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
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 25th October 2009 - 11:15 pm
Lib Dem blogger Matt Davies reports on a clumsy attempt by Tory PPC for St Austell & Newquay, Caroline Righton, to extract political advantage from her Lib Dem opponent, Stephen Gilbert – but, unfortunately, without trying to check her facts first.
Ms Righton accused Stephen of calling her a ‘D***h***d!!!’ on Twitter in an email to residents. Except that he didn’t. And as Matt explains, it’s hard to know how Ms Righton could have failed to realise this before broadcasting her allegation:
She might not have liked Steve highlighting their different priorities when it comes to helping local residents
Welcome to the 140th 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:
Senior Liberal Democrat figures will hold talks in an attempt to halt a growing rebellion within the party’s ranks over its opposition to Alex Salmond’s Referendum Bill. Party managers will meet on Monday to decide the best way of tackling the revolt, which could seriously undermine Tavish Scott’s leadership of the party.
Strategists have yet to decide whether they will allow the issue to go to a vote at a special conference being held in Dunfermline next Saturday to confirm the party’s stance. It is understood that several of the party’s Westminster candidates are preparing to join
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 24th October 2009 - 11:15 am
Okay, I’ve bowed to popular opinion – the Hazel Blears-inspired title for our occasional video round-ups, YouTube ‘cos we want to, is no more. Instead you’re getting the drably named LDVideo. BUT just because you’ve made me drop my punning motif doesn’t mean the videos that follow are anything less than scintillating.
First up, we have Cassettboy’s Nick Griffin / BBC Question Time mash-up which was being re-tweeted like nobody’s business yesterday. Childish but fun:
Earlier this week, Nick Clegg pitched up on Absolute Radio to be interviewed by Christian O’Connell – here’s a little bit of what happened:
By Stephen Tall
| Fri 23rd October 2009 - 10:39 am
So that was the Question Time that was. There is copious assessment of Nick Griffin’s performance, linked to here on LDV.
My views are straightforward. First, Nick Griffin came over badly, but that is immaterial: those who are BNP-inclined will likely have seen him as the victim of a liberal, metropolitan, media stitch-up; and those who despise the BNP will have had their view confirmed.
Secondly, my over-riding sense was of relief that the BNP don’t have a more slick, plausible leader. The moment is ripe for a truly charismatic, attractive, anti-politician to play the demagogue: Nick Griffin is decidedly not that person, thankfully.
Such are my thoughts on Mr Griffin – but what about Chris Huhne’s performance?
Was it only a month ago we were in the throes of the Lib Dem conference? How time flies. Cast your minds back four weeks, and the Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor, Vince Cable, made a few waves by announcing his wish to introduce a new tax, quickly dubbed the ‘Mansion Tax’, of 0.5% on the value of properties over £1m.
In fact, as LDV’s Alex Foster spotted at the time, Vince was re-treading a policy he’d been forced to abandon just 18 months previously. But, then, a lot has changed in the last 18 months, both economically, and in terms of Vince’s popularity. The surprise announcement caused Vince more than a few headaches, with shadow cabinet colleagues complaining of being kept in the dark.
Ahead of tonight’s BBC1 Question Time – featuring the BNP leader Nick Griffin – The Guardian reports his verdicts on his fellow panellists. Here’s what he said about Chris Huhne, the Lib Dems’ shadow home secretary:
Big hitter. Menzies Campbell would have been more daunting.
And here’s what he said about the other panellists:
At the Speaker’s Conference yesterday, Nick Clegg delivered a frank assessment of the Lib Dem Parliamentary Party, calling it “woefully unrepresentative of modern Britain”. It’s not hard to see why. No ethnic minority MPs, and just nine female MPs among our 63 representatives. Woeful is the word.
The real question is: what to do about it? Nick has previously indicated – and repeated the point in his submission yesterday – that he would consider recommending all-women shortlists be adopted by the party after the next election if he’s unable to point to real progress in improving the Parliamentary party’s representativeness. …
A few months ago, Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable tabled an Early Day Motion in the Commons to attempt to pressure the Government to treat fairly the Equitable Life policyholders who lost their pensions due to “serial maladministration” by the, erm, Government. Rather remarkably, the EDM attracted 331 signatures, a recent record, and over half the MPs in the Commons.
With such support, the Lib Dems decided to put the issue to the vote (the first time it’s been voted on by the Commons), giving over one of their oppositon debates to the subject. Surely Labour would either give in, and at last accept the independent Parliamentary ombudsman’s judgement that the Government was liable for compensation; or, if they didn’t, enough MPs would ensure they backed up their EDM signature with their Parliamentary vote?
Neither event happened. Labour squeaked through with a majority of 25, the whips’ job done. Equitable Life policyholders remain uncompensated for the incompetence of their Goverment.
What’s the correct response to the news that Lord (Chris) Rennard has been cleared by the Clerk of the Parliaments of any wrong-doing over his allowances claims? I ask because I think there are some important issues at play here for how we, the Lib Dems, as a party can help restore trust in democracy.
