Category Archives: Op-eds

Caron Lindsay

Willie Rennie loses patience with the Conservatives, saying they put party before country

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 14th April 2015 - 9:46 pm

Let me take you back to 7 am on 19th September last year. In Scotland, we’re emotionally drained after a brutal 2 year referendum campaign. After some real fears that the result might go the other way, No campaigners were relieved rather than triumphant.

Then David Cameron comes out of Downing Street and starts picking a fight with Labour, trying to paint the opposition as anti-English and talking about English votes for English Laws. That was the moment that you needed a Prime Minister to bring the country together, not exacerbate divisions.

Since then, the Tories and the SNP have been doing this strange harmonious dance. Alex Salmond has been trolling Middle England talking about various demands he’d make in the event of a hung Parliament. The Tories have fed that fear with their posters showing a pathetic looking Ed Miliband in a smug looking Alex Salmond’s pocket. That, of course, suggests to me, as I wrote at the time, that David Cameron thinks he’s been in Nick Clegg’s pocket these past five years. Michael Fallon’s insinuation that Ed Miliband would do a deal with Nicola Sturgeon to get rid of Trident is fanciful in the extreme, but it all seeks to scare swing Tory voters. You just wonder what “secret Ed/Nicola pact” the Tories will come up with next. Compulsory Gaelic lessons? Installing Alex Salmond as News Editor of the BBC?  Making a deal with the Loch Ness Monster to crash the Stock Exchange (as a friend of mine suggested on Facebook)? The list is endless.

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Opinion: Is a Minority government good for a progressive agenda and good for governance?

By Felix Dodds and Mark Jones | Tue 14th April 2015 - 4:30 pm

Most political commentators believe that the chances are that after the next election no party will have a majority. As we approach the election some people are suggesting that perhaps a new coalition government isn’t the best answer to promote progressive policies. The experiences of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition, and to a lesser extent the Labour/Plaid Cymru coalition that ran Wales from 2007-2011 have shown that a left leaning party has to make too many compromises when in a coalition.

Some people are actively discussing that perhaps a new coalition government isn’t the best answer to promote progressive policies. The experience of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition has shown that a left leaning party has to make too many compromises when in a coalition with a right of centre party.

This has resulted in an increasing discussion on the left that perhaps a minority government, as in Scotland from 2007-2011, might be a better chance for a progressive agenda. One positive outcome of this approach could be the re-establishment of a positive relationship between the general public and parliament. A minority government could strengthen parliament. Why do we say this? After having had a budget agreed, a minority government would have to create coalitions for every policy issue. This would enable real debate on issues and the possibility of creating a progressive agenda across political boundaries.

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg’s BBC1 interview – Evan Davis disappoints with constant references to Clegg’s multi-national background

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 13th April 2015 - 11:23 pm

I’m normally a big fan of the BBC’s Evan Davis. He knows how to make people squirm and we knew that he would do a thorough job on Nick Clegg tonight. And he did. All the difficult questions were in there, on tuition fees. that broken promises broadcast, was the coalition worth it when we’ve lost so much support. In fact, the tone was set right from the word go with “How does it feel to have gone from hero to zero?” which Nick took with his customary good grace.

No complaints about those tough policy questions. There was something else, though, which disappointed me. Davis showed a clip of Clegg speaking Dutch during the 2012 elections. Then he started to ask a series of questions around his family background,  whether it was the fact that his mother was Dutch and his father from Russian heritage that made him look to other countries for different ways of doing things. He’d found a quote from pre 2010 where Nick had talked about how, as a child in the 70s, he felt that the Netherlands were doing things much better than we were. Surely everybody looks to other countries to see what we could learn from them? Just look at the most popular dishes on every menu in the country for evidence of that. I’ve always admired many Scandinavian ways of managing their public services and the way they’ve enforced the International Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes for a start.

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Pramod Subbaraman

Opinion: So what questions do I want to answer at hustings?

By Pramod Subbaraman | Mon 13th April 2015 - 3:55 pm

hustings

I’ve now had four hustings and wherever I go, we get the same questions – nitty gritty details about spending and taxes, TTIP, deficit, debt etc. the usual stuff. Now these are the questions that politicians WANT to be asked. Very much up their street! The kind of things they’ve been preparing for.

