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

When being called a Liberal Democrat is taken as an insult

By Stephen Tall | Fri 20th February 2009 - 6:15 pm

LDV has mentioned previously the tendency of Gordon Brown to attempt (rather pathetically) to rile Liberal Democrats by referring to ‘the Liberal party’ at Prime Minister’s Questions. Well, up in Liverpool, the Liberal party is taking considerable offence at being referred to as Liberal Democrats, as the Liverpool Echo reports:

A CITY leader is at the centre of a standards investigation into claims he was rude to a charity set up to encourage black people into politics. Liberal group leader Cllr Steve Radford is alleged to have breached the members code of conduct in comments he made to Operation

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Stephen Tall

BBC Question Time (19/2/09): open thread

By Stephen Tall | Thu 19th February 2009 - 10:20 pm

Sarah Teather, the Lib Dems’ shadow housing minister and MP for Brent East, is the party’s representative on tonight’s Question Time (BBC1 and online, 10.35 pm GMT).

Sarah will be joined on the panel by Labour’s employment minister, the uber-loyal Tony McNulty, former Tory deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine, journalist and television personality, the slimily shallow Piers Morgan, and ‘entrepreneur’ (aka the inexplicable winner of The Apprentice 2007) Tim Campbell.

And for those who are staying up extra late for BBC1’s This Week, don’t bother – they’re taking a half-term break, and will be back next week.

If you’re …

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Posted in Lib Dem TV and News | Tagged and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Vince to tread the boards

By Stephen Tall | Thu 19th February 2009 - 6:29 pm

There’s seemingly no end to the Lib Dem deputy leader’s talents – the party’s guest star at Prime Minister’s Questions, appearances on Strictly Come Dancing, and now, to top it all, Our Vince will make his debut appearance at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford next month

with a 45-minute talk about the state of the economy, as well as more general musings about his “life and times”. Afterwards, I’m told, the audience will be given the chance to pose direct questions. “It is rather like a reinvention of the public meeting,” explains Conway. “I had thought about approaching

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Stephen Tall

LDV, ConHome and DraperList go head-to-head (ish)

By Stephen Tall | Thu 19th February 2009 - 6:15 pm

LDV’s Mark Pack will be speaking alongside ConservativeHome‘s Jonathan Isaby and LabourList‘s Derek Draper on 24th March at an event organised by the Hansard Society entitled, The Online Campaign – solution or smokescreen? Details below and at the Society’s website.

Tuesday 24 March, 10am, House of Commons, Westminster.

The use of online strategies is becoming increasingly important, encouraging grass-roots activism and enabling mass mobilisation. But there is no guarantee that the cooption of online strategies will guarantee electoral success or promote healthy dialogue between politicians and citizens.This eDemocracy event will gather the leading thinkers on this subject to discuss

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Stephen Tall

Why Nick was right to speak out

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th February 2009 - 7:45 pm

Nick Clegg’s article in yesterday’s Times – in which he looked at the impact of the recession, and predicted it would lead to a reinvention of traditional parenting roles – has provoked an entirely predictable knee-jerk from the right-wing media:

The Sun – LIB Dem boss Nick Clegg yesterday HAILED the slump as a chance for sacked workers to make a fresh start. In an astonishing gaffe, he said mass redundancies would have a “liberating effect”, allowing men to “reinvent” themselves as stay-home dads.

