Author Archives: The Voice

The Voice

Exclusive: party research into effectiveness of bar charts leaked

By The Voice | Wed 1st April 2009 - 7:30 am

Courtesy of the traditional route of documents left on Parliamentary photocopiers, The Voice has seen the results of an in-depth piece of market research the party has carried out into the use of bar charts in Liberal Democrat leaflets and other literature.

The research, including focus groups and a national opinion poll, found that by a margin of 63% – 18% the public disagree with the statement,  “We receive too many bar charts from the Liberal Democrats”.

This margin is likely to please many of the party’s most experienced campaigners, as is the finding that by 72% – 9% people agree with …

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The Voice

“G20 summit is no time for playing politics” – Nick Clegg

By The Voice | Mon 30th March 2009 - 4:26 pm

The Press Association reports,

Radical measures must be decided at the G20 summit or it could become the “fateful moment” when the global recession lurches into an outright slump, Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said today.

Clegg said the meeting of world leaders in London this week was one of “immense psychological importance” and warned that failure to agree on immediate action could lead to a “dangerous market stampede”.

Disunity could spark further panic among jittery markets, sending the world economy into “freefall” and raising the spectre of a 1930s-style depression.

More too on the party’s website.

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Chris Huhne – Scalpel-sharp intelligence is needed to slash knife crime

By The Voice | Mon 30th March 2009 - 11:21 am

Over at The Times, Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne notes that a cosmetic surgeon helped to cut knife violence by 40 per cent in Cardiff, and asks: why isn’t his no-brainer idea being copied across Britain? Here’s an excerpt:

Nearly 50,000 people have been treated in hospital for knifings since the Government came to power. The toll of knife crime has rightly gripped the media, since there can be few more horrifying thoughts for any parent than to think of their child being attacked by knife- wielding thugs. …

Effective action is about stop-and- search, particularly working from intelligence.

…

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: David Steel – The night Labour self-destructed

By The Voice | Sat 28th March 2009 - 6:25 pm

Over at the Daily Mail, former Liberal party leader Lord (David) Steel recalls the dramatic evening of 28 March 1979, when the Labour Government lost a confidence motion by one vote, and the then Prime Minister James Callaghan was forced to call an early General Election. It was this election that swept Margaret Thatcher to victory. Here’s an excerpt:

The tension was palpable, politicians from all parties talking and arguing with one another, all speculating about what was going to happen next.

I had never seen the chamber so packed before. Not one of us had the slightest idea what the

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Posted in LibLink and Parliament | Tagged and | 1 Comment
The Voice

Tories the late starters in Islington two-horse race

By The Voice | Sat 28th March 2009 - 6:17 pm

A correspondent not unadjacent to Islington contacts The Voice to note:

Islington South and Finsbury Conservatives have selected their PPC, more than two years after the Liberal Democrats re-selected Bridget Fox to fight the seat.

The Tory hopeful, Antonia Cox, is an investment banker turned journalist who lives in Kensington. She has promised to move into Islington if elected – a pledge she is unlikely to be called on to fulfil. Ladbrokes have given the Conservatives (surprisingly generous) odds of 25/1 to win the seat. The borough has 0 (zero) Conservative councillors. Even the ConservativeHome post announcing her selection

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The Voice

Vince reviewed on tonight’s BBC2 Newsnight

By The Voice | Fri 27th March 2009 - 6:08 pm

A quick plug for a quick plug – in this week’s Newsnight Review (BBC2, 11pm Friday 27th March, and online), Kirsty Wark and the panel will be discussing Vince Cable’s book, The Storm: the world economic crisis and what it means:

Vince Cable’s book The Storm is one of many pieces of non-fiction about to be published which attempt to explain the roots of this economic crisis.

The Lib Dem Treasury spokesman has been called the “sage” of the credit crunch.

He warned years ago about the over-heating housing market, and advocated the nationalisation of Northern Rock months before the

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Posted in Books and News | Tagged , and | 1 Comment
The Voice

Evan: Labour has dealt serious blow to reform of the monarchy

By The Voice | Fri 27th March 2009 - 3:57 pm

Even as the Prime Minister was, according to the headlines, proving his commmitment to ‘ending anomaly of royal ban on Catholics’, his Government was conspiring to ‘talk out’ Dr Evan Harris’s private member’s bill reforming the right of succession and the laws preventing the monarch marrying a Catholic. Evan was not amused:

Despite the spin from the Prime Minister about amending religious and sexual discrimination in our constitution being a higher priority, the Government has dealt a serious blow to the prospects of reform by talking out my Bill. Jack Straw was asked three times to provide either a timetable,

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Nick Clegg – We need to know why we went to war

By The Voice | Fri 27th March 2009 - 12:59 pm

Over at The Independent today, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg explains why an Iraq inquiry should examine every detail the Government would like ignored. Here’s an excerpt:

We had the whitewash Hutton inquiry, then the Butler inquiry, but the real truth about the political decision-making that led us into this war has never yet been exposed.