First, we need to separate the personal from the political (and, incidentally, this applies just as much to Chris’s critics). Most of us who have met, or in some way know, Chris will be pleased for him on a personal level. The allegations that he’d somehow fiddled the system has dogged him since April, and brought about a more-hasty-than-planned exit to his time as the party’s chief executive.
Above all, though, Chris’s friends and the wider party will be relieved. The allegations against him have hung like a dark cloud over the Lib Dems’ pronouncements on expenses for several months now.
To be blunt, it’s been an embarrassment, and one which the party has handled poorly – precisely because we’ve failed to separate the personal from the political.
I am delighted to announce that Mark Pack is joining me as Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, effective immediately. Mark was a founding member of LDV, alongside Rob Fenwick, back in August 2006. His first post was entitled, Ming Campbell movie online. Ah, those were the days.
Over the past three years Mark has made a huge contribution to making this site the success it is, helping build LDV’s monthly readership to over 30,000 unique visitors, and ranked as one of the top 5 blogs in the UK.
This is, according to some of the more desperate right-wing blogs, evidence of the Prime Minister’s tendency to dither. Or perhaps it’s because he has more important things to worry about – just as the media has more important things to report, or so you’d have thought.
Anyway, as a result of this over-literal storm in a teacup, Nick Clegg has also been asked about his …
The author, broadcaster and campaigner Sir Ludovic Kennedy has died aged 89. A former BBC Panorama journalist, Sir Ludovic spent decades investigating miscarriages of justice, including the case of the Birmingham Six. He contributed to the abolition of the death penalty and was also president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.
Nick Clegg has joined in the tributes to Sir Ludovic, a member of the Liberal party and later the Lib Dems, for most of his life:
Ludovic Kennedy was one of the great thinkers of his generation. His pursuit of justice and his championing of sometimes unpopular and controversial causes marked him out as a true liberal. He will be greatly missed.”
Sir Ludovic was the Liberal candidate and runner-up in the 1958 Rochdale by-election, propelling the party to its highest vote in the constituency since the 1920s, with the Tories pushed from first to third place. It was the first UK election to feature televised debates between the candidates, with Granada also broadcasting the count – another first.
He quit the Lib Dems in 2001 in protest at Charles Kennedy’s refusal to countenance legalised euthanasia, even standing as an independent candidate for the cause in Devizes, Wiltshire, polling just over 1,000 votes. He later re-joined the party.
During the 1980s and ’90s, Sir Ludovic gained fame among a new generation (such as myself) through his appearances as himself in the superior BBC comedy programme, Yes, Minister, as well as his interviews with Peter Cook, playing Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, for A Life in Pieces. Here’s the first programme from that fantastic series, first broadcast in December 1990:
Getting on for a year ago, Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik began writing a regular political column in the Daily Sport. Thanks to Lib Dem blogger James Graham – who set up the Prawn Free Lembit blog, so that those of us who don’t touch the Sport’s casually misogynistic pages can follow his writings – I’ve become a regular reader.
It’s a weird, dire mixture of straight news and forced comedy-innuendo. Commentary on Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace prize and the plight of British troops in Afghanistan jostle for space alongside groaning references to “Sport stunna Marlena …
Labour’s Hain threatens BBC with legal action over BNP invitation
Labour’s Welsh secretary Peter Hain makes a bid for the media spotlight today by arguing that the BBC could face legal action over this Thursday’s edition of Question Time, due to feature an appearance by BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP:
… in his letter , Mr Hain … said the decision should be reconsidered in light of a legal case about ethnic restrictions on the BNP’s membership rules. The party has agreed to amend its constitution after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission sought an injunction, claiming the BNP was breaking the Race Relations Act by restricting membership to “indigenous Caucasian” people.
Welcome to the 138th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (11th – 17th 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:
The Tories were last night accused of a “systematic cover-up” when it emerged that someone at the House of Commons had deleted internet details about a key European ally with a far-right past. Politically embarrassing information about Michal Kaminski, a Polish politician who now leads the Tories in the European parliament, was removed from Wikipedia by someone in the Commons three days after the alliance was formed.
Chris Bryant, the government’s new minister for Europe, called on the Conservatives to “come clean” after the Observer discovered that details of Kaminski’s previous membership of the far-right National Revival of Poland party had been mysteriously removed.
The information was deleted on 25 June by someone using a computer connection directly traceable to the House of Commons. The European Conservatives and Reformists Group, which Kaminski leads and in which the Tories are founder members, was formed on 22 June.
A FRONTBENCH Liberal Democrat peer is refusing to reveal the location of her main home, which she used to claim more than £70,000 in expenses from the House of Lords. Baroness Barker, 48, a spokeswoman on health, has lived in London for the past 20 years but four years ago began claiming allowances for peers living outside the capital.
While continuing to live and work in London, Barker claimed up to £19,000 a year by saying her main address was in the “southeast”. When approached by The Sunday Times, she volunteered the home was in Sussex but would
A story we didn’t get the chance to cover this week was Nick Clegg’s speech to the National Liberal Club in which he gave his personal backing to an idea being developed by Lib Dem shadow business secretary John Thurso – the potential for a system of localised stock markets across Britain:
Regional stock exchanges are one way of getting vital investment directly to small and medium-sized businesses. They could give local investors – many of whom are disillusioned with the City – an opportunity to see business grow and keep jobs in their communities.
