Category Archives: Op-eds

Roisin Miller

A strong record in government…why I’m voting Lib Dem

By Roisin Miller | Thu 7th May 2015 - 11:13 am

Throughout polling day, LDV will be running short pieces by readers giving their personal reasons for supporting the Liberal Democrats when they go to the polling station today.

This year, I had to think very hard about this. Despite being a member and campaigning to re-elect Ed Davey, I wasn’t convinced. In a safe seat and subsequently we hear little from any party – my decision therefore had to be made on national lines. None of the parties are trying that hard to bribe single, childless, Twentysomething women so there wasn’t much there to deliberate.

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Kishwer Falkner

Baroness Kishwer Falkner writes… A Lib Dem red line over an EU referendum: Yes or No? The choice is appealingly straightforward isn’t it?

By Kishwer Falkner | Thu 7th May 2015 - 9:58 am

So posits Andrew Duff in his letter to the Guardian warning that ‘If we Lib Dems accept this referendum as part of a new coalition pact, we will bring ruination on ourselves’. Well that’s clear then, isn’t it?

There are two reasons of principle why we should not be seduced by this simple hypothesis, and a third to do with pragmatism.

First, there is the argument that complex issues cannot be dealt with through referendums, and the proposed in/out referendum is somehow alien to our own thinking or political philosophy. The Lib Dems have never subscribed to this Burkean view of the relationship between the electors and the elected. In this period of Government alone we have departed from it three times by holding a referendum on the Alternative Voting system, legislating in the European Union Act 2011 for a referendum should there be a fresh transfer of powers to the EU, and in granting a referendum for a yes/no vote in Scotland. Given that the last issue had the potential to breakup the Union and was the subject of much deliberation, an anti-referendum stance is not one of principle.

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Caron Lindsay

The best UK government of my lifetime

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 6th May 2015 - 7:55 pm

I kicked off the campaign with this post and I thought I’d re-run it the night before we head to the polls. I wrote a book chapter about the coalition in the shadow of a rollercoaster. That’s how the last five years have felt. There have been moments when I’ve winced and moments when I have been immensely proud of our ministers. All in all, though, Britain is in a much better place than it would have been without us. All that horrible stuff you see in the Tory manifesto about banning non-specified non violent extremism, all the stuff about taking all benefits from young people, all the illiberal, immigrant-bashing, poor-demonising, rich-enriching nonsense wouldn’t in their manifesto. They would already be law. I hope that the government elected tomorrow is a force for economic fairness and stability, transformational political change and has an open and internationalist approach. If there are Liberal Democrats in it, it will tick all of these boxes. Anyway, here are my thoughts from five weeks ago. 

This post will be open to new and infrequent commenters. 

I’m not going to lie, when we went into coalition with the Tories, I did not feel comfortable with it. Working with the party who had destroyed the country I grew up during the 80s  in was never going to be easy. It’s not about comfort or ease, though. It’s about doing good and enacting liberal values. We’ve made mistakes – howlers, even. Who hasn’t? Can you say that you’ve got through the last five years error free? We have much to show for it. For every child who hasn’t had to spend months in Yarl’s Wood, for every disadvantaged child who has new opportunities at school, for those who benefit from reforms to mental health, for those who have workplace pensions, for pensioners benefitting from the triple lock, for those people across the world who benefit from our aid. for those who are now free to marry the people they love, it’s been worth it. Despite all the constraints on us having only 8% of the MPs and a fifth of the government, we have made a very strong, liberal mark.

Despite everything, this coalition has been the best UK government of my lifetime. That’s quite a long time, however much I like to pretend that I’m a young person. Certainly the likes of Blair, Thatcher and Callaghan didn’t set the bar very high, but we’ve achieved a lot. It’s been a roller coaster and I’m far from satisfied with everything it’s done, but I am incredibly proud of Lib Dem ministers, among them:

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Anthony Tuffin

The Independent View: Benefit the nation and the voters

By Anthony Tuffin | Wed 6th May 2015 - 10:40 am

If the Liberal Democrats get about half UKIP’s votes (8% against 14%) but about 10 times as many MPs 20 – 30 against 2 – 3), will the Liberal Democrats stand by their principals and demand electoral reform?  In particular, will they insist on the Single Transferable Vote (STV), which they have always recognized as the best voting system for voters?

