Category Archives: Op-eds

Mark Argent

An open letter to Nick Clegg

By Mark Argent | Mon 3rd August 2015 - 9:34 am

 

Dear Nick

I delayed writing this letter until the leadership election was past, so it didn’t get lost in that campaign, but want to write to thank you for your rich contribution to the Liberal Democrats.

We owe you a great deal, not least for the wisdom, statesmanship and tenacity you have shown. It is a tribute to you and the colleagues who you led that you stepped into ministerial roles with a naturalness and fluency that belied the fact that we had not formed a majority government in living memory. It is a tribute to you personally that you withstood so many brickbats from so many quarters with such dignity.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 121 Comments
Caron Lindsay

An essential part of any committee room

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 2nd August 2015 - 3:15 pm

I saw a discussion elsewhere on social media about this and thought it was worth mentioning here.

If you are running a committee room on polling day, or in fact any election HQ, bear in mind that you are likely to have people there who have periods. It is also very probable that they will be there for many hours working very hard.

It is therefore essential that you make some provision for them. It’s really quite simple. This post will tell you what you need to do and why. It’s very simple. A packet of basic sanitary pads (which I wouldn’t bother hiding away) and a little bin with a lid  which you can buy incredibly cheaply from most supermarkets can make a very big difference to people. 

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 14 Comments
Toby MacDonnell

Dear Labour…

By Toby MacDonnell | Sun 2nd August 2015 - 9:29 am

Labour,

You can stop the Tories from ever having a majority again. Your party is caught in a tussle between its beliefs and its electability. The main weapon your right wing has against the front runner is the threat that your party will remain powerless: Corbyn supporters reply, “but this is what we believe in”.

If your party exists not to represent the kind of people who support Jeremy Corbyn but to be a socially conscious alternative to the Tories, then to win your party is always going to be wearing a Tony Blair mask. You’ll beat the Conservatives through state compensation for continuing Tory policies: will it really be worth it, or will victory always have the sour odour of spin?

If a Labour-SNP coalition remains a frightening prospect to England then the possibility of a Labour fightback is slim. The SNP are going to be hard to shift, based as they are on dying your clothes tartan: unless the SNP proves it won’t hold you over a barrel for their own ends England won’t vote Labour.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 62 Comments
Will Wilshere

A positive light on the Labour leadership election

By Will Wilshere | Sat 1st August 2015 - 12:25 pm

In case anyone hasn’t noticed Labour is in a spot of bother over its leadership election. Jeremy Corbyn looks relatively comfortable in his position as favourite to win and the other candidates seem to be busy bickering over who is best to challenge him for the position of Labour leader.  I’ve seen it thrown around that if Corbyn wins there’ll be a mass migration from Labour, or even that no matter who they elect they’ve got themselves into a flat spin and aren’t likely to recover.

I’ve also seen it thrown around that if that happens we’ll be the ones they’ll likely turn to, partly thanks to our new leader and partly due to the fact we’re seen as being nearest to Labour politically. I’d like to think that this is true; I’ve often thought that a large number of people who identify as Labour voters would happily support us if they were more aware of what we stood for as a party.

Firstly we need to remember that it’s almost certain now that the next general election will be in 2020 instead of the relative uncertainty of the past. Labour is still the second party in the UK parliament, even if their vote collapses like it did in Scotland they’re not going to lose their position in the Commons just yet. Arguably this is the best time for Labour to have this happen, early enough into the new government that it’s not impossible for whoever becomes leader to try and fix things. Five years is a long time, especially in politics, anything could happen and we can’t count on a weakened Labour. 

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 79 Comments
Emily Davey

The next housing crash

By Emily Davey | Sat 1st August 2015 - 10:25 am

It’s not only the Tory crackdown on tax credits for families that will hit the working poor: it’s the Conservatives’ multiple mistakes on social housing that will do the most damage to our society. The problem is, these are less well-understood. Yet added together, they are set to cause a social housing sector crash almost comparable to the banking crash.

