This morning’s headlines had me singing into my hairbrush:
“My my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and Brown will meet his destiny in quite a similar way…”
Faced with a whole legion of bother (MPs’ expenses, this week’s elections, constitutional and electoral reform and rumours of a leadership coup) the Prime Minister marches into a critical week:
2 Big Stories
And yet: Cabinet revolt won’t force me out, declares Brown Today’s Independent reports Brown’s determination to stay on as PM and speculates on his plans to reshuffle the Cabinet:
Labour MPs return to the Commons in a grim frame of mind today after the half-term
Welcome to the Sunday outing for our Daily View. As it’s a Sunday, today’s comes with a special examination paper supplement. If you spot anything for future posts, do let us know on [email protected].
2 Big Stories
Opinion polls
It’s been a tale of two polls: a disappointing Populus poll on Saturday followed by a spectacularly good ICM poll in today’s Sunday Telegraph, putting the Liberal Democrats in second place in both general election and European election voting intentions:
The ICM poll for The Sunday Telegraph is the worst possible news for the Prime Minister as he enters his most important week since taking
We don’t do a Daily View 2 x 2 round-up on Saturdays, so instead here’s an open thread. What stories have caught your eye? What issues are on your mind? What do you think of our new Daily View 2 x 2 series? Discuss away in the comments below…
LDV’s daily glimpse into the world of media and views. Our biggest story today has already made the news here at LDV, but it’s too good for us not to trail again: Nick Clegg has launched a campaign for 100 days of proper discussion about real reform.
Much of today’s coverage is summed up perfectly by the Independent’s headline Brown v Cameron v Clegg, under which all three leaders set out their visions for the rebuilding of Britain’s broken politics. They are due to take party in cross-party talks according to the Guardian, talks to be led by that famed bastion of reform, Jack Straw. Perhaps that’s who Nick Clegg was thinking of when he said (to the Times): “There are prominent people in government who recognise that the game’s up.” Our friends in the Lords are
As we all return to work after the Bank Holiday weekend, the big issues I’ve picked for today’s Daily View are about governance: specifically, how the British state should relate to its citizens or how the world should govern the nuclear ambitions of a rogue state.
2 Big Stories
David Cameron is making a bid for reformist credentials with a wide-ranging speech on democratic accountability and the nature of politics and the state. Previewed in The Guardian, his remarks later today thoughtfully ponder ‘the post-bureaucratic age’ and try to appropriate liberal principles:
The Tory leader, who has in the past week ended the
Say what you like about the banks: they give great holiday.
A day for making plans, maybe catching up on a few of those odd jobs – like electoral reform, for example…
2 Big Stories
Alan Johnson writes in the Times, recommending the adoption of the Alternative Vote Plus system: this came out of the Jenkins Report (Independent Commission on the Voting System) over a decade ago.
“The adoption of AV+ would shift the political focus currently concentrated almost exclusively on a few swing voters in a handful of marginal seats. It would end the perversity of the party with the most
Welcome to the Sunday outing for The Voice’s new daily post series highlighting two big stories from the media and two “must read” blog posts from Liberal Democrats. As it’s a Sunday, there’s also a bonus extra supplement. If you spot anything for future posts, do let us know on [email protected]
2 Big Stories
MPs’ expenses
Heading into its third week, the MPs’ expense story shows no sign of abating. The latest scalp is that of Andrew MacKay, again. The story has been running for so long that not only was he one of its first victims (losing his Conservative Party job) but …
MPs’ expenses row enters third week
Yes, it’s a fortnight since the Telegraph began exposing some of the most extravagant claims MPs have been submitting at the taxpayers’ expense. Today it’s the turn of Labour MPs Ian Gibson and Ben Chapman, to feel the heat with both offering to stand down at the next election (though both deny any wrongdoing).
Meanwhile Tory MP Peter Luff (three lavatory seats, three food mixers, two microwaves and 10 sets of bed linen) has seemingly sought to outbid Labour’s Fraser Kemp (16 bedsheets) for the highest number of household goods purchased in …
The expenses row continues to rumble with the MP for my ancestral home of Leominster getting scalped by the Telegraph alongside Ruth Kelly and a duck, if the pictures are to be believed.
