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
There’s no room for doubt about the overwhelming view of readers of this site (who may or may not be representative of Lib Dem supporters more generally) – here’s what you told us:
>> 27% (144 votes): Yes – no matter what you think of Blair, Europe needs his leadership abilities >> 73% (389): No – he is the wrong person for the job Total Votes: 533 Poll ran: 28th October – 17th November 2009
By Stephen Tall
| Tue 17th November 2009 - 6:45 pm
Control orders were introduced by Labour in 2005, and give the Home Secretary powers to impose a limitless range of restrictions on any person they suspect of involvement in terrorism.
As the Lib Dems noted in our proposed Freedom Bill, ‘The restrictions imposed by some control orders amount to house arrest and they can include controls on who a person can meet or speak to; when they can leave their house and where they can go. This undermines the freedom not only of those on control orders but of their families as well.’
Lib Dems are, unsurprisingly, opposed to Labour’s …
First, because it was one of the leading news items, and for a Lib Dem leader to be that high up the running order in peace-time is no mean achievement. Secondly, because he was focusing public and media attention once again on a key liberal …
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 16th November 2009 - 9:00 pm
Oooh, here’s a nasty ‘forced choice’ question to thrust upon LDV’s readers … let’s assume for a moment that, by some quirk of electoral fate, the Lib Dems do not storm to victory at the next general election, and Nick Clegg is not asked by Her Maj to form the next government. A far-fetched scenario, I know, but go with me on this. If those were the circumstances, who would you rather have as Prime Minister: Gordon Brown or David Cameron?
And, yes, those are your only two choices in this poll. We’re not giving you an easy ‘neither of …
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 16th November 2009 - 7:55 pm
Welcome to the 143rd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (8th – 14th November 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, partly 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:
Gordon Brown will begin a six-month election campaign this week with one of the shortest but most deliberately political programmes of recent years. … In a podcast on the Downing Street website, Mr Brown said that Britons wanted world-class public services underpinned by “guarantees not gambles”. He was referring to legislation this week that will enshrine in law the right of NHS patients to get treatment within 18 weeks or to see a cancer specialist within two weeks — or be granted
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 12th November 2009 - 6:10 pm
Nick Clegg’s latest ‘Meets You’ public meeting – in which he gets out of Westminster and meets real people across the UK – comes to Oxford tonight. I’m going to be live-tweeting the event over @libdemvoice – just click here to keep up with what Nick’s asked and what he says.
at Wesley Methodist Church, Oxford, waiting for Nick to speak. Couple of hundred people here.
a rather bedraggled-looking – well, it is raining – Evan Harris (MP for Oxford West) has just arrived.
Steve Goddard (candidate for Oxford East) introducing Nick, looking forward to overturning Labour’s 963 majority.
Welcome to the 142nd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (1st – 7th November 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, partly 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
| Mon 9th November 2009 - 10:30 am
2 Big Stories
Brown apologises for mis-spellings in condolence letter
Here’s a deeply uncomfortable story to start the week:
Downing Street has defended the way the prime minister writes to bereaved families after a dead soldier’s mother said Gordon Brown misspelled his name. Guardsman Jamie Janes, 20, from Brighton, East Sussex, was killed in an explosion in Afghanistan in October.
The Sun newspaper said his mother Jacqui had described Gordon Brown’s letter as a “hastily scrawled insult”. Mr Brown has personally contacted Mrs Janes to assure her he did not mean any offence. In a statement, Number 10 said the prime minister “would never knowingly misspell anyone’s name”. Mr Brown has previously admitted problems with his eyesight after a childhood rugby injury.
Sky News has produced an image from the letter for you to judge for yourselves. On the one hand, then, we have a grieving mother upset at what she sees as an insult; on the other, we have a partially sighted Prime Minister with famously bad handwriting. It’s hard not to feel sympathy on boths sides. But I can’t help wondering how many parents will look at the letter, and realise the wording is identical to the one they received from the Prime Minister? Such are the risks you run with the personal touch.
Three weeks ago, LDV posed the following question – How should the Lib Dems increase their number of female MPs? – in the wake of Nick Clegg’s frank admission to the Speaker’s Conference that the Lib Dem Parliamentary Party is “woefully unrepresentative of modern Britain”.
Here’s what you told us:
8% (23 votes) – All women shortlists and/or quotas in ALL seats
7% (22) – All women shortlists and/or quotas in winnable and held seats
44% (133) – No short-lists and/or quotas, but invest in getting more, better-trained and supported candidates
The Lib Dem Voice editorial colective is descending upon the Big Smoke today to plan ahead how to improve the site – so advance apologies for the slack blogging this afternoon. We will, of course, all be online and contactable via Twitter @libdemvoice if anyone has suggestions for items to add to our already over-long agenda.