This is probably unintended – not least because there’s not one single policy that’s driving this. It’s the combination of a series of separate decisions that are coming together to fatally undermine the finances of many social housing providers, especially housing associations. More cuts in tax credits and benefits of course cause problems to the social housing sector by themselves – because they are certain to lead to greater rent arrears. But it’s only when you add in other changes, like the way benefits will be paid in the future, imposed cuts to housing association rents and the ideologically driven extension of the Right to Buy to Housing Associations, that the full disaster facing us becomes clearer.

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 18 Comments
Zack Polanski

Where next in the campaign for electoral reform?

By Zack Polanski | Fri 31st July 2015 - 12:35 pm

Sometimes election results are indecisive but in the 2011 AV vote, the country gave a resounding no in the referendum.

What we’re not entirely sure of though is what the country were saying no to. Since the vote, the Conservative party in the main have claimed that people are happy with the First Past the Post system.

Progressives would argue that the result was simply a no to the Alternative Vote system – and people did state at the time they only wanted a change that would be proportional. In their opinion, AV didn’t go far enough. And they were right. The problem with AV was almost no one truly supported it without reservation. It was described at the time as a ‘miserable little compromise.’ It was the only system that Labour had advocated for in their 2010 manifesto but largely for what seems like short sighted political reasons, they didn’t support it fully when it came to the actual vote.

Last weekend, the Voting Reform Coalition, held a gathering opposite Parliament on College Green. Party activists, MPs and independents all gathered to support Electoral Reform. Incredibly heartening and hopefully a sign of consensus to come, there was a coalition of both the usual suspects such as the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, with UKIP also joining in smaller numbers. The really great surprise being that we even had activists from Labour and the Conservatives. The two parties both traditionally opposed to voting reform or at least opposed whilst they were in power. 

Continue reading »
Tagged | 54 Comments
Paul Walter

EU “No” campaign: It’s all about Nigel

By Paul Walter | Fri 31st July 2015 - 11:05 am

Yesterday was a good opportunity for someone leading the EU referendum “No” campaign to make a mark. You know the sort of thing, a bit of EU bashing and announcing a countrywide campaign. A bit of “no brainer”.

Incredibly, Nigel Farage decided to take a really peculiar tack on Today and other outlets:

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 6 Comments
Jonathan Brown

Turkey, the Kurds & Syria – an Opportunity for Diplomacy?

By Jonathan Brown | Fri 31st July 2015 - 9:44 am

'Syrians demonstrate for protection outside the US Embassy'. by Jonathan Brown

Syrians demonstrate for protection outside the US Embassy, London – photo by Jonathan Brown

Although the relentless misery in Syria rarely makes the headlines these days, I wonder if we now have another brief window of opportunity to do something positive.

“Turkey and the United States have agreed on the outlines of a de facto “safe zone” along the Turkey-Syria border … … a plan to drive the Islamic State out of a 68-mile-long area west of the Euphrates River and reaching into the province of Aleppo that would then come under the control of the Syrian opposition.”

The context is a major escalation of violence against Turkey by ISIS and the PKK, and by Turkey against both ISIS and Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq. A concerted diplomatic push now could reap real benefits, but if we miss this chance too, we could be looking at yet another moment at which the conflict intensifies and spreads further.

Continue reading »
23 Comments
Guy Russo

Solution to Calais crisis lies in international development

By Guy Russo | Thu 30th July 2015 - 3:45 pm

All the unpleasantness of the last few days’ reaction to the ongoing Calais crisis is perhaps just a taste of the difficult challenge it will be for Liberals to uphold decency in the coming years. In my view, the best way to form a powerfully Liberal stance on this issue is to reinforce to the public that the solution to this crisis, as well as others (Islamic extremism, the environment etc.) lies in a field of policy often neglected by mainstream debate: International Development. But for us to form that policy, we must face some difficult home truths.