It is sad that the run up to election is dominated by questions like these. It plays straight into politicians’ hands. The public can do better by asking questions about values which are lesser likely to change as easily as policy. Take politicians out of their comfort zone and ask them questions about things like electoral reform and reform of the systems they work in, the things that affect them and their political jobs. That will tell you more about the candidates than anything else will!

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Paul Walter

The Nick Clegg photo opp strategy

By Paul Walter | Mon 13th April 2015 - 10:33 am

 

I listened in to a Lib Dem activists’ campaign update last week.

This was a conference call giving news on what’s going on with our election efforts. Afterwards, I had to breathe into a brown paper bag for several minutes to reduce my respiration rate, such was the excitement generated by the call.

An interesting point was made about photo opportunities. The campaign team are adamant about one thing: Nick Clegg will not be photographed being given royal tours of factories, talking to rather stiff and obsequious employees. David Cameron has been specialising in such photo opps recently (see example below).

Instead, Nick will be photographed in amongst people in the community, talking with real people and rolling his sleeves up. A good example of this genre is above. Nick is amongst a community group with people and babies and casual drinks, and it’s lovely and sunny, people are smiling, the candidate is there (Ed Davey, for it is he and it is Surbiton) and there are some lovely orange diamonds in the background. Perfect.

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Jenny Wilson

Opinion: The regret of voting Yes

By Jenny Wilson | Sun 12th April 2015 - 9:20 am

I voted Yes in the Scottish Referendum. As a card carrying member of the Liberal Democrats this was not the same choice as most of my peers. It would be easy for me to say that I got caught up in the moment and temporarily lost my mind, but I try to never make excuses for my actions. My five years of studying international relations have taught me that small nations can be successful and happy places, but also that there are alternative modes of governing. Voting yes for me was an opportunity to break down the current government structures and build fresh ones, from the ground up, to make new political structures that are inclusive and do not lock out women and minorities from participating. It was idealistic and hopeful and heavily influenced by my Masters thesis on Women’s Political Participation and a heavy dose of critical international relations theory. It was a glorious time, a time where I could transform my abstract learning into something tangible. I was hopeful. I thought we could have a society where all could participate, where all views could be accepted and valued and where we did not exclude those on the margins.

And then I came to stark realisation that underneath all the hopeful rhetoric was a large dose of Nationalism. (I probably should have realised this earlier, my bad.)  Nationalism is nasty, as I’m sure anyone who has picked up a history book will have come to realise. Nationalism is an ideology that requires the people who live within the country to attach their own identities to that of the nation, to form what could be called a homogenous national identity. For those who happily identify themselves as Scottish, this isn’t really an issue. But nationalism scorns those who do not subscribe with gusto – creating division and closing down spaces for conversation and criticism. 

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Nick Harvey

Nick Harvey writes…Trident: The real gamble with the nation’s security is making a currently purpose-less weapon a financial priority

By Nick Harvey | Fri 10th April 2015 - 3:32 pm

TridentFor some, there is no greater symbol of the United Kingdom’s enduring role on the world stage and continued military relevance than the Trident nuclear weapons system. For others, Trident is the last unreformed bastion of Cold War thinking. It is a symbol of a bygone era of fear, instability and sky-high defence spending to hedge against an unpredictable Soviet threat.

Despite the Cold War ending; Russia and the UK de-targeting one another; multiple treaties the UK has signed up to committing to a reduction in nuclear weapon stockpiles; and a £100bn price tag which will in time account for 10% of the MoD’s budget while our Armed Forces are in desperate need of updated kit; the Tories and Labour both refuse even to entertain the notion that the status quo might reasonably be questioned.

As evidenced by yesterday’s news, they instead choose to scaremonger and point-score over what might be traded in a future coalition. Top military chiefs have also expressed their disdain at the recent headlines. The two parties are prioritising the impressive feat of kicking around the country’s most expensive political football, rather than participating in a rational conversation about whether the assumptions upon which like-for-like replacement rests are logical or relevant to the threats Britain faces today.