Labour and the Conservatives came together to drag our country into an illegal war: we need to know how that happened so that we make sure it never happens again. The government has finally accepted that it can no longer duck an inquiry. The question now

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Norman Baker – Iraq war inquiry is essential

By The Voice | Wed 25th March 2009 - 6:41 pm

Lib Dem MP Norman Baker has a letter published in today’s Guardian demanding an immediate and full inquiry into the Iraq war, which the Government has said will happen ‘as soon as possible’ after 31st July:

It is welcome that Carne Ross reminds us (March 20) that intelligence available to the government before the invasion of Iraq made it “very clear” that Saddam was not a threat, but it’s hardly a revelation. The confidential Downing Street minute from 23 July 2002 records Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, telling the meeting of senior ministers and officials that the case for

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Vince Cable – The Storm … how to survive it (and how to prevent its return)

By The Voice | Wed 25th March 2009 - 6:29 pm

Over at the Guardian today, there’s a lengthy extract from Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable’s about-to-be-published book, The Storm: The World Economic Crisis and What It Means. Here’s an excerpt of the excerpt:

Escaping this crisis will require a combination of approaches, and the mix will vary from country to country. In each case, however, the price for restoring stability will be a greatly increased role for the state in the banking sector. Beyond that, the challenge will be to build a regulatory regime that provides greater protection against systemic risk. After the calamities of the past year, few now

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The Voice

What’s in a name?

By The Voice | Tue 24th March 2009 - 7:03 pm

Question: When is a candidate for the Liberal Democrat Party not a candidate for the Liberal Democrats?

Answer: When he’s attempting to win a vacant parish council seat for the Bruche ward of Poulton-with-Fearnhead Parish Council in Warrington.

The local paper has the story, a nightmare familiar to election agents in all parties:

A CONTROVERSIAL by-election for a parish council seat will not go ahead after the Lib Dem party fluffed its paperwork.

Statements of intent to stand for the Bruche ward of Poulton-with-Fearnhead Parish Council had to be with the parish council clerk by noon on Friday.

But Lib Dem

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Posted in Local government and News | 9 Comments
The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Michael Moore – Stop these broken promises

By The Voice | Tue 24th March 2009 - 6:58 pm

Over at the New Statesman, Michael Moore, the Lib Dems’ shadow international development secretary, argues that the G20 summit offers a key opportunity to revitalise the international community’s commitment to development at this difficult economic time. Here’s an excerpt:

The Liberal Democrats believe that the G20 summit offers a key opportunity to revitalise the international community’s commitment to development at this difficult economic time. In an interconnected world tackling the impacts of the crisis on the developing world is not just a moral imperative, but in our own self-interest.

If we do nothing it will not be long before humanitarian crises,

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The Voice

Eating a vegetarian meal = suspicious terrorist activity

By The Voice | Mon 23rd March 2009 - 1:45 pm

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Nick Clegg – Banks’ business is taxpayers’ business

By The Voice | Fri 20th March 2009 - 8:37 am

Yesterday The Guardian ran a piece from Nick Clegg on Barclays and its attempts to keep secret details of how it goes about reducing the amount of tax it pays:

Yesterday Barclays may have won on a point of law. But it cannot run away from the wider point of principle: now our whole banking system relies on the support of British taxpayers, how the banks run their business is our business, too.

So long as these banks are sustained by explicit or implicit Treasury guarantees, they have no right to deprive the Treasury of money by running circles round the taxman.

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The Voice

Former Lib Dem MP raises fear of sword attacker’s move

By The Voice | Thu 19th March 2009 - 12:37 pm

Today’s Telegraph reports on the concerns of former Cheltenham Lib Dem MP Nigel Jones, who was injured, and local councillor Andrew Pennington killed, in a brutal attack during a constituency surgery:

A former MP who was attacked by one of his constituents with a samurai sword fears for his safety after his assailant said he wants to move to a town just nine miles away. Lord Jones of Cheltenham is so concerned that Robert Ashman wants to live in nearby Gloucester that he is meeting Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to express his concerns. Ashman, now 58, stabbed and killed

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Nick Clegg – It’s time for a truly different banking system

By The Voice | Thu 19th March 2009 - 12:29 pm

Over at the Yorkshire Post, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg argues that, after a decade when British banks have been allowed to get away with far too much, it’s high time for real reform of the banking industry. Here’s an excerpt:

I want a return to old-style high street banks so people’s savings are protected from bankers who are obsessed with taking high risk gambles with other people’s money. I propose that banks are given a choice: they can do ordinary consumer business like current accounts, mortgages, business loans, savings, they can even make sensible low-risk investments and we will protect

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The Voice

Lib Dems urge Tories not to join with homophobes

By The Voice | Wed 18th March 2009 - 9:39 am

Lib Dem equalities spokesperson Lynne Featherstone has written to the Tories shadow foreign affairs spokesman William Hague asking him to clarify if his party intends to join forces with a Polish party in the European parliament known for its homophobic remarks. Politics.co.uk reports:

The party in question is called the Polish Law and Justice party. The Tories are being pulled towards them after leaving their grouping in the European parliament – the centre-right European People’s party. It was the culmination of a promise David Cameron made while running to be party leader, but he must now form a grouping with at least six other parties to earn EU recognition and funding.

But Liberal Democrats and Labour warned the party could easily be thrown into the arms of non-mainstream parties, putting them on “the lunatic fringe” of European politics. Senior politicians from the Law and Justice party have made homophobic statements, as well as describing Barack Obama’s election in the US as marking “the end of white man’s civilisation”, the Liberal Democrats said.

The full text of Lynne’s letter to Mr Hague is below:

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
The Voice

Poll: 72% back official inquiry into the UK’s role in the invasion of Iraq

By The Voice | Mon 16th March 2009 - 6:01 pm

The BBC reports:

Almost three quarters of British people believe there should be a public inquiry into the invasion of Iraq, an opinion poll suggests. The BBC Radio 5 Live poll also found almost two thirds are not convinced UK soldiers should be kept in Afghanistan. …

The survey, conducted by ComRes for the BBC, found 72% of those questioned believe there should be an official inquiry into the UK’s role in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This figure increases to 81% in the 18-24 age group.

Just last week, Lib Dem shadow foreign secretary Ed Davey repeated the …

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The Voice

£853 a night – Lib Dems reveal true cost cost of locking up prisoners in police cells

By The Voice | Mon 16th March 2009 - 9:15 am

The BBC reports:

The cost of housing prison inmates in police cells is double the amount previously thought, the Lib Dems claim. The Ministry of Justice says it costs £385 a night to detain an inmate in a police station when prisons are full. But the Lib Dems say the true cost of ‘Operation Safeguard’ is £853 a night – a figure disputed by the government.

The article quotes Lib Dem justice spokesperson Paul Holmes:

For this amount of money, you could stay in the Ritz. … The government’s incompetence in managing our prison system is staggering and has left the

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The Voice

Davey slams Labour’s foreign affairs shame

By The Voice | Fri 13th March 2009 - 2:39 pm

Ed Davey, Lib Dem shadow foreign secretary, has taken to the airwaves today to make the case for inquiries into the two dodgy areas of Labour’s foreign policy – the basis for the war in Iraq, and allegations of British complicity in in illegal abduction and torture.

A full inquiry into the Iraq war

Commenting on the latest evidence to show the extent to which Labour’s spin doctors intervened to ‘sex-up’ the Iraqi weapons dossier prepared by intelligence officials, Ed said on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today Programme:

He said the emails show, “there was intervention, and we didn’t know that

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Jonathan Calder – Messy but meaningful

By The Voice | Thu 12th March 2009 - 11:25 pm

Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, Liberal England’s Jonathan Calder argues ‘of course policy on faith schools is a compromise – that’s how social institutions are most often made to work’. Here’s an excerpt:

… if, in a surge of Jacobin purity, the party had voted for an outright ban on faith schools, it would have been only a gesture. Few Liberal Democrats would have campaigned on a policy that threatened to alienate every church and disrupt a third of the schools in the country.

Besides, it’s not faith schools that are the problem: it is the conventional state schools.

…

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Vince Cable – Keep an eye on the dapper, shy man at the back

By The Voice | Tue 10th March 2009 - 8:54 pm

With apologies for missing this yesterday – that’ll teach me not to pay my daily homage to that fount of reactionary, fact-free unpleasantness, the Daily Mail website – but the Lib Dems’ deputy leader Vince Cable was performing the remarkable feat of inserting some common sense perspective into the paper, writing about the growing importance of China to the world’s financial affairs. Here’s an excerpt:

China now has the second biggest economy in the world, based on purchasing power, and India the fourth (Britain is battling it out for sixth place with France). This new industrial revolution is not a pretty