Meanwhile over the Daily Mail has been working hard to bring you this extreme comparison with Cornish MP Andrew George – they’ve found one of his constituents who commutes to LB Barking & Dagenham, but whose weekday residence is a £30 tent. There’s some grass left in Parliament Square, isn’t there? We could have a tent city for MPs …
At no cost to the taxpayer, Lib Dem Voice brings you this morning’s picks from the news and blogs (still dominated by the revelations about MPs’ expenses):
Michael Martin, the Commons Speaker, will today make a desperate appeal to stay in his job, as MPs plot to make him the most prominent casualty of the Westminster expenses furore.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, broke with convention yesterday in calling for Mr Martin to resign. David Cameron, Tory leader, refused to say how he would vote in a confidence motion to be
Welcome to the first Sunday outing for The Voice’s new daily post series highlighting two big stories from the media and two “must read” blog posts from Liberal Democrats. As it’s a Sunday, there’s also a bonus extra supplement. If you spot anything for future posts, do let us know on [email protected]
2 Big Stories
Indian elections
The big election story of the week is India: massive democracy, increasingly influential in the world and located right next to some of the world’s trouble spots which most make their impact felt here in the UK.
The election results, which have been coming through on Saturday, are looking good for the Congress Party. Indian politics are sufficiently complex and different from the UK’s that for Liberal Democrats it isn’t a simple matter of cheering on one party in particular, but overall it looks like religious extremists are faring poorly. The BBC has an extensive write-up of news as it came in, including the person with a majority of over 350,000, the political analyst who commented that expert predictions turned out to be less accurate than astrologers, the Twittering candidate and links through to lots more detail.
Parliament and Labour in race to the bottom
It’s a tough call at the moment as to who is taking the worst battering: Parliament’s reputation or the Labour Party, who are plumbing new polling depths and now bumping along in the low 20s. There are stories aplenty in the Sunday papers, but the one I’d pick out is The Observer’s round-up as it contains perhaps the oddest comment from a Minister:
“This has been Gordon being too scrupulous: it’s not that he doesn’t get it, but he has felt you have to take parliament with you,”
Silly me, I thought he’d tried to bounce Parliament with his expenses reform proposals and had to pull key parts after it turned out hardly anyone supported them.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
Is our electoral system partly to blame? Mark Reckons asks the question and does some analysis, concluding that the safer an MP’s seat, the more likely they are to have abused the system – and of course our electoral system means that many MPs have safe seats.
Our political system is still getting some things right
Meanwhile, Caron’s Musings rightly highlights that there is more to our political system than MPs’ expenses and lists some of the good things that MPs have done in the last week.
Sunday Bonus
For a bit of Sunday enjoyment, here’s a great spoof advert from last year’s American elections:
Our daily review and preview of the day’s big stories…
2 Big Stories
MPs’ expenses dominate the headlines … again
Another day, another bleak day for Parliamentary politics. Former Agriculture minister Elliot Morley was suspended from the Labour party for claiming £16,000 in expenses on a mortgage he had paid off. Meanwhile, Andrew MacKay, a senior aide to Tory leader David Cameron, resigned after claiming tens of thousands of pounds in second-home expenses on a London property that his wife, Tory MP Julie Kirkbride, designated as her main home. And as if that wasn’t enough, the House of Lords took the exceptional step …
Look, mum, we’re in the papers! And not in a good way. So far, the Lib Dems’ expense revelations in the Telegraph are pretty small beer, on the whole – but we’re not content with that, are we?
Meanwhile, in the blue corner, David Cameron is getting tough on the same issue. What I’d have given to be a fly on the wall in the meetings he had yesterday. Ever seen a man with a moat get a bollocking? Me neither, alas.
Welcome to what’s intended to be a daily feature here on LDV: an early preview of the two big news stories of the day, and a click-though to two of the must-read Lib Dem blog posts just published. Each day a member of the LDV collective will take their turn to bagpipe fact into news*.
Kira Collins Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...
Nonconformistradical "As a party we are aware of the absolute disaster our country’s current benefits system has become, where so many sticking plasters have been added by well-me...
Tom Bailey I cannot believe this is a serious policy proposal. This is just amateur scribblings on the back of a fag packet....
Katharine Pindar Competence and hard work do certainly win us council seats, I suppose, David Evans, and I would suggest 'stability' and 'reliability' as partner virtues we can ...
paul barker @David Evans
In London we ran on Competence & Hard Work, we made gains in places where we already ran The Council, everywhere else we went backward or went...
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The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Should Labour reconsider the Brexit red lines?
Raising a flap about letterboxes
Arriving at one of East Finchley's ghost platforms
Restrained
Chase Park fair photos
Kira Collins 
Nonconformistradical 
Tom Bailey 
Katharine Pindar 
paul barker 