Every ideology has an extremist form. Every tool that can construct a better world can be used as a weapon to make a darker, crueller one. In the field of international development, it is time for Liberals like ourselves to recognise that we are not exempt from this fact. It is time for our party to develop a stance on development that differentiates us from the major parties and their blind stance to the free market fundamentalism of the current key institutions, the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation, so that Britain can play its part in reforming them when we return to government.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 33 Comments
David Faggiani

Liberal heroes in pop culture Part 1: Jon Snow from Game of Thrones

By David Faggiani | Thu 30th July 2015 - 10:00 am

This is the first of what will hopefully be a series of light-hearted pieces that we will publish over the summer. Please do nominate further entries in the comments. Part 2 is here.

It is fair to say that the brutal, feudal polity of Westeros, featured in Game of Thrones and the A Song of Ice and Fire book series by George R. R. Martin, beset as it is by civil war, turmoil and hardship, is not generally a hotbed of liberal thought and action. In fact, it’s hard to think of a less likely environment in which the tradition of Mill, Gladstone and Beveridge could bloom. However, like a flower growing out of the ice, there is one man in the Seven Kingdoms who could be said to be a consistent, striving liberal, in spirit and in deed. I refer to the brooding 998th Commander of the Night’s Watch, Jon Snow.

Jon Snow shows us how a character with a liberal spirit deals with immigration, reform of institutions, and issues of larger social integration. Despite many stresses and temptations, he fails to fall back on easy pettiness and fear, which has prolonged the conflict between both sides of humanity for millennia. Instead, he uses his personal admiration and compassion for both sides to break down barriers, to marshall and combine disparate forces, and to prepare his people for the inevitably-encroaching tide of White Walkers. For White Walkers, essentially insert Climate Change, world hunger, nuclear proliferation, or any existential threat to us you care to imagine. He is also one of the few characters in Westeros elected to his position, and his awareness of this responsibility is part of his virtue.

Continue reading »
Also posted in News | Tagged and | 15 Comments
Paul Walter

The Times’ curious use of single quotation marks in headlines

By Paul Walter | Wed 29th July 2015 - 2:40 pm

times falconer

Women ‘are not tough enough to lead Labour’

Such was the headline in the Times last Friday, above an article by Lord Falconer. You would be forgiven for tinking that Lord Falconer actually said that women “are not tough enough to lead Labour”. But what he actually wrote was:

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 10 Comments
Paul Walter

We need to be careful before jumping on the Lord Sewel bandwagon

By Paul Walter | Wed 29th July 2015 - 9:34 am

Nigel Griffiths. Tim Yeo. Mark Oaten. Paddy Ashdown. Ron Davies. Ian Harvey. David Blunkett. John Prescott. Cecil Parkinson. David Mellor (“toe job to no job” – replace orange bra with alleged Chelsea FC strip). Robin Cook. Harvey Proctor.

All those men were MPs who featured in tabloid sex scandals over the last few decades. None involved expenses abuses or other impropriety that I can recall or find in the archives.

The Lord Sewel episode admittedly involves an alleged breach of drugs laws (legislation which liberals have campaigned to reform) and the use of a publicly supported flat.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 62 Comments

Leaving UKIP for the Liberal Democrats

By J W | Tue 28th July 2015 - 8:17 pm

I finally decided to leave UKIP in June this year.

Let me first say, this has not been an easy decision. It has taken me a year of talking to fellow party members, scrutinising Lib Dem party policy and wrestling with my own personal & political convictions. In the end the right choice was for me to join the Liberal Democrats.

Continue reading »
47 Comments
Paul Reynolds

Policymaking reform; what the problem is and how to solve it

By Paul Reynolds | Mon 27th July 2015 - 6:51 pm

 

New members often ask how to find out what current policy is, on a wide range of topics, how to influence or ‘input’ on policy, and indeed what the party does with its policy once it is established.

Normally I explain that in policy Conference is supreme, at least in theory. I talk a bit about Policy Working Groups (PWGs), initiated by the Federal Policy Committee, FPC. I also explain that there is a review of policymaking underway, to be discussed at Autumn Conference.

