariably testosterone-charged) can deter others from ever daring to join in. So for the next month – leading up to Valentine’s Day, appropriately enough – LDV is going to try and ‘love up’ our comments
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 15th February 2010 - 2:45 pm
A week ago, Lib Dem Voice invited the members of our private discussion forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 200 of you who completed it; we’ve been publishing the results on LDV over the last few days.
Today, we turn our attention to the performance of the Liberal Democrat shadow cabinet, and a handful of other senior Lib Dems. Reproduced below, in alphabetical order, are the full results of our survey, which shows how effective each MP is felt by members to be, together with a net satisfaction rating (those who think they’re very/fairly effective minus those think they’re very/fairly ineffective). The figure in brackets is their net satisfaction rating in September 2009, the last time we polled party members.
For those looking for our ‘golden dozen’ most popular Lib Dem shadow cabinet members, here it is:
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 15th February 2010 - 9:45 am
Happy Monday morning! And as it’s the fifth anniversary of YouTube, find out why Paddy chose to appear with a couple of puppets back in 1997. But first, the news and blogs.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
These episodes demonstrate the character of the Conservative Party – people who make all sorts of promises in order to get what they want with the firm intention of weaselling out of them.
… don’t be surprised if the next Labour PM is someone that you won’t have heard of even several years from now.
Have you donated yet?
Lib Dem Voice is asking our readers to consider making a donation to help five candidates in the imminent general election. The first to be featured is Willie Rennie, victor in the 2006 Dunfermline by-election. Click here to read more. Click here to donate to Willie’s campaign.
2 Lib Dem Stories
David Laws on Tory ‘free school’ plans: “deeply flawed”
David Laws has criticised the Tories’ plans to set up Swedish-style ‘free schools’, saying:
The Tories’ schools plans are deeply flawed both in terms of money and on the curriculum. Michael Gove’s plan to cut the education budget means his ability to establish new schools will inevitably depend on raiding the budgets of existing schools.
“On the curriculum, Conservative plans are in even more of an incoherent muddle. Michael Gove plans to impose an absurdly detailed curriculum on most state-funded schools, while allowing free schools to adopt a pick-and-mix curriculum – even if this means dropping core subjects such as British history and modern languages.
“It is impossible to justify in any logical way a system which imposes such centralized uniformity on 23,500 schools while allowing a small minority to teach whatever they like at the taxpayers’ expense.”
Lib Dem voters more likely to have a sex toy
Well, according to a poll quoted in The Sun anyway:
Lib Dem voters are more likely to have a sex toy than Labour or Tory supporters, a poll reveals. Thirty per cent own one, compared to 24 per cent for Labour and 22 per cent of Tories.
The party that gives you good vibrations.Hmmm, I admit the slogan needs some work, but, hey, it might just work.
Celebrating 5 years of YouTube
Because 5 years ago, clips like the below were just forgotten bits of old news archive seen by no-one:
The Liberal Democrats are planning to rule out forming a coalition government with either the Conservatives or Labour if Nick Clegg holds the balance of power in a hung parliament after the general election. … senior Lib Dems are making clear that Clegg has no interest in taking cabinet posts and would focus instead on winning support for four key Lib Dem demands.
Clegg would be prepared to throw a lifeline to the Conservatives or Labour by allowing either party to pass a Queen’s speech if the aspiring government makes concessions in the four areas, described
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 14th February 2010 - 7:25 pm
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, as we enter our (scary, but true) fourth year … Yes, this is the 156th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (7th – 13th February 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:
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 14th February 2010 - 6:20 pm
At the start of the week, Lib Dem Voice invited the members of our private discussion forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 200 of you who completed it; we’ve been publishing the results on LDV over the last few days.
Today we look at one of the questions LDV has asked a number of times in our members’ surveys: Do you think, as a whole, …
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 14th February 2010 - 12:25 pm
At the start of the week, Lib Dem Voice invited the members of our private discussion forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 200 of you who completed it; we’ve been publishing the results on LDV over the last few days.
Back in December, it became clear that the party had yet to decide whether the Lib Dem general election manifesto would promise to hold …
Chloe Palastine is one of those - as a labour MP put it - middle class hobby horse subject. If a mother of one gets gets 31 months for an awful tweet that was deleted...
GWYN WILLIAMS "And it is not just fingers. I got a very nasty dog bite on the bum once." It's only Monday and I have a mental image of someone trying to push a leaflet throug...
Alex Macfie Steve J Smith: Яeform may claim to be against the Online "Safety" (sic) Act and other online "for the children" surveillance for the sake of getting a few vote...
Peter Martin @ Tom,
Your figure of the richest 200 families being worth £711 bn suggests that a 1% wealth tax should bring in £7bn on them alone.
I'd start with thes...
John Smith And yet millions of people have managed to protest against Israel’s actions without getting arrested.
It’s almost like expressing support for a group tha...
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Violent Bonham Carter features on Fake or Fortune?
Have resignations led to a rethink?
High Fell leaflet watch (2)
Two new Makerfield by-election polls gives Burnham 5 and 12 point leads
Chloe 
GWYN WILLIAMS 
Alex Macfie 
Peter Martin 
John Smith 