Category Archives: LibLink

For highlighting articles by Lib Dems that have appeared elsewhere in the media.

Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Nick Clegg and Barbara Nalumu – We are proud of having ended child detention

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 30th October 2012 - 4:40 pm

One of the moments I will never forget from the heartbreaking night of the 2011 Holyrood election was our Edinburgh Central candidate Alex Cole-Hamilton’s tweet:

Ending Labour’s  horrendous policy, whereby children were locked up for indeterminate periods in horrible institutions like Yarl’s Wood and Dungavel, is one of the great things to come out of this coalition. Nobody’s saying the UK Border Agency is now perfect. Far from it. But on this, there can be no doubt that the Liberal Democrats ended an unacceptable, inhumane scandal.

Nick Clegg …

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Stephen Tall

“Liberalism shouldn’t be about the safe option, it should always be a risky thing to take on.” Alistair Carmichael on life in the Coalition as Lib Dem chief whip

By Stephen Tall | Tue 30th October 2012 - 2:15 pm

There’s a terrific interview with Lib Dem chief whip Alistair Carmichael in this month’s Total Politics magazine, in which he gives a typically candid view on what life is like as within the Coalition — and how the Lib Dem whipping operation differs from Labour’s and the Tories’. Here’s a few excerpts:

“I would say the difference between us and the other two parties in this place is that we can get to a position of unity. In fact, it’s much more important to be able to persuade a liberal,

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Paul Walter

LibLink: Nick Clegg remembering the Holocaust is the greatest antidote to extremism

By Paul Walter | Mon 22nd October 2012 - 2:54 pm

In the Independent, Nick Clegg writes movingly of the need for constant reminders of the horrors of the Holcaust. This follows his recent visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with students organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust:

The constant threats of racism, Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism still lurk every day. Anti-Semitism has been described as a light sleeper. Cemeteries are still vandalised, discredited conspiracy theories are spread over the internet, Jewish people

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NewsHound

LibLink: Ed Davey – Our £1,000 giveaways will help with rising bills

By NewsHound | Sun 21st October 2012 - 1:15 pm

On the off-chance that Voice readers missed The Sun’s interview with Lib Dem energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey on Friday, here’s an excerpt:

In a grim admission to millions of hard-pressed Brits, Energy Secretary Ed Davey said ministers cannot reverse rising global fuel prices. But he insisted that they can help to ease the blow for millions of households hit by the global trend. In a bid to placate furious consumers, he today

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Nick T

LibLink: Guy Verhofstadt MEP – Crisis shows why EU must renew its vows

By Nick T | Thu 11th October 2012 - 9:24 am

Writing in the Financial Times, liberal leader in the European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt and his colleague and fellow contributor to this new book Daniel Cohn-Bendit (leader of the Greens) set out their vision for the future of the EU after the Eurozone crisis:

The crisis has shown up the key weaknesses in economic governance at EU level where a monetary policy was introduced without a parallel fiscal policy. Unlike other global currencies such as the

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Nick T

LibLink: Richard Reeves on One Nationism

By Nick T | Thu 4th October 2012 - 4:37 pm

Over at the CentreForum blog, Richard Reeves, former Director of Strategy to Nick Clegg and now associate director of CentreForum, has a post discussing the “political movement that now sweeps all before it”: One Nationism.

Here’s an extract:

All the main political parties have now made their claim to be the true heirs to “One Nation” politics.

The Conservatives were ahead of the game by a century or so, of course. But in more recent years, non Tory leaders have turned to One Nationism to pitch for the centre ground: though none as audaciously as Ed Miliband this week.

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Stephen Tall

LibLink: Jonathan Portes on wealth taxes & ensuring the ‘rich’ pay their fair share

By Stephen Tall | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 8:25 pm

Jonathan Portes, director of NIESR and former senior Treasury official, is not a Lib Dem — he recently contributed to LibDemVoice to critique the Coalition’s economic policy — but he is addicted to robust evidence. And the recent spate of right-wing commentators rubbishing the Lib Dems’ call for increased wealth taxes to help tackle the current economic crisis has roused his ire:

The Liberal Democrats call for a “mansion tax” (that is, a higher rate of council tax for the most expensive properties), possibly supplemented by some form of wealth tax seems to have provoked a peculiarly illogical misuse of

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The Voice

LibLink: Stephen Tall – Lib Dem conference is this week’s liberal hero

By The Voice | Sun 30th September 2012 - 8:45 am

Over at CentreForum’s blog, Stephen Tall has proposed the Lib Dem conference as the think-tank’s latest ‘Liberal Hero of the Week’ for its stance in opposing the Coalition’s plans for secret courts. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s not the fact that David Cameron doesn’t know the translation of ‘Magna Carta’ that worries me. It’s that he doesn’t appear to understand its central tenet:

    No free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of

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NewsHound

LibLink: Stephen Tall – The Lib Dem Conference That Didn’t Bark

By NewsHound | Wed 26th September 2012 - 7:55 am

Over at the Huffington Post, LibDemVoice co-editor Stephen Tall assesses the party conference. His verdict? What’s significant is what hasn’t happened. Here’s how his piece starts:

On the face of it this has been a pretty tepid, even dull, Lib Dem conference. No rows, cock-ups or defeats. But it’s probably been the most important party gathering since the special conference in May 2010 when the party dipped its hand in blood to sign the Coalition Agreement.

Why do I say that? Because of what didn’t happen. Political commentators, especially of the left (yes, I’m looking at you, Polly) – the folk whose

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Stephen Tall

Paddy on the Coalition, joining the party & that Sun headline

By Stephen Tall | Tue 25th September 2012 - 9:50 am

There’s a fantastic interview with Paddy Ashdown by The Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone published here. As you’d expect it’s crammed full of anecdotes and quotable bon mots. I’ve picked out just three to enjoy…

Paddy on the Coalition

He regards those who feel betrayed by the party as weak or naive – notably Guardian leader writers who backed them in 2010. “The Guardian feels like a jilted lover. It hates the Liberal Democrats. The Guardian feels personally betrayed because for the very first time it gave the Liberal Democrats its support and what did we do? We went off with the Tories.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Ming Campbell – Afghanistan: We have to see it through till 2014

By NewsHound | Mon 24th September 2012 - 5:00 pm

Former Lib Dem leader Sir Ming Campbell has taken to the pages of the Independent to set out his views on British troop involvement in Afghanistan, and the need to be realistic about the speed at which British troops can be withdrawn from Helmand. Here’s an excerpt:

It is naive to suggest that, even if we began today, we could be out by Christmas. Withdrawal of nearly 10,000 troops and their equipment is not achieved by waving a wand. During any withdrawal, forces are at their most vulnerable. What additional protection measures would be required? What equipment would we be able

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NewsHound

LibLink: David Laws – No more “nothing for nothing” politics

By NewsHound | Sat 22nd September 2012 - 3:20 pm

Over at The Sun newspaper, the Lib Dems’ new schools minister David Laws has written an article arguing that the Coalition parties are keen to put the summer’s tensions behind them and to to-boot the Government in the weeks to come. Here’s an excerpt:

Some people even started to speculate that the Coalition would end. Or that we would be in for years of drift and dither. But I believe that both leaders have looked over the edge of the Coalition cliff — and neither likes what he sees. A break-up of the Coalition would be an economic disaster. And the

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NewsHound

LibLink: Paul Burstow – Why is the Coalition failing to tackle our broken care system?

By NewsHound | Sat 22nd September 2012 - 11:45 am

Lib Dem MP Paul Burstow, until the reshuffle the Lib Dem health minister, has written an article in today’s Telegraph with a plea for the Coalition to ‘be bold and take the decisions needed to fix our broken social care system’. Here are a couple of excerpts, first looking at why Paul fears the reforms he pushed in government might not go anywhere:

The Coalition understood the “urgent need for reform”, and has been wrestling with these issues since May 2010. In July the White Paper I drafted was published. It tackles much that is wrong with care. Widely welcomed, it

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NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack – The Home Office has got it wrong about online snooping ‘safeguards’

By NewsHound | Thu 20th September 2012 - 9:25 am

The Voice’s Mark Pack has taken to the (web)pages of The Spectator to dispute the case put by Home Office Minister James Brokenshire about the Draft Communications Data Bill:

What do you do if a regulator has failed? Leave them unreformed and instead give them greater powers? That is the line Home Office Minister James Brokenshire is arguing.

The regulator in question is the Interception of Communications Commissioner and the powers relate to online monitoring. For the Draft Communications Data Bill would not only give the government far more scope to monitor what we do online, but Brokenshire also argues we should be

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Michael Gove and Nick Clegg – A new exam will get the best out of all our children

By Mary Reid | Tue 18th September 2012 - 12:45 pm

The Evening Standard has published a joint statement by Michael Gove and Nick Clegg on the new Ebacc proposals. It begins:

We both grew up in different circumstances and chose distinctive paths. Spending your first few months in care, before being brought up by a Labour-voting mother in a Labour-voting Scottish city isn’t a natural preparation for Tory politics. Likewise, working for a former Tory Cabinet minister in Brussels and rejecting his invitation to follow in his footsteps and ending up standing as a Liberal Democrat in Sheffield instead isn’t exactly an orthodox political path either.