The Telegraph – The father-to-be has gone so far as to declare that

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Posted in News | Tagged | 21 Comments
Stephen Tall

Paddy: Scottish Lib Dems wrong to veto independence referendum

By Stephen Tall | Tue 17th February 2009 - 7:57 pm

The Scotsman reports on the intervention of former Lib Dem leader, Lord (Paddy) Ashdown:

THE Unionist parties in Scotland should back a referendum on independence to finish off the SNP as a political force once and for all, former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown has claimed. Lord Ashdown told The Scotsman that he believes his own party has got its tactics wrong in Scotland in dealing with the Nationalists. And he said that Wendy Alexander was on the right lines when she challenged First Minister Alex Salmond to “bring it on” and hold a referendum on independence. …

The former Liberal

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Posted in News and Scotland | Tagged , , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #104

By Stephen Tall | Sun 15th February 2009 - 10:04 pm

Welcome to the 104th – yes, it’s our second anniversary, folks! – 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 February 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

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 | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Times features Nick’s and LDV’s ’25 random things’

By Stephen Tall | Sun 15th February 2009 - 9:14 pm

You know a craze is over when the Sunday supplements start featuring them – from today’s Sunday Times, ’25 random things’ confession craze sweeps the internet:

Millions of people are revealing 25 ‘random’ and often embarrassing things about themselves in the latest phenomenon to sweep the internet … The first of 25 random things is: “The weirdest thing I have ever eaten is fried bees in China.”

Clegg, you might think, sounds like a fearless action man. Study his list more closely, however, and he comes across as too slick by half. He oils his eco-credentials with his second

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Stephen Tall

BBC Question Time (12/2/09): open thread

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th February 2009 - 10:20 pm

For the second week running, there’s no Lib Dem representative on tonight’s Question Time (BBC1 and online, 10.35 pm GMT) – in fact, to be honest, it looks like it’s going to be a depressingly tedious show this week. But don’t let that put you off contributing to our LDV Open Thread!

The panel comprises Labour’s Minister for the Cabinet Office Liam Byrne (let’s hope he’ll have had his cappuccino and soup), Tory shadow minister for communities and local government Justine Greening (whose face was beamed out of Putney on election night 2005), Birmingham City councillor and leader of …

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Does the Israeli election result prove PR just doesn’t work?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th February 2009 - 8:22 pm

Whenever electoral reform – ie, proportional representation or ‘fair votes’ – is debated, those who oppose it will almost inevitably use a variation on the following arguments:

• it produces coalition governments which are weak, divided and indecisive (far better, obviously, to have strong government regardless of whether a majority of people actually voted for it);
• coalition are created by political deals in “smoke-filled rooms” which the voters have no control over (unlike our Parliamentary system of whipping and Prime Ministerial patronage, of course);
• The government which emerges bears no relation to the individual parties most voters support (compared with …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged , , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Was Chris Huhne right to say Geert Wilders should be banned from the UK?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th February 2009 - 7:09 pm

As the BBC reports:

A Dutch MP who called the Koran a “fascist book” has been sent back to the Netherlands after attempting to defy a ban on entering the UK. Freedom Party MP Geert Wilders had been invited to show his controversial film – which links the Islamic holy book to terrorism – in the UK’s House of Lords.

But Mr Wilders, who faces trial in his own country for inciting hatred, has been denied entry by the Home Office. He told the BBC it was a “very sad day” for UK democracy.

Interviewed on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today …

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Stephen Tall

Jenny Randerson lodges official complaint against Rhodri Morgan with, erm, Rhodri Morgan

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th February 2009 - 6:19 pm

Jenny Randerson AM, Welsh Lib Dem Assembly Member for Cardiff Central, has today lodged an official complaint against Wales’s First Minister Rhodri Morgan amid concerns he may have broken the Ministerial code when discussing school closures in Cardiff. Her letter of complaint was sent by Jenny to Wales’s First Minister Rhodri Morgan because, as she noted in her letter:

My enquiries have shown that I have no alternative to write to you yourself over this issue as the Ministerial Code does not make provision for how to complain about the First Minister, only Welsh Ministers as a whole. I trust that

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Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #103

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th February 2009 - 8:20 pm

Welcome to the 103rd 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 February 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

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 | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Evan sticks up for drug adviser in ecstasy row

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th February 2009 - 6:20 pm

As the Guardian reports:

The government’s drugs adviser last night apologised for saying that the risk in taking ecstasy was no worse than in riding a horse. Home secretary Jacqui Smith had yesterday carpeted Dr David Nutt over comments that emerged 48 hours before his committee was expected to recommend downgrading the drug. …

Smith’s attack on Nutt, the new chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, comes when this week it will publish a report expected to recommend downgrading ecstasy from class A to class B. Smith has made clear she will veto the council’s view as

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Stephen Tall

LDV readers say: BBC not justified in banning Carol Thatcher

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th February 2009 - 3:30 pm

Last week, in the wake of the whipped-up hysteria surrounding Carol Thatcher being banned by the BBC from The One Show for using the term ‘golliwog’, LDV asked our readers if you thought the corporation was justified in its actions.

Here’s how you voted:

Yes, the BBC was justified – 44% (116 votes)
No, the BBC wasn’t justified – 52% (139)
Don’t know – 4% (11)
Total Votes: 266. Poll ran: 5th-10th February 2009

So, a bare majority of you think the BBC over-reacted to Carol Thatcher’s use of racially-loaded language.

The poll was picked-up by the Telegraph’s James Kirkup, who used it …

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Posted in Voice polls | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

What Nick’s Facebook friends are saying about his 25 random things

By Stephen Tall | Tue 10th February 2009 - 8:21 pm

On Sunday, LDV published* Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s contribution to the Facebook meme afflicting sweeping the nation, 25 random things, in which ‘tagged’ Facebook users list, erm, 25 random things about themselves. Here, anonymised, are a selection of the comments that Nick’s Facebook friends have posted in response:

>> Brilliant stuff – good to see a politician keeping on trend with the meme surveys 🙂
>> Careful Nick…you’re coming across as too interesting. people might not believe you’re a real politician
>> #25 made me laugh!
>> Wow, that’s great! It’s nice to see politicians who are so down to earth.
>> Even

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

Vince to take over from Nick

By Stephen Tall | Tue 10th February 2009 - 7:59 pm

Before you get too shocked/excited (delete according to taste) by the news, Jon Craig at Sky News’s Boulton & Co blog gives the background:

Vince revealed at a Parliamentary Press Gallery lunch that he is to stand in for Nick Clegg for “two or three weeks” when the Lib Dem leader takes paternity leave. … Cable expects to stand in for Clegg at at least two Prime Ministers Questions next month in the run-up to Parliament’s Easter recess. … I don’t suppose Gordon Brown will be relaxed about the prospect of facing a few more painful jolts from the electric

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Stephen Tall

Would the Tories kick Lord Belize Ashcroft out of the Upper Chamber?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 10th February 2009 - 6:40 pm

Over at the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire & Friends blog, Jason Beattie asks if the Tories are on the point of reversing their U-turn, and supporting a Lib Dem motion obliging anyone who sits in the House of Lords to be a UK resident for tax purposes:

This may seem like an obscure requirement but it could mean Lord Laidlaw (a Tory) Lord Paul (Labour) and possibly Lord Ashcroft (a Tory who has never come clean about where he pays his taxes) face being kicked out of the Upper House. When this bill was first introduced by the Lib Dem Lord

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Stephen Tall

NEW POLL: what should be done about bankers’ bonuses?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 10th February 2009 - 11:20 am

One thing you absolutely cannot accuse the Lib Dem leadership of – going soft on the pay bonuses for executives at those banks which have been re-capitalised by the government. Here’s Vince Cable, Lib Dem deputy leader:

The Government must freeze all bonus payments for employees of semi-nationalised banks and ensure that the pay details of those earning over £100,000 a year are published.”

