Category Archives: LibLink

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

NewsHound

LibLink: Tuition fees roundup

By NewsHound | Tue 7th December 2010 - 11:24 pm

Ahead of Thursday’s vote on student fees, advice is coming in thick and fast.

Here’s what some senior Lib Dems have been writing publicly on the issue.

First, Chris Rennard, who concludes:

The crucial test for wavering Liberal Democrat MPs this week should be: is what has now been negotiated fairer and more progressive than the system Labour left behind? If it is, and I believe that it is, then I believe they should vote for it. For me, there is a simpler test. Under these new proposals, I know that an 18-year-old like me who had no parental income would

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Alex Foster

LibLink: two pieces in New Statesman

By Alex Foster | Thu 2nd December 2010 - 9:31 pm

Two pieces in the New Statesman have crossed my desk recently, and I thought I’d pass them on.

First, a quick Q&A with Lib Dem peer Julia Neuberger, including this rather positive outlook:

Are we all doomed?
Absolutely not! Not only are we not doomed, we’ve got a bloody great responsibility to turn things around when we feel as if we are.

Me, I always feel as if the Eco-Apocalypse is just around the corner.

And secondly, David Laws pens a piece in reply to Andrew Adonis’s review of his book.

I am one of those many politicians across all parties who admire Andrew Adonis.

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NewsHound

Vince: there has been no betrayal

By NewsHound | Sun 21st November 2010 - 8:45 am

The BBC is reporting that Vince Cable has argued that there’s been no betrayal of students by the Lib Dems, and that he’s working to get the best deal for students.

We didn’t break a promise. We made a commitment in our manifesto, we didn’t win the election. We then entered into a coalition agreement, and it’s the coalition agreement that is binding upon us and which I’m trying to honour

Vince speaks in an interview to be broadcast on the Politics Show later today.

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Helen Duffett

LibLink: Tim Farron – Tuition fees are the poll tax of our generation

By Helen Duffett | Fri 12th November 2010 - 9:43 am

Over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, Tim Farron MP reiterates his pledge to vote against tuition fees, calling them “the poll tax of our generation” – a reference to the angry scenes at Wednesday’s demonstration.

In his article, Tim makes the distinction between the NUS pledge against tuition fees, signed by Parliamentary candidates before the General Election (which he intends to abide by), the Liberal Democrat manifesto (which became a negotiating document) and the Coalition Agreement (which contains 65% of the Liberal Democrat manifesto).

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NewsHound

LibLink: John Hemming – Scrap tuition fees? Yes we have

By NewsHound | Mon 8th November 2010 - 2:25 pm

Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, Lib Dem MP for Birmingham Yardley John Hemming has penned a robust defence of the Coalition’s plans for higher education funding in England, taking as his starting point the IFS’s findings that more than half of students will pay 9% of income over £21,000 a year for 30 years: “In other words this new system is a graduate tax in all but name.” Here’s an excerpt:

It is, however, not an open-ended graduate tax as it has a cap. The cap works in such a way that graduates with higher earnings get to

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NewsHound

LibLink: Julian Glover – Ten tips for the Liberal Democrats

By NewsHound | Thu 4th November 2010 - 10:15 am

The Guardian’s Julian Glover is one of the very few commentators to emerge as a True Believer in the Coalition, and a champion of the Lib Dems’ role within it… much to the undisguised fury of regular inhabitants of the paper’s Comment is Free website. He’s popped up again to offer the party 10 tips to prove the Coalition-sceptics wrong, preserve our identity, and try to establish a distinctive message. It’s well worth reading in full, but here’s three…

1) Don’t panic. There is no crisis. Don’t believe people who tell you that there is. The polls are poor, not catastrophic

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NewsHound

LibLink: Reel in the non-doms – Matthew Oakeshott

By NewsHound | Fri 29th October 2010 - 9:27 am

Writing for the Guardian earlier this week Liberal Democrat peer Matthew Oakeshott said,

It’s time to put a time limit on non-dom status, the widest tax loophole of them all. Did you know you can inherit non-dom status? Just like a hereditary peerage, it passes down the male line. You are born a non-dom and stay one – unless you disclaim it. Hereditary peers and hereditary non-doms must both go…

Cheating tax is a deep-seated, pervasive, pernicious disease that infects our body politic. Tax cheats are the Bad Society, not the “big society”. Of course it has always gone on and it’s

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NewsHound

LibLink: Now Nick Clegg is leading the Tories by the nose

By NewsHound | Wed 27th October 2010 - 3:19 pm

Ann McElvoy, writing in the Evening Standard, adds an interesting perspective on Coalition life:

Look, for instance, at the policy writhing on tuition fees of the main party in power. On Monday, I chaired a meeting at the University of London on the future of higher education. David Willetts, the universities minister, ran the gauntlet of students shouting “F*** the fees” with the look of a man who knows that he is to this generation of uppity students what Keith Joseph was in my youth: permanent quarry.