The Liberal Democrats have had five years now to learn the hard way what some of us warned in 2010, based on our observations of continental Europe where coalitions are normal; the senior partner takes the credit for popular decisions and blames the junior partner for unpopular ones.

If the Liberal Democrats had got STV for this election as a condition of entering into coalition in 2010, they could now be looking at winning about 52 seats for about 8% of the vote.  Admittedly, UKIP might be expecting about 91 seats but, if that is what voters want, so be it.

The real point of electoral reform is not to benefit this or that party but to benefit the nation and the voters.

With electoral reform for this election, the SNP could expect about half the Scottish seats (30) for about half the Scottish votes instead of all the seats (59) for half the votes and not be in pole position now to hold the UK to ransom.  Please see David Green’s excellent exposition on for more on this.

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Cara Jenkinson

Opinion: Why I would be wary of another coalition with the Conservatives

By Cara Jenkinson | Tue 5th May 2015 - 9:41 am

As the speculation continues on the make-up of the next government, I have been thinking a lot about the prospect of another Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.

We went into coalition in 2010 for three main reasons 1) because the country needed a strong, stable government to sort out the economy which was in crisis 2) to stop the Tories from doing nasty, right-wing things, and 3) to get our own great policies, such as pupil premium implemented.

So where are we in 2015? We do not have the same level of economic difficulty as we did in 2010. The deficit is halved, our GDP growth is the highest amongst developed countries and we have record employment. Whilst it’s true that we cannot take the economic recovery for granted, we are not in crisis.

As to being able to stop the Tories’ right wing agenda in 2015, I doubt that we will be able to do that as effectively. It is likely that any Conservative/Lib Dem/DUP coalition will have the smallest of majorities. This will give those ‘swivel-eyed’ right wing conservatives a lot of power. In this parliament, the Coalition had a decent majority and the more extreme Tories could be safely ignored – that won’t be the case this time. And just to get a flavour of some of the policies on offer in the Tory 2015 manifesto – 500 more free schools, removing JSA for 18-21 year olds, requiring 40% turnout for strike action, ending any subsidy for onshore wind,  lowering the benefit cap, capping skilled migration, scrapping the Human Rights Act and introducing the snoopers charter – nice!

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Joe Otten

The real problem with #EdStone is that Miliband cannot be sure he will be able to deliver

By Joe Otten | Mon 4th May 2015 - 1:22 pm

We are all sneering – myself included – at Ed Milliband’s decision to inscribe a monolith with 6 election pledges. Even the Labour-supporting Guardian has likened it to Neil Kinnock’s Sheffield Rally.

Preposterous as this seems, I suspect that the intended message – that they are really serious about these pledges – may nonetheless seep through, while politicians and reporters clutch their aching sides, to the wider public.

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Toby MacDonnell

Opinion: Labour isn’t Keynesian – that’s why Liberal Democrats had to be

By Toby MacDonnell | Mon 4th May 2015 - 12:14 pm

 

When Labour bailed out the financial system, it misapplied Keynesian economics. Keynes writes that stimulus should be used to stimulate a depressed economy that isn’t at full employment: what Labour did was use the stimulus money to stabilise a system that was falling apart under the weight of its own contradictions.

The instant they did that, it committed the UK to paying back the money it had borrowed: it transferred the debt that would have been wiped out by private sector bankruptcy to the state.

While this reduced the loss of value in the economy (public sector debt has prevented private sector bankruptcy to accumulate a negative multiplier effect: the cost of propping up one domino has prevented the others from falling), it means that regardless of who is in charge we need to reduce the deficit to maintain the creditability of the state by which the rest of our economy is guarantored.

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Caron Lindsay

There is no need for Clegg to make an EU Referendum a red line. This does not signify agreement to it

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd May 2015 - 11:50 pm

I have seen some consternation amongst Lib Dems today, both in real life and online, about Nick Clegg’s remarks about an EU referendum not being  a red line for us. Many party members feel very strongly that we should not agree to something which could be very unsettling and destabilising. Having come through three years of the Scottish referendum, I am more in that camp than in the other group of activists who think we should agree to it or we’ll be seen as anti-democratic.

Before we rush to judgment, let’s have a look at what Nick actually said. From the Guardian:

I am happy to insist on my red lines – they are the ones the Liberal Democratshave put on the front page of our manifesto which are much more important than some of the other red lines other parties have chosen.”