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Jonathan Brown

Opinion: The humanitarian catastrophe in Syria and the need for a no-fly zone

By Jonathan Brown | Thu 9th April 2015 - 3:00 pm

Jonathan BrownOn Tuesday 7th April Planet Syria organised a global day of solidarity with Syrians campaigning against dictatorship and extremism. A coalition of Syrian civil and human rights activists including the famous White Helmets asked for people to remember Syria and send a message showing that they care. Over the last 4 years an amazing country I used to call home has been reduced to rubble and an amazing people ripped apart in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in a generation.

Syrians are calling for 2 steps to reverse the ever-worsening conflict: the implementation of a No Fly Zone followed by support for serious peace talks. The various ways in which such a no fly zone could be implemented are explained in further detail here.

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Nick T

A foreign-policy-free election?

By Nick T | Thu 9th April 2015 - 12:37 pm

RAF lightning II aircraft photo by defence imagesFor all its crudeness, the barrel bomb has to be one of the most brutally effective weapons around. An old oil drum, filled with that now all too familiar combination of explosives and steel detritus, dropped onto its fuse-laden nose from a helicopter, it seems, kills and maims in just the right proportions to terrorise those left behind.

It is little wonder, then, that the barrel bomb is Bashar al-Assad’s weapon of choice in his effort to wear down those parts of Syria with the impudence to have thought they could do better. It tells you all you need to know about the man that, having discovered that the wretched things seem to be particularly effective when aimed at young children, the regime, like so many despots before, has found schools to be an especially desirable target.

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Alice Thomas

Opinion: “Victim-blaming” 101: why sexual assault is different to other crimes

By Alice Thomas | Thu 9th April 2015 - 10:49 am

Sussex Police has produced a campaign poster encouraging women to stick together on a night out to reduce their chances of sexual assault. There are so many ways this poster is stupid: it perpetuates the myth of stranger rape as the only “real rape” (an idea which helps acquaintance rapists get away with it over and over again), it ignores male victims of rape, and it suggests women should fear sexual assault more than they value their sexual liberty.

But there’s only one issue I want to address now. On Monday, Caron Lindsay called the poster “victim-blaming”: she was right, and it’s worth explaining why victim-blaming is so much more harmful in cases of sexual assault than other forms of crime.

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Caron Lindsay

The two most talked about things from last night’s Scottish Leaders’ debate and two things the press got wrong about Willie Rennie

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 8th April 2015 - 5:14 pm

At Wimbledon, you generally, if you’re lucky and it hasn’t been raining, get a day between matches. This isn’t the case for Scotland’s political leaders. After a two hour marathon on STV in Edinburgh last night, Nicola Sturgeon, Jim Murphy, Ruth Davidson and Willie Rennie head to Aberdeen where they will face another hour of debate, joined by the Greens’ Patrick Harvie and UKIP’s David Coburn. The moderator will be BBC Scotland’s James Cook, who took a bit of a pasting from cybernats for daring to suggest that he’s had SNP sources tell him that a Tory Government would be the best option for their independence cause.

Last night’s debate took place in the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. The format was a bit weird. There was a 20 minute session at the start where the moderator, Bernard Ponsonby, had a chat with some people in the audience and then put some questions to the leaders. Then they each had a 10 minute session on their own, giving a statement and taking 8 minutes of audience questions. That dragged a bit, to be honest. Then there was a 45 minute Question Time style free for all. It wasn’t as relaxed and well-behaved as the one at Glasgow University last month, but there were a few noteworthy moments. The most talked about on social media was the man in the crowd wearing a false moustache. Who could it be?

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Simon Foster

Opinion: We don’t duck things in OxWAb

By Simon Foster | Wed 8th April 2015 - 8:55 am

duckFollowing on from our April Fool’s Day prank a large yellow Duck has appeared in the Abingdon HQ for the Oxford West and Abingdon Liberal Democrat Campaign.  Already he has become a big hit with the activists.

Typically for Lib Dems, a discussion ensued as to what to call the duck.  A quick internet poll was held, and we now have the results:

Duck a L’Orange (write in suggestion from Neil Fawcett): 69%

Shirley Williams: 15%

Paddy Ashdown: 8%

Evan Harris: 8%

Lembit Opik: 0%

Result: Duck a L’Orange gain.  Majority: 54%

On hearing the news, the newly elected Duck said:

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Caron Lindsay

Have SNP abandoned their plans to reverse welfare reforms?