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The Voice

CommentIsLinked@LDV: James Graham – Reasons for Lib Dems to be cheerful

By The Voice | Tue 10th March 2009 - 12:25 pm

Over at the Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, Quaequam Blog!’s James Graham argues that the Lib Dems’ spring conference ‘revealed Nick Clegg’s sense of purpose as he delivered a message of hope amid the economic gloom’. Here’s an extract:

Nick Clegg’s early weakness for attention-grabbing gimmicks has been superceded by a new seriousness of purpose by a leader finally finding his voice. He has been rewarded by a small but perceptible shift in the polls. The talk a few months ago was of a Tory landslide and a Lib Dem wipeout, yet it has become increasingly apparent that Clegg may find

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The Voice

Exclusive: 94% of conference attendees took Winslet picture seriously

By The Voice | Mon 9th March 2009 - 1:03 pm

There was further embarrassment for the party this morning as it emerged that a vast majority of grassroots attendees had taken seriously the “evidence” of this picture of Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet in the conference brochure:

Kate Winslet

Over seven of the nine people quizzed by Lib Dem Voice’s roving reporters on Saturday morning in the exhibition hall at the Harrogate Conference Centre had taken the picture at face value, and assumed that Winslet had attended the Lib Dem Council Awards event held by the party

…

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The Voice

Simon Hughes in Harrogate

By The Voice | Sun 8th March 2009 - 10:21 am

Simon Hughes’s speech from yesterday morning is online to watch, and for your viewing convenience we present it here:

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The Voice

Vince warns against inflationary boom following recessionary bust

By The Voice | Fri 6th March 2009 - 9:33 am

Today’s Financial Times notes soothsayer and Deputy Lib Dem leader Vince Cable’s latest economic warning:

Vince Cable called the recession before it hit but now the Liberal Democrat has another worry preying on his mind: that Britain might find itself emerging quickly from the crisis and straight into a new era of rising inflation. On the day the Bank of England announced plans to pump £75bn into the economy, Mr Cable warned that this expansion could fuel a return to “old-style boom and bust” unless it were handled with extreme caution.

The Lib Dem Treasury spokesman is not known for his

…

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The Voice

A note of thanks from Nick and Miriam

By The Voice | Thu 5th March 2009 - 4:51 pm

Nick Clegg’s office has asked us to pass on the following message from Nick to Lib Dem Voice readers:

A big, big thank you from Miriam and myself to everyone who sent such generous messages to us when Miguel was born.

As he sleeps through each day, and keeps his parents wide awake by night, he seems blissfully unaware of all the goodwill from so many Liberal Democrats. But we’ll be sure to remind him when he’s old enough to appreciate it!

Many, many thanks again.

Nick and Miriam

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The Voice

Ros Scott’s Presidential report to party members

By The Voice | Tue 3rd March 2009 - 5:42 pm

We’re coming a bit belatedly to this, but in case LDV readers missed it, Lib Dem president Baroness Ros Scott blogger her February report to members over at Because Baronesses are people too. Here’s an excerpt:

My manifesto set out a number of areas where I wanted reform, but made it clear that there is no Presidential magic wand to make changes happen. I’m really pleased that progress is being made in many of these areas already, although it is still early days. The English Party are looking at selection rules for Westminster candidates and at the formal relationship between

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The Voice

Three Lib Dem councillors suspended

By The Voice | Tue 3rd March 2009 - 11:20 am

The Aberdeen Press and Journal reports,

Councillors who resigned from a local authority group have been suspended by their party and threatened with expulsion.

Paul Johnston, Sam Coull and Debra Storr quit the Aberdeenshire Council Liberal Democrat group, but remained members of the party, after a row over Donald Trump’s golf resort plans.

A spokesman said the Scottish Liberal Democrat executive committee voted to suspend the trio at a meeting on Saturday.

He added: “The party hope they will rejoin the Liberal Democrat group on the council, but the choice is now theirs.”

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The Voice

Forthcoming PPC selections

By The Voice | Sun 1st March 2009 - 2:40 pm

The Lib Dems 4 Parliament site brings news about a bumper set of selections closing in March:

GEDLING – PPC (28th Feb 2009).

HARWICH AND NORTH ESSEX – PPC (2nd Mar 2009).

CLACTON – PPC (2nd Mar 2009).

BECKENHAM – PPC (5th Mar 2009).

WELSH Region – PPC’s (6th Mar 2009).

WAKEFIELD – PPC (7th Mar 2009).

NORMANTON, PONTEFRACT AND CASTLEFORD – PPC (7th Mar 2009).

MORLEY AND OUTWOOD – PPC (7th Mar 2009).

HEMSWORTH – PPC (7th Mar 2009).

HARROW WEST AND HARROW EAST – PPC (13th Mar 2009).

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