Yet his message, through clenched teeth, was that fees would still be capped under

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Iain Roberts

Liblink: Liberal Vision grills Kramer and Farron

By Iain Roberts | Tue 26th October 2010 - 5:34 pm

Liberal Vision have published interviews conducted with each of the candidates for the Liberal Democrat presidency: Susan Kramer and Tim Farron.

Read the Farron interview here and the Kramer interview here.

As a taster:

Liberal Vision: In one sentence why should people who read our blog back your campaign?

Susan Kramer: Overwhelmingly it’s to be the voice for the grass roots of the party, creating that two-way connection between the grass roots and the leadership, and keeping us unified. We shouldn’t let other pull us apart

Tim Farron: Because they want the Liberal Democrats to win, and because

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NewsHound

Liblink: Liberator interviews the presidential hopefuls

By NewsHound | Tue 26th October 2010 - 11:15 am

Liberator magazine has asked the two Lib Dem presidential contenders those tough questions – read their responses here.

A taster to whet your appetite:

Q5: How will you ensure that you gain regular and meaningful access to the party leader?

Farron: He won’t be able to get rid of me. Being an MP gives me direct access to the media to get our message across and it also gives me close access to Nick. I’ll be a critical friend to the coalition and a candid friend to Nick. As President, I would carry a mandate from the members to ensure that the

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NewsHound

Liblink: Simon Hughes is no rebel

By NewsHound | Tue 26th October 2010 - 9:49 am

Our very own Stephen Tall writes on The Guardian’s Comment is Free:

Simon is neither a stooge nor a destructive malcontent. Not only is he a loyal supporter of Nick Clegg personally – he was one of Nick’s key backers in the contest with Chris Huhne to be leader, and the two meet regularly – but he is a steadfast advocate of the coalition itself – in general, if not always in every particular. The last thing he is, or wants to be seen as, is the Lib Dems’ very own leader of the opposition. So why are his public

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Helen Duffett

LibLink: David Laws – Why I’m proud of the pupil premium

By Helen Duffett | Mon 25th October 2010 - 6:35 pm

Over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, David Laws writes of the importance of delivering the Pupil Premium – a key Liberal Democrat election pledge.

He corrects two misconceptions. First, that the pupil premium is not additional money:

This is nonsense. Without the pupil premium, I suspect that the budget for schools would have been based on a per pupil cash freeze for the period up to 2015. That would have meant a real cut in schools funding over the next few years. Instead, schools funding will rise by 0.1% (above inflation) each year until 2015.

The second misconception:

It would, however, be

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Helen Duffett

LibLink: Floella Benjamin – I want to be judged on my actions in a political place

By Helen Duffett | Sun 24th October 2010 - 7:23 pm

Today’s Independent on Sunday features an interview with Baroness Benjamin of Beckenham – Floella to the rest of us – which ranges over a variety of topics, from Floella’s childhood, her work on stage and TV, her charity and campaigning work, to her future ambitions.

Some of the stories featured in Floella’s recent maiden speech in the House of Lords, but there are some unfamiliar ones, which she has included in her new book about her teenage years Arms of Britannia:

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Helen Duffett

Any treasures in Nick Clegg’s Desert Island Discs?

By Helen Duffett | Sun 24th October 2010 - 6:02 pm

Nick Clegg appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs this morning, and revealed his eight essential tunes, as well as a book and a luxury item with which to be marooned.

You can listen to the whole programme on iPlayer here but for the record, here’s Nick’s list:

  1. Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor (played by Idil Biret)
  2. Sunday Morning Coming Down (Johnny Cash)
  3. The Cross (Prince)
  4. Petit Pays (Cesaria Evora)
  5. Street Spirit (Radiohead)
  6. Life on Mars (David Bowie)
  7. Waka Waka – the theme to the 2010 World Cup (Shakira)
  8. Schubert’s Impromptu No.3 in G Flat Major (played by Alfred Brendel)
  • Book: The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
  • Luxury: A stash of cigarettes

    • As guilty pleasures go, it’s a pretty safe list; Desert Island Discs is a chance for famous people to judiciously bury treasure for the listeners to find, and from there to form their impression.

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: David Laws and Julian Astle – Coalition must not waste the pupil premium

    By NewsHound | Mon 18th October 2010 - 6:58 pm

    Over at the Financial Times today, former Lib Dem cabinet minister David Laws and CentreForum’s director Julian Astle write about the potential of the ‘pupil premium’ to transform the life chances of pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds — but argue that schools must be held accountable for using the money directly for this purpose. Here’s an excerpt:

    The pupil premium, which for the first time will see a universal service underpinned by an explicitly pro-poor funding system, sits front-and-centre in this agenda.