He said he disagreed with the Tory position on the EU and said he was still committed to the act of parliament passed by the coalition which would trigger a referendum if further UK sovereignty was ceded to Brussels. But he declined to rule out rejecting Cameron’s demand for a referendum.

“It’s not my responsibility to try and stare into a crystal ball. The way this works is I set out my priorities, David Cameron sets out his, Ed Miliband sets out his. People then choose. How those red lines are or are not compatible with each other is in part dependent on the mandate that the British people give each of those parties.”

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Caron Lindsay

In which I seriously contemplate voting Labour

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd May 2015 - 8:02 pm

You might find this hard to believe. I was a little bit shocked by it myself. You have to understand the situation I am in. I live in a seat which is, to all intents and purposes, a battle between the SNP and Labour. With a poll this week suggesting that the SNP could win every single seat in Scotland, the unthinkable had to be thought. Should I, could I vote Labour tactically  to try to stop that happening? A large group of SNP MPs primarily motivated by narrow nationalist interests is not something that I think would be healthy for our democracy.

I have voted either SDP or Liberal Democrat in every election since I turned 18 bar two. The first was in the 90s when there was no Lib Dem candidate in my council ward. There wasn’t even an independent. My choice was Tory or Labour. There was no way I could ever in a million years vote Tory, so I had to click my heels three times, cross my fingers behind my back and put my cross next to the Labour candidate. The second was the 1997 election when I didn’t vote at all. When I had headed over to Chesterfield on the Friday before polling day, I rather suspected I might get home before 10pm on polling day. It wasn’t to be. I don’t think Mrs Pankhurst would have minded too much, though, because I was working my backside of in one of the most fantastic campaigns I have ever worked on.

The thought of Scotland sending a contingent of 100% of nationalist MPs elected on barely half the vote was something that deeply disturbed me. they would then claim that they spoke for Scotland, dismissing those who didn’t support them. Don’t get me wrong, there are some issues where I have a lot of common ground with them. However, their nationalism and quest for independence aside, they have a strong authoritarian, illiberal streak which goes against all my instincts. If Labour were the only ones likely to be able to beat them, shouldn’t I hold my nose and just vote Labour?

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Caron Lindsay

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

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd May 2015 - 8:24 am

sundaypapsOn the last Sunday before the election, here’s a quick selection of the must-reads from the Sunday papers. Five years ago on this Sunday, we woke up to favourable comments in the Observer and Scotland on Sunday. Would anyone recommend voting for us today or would the papers revert tot type?

The Observer, presumably for its own reasons, has a very unbalanced look at coalition options after the election for the Liberal Democrats. The article barely even looks at a deal with Labour and has a number of sitting MPs, including David Ward, saying that the coalition with the Tories might continue. They might have done well to look at my article on the party’s processes so that they didn’t assume that it was all in the MPs’ gift. Oh, and a member of the LDV team gets quoted.

In news that will surprise nobody, the Observer backs Labour. Unlike its sister paper, though, which advised tactical voting for the Lib Dems in places like the South West, the leader ostentatiously ignores us.

Funnily enough, the Sunday Times (£) talks up Liberal Democrats slating the Tories to try to persuade Tory voters not to vote tactically.

Clegg has said he will deal first with the largest party, but in a sign that a repeat of the coalition may be difficult the Lib Dem Tim Farron last night warned that his party should be prepared to “walk away” if it does not get what it wants, branding Conservative instincts as “wicked”.

He said a Tory government without the Lib Dems would be “a horror story”, creating an “uncivilised” country “that we should be ashamed of”.

Farron said his party would inject “compassion and basic humanity and civilisation into an otherwise wicked Tory administration

In news which will surprise nobody, the paper backs the Tories but urges Tory voters in Lib Dem Labour marginals to vote tactically for the Liberal Democrat.

But Peter Kellner finds room to hope for Liberal Democrats, finding strong recovery in key seats.

We find that Conservative support is holding up better in the party’s key marginal seats than in the rest of the country, and also that the Liberal Democrats are recovering strongly, albeit from a low base, in the seats they are defending.

The upshot is that I have increased the number of seats that I expect the Lib Dems to hold, and reduced the number of seats that Labour is likely to gain from the Conservatives.