But while we both chose

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Stephen Tall – Will the reshuffle actually matter?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 5th September 2012 - 12:55 pm

Our own Stephen Tall has been analysing the Reshuffle over at Endeavour Public Affairs.

He says that an opportunity to pursue a more radical economic agenda has been missed:

The Government should be building on this with a radical and popular agenda to create a more competitive and much, much fairer economy, as I argued here on LibDemVoice.  This would mean further banking reform than currently proposed, for example by separating completely retail and investment banking, and parcelling up and selling on the currently state-owned banks into a number of smaller ones to create greater plurality in the system.  More than this, it

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Stephen Tall

LibLink: Anthony Wells ‘On that poll of Lib Dem members’

By Stephen Tall | Sat 25th August 2012 - 2:20 pm

As my LibDemVoice colleague Caron Lindsay noted here, our poll asking when Lib Dem members want Nick Clegg to stand down has attracted a fair bit of coverage this week (including in the Daily Mail: I’ve showered three times since reading it, I still feel unclean).

Over at his essential UK Polling Report blog, the best online guide to British polling, Anthony Wells has taken a closer look at this survey — and at the validity of LibDemVoice surveys in general — and here’s an excerpt of what he says:

Stephen Tall and Mark Pack don’t make huge claims

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Stephen Tall

Three interesting reads for the weekend: on the Lib Dem mission, campaigning and Coalition

By Stephen Tall | Sat 25th August 2012 - 11:25 am

Here are three articles about the Lib Dems well worth a read this Bank Holiday weekend… Enjoy!

The Lib Dems don’t need a new leader. They need a point (Ian Birrell)

After two torrid years in office, a fundamental question hangs heavy over the Liberal Democrats: what is the point of them these days? The party has long been ill-defined, split between social democrats on the left and market liberals on the right. In many ways, their brilliance as they grew under successive leaders over the past four decades was this blurred brand, ensuring disgruntled voters of any persuasion could see

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Christine Jardine – Balance of Scottish power

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 23rd August 2012 - 9:25 am

Until the Summer, Christine Jardine was deep at the heart of Government as a special adviser on Scottish media based in Downing Street. She’s now returned to Scotland and full time Liberal Democrat politics.

This week, in the Scotsman, she argued that over reliance on land based wind farms can hurt the communities where they are based and predominantly benefits the landowners who pocket the subsidy and don’t pass it on to local people. She argued that more attention should be given to offshore and tidal projects, like the one Scottish Secretary Mike Moore was so enthusiastic about a few …

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NewsHound

LibLink: John Pugh MP – With hindsight, Cable’s deficit reduction plan looks better than Osborne’s

By NewsHound | Tue 21st August 2012 - 1:20 pm

Lib Dem MP John Pugh has written a thoughtful, balanced piece on economic policy for the New Statesman website. He freely admits he has voted for every part of George Osborne’s economic strategy brought before the Commons (“I did not know if it would achieve all its major objectives but I certainly did not know it would not”) but says the facts are plain: it’s not working. Here’s an excerpt:

Yes, jobs are being created in the private sector, unemployment is not moving upwards, the deficit is down, our export markets are engaging with the emerging economies, inflation is low and

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NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack – Give people power over the sharing of their data

By NewsHound | Thu 16th August 2012 - 12:25 pm

The Voice‘s Mark Pack has been writing about individual electoral registration for the IPPR’s website:

If I were to move, I would be quite happy to let the gas company, the TV Licensing authority, the local council’s tax department, the electoral registration services and many others know, all in one go.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack – Voters get to choose how they think

By NewsHound | Wed 15th August 2012 - 11:50 am

Over on the Biteback Publishing website, The Voice‘s Mark Pack has been writing about how voters make their decisions:

One of the findings increasingly coming out from research into how we make decisions is that often we make a decision using our subconscious and only afterwards come up with a justification for it. Our subconscious decides, our conscious rationalises.

It is an intriguing – and in some ways, scary – finding, that is best illustrated by a clever experiment where people were shown photographs of two similar, but different, people and asked to pick which one was the most attractive. They were then given that photograph and asked to explain the reason for their decision.

Except that what the researchers did was try out a bit of sleight of hand, so sometimes the person was actually given the photograph of the other person.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Tavish Scott – Clegg’s stance gives Lib Dems new hope

By NewsHound | Mon 13th August 2012 - 9:15 am

Former Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott has an article in The Scotsman this week looking at what he terms hyperbolically Nick Clegg’s “ripping up the UK government’s coalition agreement” after the Tories’ decision to block Lords reform:

For the party, this was a bitter pill to swallow. Many people were attracted to the Lib Dems because of constitutional reform. A Scottish Parliament, a Bill of Rights and elections using fairer voting systems are the DNA of most Lib Dems.