In this context, new members may appreciate a quick summary of my personal views of some of the problems and how we might approach solving them.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 30 Comments
Joe Otten

Rawls v Bayes

By Joe Otten | Mon 27th July 2015 - 5:39 pm

At the Social Liberal Forum conference session on equality, one of the points raised by Julian Huppert (pictured alongside chair Mark Blackburn and the other speaker Kelly-Marie Blundell) was that of philosopher John Rawls’ idea of the Veil of Ignorance.

Huppert Blackburn Blundell

Continue reading »
Tagged | 25 Comments
Hannah Ashworth

The Human Rights Act 1998: Why this must always be protected

By Hannah Ashworth | Mon 27th July 2015 - 3:58 pm

Human Rights ActAfter the 2015 general election, David Cameron announced that during his time in government he will try and scrap the Human Rights Act of 1998 and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. After this statement only one thought sprung to mind: has David Cameron officially lost it?

However with David Cameron’s small majority, I hardly think this motion will be accepted among the MPs of the House of Commons, let alone the great British public.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 16 Comments
David Thorpe

The economic consequences of tuition fees 

By David Thorpe | Mon 27th July 2015 - 2:36 pm

 

Volumes have been written on this site and elsewhere about the political, moral and social impacts of the coalition government increasing tuition fees in the last parliament.

I do not propose to rekindle that debate, but rather to examine the emerging, and potentially very long-term economic consequences of tuition fees.

Whilst the UK economic recovery started to gain a genuine depth, public policy makers and private sector market participants alike commented on both the narrowness of the recovery (the rate of growth being pedestrian for an economy exiting recession), the lack of wage growth, the subdued level of capital investment and lack of productivity growth.

Some of those metrics, notably wages, have shown improvement more recently, whilst demographic changes and the impact of quantitative easing on asset prices carry much of the blame for some of the other structural ills that have haunted this economic recovery.

But it is the contention of this article that the tuition fee rise has had a direct impact on the progress of the UK economy in recent years and will continue to do so in two distinct ways.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 89 Comments
Will Paul

Liberal Democrats can define themselves through football reform

By Will Paul | Mon 27th July 2015 - 12:37 pm

 

In the world of football, all is not good. FIFA is undergoing the trials and tribulations of reform, whilst acting like some sort of pseudo- authoritarian state, corrupt to the very core. The FA is blind to the locking out of many fans and seemingly unable to push real reform. The Premier League can’t hear complaints over the cash pile that they find themselves eternally drenched in.

This matters, to a lot of people. In the UK, 32% of the adult population is engaged with the Premier League. This is before we address the Championship, where historically popular teams such as Derby and Nottingham Forest now lie. In 2013-14, Championship teams averaged 17,000 spectators per game, and in League 1 that figure still stood at a very reasonable 8,000. Football matters.

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 32 Comments
Simon Thorley

Where are the Lib Dem business networks?

By Simon Thorley | Mon 27th July 2015 - 10:14 am

 

After many years on the cusp of joining the party, I finally made the decision to join the Lib Dems immediately after that fateful day in May. My motivations, I am sure, were much the same as those of many other waverers – despite having a stubborn, independent streak that made me loath to join a party (any party), and hesitation over the policies of the Coalition, I could no longer stand by and expect others to shoulder the burden of protecting liberal values and defending individual rights.

I can safely say that I haven’t regretted my decision for a moment: the warm welcome from Greenwich Borough Lib Dems, and the party as a whole, has reaffirmed my belief that liberalism has a bright future in English politics.

As a small business manager, one aspect of the Lib Dems that I have always found most attractive is its independence from vested interests. Not being dominated by – or acting as a mouthpiece for – the sectional interests of organised labour or powerful corporations is, for me, what allows our party to genuinely stand for individual rights and wellbeing. It is this independence which also makes the Lib Dems the natural home of the entrepreneur, the shopkeeper and the SME business manager – the small and the brave – as the social freedoms which we strive for as a party are those which independent businesses require in order to thrive.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 35 Comments
Stephen Ruffian

#Libdemfightback: What do the polls say?