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Caron Lindsay

Apparently, our future depends on Nick Clegg’s eyebrows…

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 2nd May 2015 - 12:15 pm

 

An article on the Huffngton Post looks at Nick Clegg’s communications skills. It’s all about the eyebrows, apparently:

Nick Clegg faces a virtual mission impossible in this general election campaign – but if anything can save him and his party from electoral oblivion, it’s his eyebrows.

That’s right. His eyebrows. They’re the key to understanding why, despite being a figure of derision, the deputy prime minister’s communication skills remain some of the most polished out there.

Clegg uses his eyebrows better than any of the other party leaders when he wants to use emphasis to make a point. Raising the eyebrows is a very primitive gesture indicating interest in a particular fact or statement. And Clegg always has a slightly raised eyebrow look which opens his face up.

Compare him to David Cameron, whose face is so tense he can barely muster a convincing smile. The prime minister always seems quite severe, whereas Clegg is more open facially and appears more likable as a result.

They look at other aspects of his communication skills:

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David Warren

Opinion: A golden handshake

By David Warren | Sat 2nd May 2015 - 10:45 am

Jonny Smith, the principal character in Stephen King’s ‘The Dead Zone’, awakes from a coma with the power to see into a person’s future by touching them.

It starts in hospital where he forsees a nurse’s house is on fire with her child in it.

His premonition is correct and the child is saved.

He becomes a national celebrity and is able to help the police solve a serious crime in a rural backwater.

However when he turns his attention to politicians, the fun really starts.

The novel was written in the 1970’s, the era of Nixon, Ford and Carter.

Smith encounters candidate Carter on the campaign trail, shakes his hand and sees that the peanut farmer will become President but encounters no feelings of malevolence.

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Holly Matthies

Opinion: To be free from poverty, ignorance and conformity, our society must have robust support for disabled people

By Holly Matthies | Fri 1st May 2015 - 7:20 pm

Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day 2015. It’s the tenth annual day for disabled and non-disabled people to blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination (known as disablism or ableism). It aims to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made.

An online acquaintance of mine said he was going to write for #BADD2015 in terms of the political parties’ manifestos. Good Lib Dem that I am, I looked forward to hearing some positive stuff about my party. I know there’s lots to talk about.

The Lib Dems have budgeted the £8 billion a year the NHS will need during the next parliament, which is bound to be relevant to the lives of people with disabilities and other long-term conditions, as many of us do seem to see doctors, nurses and specialists often enough to be on a first-name basis with many of them!

The Lib Dems’ unique dedication to improving mental health care is also relevant to many disabled people, both those whose disability is primarily or entirely a matter of mental illness, and those who experience poor mental health as a result of other disabilities. Mental illnesses are some of the most common, and most “invisible,” disabilities in the UK, and at the moment the mental health care many people receive (or fail to) not only doesn’t help them but can actually make their mental health worse.

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Denis Mollison

Opinion: Opportunities for electoral reform in a hung parliament

By Denis Mollison | Fri 1st May 2015 - 4:10 pm

As Simon Kelner says in today’s i newspaper, electoral reform has “played absolutely zero part in this election campaign”, though it “goes to the very essence of our democracy”.

In what has been described as a lottery election, we need to be prepared for any of the diverse opportunities for electoral reform that may open up.  One thing that does seem almost certain is that the result itself will provide strong evidence of the need for change, with hugely varying seat/vote ratios.  Current polls suggest the following: Conservatives and Labour each with only a third of the votes but over 40% of seats; Liberal Democrats with 4% of seats from 8% of the votes while the SNP have the reverse; and UKIP and the Greens with a combined vote of 15-20%, yet less than 1% of seats between them.

What type of negotiations might there be?  A key distinction is between any possible long term agreement – that is, for the duration of the parliament – such as a formal coalition, and a short term agreement that allows a minority government to take office, winning the vote on a Queen’s Speech and any ensuing vote of confidence.

For any formal agreement, STV for local government in England and Wales should be a Liberal Democrat red line.  With the Conservatives, we could agree on further devolved powers for Scotland and Wales, but their other constitutional manifesto aims, “English Votes for English Laws” and “reduce and equalise constituencies”, are much more problematic because we have very different ideas on both issues.  A formal agreement on constitutional reform with Labour should be easier: their constitutional manifesto aims are all ones we can agree with: more devolved powers, a constitutional convention, replacing the House of Lords with an elected senate, and votes for 16 and 17-year olds.

