Author Archives: Web Magpie

Web Magpie, collecting shiny things from the internet. Magpie photograph by Steve Bittinger, Flickr CCL CCL licence
Web Magpie

How a Liberal pamphlet from 1980 led to the collapse of the British political system

By Web Magpie | Sun 2nd February 2020 - 2:05 pm

Original cover artwork from “The Theory and Practice of Community Politics”

Over on Medium.com, Councillor Nick Barlow has written a remarkably astute retrospective on the 1980 pamphlet “The Theory And Practice of Community Politics” written by Bernard Greaves and Gordon Lishman and published by the Association of Liberal Councillors (now the ALDC).

Nick’s narrative takes us from the ideologically based idea of Community Politics in the 1970s and how it morphed into the quite different concept of Customer Service Politics, which dominates our civic arena today:

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Posted in Liberal History and Online politics | Tagged , , , , and | 18 Comments
Web Magpie

Nick Tyrone: “What the Lib Dems keep failing to understand about the Labour Party” ****WARNING: CONTAINS ORANGE BOOK MENTION****

By Web Magpie | Mon 27th January 2020 - 2:49 pm

Embed from Getty Images

On his website, writer Nick Tyrone has written a typically astute and pithy article which cuts to the heart of the relationship of the Liberal Democrats to the Labour party:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 81 Comments
Web Magpie

Our President on the timetable for the leadership election

By Web Magpie | Sat 18th January 2020 - 7:01 pm

Our party President and Co-leader, Mark Pack has just commented on the leadership election timetable on his blog:

The Board discussed in some detail different possible options for the timetable, and we carefully considered the pros and cons of, for example, having a leadership election that took place sooner. Considerations such as wanting to get our review of last year’s elections done first and also avoiding distracting key activists from the May elections were weighed against the benefits of having a new leader sooner.

The close of nominations date will also

…

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Web Magpie

Sir John Curtice on the Lib Dem general election performance

By Web Magpie | Fri 17th January 2020 - 2:06 pm


Embed from Getty Images

Jonathan Fryer has blogged about this week’s presentation at the National Liberal Club by Sir John Curtice entitled: “The 2019 Election: A Tale of Hope and Disappointment”.

Jonathan notes the following points about the drop-off of Lib Dem support during the election campaign itself:

Many commentators at the time also attributed the fall in LibDem support to (1) Jo Swinson’s call to Revoke Article 50, rather than pitching wholeheartedly for a second EU Referendum, and (2) her claim to be a potential PM in waiting, despite the modest number of LibDem MPs (albeit supplemented by both Labour and Conservative defections). However, Professor Curtice said polling, notably from YouGov, did not support that assumption. Instead, he highlighted three conclusions about the election result based on his research:

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 23 Comments
Web Magpie

LibLink: Wera Hobhouse – Without proportional representation, there’s no future for moderate politics in Brexit Britain

By Web Magpie | Fri 3rd January 2020 - 10:10 am


Embed from Getty Images

Over on the Independent, Wera Hobhouse MP argues that the whole EU referendum and ensuing mess came about due to the faults of the First Past the Post voting system, and has now left us with a government elected by 44% of voters which can deliver any Brexit it wants, despite 52% of voters voting for parties committed to a People’s Vote or revoking Article 50:

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , , and | 49 Comments
Web Magpie

LibLink: Vince Cable – we need to learn lessons from Nigel Farage

By Web Magpie | Tue 31st December 2019 - 9:59 am

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Over on the Independent website, Vince Cable, with typical wisdom, conducts a post-mortem on the “remain” campaign. He advises that we need to learn lessons from Nigel Farage, such as campaigning outside of Westminster through social media and other non-parliamentary means:

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , and | 134 Comments
Web Magpie

Nick Tyrone: At least the general election result has buried the UK’s flirtation with direct democracy

By Web Magpie | Thu 19th December 2019 - 9:45 am


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On his website, writer Nick Tyrone has written a post entitled “Here’s one thing that was definitely positive about the general election result”.

In it, he argues that at least the general election has killed off the UK experiment with direct democracy and led to a resumption of our historical representative democarcy:

One of the things that has infected UK politics since June 2016 has been this clash between direct and representative democracy, with direct democracy often being given the greater nod by both the public and the media. The Leavers began to treat the referendum result as if it was the ultimate democratic event for all time, one that trumps every other election that has ever been and will ever be; Remainers played the same game for the most part, campaigning for a second referendum. It was as if we had changed the entire constitution without anyone being consulted.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 17 Comments
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