In our survey following this year’s party conference, we asked LDV-reading party members for their views on our content – what you appreciate, what you don’t, and suggestions for improvements. Here are the features you told us you enjoy most, in descending order:
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 4th November 2009 - 10:35 pm
Welcome to the 141st of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (18th – 24th October 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, partly 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
| Mon 2nd November 2009 - 11:00 am
… We’d say a big thank you to the 31,331 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in October.
That’s a 10% uplift on last month’s readership, and a 38% increase on the same period a year ago, when just over 22,000 readers visited LDV.
This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Nov 2008 – 31 Oct 2009) to 312,829, almost double the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 169,320.
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 2nd November 2009 - 10:30 am
On Saturday, LDV reported the news that the Scottish Lib Dems were uniting behind leader Tavish Scott’s opposition to the SNP referendum on independence, ahead of a special private conference for party members. And so it came to pass, as the BBC reports:
Tavish Scott has consistently opposed a referendum, but some divisions within the party have emerged and the issue was debated in a closed session at the party’s autumn conference in Dunfermline, Fife, on Saturday.
Senior Lib Dem MSP Ross Finnie, who has been asked to lead a consultation with members about the party’s stance,
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 2nd November 2009 - 10:00 am
With just 59 days til the end of the third millennium’s first decade, we can celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the birth of BBC1, and that it’s 49 years to the day since Penguin Books was found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case.
2 Big Stories
Johnson faces backlash over decision to sack drugs advisor
The fall-out continues from Home Secretary Alan Johnson’s decision to sack Professor David Nutt as chair of his scientific advisory body on drugs policy – The Times reports:
The Government is facing mass resignations from the official advisory body on drugs after the sacking
A week ago, LDV asked the question, Is it time for the Scottish Lib Dems to back an independence referendum?, amid suggestions in The Sunday Times that there was “a growing rebellion within the party’s ranks over its opposition to Alex Salmond’s Referendum Bill.” Today’s Times reports that Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott will win overwhelming backing for the leadership line:
Senior Lib Dems were increasingly confident that a minority of “referendum rebels” would not succeed in forcing Mr Scott into a U-turn that could pose serious question marks over his continued leadership.
The row over David Cameron’s decision to pull the Tories out of the main centre-right European grouping, the European People’s Party (EPP), and set up a new group of “extreme and rag-bag” assorted right-wingers, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), has been simmering for months.
It’s burst into the political mainstream this week, courtesy of the unlikely figure of the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich. Back in July, he emailed the New Statesman’s James Macintyre with some sharp criticism of Michael Kaminski, the leader of the Tories’ new Euro grouping, who has faced accusations of anti-semitism and …
The Telegraph reports today that two Lib Dem MPs – Malcolm Bruce and Matthew Taylor – are among the 17 MPs who have protested to Sir Christopher Kelly at the proposed ban on employing relatives:
Malcolm Bruce
Liberal Democrat MP for Gordon
Employs wife, Rosemary Bruce, as Office Manager and Diary Secretary
“Having my wife as office manager, diary secretary and constituency PA operating from an office in our home is invaluable not only to me but, I strongly believe, to constituents and other organisations I deal with as part of my parliamentary and constituency duties.”
By Stephen Tall
| Fri 30th October 2009 - 10:05 am
Moron: it’s not exactly a nice word. Definitions include “a person of subnormal intelligence” and the more psychologically precise “a person having an intelligence quotient of between 50 and 70”. Many of us might have used the term, but it’s one generally best kept out of civilised political discourse.
Tory councillors in the Cotswolds take a different view, as the BBC reports:
Councillors dubbed “morons” by rivals via social networking site Facebook say they may report the insult to the local government watchdog. Cotswold District Council leader Lynden Stowe and fellow Tory Chris Roberts said Lib Dem rivals “have a
I reported here on LDV this afternoon on the serious mis-reporting of Watford Borough Council’s children’s adventure playgrounds policy, indulged by Iain Dale and some newspapers.
For all the media attempts to stir-up some cliched ‘political correctness gone mad’ controversy, it’s clear that Lib Dem Mayor Dorothy Thornhill has acted sensibly and straightforwardly throughout. I hope all those who have copy ‘n’ pasted the mythologised story without first verifying their sources will now ensure they amend their articles to reflect the facts.
One person who does know what she’s talking about – both as a near-by councillor, and as …
Tory blogger Iain Dale should perhaps have paused before clicking ‘publish’ on his latest – highly inaccurate – post, How Very Illiberal of a LibDem Mayor. Those few seconds’ hesitation would have been sufficient for him to do a quick Google and find out what he was about to write was nonsense.