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Joe Otten

My challenge to Ed Miliband – your core message may be a fabrication

By Joe Otten | Fri 1st May 2015 - 11:15 am

Ed,

Yesterday on Question Time, you said, as you have said many times during this campaign:

There are some people who tell you that the way we succeed as a country is as long as a few people at the top do well and large corporations, that’s what powers the economy…

Here’s a good question, which you’ll be glad I asked you: Who are these people who tell us this? Have we heard of any of them? Are they standing for election? Can you give us a direct quote or two?

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Tony Greaves

Lord Tony Greaves writes…Why a new coalition would be a bad idea

By Tony Greaves | Thu 30th April 2015 - 4:42 pm

In my first piece about what happens after May 7th I worked on the basis that the result would be around Con 275, Lab 275, LD 35, SNP 40, UKIP 5, Green 2, Speaker 1, all the Northern Irish 17 (of which the present numbers are DUP 8, SF 5, SDLP 3, All 1). Since then the numbers predicted by the polls have wobbled a bit around these numbers but the only consistent change has been to push up the SNP to perhaps 50 seats. And given the lack of a “late swing” of any size the LD number may be a bit high.

Given the provisions of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act it all still adds up to the likelihood – or the opportunity? – of a minority government (or democratic parliament?) that lasts several years, perhaps for the full five. Yet our official line is still that we want to join another Coalition. Officially we will negotiate with Tories or Labour, starting with the party with most seats (though in practice we will be talking to both simultaneously if that is what the numbers decree). Unofficially our leadership are reported to prefer another coalition with the Tories.

It’s no secret that this idea causes a severe onset of jitters in many parts of the party. With a week to go, the Times’ lead story reports “Lib Dems to revolt over fresh pact with Tories” (£). The story is pretty anecdotal, full of unattributed comments by “senior figures in the party” and the like (only Andrew George breaking cover), in general a typically flimsy piece of tabloid style journalism of the kind we see nowadays in the Times.

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Ruth Bright

Opinion: Politics? It’s child’s play

By Ruth Bright | Thu 30th April 2015 - 12:23 pm

Toys debate politicsPity, poor Tristram Hunt. On the campaign trail the other day he made the classic mistake of asking a young child how he was going to vote.

Child: “UKIP”

Hunt: “Oh why is that then?

Child: “Because they’ll get all the foreigners out of the country”

To adapt the old adage: Never do politics with children and animals!

For a candidate kids are a minefield but as a parent I’ve been struck by how interested my kids (one pre- teen and one mid primary) have been in this their “first” General Election. They even staged their own election debate with toys which of course I enjoyed as much as they did!

There isn’t much help for parents attempting to introduce their kids to politics and political history.

Even really young American children have reading books about the Founding Fathers, Lincoln and the Roosevelts. Imagine the laughing stock a British parent would be if she went into a bookshop and asked for: “Gladstone and Disraeli for toddlers” or “Learn to read with the Tolpuddle Martyrs”

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Simon Foster

In pictures: Oxford West and Abingdon – 500th poster up for Layla Moran

By Simon Foster | Wed 29th April 2015 - 10:33 pm

Thing started well when we got the 300th stakeboard up:

Photo 1 Nathan with the first stake

Photo 1 (Nathan Khan)

Then, there’s the posters.  Activist Jan Morter decided that her stakeboard couldn’t be seen at night.  So she decided to brighten up her street, which shone some light on the campaign:

Photo 2a Jans poster

 

Photo 2 Jans poster at night

Next there’s the ducks.  Duck L’Orange, the duck of Liberal Tolerance and Justice, apart from having her own twitter account (follow @duckalorangeld) has apparently produced some offspring.  A naming competition followed.  After 2 ballots and 1 recount, Crispin Daisy Duck was declared the winner:

Photo 3 Crispin Daisy Duck

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John Kelly

Opinion: Why Liberal Democrats should respond positively to the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign’s questionnaire

By John Kelly | Tue 28th April 2015 - 3:45 pm

In an election Campaign in which none of the Parties has wanted to talk very much about foreign policy, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been asking candidates their views on a variety of questions related to Palestine and then urging the c.200,000 people on their mailing list to consider these responses before deciding how to vote.  On average that represents 300 supporters per constituency – more than the margin that decided the election in a handful of seats in 2010, including some of ours.