And Nick Clegg has also strongly criticised Labour for not taking a tough line, instead suggesting bankers ‘ask themselves whether accepting these payments is the right thing to do’, and setting up a review:

You don’t need a review

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Posted in Voice polls | Tagged , , and | 14 Comments
Stephen Tall

Clegg & Cable spell out Lib Dem public spending cuts to fund education priorities

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th February 2009 - 8:44 pm

In his 2008 conference speech, Nick Clegg promised the Liberal Democrats would soon spell out exactly how the party would fund its policy priorities – new spending on Lib Dem policies, including tax cuts for the vast majority of citizens:

I want this to be the most progressive – most redistributive – tax plan ever put forward by a British political party. Using just a little of the money the government wastes every day. To help people in their everyday lives. That doesn’t mean cutting help for the poorest, of course. It doesn’t mean stopping vital investment in hospitals and

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Stephen Tall

Hemming campaigns for Britannia coin comeback

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th February 2009 - 8:14 pm

Has Britannia been missing form your life? Last year, the Royal Mint removed the image of Britannia from the UK’s coins, where her image has appeared since 1672. Now Lib Dem MP John Hemming has launched a new campaign to restore Britannia to her rightful place. I kid you not. The Birmingham Post reports:

John Hemming (Lib Dem Yardley) wants Britannia to make a comeback and believes the £2 coin would be the perfect place for her return. The campaign has won the support from MPs of all parties after setting out his proposal in a House of Commons motion.

Britannia was

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

Labour ‘scrap plans to block wealthy donors’ spending in marginal seats’

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th February 2009 - 10:33 am

From today’s Guardian:

Ministers have abandoned plans to block wealthy Tory donors such as Lord Ashcroft from spending huge sums of money in marginal seats between general elections. … The amendment scraps a planned “trigger” which would have meant that would have meant that, the moment a candidate was adopted, their campaign spending would have been subject to restrictions.

The Guardian understands ministers have been warned that the rules would be very difficult to police. In its place, the government has set a date – 55 months after the new parliament first sits – when new restrictions, set at £25,000 per

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Stephen Tall

Baker rejects air flight rationing

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th February 2009 - 10:20 am

Today’s Telegraph reports that Lord Turner, the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, has said people should be given personal flight limits to lower pollution from the aviation industry:

“We will have to constrain demand in an absolute sense, with people not allowed to make as many journeys as they could in an unconstrained manner,” he told the Commons environmental audit committee. Lord Turner, whose committee is investigating whether the air industry can meet a target of reducing emissions to below 2005 levels by 2050, said the restriction may need to become permanent. He added: “It is at least possible

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Stephen Tall

Lib Dem councillor ‘faces down youths goading dog to attack tree’

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th February 2009 - 9:52 am

And, no, she didn’t need to call the police/council, or threaten litigation to deal with the matter. And, no, the young people in question did not threaten violence against her as a result of her intervention. From the Islington Tribune:

FACED with a group of youths goading a Staffordshire Bull Terrier to strip bark off trees to toughen its jaws, a lesser person would walk away. But 82-year-old deputy mayor and Lib Dem councillor Anna Berent is not a lesser person – she once bit a burglar – and the safety of the tree, in Petherton Road, in Highbury, was

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

43% of LDV readers say: yes to managed immigration

By Stephen Tall | Fri 6th February 2009 - 9:36 pm

A couple of weeks ago, LDV asked our readers the question, What’s the liberal response to immigration?
 It sparked a fascinating comments thread, and our poll attracted over 500 votes. Here’s what you told us:

LDV asked: What do you think should be the basis of the UK’s immigration policy?

You told us:

>> 23% (121) Open the borders, and impose no immigration restrictions
>> 43% (225) Have managed immigration, eg through a points system
>> 15% (79) Operate an annual cap on immigration, with work-permits strictly limited to 4-years
>> 18% (95) Close the borders, and accept no more immigrants
Total Votes: 520.

…

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Posted in Voice polls | Tagged | 11 Comments
Stephen Tall

BBC Question Time (5/2/09): open thread

By Stephen Tall | Thu 5th February 2009 - 10:20 pm

There’s no Lib Dem representative on tonight’s Question Time (BBC1 and online, 10.35 pm GMT) – but liberalism will be represented, at least to some degree, by Shami Chakrabati, director of Liberty (and, more importantly, the original LDV Liberal Voice of the Year 2007).