Getting rid of the unelected House of Lords is part of the package of moving Britain into the 21st century. Reform has

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NewsHound

LibLink: Tom Papworth – why Norman Baker is my Liberal Hero

By NewsHound | Sat 4th August 2012 - 11:20 am

Over at liberal think-tank CentreForum’s blog, Tom Papworth has nominated Lib Dem MP and transport minister Norman Baker for the honorary title ‘Liberal Hero of the Week’. The reason? Norman’s libertarian stance on the proposal that wearng cycle helmets should be compulsory:

I think anybody who rides a bike without wearing a helmet is taking an enormous risk. I’ve fallen off my bike in the past and had my helmet (rather than my head) bounce off the tarmac. I also know that cycling can be very dangerous; the chair of one the neighbouring constituency party was killed a few years back

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Nick T

LibLink: Norman Lamb – How can we bring consumer law into the digital age?

By Nick T | Thu 2nd August 2012 - 12:53 pm

Norman LambWriting for Which? in his capacity as consumer affairs minister, here’s what Norman Lamb had to say about his hopes for improving consumer protection:

I want to develop a single, comprehensive set of shoppers’ rights, which sets out in plain English, all the rights and remedies that consumers have. The intention is to drive up business standards and help you settle issues much more quickly and easily.

At the start of July we launched a consultation seeking your views on proposals to strengthen the law on goods, services, and digital

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Stephen Tall: Liberal Hero of the Week: Danny Boyle

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 1st August 2012 - 11:55 am

There were tears, laughter and wide-eyed wonderment at Liberal Democrat Voice Towers on Friday night as we marvelled at Danny Boyle’s innovative Olympic opening ceremony. While some of us will remember Boyle as the guy who persuaded the Queen to “jump” out of a helicopter, our own Stephen Tall has looked a little deeper.

Over at CentreForum’s blog, he’s awarded Danny Boyle the accolade of Liberal Hero of the Week. While Labour supporting Boyle may smart at this, Stephen talks about what the Ceremony conveyed to him:

First, the human potentiality which has formed Britain, made her what she is today: from music

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NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack on how party leaders should be speaking this autumn

By NewsHound | Tue 31st July 2012 - 4:50 pm

Over on the Biteback Publishing website, The Voice’s Mark Pack has been penning some words of advice for those planning party leader conference speeches:

Technological change has frequently altered the speaking styles of political orators. The exaggerated hand movements and booming voice projections of the pre-electrical era were essential for being seen and heard. As film footage spread, that approach increasingly came over as histrionic. The total distanced travelled by the hands and arms of politicians during their speeches therefore declined, thanks to the adoption of a more homely, direct style. Radio and TV both brought about their own changes, followed by the impact of the teleprompter in the 1980s…

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Stephen Tall – Vince Cable leading the Lib Dems? Is it time for Plan V?

By Mary Reid | Sat 28th July 2012 - 9:35 am

Stephen Tall, co-editor of Lib Dem Voice, has been blogging away at Huffington Post.

Lots of politicians have 20:20 hindsight. Foresight, however, is generally in shorter supply, which explains why Vince Cable is being acclaimed once again, tipped at the age of 69 both as a potential successor to either the 40-something George Osborne as Chancellor and/or the 40-something Nick Clegg as Lib Dem leader. The ‘Septuagenarian Sage of Twickenham’ is enjoying a Second Coming-of-age. Age does not weary him, nor the years condemn. What’s his secret?

Principally, it’s Vince’s tendency

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Matthew Oakeshott – The Treasury needs a new team to stop this slide back into recession

By Mary Reid | Fri 27th July 2012 - 2:55 pm

In The Guardian Matthew Oakeshott writes:

Britain’s economy after this week’s grim GDP figures looks like an old steam train struggling up Shap Fell. George Osborne, the driver, is doing his best but there’s just not enough coal in the firebox, the train’s lost momentum, and it’s slipping back down the hill. We need two massive growth locomotives, called housing and banking, with a new team on the footplate to stop the slide.

That’s why I’ve been saying we need a bold plan A+, making banks lend, especially RBS,

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Steve Webb – I will not hesitate to take action on pension charges

By Mary Reid | Tue 24th July 2012 - 2:24 pm

Steve Webb writes in The Telegraph:

Almost 11 million of the adult population are not saving enough for retirement. So if millions of people are not going to get a nasty shock when they retire we need some big changes in the world of pensions. …So what is the truth about pension scheme charges, and what is the Government doing to make sure that people get

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