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 7th April 2015 - 1:26 pm

Nicola Sturgeon gave a speech on tackling poverty today. In it, there is much that I think many Liberal Democrats could agree with.

The First Minister announced that SNP MPs will use their influence after May’s election to:

·  Push for child tax credits and child benefit to be uprated instead of frozen as the Conservatives plan.

·  Promote action that supports in-work families by calling for an increase in the minimum wage to £8.70 by the end of the next parliament.

·  Support an increase in the work allowance – helping those in work benefit from their earnings.

·  Deliver an end to austerity and oppose the renewal of nuclear weapons to help fund a further expansion of childcare.

·  The SNP Government has already extended free childcare provision to 600 hours and has pledged that if re-elected at the next Holyrood election, childcare provision will be extended further still to 1,140 hours per year.

We’ll gloss over the fact that the SNP had to be dragged kicking and screaming to provide better childcare for the poorest 2 year olds. In England, Nick Clegg has made sure that 40% of the poorest 2 year olds get nursery education to give them the best chance in life. It took a persistent and tenacious campaign by Willie Rennie and the Scottish Liberal Democrats before the SNP expanded Scottish provision.

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Sean O'Curneen

Opinion: Threat to Europe? Countering the TTIP scaremongering

By Sean O'Curneen | Tue 7th April 2015 - 11:57 am

It was with a certain degree of shock that on Thursday 2 April, I read the opinion article “We should be alert to this threat to Europe!“. How was it possible that the concerns expressed in it about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – which echo what many segments of Europe’s radical left have been peddling – could be given credibility from within one of Europe’s most influential liberal parties? After some consideration, I concluded that clearly the anti-TTIP propaganda war is proving to be very successful and that there is still much work to do to counter those arguments.

Here are a number of facts that all Liberal Democrats should be aware of and should readily share whenever the subject arises, regarding in particular transparency, public services, and democratic rights of public authorities:

Transparency

The media and the public rarely show much interest in highly technical trade negotiations. Clearly, however, times have changed. The EU Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, a Swedish liberal and one of the most respected politicians in Brussels has recognised that there is a public demand for greater openness. Since taking office in November 2014, she has taken steps to address this demand, such that only weeks later, on 29 January 2015, the spokersperson on TTIP for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) in the European Parliament, Marietje Schaake, congratulated Commissioner Malmström for “taking the concerns of citizens seriously” after it was announced that transparency rules would apply to the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS). Furthermore, only a few days ago, on 23 March 2015 the European Ombudsman commended the European Commission for the progress made.

Public Services

On 20 March 2015, Commissioner Malmström and the US Trade Representative, published a Joint Statement on Public Services. Anyone concerned about the NHS, environmental policies, public procurement, or the democratic freedoms of public authorities in Europe, should read it. Here’s an extract:

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Martin Horwood

Martin Horwood writes…Cross-Government International Development in 2015 and beyond

By Martin Horwood | Tue 7th April 2015 - 10:25 am

There is no doubt that we are in the midst of the most unpredictable election campaign in recent memory.  Whilst the UK media, and indeed anyone with an interest in politics, has become an expert in polling data and marginal seats, we shouldn’t forget the real impact that these elections will have on the lives of millions of people around the world.

Anyone who doubts that impact should be reminded of Nigel Farage’s ridiculous attacks on UK aid spending in the leaders’ debate last week, topped off by his heartless comments about access to treatment for people who are HIV positive. Much like Labour’s ‘banker’s bonus tax’, Farage seems determined to use our foreign aid budget to fund every one of UKIP’s policies. While our impulse might be to roll our eyes at the absurdity of it all, we mustn’t forget the real damage that this line of aid-scepticim could do if unleashed on the Department for International Development (DfID) in the next government.

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Caron Lindsay

Why are police forces getting away with misogynistic, victim-blaming rape prevention campaigns?

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 6th April 2015 - 8:54 pm

I was horrified to hear this afternoon that Sussex Police are launching a campaign to encourage women to stay together to avoid the possibility of rape and sexual assault. This is what they tweeted last week:

So, now your friends come above the perpetrator of any crime when there’s blame to be handed out.