Over 800 candidates have responded.  I did a check a few days ago and found that only half of the Lib Dem candidates in constituencies that we held last time have responded.  Some of the responses, for instance from Martin Horwood, Layla Moran, Andrew George and John Hemming were particularly strong. Others responded rather weakly and seem to have been following a rather weak brief supplied by Party HQ.

Liberal Democrat candidates who haven’t yet responded should be aware that Greens have been particularly punctilious about responding and doing so positively to PSC questions, which were:

Do you agree with the following statements:

  1. I urge the UK Government to uphold the principles of equality, human rights and international law in all its relations and dealings with Israel.
  2. I consider the construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal and unjustifiable.
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Paul Reynolds

Opinion: Ed Miliband’s march to Financial Crisis II and Wars of Choice II

By Paul Reynolds | Tue 28th April 2015 - 2:30 pm

Canvassing over the weekend for Simon Hughes in Canada Water, (Labour-facing) and for Ed Davey in Surbiton (Tory facing), I was again struck by how much the remaining staunch Labour voters still see their party as on the left of the political spectrum.

Sure they are planning to  borrow much more than the Liberal Democrats, and make the UK vulnerable to another crisis.  However that seems a direct result of most of their big money contributions coming courtesy of dual-hatted public sector union reps.

On everything else they are looking increasingly authoritarian, and pro-war.  A kind of ‘Blairism without the fake financial prudence’.  Whilst the combination of top-down control-freakery and sponsored superficial PR-type MPs lost them Scotland, no lessons seemed to have been learned. The likely new Labour intake looks frighteningly lightweight and malleable.

At recent hustings (I’m a candidate in West Ham and doing some Newham-wide events) Labour incumbents robotically read through lists of extra spending promises, but dodge much else with bland statements of the blindingly obvious. They peddle the myth of the 2007 ‘global crisis’.

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Paul Walter

It’s not often the leader of the DUP says something I agree with….

By Paul Walter | Tue 28th April 2015 - 9:53 am

After her recent slow car crash with John Humphrys on Today, one would have thought that Theresa May would have spent the rest of the election campaign getting quietly lost in darkest Maidenhead.

But, oh no, at the weekend she came back with a bang in an interview with the Mail on Sunday:

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Mark Wright

Opinion: Labour’s unfinished business on ‘Religious hatred’

By Mark Wright | Mon 27th April 2015 - 3:26 pm

 

On the penultimate Saturday before the General Election, the Labour Party made a fairly startling policy announcement that was hardly noticed by the media: “Labour would outlaw Islamophobia”, said Ed Miliband in an interview. At first glance, that doesn’t seem like a scary announcement – I mean, Islamophobia is a bad thing, right?

Unfortunately, it’s much more complex than that.

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Toby MacDonnell

Opinion: I’m voting Lib Dem, without holding my nose: not for liberalism, but for democracy

By Toby MacDonnell | Mon 27th April 2015 - 2:29 pm

 

We are the only party prepared to campaign for genuine democratic reform and to put their money where their mouth is.

When I voted in 2010, I knew full well we might prop up the Tories: Brown had had it, and the Labour party has always been high handed and patrician-like to smaller parties.

When I hear supposed progressives railing against the Conservatives, I hear people who only want the arguments closed, who want a winner: the point of democracy is that nobody should win outright.

The only route to power should be to govern in a way people not of your party can get onside with. Democracy is a process of discussion and persuasion.

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Denis Mollison

Opinion: Hung parliaments – a suggestion from Denmark    

By Denis Mollison | Mon 27th April 2015 - 12:21 pm

 

Why is Nick Clegg ruling out options in a hung parliament?

Firstly, he has said that he would refuse to work with Labour in a government that relied on ‘life support’ from the Scottish National Party; this is reported in the Financial Times as a  blow to the chances of a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition.  I know very well that the SNP are our most dangerous opponents in Scotland – as they are also Labour’s – but the fact remains that these three parties’ policies have more in common than any of them do with the Conservatives.