Shami will appear alongside Labour’s Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon (the man who somehow, miraculously, escaped being sacked as defence secretary following the David Kelly affair), Conservative shadow work and pensions secretary Theresa May (who somehow, miraculously, escaped being sacked from the shadow cabinet for general inspidness), the leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage …

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Ambulance-chasing, Colin Rosentiel, the Standards Board, and our loss of civic pride

By Stephen Tall | Thu 5th February 2009 - 8:40 pm

Some may feel I’m asking for trouble by highlighting for a second day running the case of Colin Rosentiel, the Lib Dem Cambridge city councillor who allegedly blocked an ambulance on an emergency call to protect some common land. But, having reported the story here yesterday, it prompts a wider question than the rights and wrongs of an individual councillor.

A couple of folk linked in the comments thread to the report of Cambridge city council’s monitoring officer to its standards committee – you can read it in full here. And I mean in full – it’s …

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Posted in Local government and Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , and | 11 Comments
Stephen Tall

NEW POLL: was the BBC right to ban Carol Thatcher from The One Show?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 5th February 2009 - 2:25 pm

I’ve avoided for as long as possible the uber-hyped ‘nowtrage’ over Carol Thatcher’s off-air-but-in-the-studio comment that a still-to-be-identified tennis player looks like a ‘golliwog’.

It does of course pose lots of interesting questions for liberals: the conflict between freedom of speech, and the offence that may cause; to what extent unbroadcast behind-the-scenes remarks should be regarded as private; whether remarks that cause offence are best dealt with by individuals at the time, rather than by being referred to an ombudsmanperson.

The Lib Dem blogosphere has wrestled with many of these issues and more, and given more time to …

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Posted in Voice polls | Tagged , , , , , and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

CommentIsLinked@LDV: James Graham on the Channel 4/YouGov poll of marginals

By Stephen Tall | Wed 4th February 2009 - 6:50 pm

Over at the Channel 4 News politics website, Lib Dem blogger James Graham gives his brief take on the latest YouGov poll of Conservative-Labour marginals showing Labour on 36% (-2% since Oct ’08), the Tories on 43% (n/c) and the Lib Dems at 13% (+1%). Here’s an excerpt:

This poll tells us nothing about how the Lib Dems might be doing in terms of seats because of the constituencies chosen, but nonetheless it does give us some idea about how the party is doing in terms of fighting the ‘air war’. The headline figures show a small, albeit statistically insignificant,

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem councillor accused over ambulance

By Stephen Tall | Wed 4th February 2009 - 6:26 pm

Plenty of media coverage today of Lib Dem Cambridge city councillor Colin Rosentiel following a complaint made against him to the Standards Board for England – the Telegraph’s account is the most detailed I’ve seen:

Liberal Democrat councillor Colin Rosenstiel stopped the vehicle as crews tried to reach an injured person at a summer festival on common land in Cambridge. Mr Rosenstiel rode his bicycle into the path of the ambulance, blocking the entrance, and refused to budge because he claimed cars were not allowed on the grass.

The emergency crew eventually manoeuvred around him but, on leaving the ground, after

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged and | 26 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Jason Connor
    Excellent and a good speaker. Highly admired in Richmond and would certainly get my vote...
  • Richard Whelan
    Good luck Sarah. I wish you every success in your campaign....
  • Peter Davies
    Simon Hughes was an MP when he stood. He got our best result....
  • Andy Daer
    I’m afraid John Kelly is right. Our leadership seems to have a blind spot where the Israel/Palestine conflict is concerned....
  • Mary ReidMary Reid
    David Raw - yes, it would trigger a Parliamentary by-election if she won as Mayor. Selection itself would not require it....