Looking a bit further afield, I found the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Be Smart campaign, which is even worse. Three quarters of the page is taken up with advice for women like:

Would you go alone into a stranger’s house at 11am in the morning? No? So why do it at 2am drunk? Arrange to meet new acquaintances when sober.

It’s the sort of victim blaming nonsense that is counter-productive. Going to someone’s house is not a crime. Raping somebody is against the law. If you had been raped, how likely would you be to report what had happened to you if you thought you might be judged and blamed for the crime that you had been subjected to? I thought we’d moved on from that. To add insult to injury, as an afterthought, there’s an “And for guys” bit at the bottom of the page, reminding them that “rape convictions last forever.” The effects of being rape are pretty much a life sentence, too, you know.

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Mark Argent

Opinion: HS2 and the Ivanhoe line

By Mark Argent | Mon 6th April 2015 - 4:33 pm

321px-Sileby_railway_station_in_2010HS2 is the high-speed link which will run from London to Birmingham and then divide, one side going to Manchester (and potentially then to Glasgow) and the other through Sheffield, Leeds (and potentially Newcastle and Edinburgh).

The economic case is overwhelming.  The latest figures I’ve seen suggest that, over the next 30 years, this will cost £32bn to build and generate £43.7bn of economic benefits and £27bn in fares. Those figures are conservative: after 30 years the income will continue, but the building costs will have been covered. On top of this, what they can’t readily include is the role of house prices. At the moment people are paying a substantial premium to live in London (which also pushes up labour costs): finding a way to spread out economic activity across more of the country offers huge additional benefits as people no longer need to live in London.

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Andreas Christodoulou

Opinion: The real issue – nationalisation

By Andreas Christodoulou | Mon 6th April 2015 - 2:23 pm

 

The leaders debate last week brought some, but not much comment on the most important, but least talked about, issue affecting the UK. This is the fact that over the last 30 years the government, of both colour ties, has sold off the family silver in order to provide return and profit to shareholders and their friends in the city.

Nationalised companies can’t fail

The UK’s utilities network, of just gas and electricity alone, consists of multiple companies running small cut up sections of the country. How could we cut the whole of the Midlands (say) off gas if a company folds? The railway network is confusing, with the tracks owned by Network Rail, formerly Railtrack, privatised in 1996. Railtrack made massive losses following a horrible crash, then approached the government for emergency funding. The government, of course, HAD to bail Railtrack out – we can’t not have a railway network! Anyway, they immediately paid a £137m dividend to the shareholders out of the public gift.

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Patrick McAuley

Opinion: First term councillor diary – mental health, the Council and me

By Patrick McAuley | Mon 6th April 2015 - 12:08 pm

In 1998 I lived 500 yards from Mick Philpott who was later convicted of killing 6 of his children. I’d met him on one occasion and was told even then he was an odd individual. Never did I expect to see him on the telly, but, having lived in that area, hearing what he had done did not surprise me. There used to be little hope in humanity in a place like Allenton, Derby. In 1998 I’d left with no qualifications, was living in a caravan and had lost my second job in three weeks working in the local bakery. I …

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David Allen

Opinion: The Conservative campaign – some concerns

By David Allen | Mon 6th April 2015 - 10:57 am

 

It is an opportune time to take issue with some of the key planks of the Conservative campaign.

Mr Crosby, who likes simple messages, has primarily put forward just two.  The first is that the Tories have a long term economic plan.  The second is a clever cartoon presenting Miliband as a puppet in Salmond’s pocket.

It might perhaps be argued that George W Bush, who repeated endlessly that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al-Qaida, was the original inspiration for the “Long Term Economic Plan” campaign.  Surveys showed that a majority of Americans came to believe a story known to be entirely false.  Constant repetition of the untruth helped Bush justify the invasion of Iraq.

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David Babbs

The Independent View: An apology from 38 Degrees

By David Babbs | Mon 6th April 2015 - 9:55 am

On 26th March, the staff team at 38 Degrees posted an image to our Facebook page, attempting to simplify the confusing debate on pledges to fund the NHS. Unfortunately, we got the numbers jumbled up and drew criticism from several different political parties – including Lib Dems on this website. This is an apology and an attempt to explain where we went wrong.