In his article, Iain recycled a Metro report to allege that Watford Borough Council (run by elected Lib Dem mayor Dorothy Thornhill) has “barred from public playgrounds in parks. Instead, they are forced to wait outside the railings whilst council-employed “play facilitators” assist the children.”
The speculation that Tony Blair might become the first President of the European Union – a post created by the soon-to-be-ratified Lisbon Treaty – continues to swirl around. The BBC reports today:
Gordon Brown has said he would be “very happy” to support a bid by his predecessor Tony Blair to be the first president of the European Council. But the prime minister told MPs the post did not yet exist as the Lisbon Treaty creating it had not become law. The BBC understands Mr Brown will put Mr Blair’s case to other EU leaders in Brussels later this week after previously denying it would do so.
But there are major potential obstacles in Mr Blair’s way – first, other qualified candidates, especially from the EU’s smaller nation states, and, secondly, the opposition of the Lib Dems and Tories to his candidacy. Here’s what Nick Clegg today said:
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 28th October 2009 - 12:10 am
Two weeks ago, Nick Clegg wrote to Sir Thomas Legg – in the wake of Sir Thomas’s decision to recommend MPs repay public money if they had been found to have overclaimed expenses for cleaning and gardening – asking that he examine the most serious allegations levelled against MPs:
… when your inquiry was first announced, I think most people expected the worst offences such as flipping to come under the toughest scrutiny. The letters sent this week, however, appear not to focus on these offences. If your review is to be seen as credible it must expose every single one of those MPs who claimed for a non-existent mortgage or ‘flipped’ their second homes purely for personal gain, some of whom then went on to avoid Capital Gains Tax. Some of these MPs appear to have made tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds in profits with the help of taxpayer subsidies. They must be exposed and these illegitimate profits returned.
Today Nick got his answer, but not the one he – or the public – would have hoped for. Sir Thomas passed Nick’s letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, to reply. Here’s what he said (with a big hat-tip to The Times’s Sam Coates):
You’d have thought he’d be famous enough by now, but apparently not … The Independent reports:
Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik will complain to the Commons authorities today after his name was missed off a key internet search tool. The online of version of Hansard, which records everything said in Parliament, has a “search by Member” page – but Mr Opik’s name is not on the alphabetical list. It means his Montgomeryshire constituents cannot simply click through to find his written and spoken contributions.
When told of the error Mr Opik said: “I’m both appalled and amazed by this and will
Some positive news today in the fight for justice for Gary McKinnon, the Asperger’s sufferer and alleged computer hacker who is facing extradition to the USA, a fate which it is believed could jeopardise his health:
The Home Secretary confirmed today that he had “stopped the clock” on proceedings to extradite the British alleged hacker Gary McKinnon to the United States. Alan Johnson told MPs that he was examining new medical evidence in the case, and would allow Mr McKinnon’s lawyers more time to consider medical reports and make legal representations.
Mr McKinnon, from North London, is wanted by US prosecutors
He’s never been known for his politically correct sense of humour, but comedian Jimmy Carr has incited the rage of MPs over a joke about wounded soldiers. … Audible gasps could be heard when Carr quipped: “Say what you like about the servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, we are going to have a f**king good Paralympics team in 2012.” …
… Lib-Dem Nick Harvey exclaimed: “Most people will think it in completely poor taste to try to extract humour from what are catastrophes.”
A smart-arse quip too far; or deliberately provocative humour designed to get …
Well, here’s a turn-up for the books – the man who was Tony Blair’s head of policy is now backing his former boss for the new post of President of the European Union. Who’d have thunk it? The BBC reports:
David Miliband has ruled himself out of taking a senior role within the EU, while endorsing Tony Blair for the new post of European president. … it would be “good for Britain and good for Europe” if Mr Blair became the president of the European Council. Although Mr Blair is seen as frontrunner
nigel hunter Can we not encourage the wealth to stop disappearing to The Canary Islands etc by giving incentives for it to stay in the UK. A tax system that encourages the m...
Chloe When you go down the road of introducing a ban. Don't be surprised if this is where you end up. The tobacco ban infantalises adults as they get older - deeply i...
Abrial Jerram Neil Hickman that, and things along those lines would be the right thing to do. We taxed food companies for making unhealthy food, we didn't ban them. We could ...
Abrial Jerram Jana expectations play a large part in this, if people feel there is a fair route to social mobility that is incentive to engage, and also if one that is widely...
nigel hunter If an alternative to social media is required more effort should be ploughed into HUGELY expanding youth clubs/provisions. After all they are good meeting place...
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Back on the campaign trail
1963: London's summer of the Hoverbus
Have resignations led to a rethink?
nigel hunter 
Chloe 
Abrial Jerram 