“Too many are struggling and many viable start-ups just cannot secure the finance they need. We simply can’t rely on wheeler-dealing in London’s Square Mile to keep the country afloat. It’s high time we look at innovative ways to spread growth across the country.”
Well, the idea has found early and firm favour in Wales, where the party’s economic spoksesperson Jenny Randerson has declared her support for the idea:
I AM delighted to see the Daily Sport taking a courageous and honest stand against the unwinnable and hopelessly expensive war in Afghanistan. The only WAY OUT is to PULL OUT. Then we can start talks with the other side and find a better way to sort out the mess. In hundreds of years, nobody’s ever beaten the Afghans on their home turf. It’s an away match the British and Americans cannot win — not least because, when they were our friends, we actually
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 17th October 2009 - 12:20 pm
There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader …
Here’s newly elected Lib Dem mayor of Bedford Dave Hodgson with party leader Nick Clegg following the sensational Lib Dem victory in the mayoral by-election – but what do you imagine they might be thinking / saying? Photo: Mark Fitzpatrick.
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 17th October 2009 - 12:05 pm
All this week, LDV has been compiling a full list of the findings of Sir Thomas Legg’s inquiries into MPs’ expenses as they related to the Lib Dems’ 63 MPs. We are adding to this list as information is received by us or published elsewhere.
We now have information on around two-thirds of the Parliamentary party, 39 MPs – but this still leaves 24 Lib Dem MPs whose Legg letters we don’t know about. The party’s whips office has recommended all the party’s MPs publish a statement on their websites in order to ensure the party’s representatives are as open and accountable as possible. However, after spot-checking half a dozen of the 24 ‘missing’ MPs I can see no references on any of their sites: this is a pretty unimpressive record.
LDV readers – or MPs or their staff – can contact us direct to help us establish a full, accurate and transparent record: please leave a comment in the thread to update us, or alternatively email us at [email protected].
As of Saturday, here’s the scores on the doors (which we’ll update as we get more info):
Clean bill of health letter received from Sir Thomas Legg:
… suggests that more than half the population believes the recommendations were ‘not tough enough’, 57% have ‘no sympathy whatsoever’ and 60% are as interested in the story as they ever were. The LIberal Democrat MPs are perceived to have behaved the best.
The survey is split down into categories of voter identification – Lib Dem, Labour, Tory, none – and generally there is little marked difference in the attitudes of party supporters:
Update: Nick Clegg has issued his congratulations …
This is a sensational victory for Dave Hodgson and I congratulate him and the Bedford Liberal Democrats for an outstanding campaign. By electing Dave Hodgson as Mayor the people of Bedford have put their trust in the Liberal Democrats to work hard on their behalf.
“The fact that the Tories are losing in their South of England heartland is proof the General Election is not the foregone conclusion they think it is.
“Dave has lived in Bedford for thirty years and has built an outstanding record of action for local people. As Mayor he will work hard to keep Bedford’s roads safe, cut waste and make sure that the people of Bedford get the quality local services they deserve.
“People told me and Vince Cable at our visits to Bedford that they are enthusiastic about our message for real change
“This result shows how misplaced the Conservatives’ complacency about the next election really is. The Liberal Democrats have never taken a single vote for granted. With Labour lagging behind at a disastrous fifth this is yet more evidence that the real choice is now between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.”
You can watch a video of Nick congratulating Dave here:
Yesterday saw voting in Bedford for the new elected mayor, with the Lib Dems’ Dave Hodgson the bookies’ favourite. Counting started this morning, and we’ll be reporting the result as soon as we receive it. Alternatively, you can do what we’re doing and follow the Twitter stream …
The good news so far is that Dave was ahead on first preferences, with Labour trailing badly in fifth place, and the Greens losing their deposit. However, as no candidate gained more than 50% of the votes cast, second preferences of the losing candidates are now being counted – so we …
To be a fair, a former Labour minister, ex-SDP leader and Tory voter is probably the natural person to advocate a national unity government – and that’s exactly what David Owen has done today in an article in The Times:
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, and his deputy, Vince Cable, need to position themselves as ready to shoulder the burden of responsibility for hard economic choices, and help to provide, with one of the big parties, the principled, practical government that the country so sorely needs. That means talking to voters about participating in a government of national unity.
The issue of tuition fees exploded into the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth, when Nick Clegg appeared to suggest he was rowing-back on the party’s long-established commitment to abolish them.
I’ll state clearly my position: I support tuition fees, and believe they are the only possible way of funding world-class higher education for UK students. As and when extra public money is available, I believe it would be much better invested in early years and adult education programmes if we are serious about combating the real causes of social inequality. I am equally clear that I’m in a small minority in the party, and that bulk of opinion is with our existing policy.
I noticed this article in today’s Independent, Universities finally open their doors to the poor. This shows that, over the past decade – and therefore since the introduction of tuition fees, and then top-up fees – the proportion of young adults reaching university from the poorest backgrounds has increased significantly:
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 