Our graph compared NHS funding pledges for 2015-16 from the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour, against the additional £8bn of funding that NHS England says it needs by 2020. We ended up comparing apples and pears. Lib Dems quite reasonably complained that presenting the information in this way obscured their flagship pledge to match that £8bn target by 2020. Both Labour and Conservatives have avoided matching that pledge.

Labour supporters also complained. We showed the Labour figure on the graph as £2.5bn – based on their pledge of £2.5bn in the “time to care” fund. But Labour says this £2.5bn is additional funding – £2.5bn on top of what the government has already said it’ll spend. And it’s due to be realised much sooner than 2020 (though it seems it’s disputed exactly when). So they argued that their bar on the graph should have shown them £2.5bn higher than the Conservatives or Lib Dems. Meanwhile, some Green Party and UKIP supporters complained that we’d failed to feature their positions at all.

It’s extremely hard to compare like-for-like pledges on NHS funding, given the different timescales and assumptions on which each of the parties claims are based. It’s well nigh impossible to compare them through the medium of one, simple bar chart which conveys all the relevant information.

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David Warren

Opinion: What’s in a name ?

By David Warren | Mon 6th April 2015 - 9:00 am

 

Having recently finished reading a biography of Charles Kennedy, which covered the merger of the Liberal Party and SDP in detail, I pondered for some time on the controversy surrounding the names and philosophy of political parties.

In the late 1980s the Social and Liberal Democrats or SLD were lampooned as the Salads, the use of the shorter Democrats was unpopular because it omitted the word liberal, so we ended up with the Liberal Democrats – a title that is now long established.

If you look beyond the UK though, the confusion really begins.

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Caron Lindsay

Swinson and Willott hail start of shared parental leave – but this isn’t the end of the work to be done on this issue

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 5th April 2015 - 5:26 pm

I’ve always said that shared parental leave is one of those policies that ticks all the stronger economy, fairer society and opportunity for everyone b boxes. It’s an entirely liberal thing to give people the choice as to what is right for them and their family rather than have the state dictate it for you.

Today is the day that this policy, first passed at Liberal Democrat conference in 2009, becomes a reality. Jo Swinson, the Minister who took the legislation through Parliament, had this to say:

This is a momentous step forward for families and for parents in work. Shared parental leave can make an incredibly positive difference in a child’s life and help both mums and dads make the best decisions for them and their families.

Men and women will no longer be tied to what history dictates their traditional roles should be with mum holding the baby while dad goes out to work.  Parenting is a shared endeavour and now dads have the opportunity to spend more time with their new baby in those vital early weeks.

Shared parental leave is my proudest achievement in government, and I’m delighted that it is now a reality.

The Liberal Democrats are the driving force behind this change, and we’re pushing to go further in the next parliament. We want to champion the role of dads, and triple paternity leave, giving all fathers an extra month to spend with their child.

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Caron Lindsay

Caron’s Sunday Selection: Must-read articles from the Sunday papers

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 5th April 2015 - 1:25 pm

sundaypapsHere is a smattering of the many articles I’ve found informative or infuriating in this week’s Sunday papers.

Firstly, a leader in the Independent argues that Coalition has improved the quality of government by ensuring more than one party’s ideas are heard:

Granted, the old bipartisan system has its advantages – it gives clarity and stability to government – but one thing the experience of coalition has done is to remind us that government is sometimes improved by having to take into account more than one view. We may have to get used to these compromises which are, of course, perfectly normal for many of our European neighbours. The only certainty is that there is no certainty and it’s rather exhilarating.

The Observer looks at Liberal Democrat prospects both at the polls and with tough choices after all the election. Robert Ford’s analysis of seat battles is reasonable on the types of battle we are facing – all of them tough – but deeply flawed on the “lost causes” he identifies. He clearly has no idea what is happening on the ground and is basing his projections on uniform swings. While it will be great to see his face dripping with egg yolk on May 8th, it bothers me that our opponents will be packaging this as “leading academic says” in our seats. It simply is not credible to say that in the likes of Edinburgh West and East Dunbartonshire, where Mike Crockart and Jo Swinson are out-campaigning everybody and have been for years that the seats are lost. He puts nine of our seats in Scotland in that category, which is simply wrong. I don’t know anybody with a working knowledge of Bradford East who expects David Ward to lose and who would bet against Duncan Hames in Chippenham? He also counts Cambridge as a “tight urban battle” despite the Ashcroft poll this week showing a sensational boost for Julian Huppert. If you’re going to tell us that we have a lot of tight fights on our hand, well, you are stating the bleedin’ obvious. But don’t write off clearly winnable options.