By Stephen Ruffian | Sun 26th July 2015 - 10:25 am

Obviously we’re all a little wary of using the polls since the General Election, but it should be remembered that while the polls then underestimated the Tories and over-estimated Labour, they got our tiny percentage pretty much spot on. The only problem was that, because the Tory vote was higher in actuality than predicted, that we ended up losing a few more Tory/LD marginals than we’d ever expected to.

But Pollsters have been amending their weighting…and the ‘Shy Tory Voter’ doesn’t really seem to exist anymore. They’re out and proud! So I’ve been having a look at what the polls have been predicting for a General Election  held today.

The Method

My reading of the polls uses averages to fill in the gaps on the days when there aren’t polls, and then to run seven day rolling figures based on both those averages and the polls themselves.

The model I use is modelled heavily on that of Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus model, as featured often in the press. The idea is that one takes the ‘base’ vote of each constituency (i.e. Southport 2010 36% Con, 9% Lab, 50% LD etc), place that against the GE figure for that year (i.e. 37 Con, 30 Lab, 24 LD) and then see how the constituency figure moves with regards to latest polling (i.e. the final poll pre 2015 GE of 33 Con, 33 Lab and 9 LD) and then see how the initial constituency figure moves (in this case to 33 Con, 12 Lab and 35 LD) thus showing how John Pugh kept his seat.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 24 Comments
David Warren

A liberal century

By David Warren | Sat 25th July 2015 - 11:55 am

In many ways the 20th century could be described as a socialist one.

Internationally parties using that label emerged gaining electoral strength, or in some cases,notably Russia, lead successful revolutions.

In Britain, Labour overtook a Liberal Party wracked by division and by 1945 they appeared totally dominant.But as the century ended the collapse of the regimes in Eastern Europe left socialism of the authoritarian variety totally discredited and the democratic socialist parties in the West struggling to define themselves.

Here Blair created New Labour, dropped Clause 4 and built a new philosophy that turned out to be ideologically hollow. A temporary rise in their electoral fortunes has now given way to what looks like another long period of opposition and the inevitable soul searching that goes with it. Their current current leadership election could even bring about a split.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 50 Comments
George Smid

Pay the top, squeeze the lot – the intuitive definition of Toryism

By George Smid | Sat 25th July 2015 - 8:55 am

It is indicative that the ‘Welfare Bill’ made a news splash mainly for the Labour Party’s disarray “now we vote, now we won’t”. Otherwise no emotions shown or played, no questions, no strong public reaction. (With the exception of Tim Farron’s speech). The conclusion? Business as usual.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Labour is leaning left – we do not know the policies yet but the move is apparent. Whatever the result of the Labour leader’s election it will be ‘business as usual’.

What it shows is that Labour and the Tories are reverting to their stereotype. During my hustings as a PPC for South Holland and Deepings I argued that we cannot rely on ‘business friendly Labour’ and ‘working people Tories’. I reasoned that if and when they are put under pressure, if and when they have to make a decision in face of uncertainty, they will retort to their ‘intuitive reaction’: so the Tories will cut taxes for the rich and benefits for the poor and the Labour expresses preferences for Jeremy Corbyn.

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 13 Comments
Isabelle Murray

From the Liberal Democrats’ newest and youngest Councillor

By Isabelle Murray | Fri 24th July 2015 - 3:56 pm

Last night I was delighted to be elected as Councillor for the Seaford Central ward of Seaford Town Council.

In the previous election in May this year, I was not old enough to stand and therefore missed out. But when I found out that a by-election was taking place I jumped at the opportunity. I’ve always been active with helping the local community. Throughout my schooling at Seaford Head, I was Deputy Head Girl and Chair of the Student Council. Then again at BHASVIC (Brighton) I couldn’t resist making a difference so became part of the Student Council.

Now that I am on the Town Council, my main aim is to bring my knowledge of young people’s concerns. In the campaign, I stood for three main points:

  1. Stopping anti-social behaviour.
  2. More facilities for young people.
  3. Fighting for affordable housing.
Continue reading »
Tagged and | 18 Comments
Clive Sneddon

Have we got the balance right between fairness and equality?