    At present there is additional school funding for young people from deprived backgrounds, but it is allocated in

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    NewsHound

    IFS: Browne offers “a graduate tax by another name”

    By NewsHound | Sat 16th October 2010 - 9:43 am

    The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have looked at the Browne Report. Their conclusion raises some interesting points.

    our analysis suggests that graduates with higher earnings would repay unambiguously more than their lower-earning counterparts.

    Under Lord Browne’s proposals, this would for many become a 30-year graduate tax of 9% above £21,000 (with this threshold indexed in line with earnings). Indeed, for the lowest-earning 30% of graduates the actual level of fees makes no difference to how much they repay

    Paradoxically, therefore, the more fees go up, the more the system approximates a graduate tax – indeed, a pure graduate tax

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Interview with Lib Dem Tower Hamlets’ mayoral candidate John Griffiths

    By NewsHound | Sun 10th October 2010 - 8:32 pm

    Over at Dave Hill’s London Blog on the Guardian website, there’s a candid and in-depth interview with John Griffiths, the Lib Dems’ candidate in the contest to become the directly elected Mayor of the London borough of Tower Hamlets. Here’s an excerpt:

    … Griffiths knows what he’d do if he won. “The main function the mayor has to perform is to be an advocate, a champion, for the borough,” he says. “In the present situation, with a government of a different political hue from that of the Council, it’s critical that there’s someone there who can really stand up for

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Stephen Gilbert – It’s time for an equal, gender-neutral, marriage law

    By NewsHound | Tue 21st September 2010 - 7:05 pm

    Over at The Independent, Lib Dem MP for Newquay & St Austell Stephen Gilbert explains his support for equal LGBT rights, which took another step forward today with the Lib Dem conference support for equal marriage. Here’s an excerpt:

    … despite the repeal of Section 28, the equalisation of the age of consent, same-sex adoption and civil partnerships; homophobia still rears its ugly head in playgrounds, workplaces and even in the home. It’s unacceptable. It’s an individual’s right to live their lives as they see fit, without discrimination, with personal privacy, with equal rights in front of the law. That’s

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Chris Rennard – Lib Dems must stress where they stand out

    By NewsHound | Mon 20th September 2010 - 7:25 pm

    Over at the Financial Times, former Lib Dem chief executive Lord (Chris) Rennard surveys the political scene and suggests policy areas where Nick Clegg can show how the party is making an impact in government. Chris notes the problems of being the junior party in a Coalition:

    Junior coalition partners in many countries are familiar with getting the blame for what is unpopular and failing to get the credit for what goes well. Nick Clegg’s first priority has to be to show that the coalition works – even with unlikely partners – while maintaining the party’s distinctiveness. If he cannot demonstrate

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Tim Farron – Why I want to be president of the Liberal Democrats

    By NewsHound | Mon 20th September 2010 - 4:17 pm

    Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, Lib Dem MP and party presidential hopeful Tim Farron writes about his aim to inspire members to be proud of our party and work hard for elections and for the referendum. Here’s an excerpt:

    When I read people telling us that this coalition government is “turning the clock back to the 1980s” because of the cuts, I know that this is witless rubbish – but I’ll be honest with you, those barbs really hurt me. I was brought up by a single mum, in significant poverty in Lancashire in Thatcher’s Britain. I went

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Evan Harris – Nick Clegg’s major error

    By NewsHound | Mon 20th September 2010 - 9:40 am

    Over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, former Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris develops some of the points he made at Sunday’s LibDemVoice.org fringe (which you can listen to here) — that while he’s broadly supportive of the Coalition he rejects entirely Nick’s claim that the austerity cuts can be “fair”. Here’s an excerpt:

    The progressive wing of the Lib Dems broadly supports the coalition and the agreement underpinning it … The party voted to endorse the coalition agreement, but we did not vote to endorse the implementation of illiberal or unfair government policies that have emerged since. The

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Mark Pack – Coalition is like getting some chocolate but having to eat your broccoli

    By NewsHound | Sun 19th September 2010 - 7:10 pm

    Lib Dem Voice co-editor Mark Pack was interviewed for BBC One’s The Politics Show (East) on what the mood of conference was likely to be. Here’s the write-up on the Beeb’s site:

    The Lib Dem Party is in a pensive mood, we are told, by Mark Pack from Lib Dem Voice, a website for grassroots supporters. Although Lib Dems are pleased to be in government, they are not as upbeat as you may imagine at their first Conference in power for several generations.

    There is a balance to be struck between finally pushing through Lib Dem policies and having to support a

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Olly Grender – Should the Lib Dems battle to be distinctive?