Oh, and any list of possible gains that doesn’t include Layla Moran in Oxford West and Abingdon is a very poor show.

Toby Helm et al look at our post coalition decision making and make the startling revelation that it might just be difficult to get the party to sign up to another deal with the Tories. Who knew? Gordon Lishman, Martin Tod and Naomi Smith are all quoted in it.

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Kirsten Johnson

Opinion: Water of Life

By Kirsten Johnson | Sun 5th April 2015 - 10:25 am

Today many Christians are celebrating Easter, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Jesus, whether you view him as historical figure, prophet or messiah, used many images in his teaching. One was water.

John 4:13-14 talks of Jesus’ encounter with the woman of Samaria at the well, and Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But anyone who drinks the water I give them will never be thirsty. In fact, the water I give them will become a spring of water in them. It will flow up into eternal life.”

Water is a precious resource. Just this week there was news of California entering the fourth year of drought. Governor Jerry Brown has introduced strict conservation measures to reduce water usage by 25%. California produces a third of the fresh vegetables consumed by Americans, and prices in shops across the country are already reflecting the drought.

Global warming has brought this on. The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains which supplies the water California needs is at a record low. The water California needs for households, crops and industry is not available. Sacrifices will have to be made.

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Caron Lindsay

Nicola Sturgeon faces similar press trashing to Clegg in 2010 – but with added misogyny

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 4th April 2015 - 10:39 am

I might have some fairly fundamental disagreements with Nicola Sturgeon on the best future for Scotland, but I have a great deal of time for her as a human being and as a politician. She is a much cleverer tactician than Alex Salmond ever was. I am perfectly happy to argue with people on their political outlook, but I’m not struck on the sort of nasty personal mudslinging that we see at PMQs, or in Labour’s deeply misleading personal attack on Nick Clegg last year and I sure as hell am not going to make up my mind how to vote based on how someone eats a bacon sandwich. Nor, I suspect, are the rest of the population.

It appears that after her very good performance in Thursday’s Leaders’ Debate that Nicola Sturgeon is, highly predictably, being done over by the right wing press in much the same way that Nick Clegg was in 2010. Remember Nick Barlow’s wonderful way of dealing with that – the #nickcleggsfault meme on Twitter where Clegg was blamed from everything to the weather to the cat being sick?

Of course, Nicola is getting much different treatment to a man. Her clothes come in to it. The Daily Fail describes her as a “glamorous power-dressing imperatrix.” Wow. A woman goes out wearing smart clothes. How remarkable. Of course, if she rocked up for FMQs in Parliament in her jeans, they’d have something to say about that, too. On appearance, women really can’t win.

The Telegraph’s splash is a bit different. Last night, when I read their account that she’d told the French ambassador that she’d prefer David Cameron to be Prime Minister, it didn’t seem right to me. Apart from anything else, the Nicola Sturgeon I know has more sense than to be so indiscreet. The paper bases its story on a memo written by a UK Government official who wasn’t even at the meeting in question and who actually doubts its veracity. It’s all very third hand and clearly questionable.

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Simon Foster

Opinion: The silence of the Miliband

By Simon Foster | Fri 3rd April 2015 - 9:06 am

Yesterday I got an email from Ed Miliband, which included part of his online Q &A session:

“I am stuck as to whether to vote Labour or Lib Dem. I am not interested in past records either, I am looking to the future. Many people fall in an “in-between zone”, not poor enough to receive help with living costs, but not rich enough to be able to stay on top of general living costs. How would Labour deal with this? — Zoe, Norfolk

Ed: Hi Zoe, you’re absolutely right that the problem in our economy right now is that recovery just isn’t reaching working people — just a few at the top. Many working people aren’t getting paid enough to be able to stay on top of the bills. Tackling this cost of living crisis will be the key mission of the next Labour government. Unlike the Tories, Labour understand that Britain only succeeds when working families succeed, and that’s why only a Labour government can tackle the cost of living crisis. One of the ways we will do this is by freezing your energy bills until 2017 and giving the regulator the power to cut bills this winter so that people can afford to heat their homes. To make sure work pays, we will ban exploitative zero-hours contracts, raise the minimum wage to £8, and provide 25 hours free childcare per week for working parents with three or four year olds. We’ll also introduce a new, lower 10p starting rate of tax, paid for by scrapping the unfair marriage tax allowance, which will benefit 24 million people on middle and lower incomes…”

Well the minimum wage should go up to £8.25 in the long run anyway, and the 10p tax rate is completely wrong, we should be looking at national insurance now instead.