By Clive Sneddon | Fri 24th July 2015 - 3:00 pm

The years since the financial crash have seen the 2010 Equality Act and an apparently unending stream of scandals in which firms have mis-sold products, rigged markets and exploited every loophole they could find to avoid paying tax while enhancing their managers’ pay, entailing in some sections of the media breaking the law for stories.

The Equality Act is the culmination of a series of ground-breaking laws since the 1965 Race Relations Act which have over generations changed attitudes in the UK. These laws have not prevented the stream of scandals, which come from a culture in which social constraints have eroded, so that managers can use their power to pay themselves more and justify that by growing the company however they like, including choosing which law will be applicable.

In all this the concept of fairness has been lost sight of. Everyone agrees what fairness means, but rhetorically individuals often apply it only to themselves in order to win an argument. In small children that is understandable, but growing up involves learning to see how others see things so that we can act as members of society and not just as individuals. The scandals show large organisations have been less good than individuals at learning socially acceptable behaviour. The immediate response has been to seek separate remedies for mis-selling, rigging markets, tax avoidance and media behaviour, whereas the scandals originate in managerial behaviour which has not been addressed. If the misbehaviour is not addressed, it will just find new outlets that are still legal.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 18 Comments
Emily Davey

How new members helped us win in Grove

By Emily Davey | Fri 24th July 2015 - 11:55 am

Like so many local parties in the days after our General Election defeat, the devastation we felt in Kingston was offset somewhat by the huge influx of new members, with over 130 joining since May 7th. The question was: how did we build on their enthusiasm when we were all so…..well, knackered?

And we were just putting plans together for new member welcome events when we got the tragic news that our longstanding councillor in Grove ward, Cllr Chrissie Hitchcock, had died suddenly. The fourth Grove by-election in recent years beckoned: in fact, the last one had been held on the same day as the General and we’d just held on by 18 votes – and we’d lost one of the 3 seats in the 2014 Borough-wide elections. So Grove was one of London’s most marginal wards.

To win in this split ward, we decided we needed all of the enthusiasm and energy of our new members. But how did we avoid putting them off, with just piles of leaflets?

Continue reading »
Tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Mark Argent

What could a Jeremy Corbyn victory mean for the Liberal Democrats?

By Mark Argent | Fri 24th July 2015 - 8:57 am

A reasonably-new Conservative government lurches to the right. The defeated Labour Party elects its most left-wing leader in a generation. There is a new sense of opportunity in the party as the centre-ground seems to be opening up. At conference the leader’s uplifting speech ends “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government”…

That was David Steel in 1981, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and Michael Foot the leader of the Labour party. The excitement was real, but it didn’t happen. Our actual breakthrough waited until “New Labour” was electable and people were no longer frightened into voting Tory.

Pragmatism says we should wait to see who Labour elects, and what the actual effects are before getting too excited or worried. But thinking about the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn victory could help us in our journey. I’ll offer two thoughts as starters:

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 165 Comments
Fergus Blair

Our tactical victories betray a lack of strategy – the need for an economic vision

By Fergus Blair | Thu 23rd July 2015 - 3:40 pm

Thanks to Labour’s abstention on the welfare bill, a party that was just two months ago caricatured as ‘Tory enablers’ can now credibly claim to be the only national voice of left-wing opposition to the current regime. While I’m sure we’d all much rather be seen as the latter than the former, the fact that this repositioning is possible at all speaks to the central flaw at the heart of our political platform.

When I consider voting for the Tories or for Labour, I know that in doing so I’d be declaring my belief in a certain economic narrative. If I vote Conservative, I’ll be paying lower taxes, and if I want to start a business it’ll be easier. If I vote for Labour, it’ll be easier to get employment in the public sector, and there’ll be more support for me should I lose my job. I know all of this without even glancing at their manifestos, because each party’s identity is inextricably bound to its economic vision.