    By NewsHound | Sun 19th September 2010 - 4:25 pm

    Over at the New Statesman, former Lib Dem director of communciations, Olly Grender, ponders the real question dominating the Liverpool conference. Not ‘Do you support the Coalition?’ (the vast majority of members do), but rather the key dilemma: “How much do we celebrate our separateness in government versus how much do we argue that this is a fully integrated team?”

    Here’s her conclusion:

    So what is the correct answer? Celebrate the differences? Or talk about the team? I suspect that the holy Grail of “being distinctive” at a national rather than local level is far less realisable than people think. In

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Vince Cable – Proud of our record, and our programme

    By NewsHound | Sun 19th September 2010 - 1:55 pm

    Over at The Independent today, Lib Dem secretary of state for business, skills and innovation Vince Cable declares unequivocally that he will be trying to convince the Liberal Democrat conference that the Coalition’s austerity programme of cuts are right and will be fair. Here’s an excerpt:

    What will matter for my party and the country at large is whether fiscal discipline and wider reforms are carried through in a spirit of fairness. Within a few months, some key steps have been taken in that direction. The first has been to lift income tax thresholds, taking low earners out of tax and

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Chris Rennard – The point of goverment

    By NewsHound | Sat 18th September 2010 - 11:35 am

    CommentIsFree has published a piece from Liberal Democrat peer Chris Rennard about the coalition, its future and what the party’s priorities should be. The Guardian has published an abbreviated version of the piece, the full version of which we publish here:

    Liberals and Liberal Democrats became accustomed over many decades to attending our party conferences amidst media reports of the party’s imminent demise.  At one of the first that I attended, I remember the then Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe describing how the “Fleet Street hearse” regularly turned up to the Liberal Assembly but went away empty. The Lib Dem Conference …

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Paris Gourtsoyannis – Why I still agree with Nick… sort of

    By NewsHound | Fri 17th September 2010 - 8:45 pm

    Paris Gourtsoyannis was editor of the Journal, a newspaper serving Edinburgh’s higher education institutions, last year, and is a Lib Dem supporter. In an article for the paper, Paris sets out reasons for continuing to back Nick Clegg and his party — here’s an excerpt:

    You only have to listen to the chatter from the right of the Conservative party to understand the effect that the Liberal Democrats are having on the government. Crusty relics like Norman Tebbit and John Redwood speak for the silent majority in rural Conservative safe seats, and they’re aren’t happy. That makes me happy: it’s one

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Stephen Gilbert – Why we must be fighting for full same sex marriage equality now

    By NewsHound | Thu 9th September 2010 - 6:13 pm

    Over at Pink News, Lib Dem MP for St Austell & Newquay Stephen Gilbert writes in support of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) marriage equality and explains why LGBT rights organisations should be fighting for marriage equality now. Here’s an excerpt:

    As a society we have set a standard for people who want to show they are in a committed relationship, for people who want to show that they have found love and wish to remain together until death do them part. We call it marriage. Why should we deny that institution to people who wish to show that commitment

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    Stephen Tall

    LibLink: Evan Harris – Vince Cable’s science spending cuts: how harsh will they be?

    By Stephen Tall | Wed 8th September 2010 - 2:45 pm

    This morning’s news that Vince Cable will announce in a speech today how the cuts to his Business, Innovation and Skills department will impact on science attracted a vigorous reaction from commenters on the Voice today.

    Former Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris — whose Political Science blog for the Guardian has quickly established itself as essential reading — has contributed his throughts to the debate there. Evan, as Lib Dems will know well, is firmly on the social liberal ‘wing’ of the party (a staunch defender, for example, of higher taxes for the wealthiest), and has great credibility …

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: Nick Clegg & David Cameron – We will not budge on voting reforms

    By NewsHound | Sun 5th September 2010 - 1:14 pm

    Over at the Sunday Telegraph, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have jointly penned an article marking the start of the new political year by re-asserting the Coalition’s determination to reform British politics. Here’s an excerpt:

    We came together to change our country for the better in every way. And as we go about fixing our economy, society and political system, our government’s purpose will be to make two major shifts in our national life.

    First, our decisions will be taken with eyes fixed firmly on the long-term. This is a horizon shift for government, moving away from short-term obsessions towards investment in

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    NewsHound

    LibLink: John Hemming – How the IFS got it wrong in calling the budget regressive

    By NewsHound | Sat 4th September 2010 - 4:25 pm

    Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, Lib Dem MP for Birmingham Yardley John Hemming argues that the Institute for Fiscal Studies made a number of mistakes in its analysis of the Coalition’s budget plans. Here’s an excerpt:

    Labour politicians seized on an Institute for Fiscal Studies report last month which described the emergency budget as “clearly regressive”. Unfortunately, some of the IFS’s conclusions and the reporting of them were misleading and inaccurate. … the IFS has made a number of important errors in its report, which tends to exaggerate the effect of the cuts on the poorest households.

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