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Caron Lindsay

Candid, competent Clegg puts in good performance in debate that fails to break the poll deadlock

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 2nd April 2015 - 11:12 pm

The NHS doesn’t need warm words, it needs hard cash.

Probably the line of the debate for me, from Nick Clegg as he highlighted Liberal Democrat plans to invest £8 billion in the NHS in England with resultant Barnett Consequentials. Clegg was at the top of his game tonight. Paddy Ashdown said he was flawless, but I wouldn’t quite go that far. He stumbled a bit on immigration – taking the right line but with some strange comments about good and bad immigrations. I actually feel prouder of him than I did in 2010. After all the grief he’s taken, after everything that’s happened in the last five years, for him to come out with humility and clarity and perform so well was very good.  As I write, a public speaking expert says that he thought Nick was excellent.

He was pretty strong on the economy, too and repeatedly challenged Cameron on the Tory plans not raising taxes on the rich.

Having lived through the independence referendum and all the nonsense spread by the Yes campaign that the NHS had been privatised in England, it was good to see Nick call Nicola out on that.

Nicola Sturgeon  was very good too. It was funny when she turned and faced Cameron to ask him to specify his welfare cuts and he turned away from her. She made a lot of claims about what was happening in Scotland, from NHS Funding (actually going down), NHS car parking (you still have to pay in some places) and on the failure of the SNP to keep its promise to dump student debt. Oh, and let’s not forget the young people denied opportunity because of the SNP’s slashing of college places. 

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Caron Lindsay

The popcorn’s ready for the debate tonight – what I want to see from Nick Clegg

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 2nd April 2015 - 7:39 pm

It was one year ago tonight that Nick took on Nigel. And tonight he takes on Nigel and five others. All of them will be queuing up to attack him. Nigel because Nick’s open, liberal, internationalist stance is the antithesis of all he stands for, Ed, Nicola, Leanne and Natalie because that’s what they do and Dave because the last thing he wants is another coalition with the Nick. After all, he did tell the Daily Mail that he’d govern like a proper Tory if it weren’t for Nick. When the Prime Minister talks about Ed Miliband being in Alex Salmond’s pocket, you can tell he feels that he’s been in Nick Clegg’s for the past five years.

But lets just take a moment and smile. This is the first major occasion like this at a UK level when there will be an equal number of men and women on that stage. I wish it wasn’t remarkable and I hope that in my lifetime it won’t be. Natalie Bennett, Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood and Julie Etchingham, you are making history.

So, let’s look at the basic housekeeping first. The debate can be seen on STV and ITV live and you can watch online on the Lib Dem website here. I will probably watch the BBC News Channel, where, alongside the debate, they’ll have the Worm, which shows selected viewers’ instant reactions to what is being said.

Format

Each leader gets a one minute statement. Then there are four question and answer sessions on the topics of health, the economy, immigration and the future of the UK. Each section, after each leader has had an uninterrupted minute to answer the question, lasts for up to 18 minutes.

My advice to Nick

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Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes…Challenging Ukip’s assumptions

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 2nd April 2015 - 11:35 am

With Eurosceptic Tories and Ukip candidates alongside us in this campaign, we need to challenge their assumptions in every all-party panel and debate. Here are a few I’ve found useful so far:

1. To those who say we want a referendum now, or as soon as possible, without waiting for negotiations on EU reform or for the next change in the Treaties: why don’t they say straight out that they want to leave the EU, and not hide behind the call for a referendum?

2. Where do they think Britain will go to when we leave the EU? The Norwegians and the Swiss have warned us about the disadvantages of not having a say in the rules of the Single Market.  Would we find closer friends to work with in Saudi Arabia, or Russia, or China?

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