Thinking about the Lib Dems, I could maybe list some specific lines of their manifesto, and I could probably think of a few things they achieved in Coalition, but I don’t know what those pieces add up to. People don’t vote for itemised policies, they vote because they identify as the sort of person who will be better off under party A than party B. And until we offer a unified narrative of our own, there will never be a constituency of people who think to themselves, ‘Yes, me and my family will probably be better off under a Lib Dem government’.

Continue reading »
76 Comments
Sarah Noble

Breaking the Establishment

By Sarah Noble | Thu 23rd July 2015 - 2:05 pm

House of Commons. Crown Copyright applies to this photo - http://www.flickr.com/photos/uk_parliament/4642915654/“We stand up for the outsider instead of the establishment.”, Tim Farron said during the leadership rally last week. For party members who were rather discouraged by our missteps in coalition, that line gives us hope.

Our failings in the Coalition can be traced to one key fault: after speaking out against the establishment, we were seen to be now a part of it. There are so many bills that we extracted key concessions on, but we were not able to communicate that. How could we, after all? We were bound by Cabinet collective responsibility. But it was never designed to operate the way it did in coalition.

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 44 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Lib Dem digital guru Rathe talks to Guardian about internet communications

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 23rd July 2015 - 12:00 pm

The Guardian has taken an interest in the deluge of emails being sent out by the Labour Party recently. Our head of Members and Supporters Austin Rathe is quoted in the piece explaining the difference between Labour’s approach and ours.

Most of what is being done by both party’s has been poached from the Obama campaigns.  But while Labour have been more indiscriminate in their approach, the Liberal Democrats have sought to build relationships with people. All those emails with pictures of cute babies that the Labour Party use to harvest your email address are not well used. Over to Austin:

They knew nothing about you except that you’re an email address,” says Rathe. “And they just throw everything at you. It’s a sledgehammer approach – it’s watching what went on in the States and learning all the wrong lessons, just thinking that you just have to send a lot of email. But you’ve got to talk to people about things they’re interested in, it’s got to be driven by that.” Rathe’s party uses email more to focus on achievable local goals than the big national picture. “We build relationships with people on issues that they care about,” Rathe adds. “And we give local campaigners the tools to do it themselves.”

Continue reading »
Also posted in News | Tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Caron Lindsay

On Farron’s lurch to the left…

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 22nd July 2015 - 4:28 pm

If you read some commentators, you’d think that in less than a week of leadership, Tim Farron had virtually turned us all into revolutionary socialists.

Matt Dahan wrote a story for the Independent which suggested that Nick Clegg would be “shaking his head” in “uncomfortable dismay” at Tim Farron’s bid to “form a Lib/Lab pact” to oppose welfare cuts.

The former deputy prime minister has been left sitting on the backbenches in the House of Commons, where he is forced to choose between toeing the party line or causing what would be a major rebellion in a party of just eight MPs.

It seems Mr Farron is leading the Lib Dems further to the left than Labour, even sending a letter to interim Labour leader Harriet Harman telling her to form a Lib-Lab alliance to fight the Government’s spending cuts.

Except Tim’s stance on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill is entirely consistent with the stance Nick Clegg took in Government. He stopped all this nonsense about taking Housing Benefit off young people and limiting tax credits to two children and further reducing the benefits cap. If Tim had supported them, it would have been a massive story.

Continue reading »
Tagged , , , , , and | 66 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Caron LindsayCaron Lindsay
    @william That is fascinating. There are so many different variants of Gaelic - Lewis, Skye, Barra and Uist are all different and the Argyll/SW variants are d...
  • Caron LindsayCaron Lindsay
    @alasdair You are right of course. For heaven’s sake fon’t tell Alistair Carmichael I forgot about Orkney and Shetland. And thank you for the info about ...
  • Caron LindsayCaron Lindsay
    @maurice - small world indeed! What course were you doing? It was a fabulous week. Did you stay on campus?...
  • John MacInnes
    The key issue is that whilst filming is generally legal in public, AI glasses process the audio and video with AI, transfer and often store the data on company ...
  • Simon Robinson
    London isn't all the same. I think what @Josh says is broadly true of central London out to maybe TfL Zone 4, where much of the population is young, transient, ...