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Will Wilshere

Opinion: Letterbox v doorstep

By Will Wilshere | Mon 27th April 2015 - 10:30 am

 

I’ve been volunteering in my seat of Watford for Dorothy Thornhill since February, offering my assistance whenever I can. I’ve done my fair share of both deliveries and canvassing since then, and whilst I was doing some deliveries I got thinking.

Which way is the best way to attract voters and win people over?

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Judy Abel

Opinion: We shouldn’t position ourselves as the ‘Middle of the Road’ Party

By Judy Abel | Mon 27th April 2015 - 9:02 am

 

I am hesitant to write another article for LDV so soon after my last one on polling, but with the General Election so close now, I am going to put my head above the parapet on the matter of the Party’s seeming decision to steer us right down the middle.

Having looked at the Lib Dem Manifesto in some detail when recently writing some articles for the LDCF, I was surprised to see how many progressive and innovative policies there really are in there. I am worried though, that if we keep saying we ‘Won’t spend as much as Labour or cut as much as the Tories’, we will simply become more and more ‘invisible’. The whole ‘Look Right, Look Left and Cross’ thing also seems to present the same image of the Liberal Democrats as standing for nothing in particular – and certainly nothing to get excited about.

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Caron Lindsay

So what exactly will the Liberal Democrats do if involved in coalition negotiations?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 26th April 2015 - 4:30 pm

As Nick Clegg had the good grace to say in his email to members yesterday, that the decision about whether the Liberal Democrats go into coalition or not if in a position to do so is not in his gift.

We’re a democratic party. In the end, the decision to form a coalition rests not with the leader but with the party.

That is kind of true. I thought it would be worth taking you through what will happen should Liberal Democrats be involved in coalition negotiations after the election. The process is different from last time. Then all the leader had to do was to get the approval of the parliamentary parties in the Commons and Lords and the Federal Executive. The Special Conference which took place was not actually a requirement, but it was thought to be good practice. It overwhelmingly endorsed the Coalition Agreement.

This time, things are different, due to a motion passed at Spring Conference in 2012. Now, this will deliver a clear answer on whether to go into coalition or not, so the markets need not worry themselves, but it would be wrong to overlook the potential for longer term chaos it could ignite in the party. What conference was thinking of when it passed this, I have no idea. Here’s the motion:

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Anne Cunningham

Opinion: Why do I still care?

By Anne Cunningham | Sun 26th April 2015 - 1:34 pm

It is difficult to stop caring coming, as I do, from generations of politically active Liberals and having taken up the baton myself back in 1983. In 1997, I was handed the reins of the Scottish Lib Dem website which meant I was in sole charge of the content and design of the site. I ran it until 2008 when I resigned in disgust at the changes, and censorship, mooted by a newly-formed website committee. Since then, I have allowed my membership to lapse but, until now, have always voted Lib Dem.

Being in a coalition took Westminster Lib Dems by surprise in 2010 but it need not have done. They have, of course, done wonders as a brake on Tory policies but they will never have any credit for what they have done. What is particularly frustrating for me is that I had pointed out how to advertise their role in a paper I circulated in January 2005 because, by that time, there had already been Lib Dem Government Ministers for five years.

How easy it would have been, back then, to have had permanent footers on every London press release pointing out that the person in charge, in Scotland, was a Lib Dem.  How easy it would have been to have our Education spokesperson MP stop waffling on about what he would do and start saying this is what our Minister is doing, in Scotland.  No-one else was going to do so, no Westminster Minister was ever going to admit to covering only part of the UK, the only people who could blow the Lib Dem trumpet were the Lib Dems themselves and they failed, miserably.

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Caron Lindsay

Sarah Smith, a brave and committed Liberal Democrat candidate fighting the election while undergoing cancer treatment

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 26th April 2015 - 12:15 pm

There’s a really moving profile of Liberal Democrat candidate Sarah Smith in today’s Observer magazine. Written by her stepsister Catherine Mayer, it tells of how she is combining fighting the election with a gruelling course of Chemotherapy after being diagnosed with Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer just after party conference in October last year.

Sarah is not the only candidate fighting the election with such a diagnosis. I know of two others who have had Cancer diagnoses in recent months and are continuing with their duties. The way that they have handled it has been a real example to us all.

Sarah is fighting the seat of Dover and Deal and has been open about her diagnosis and hopes that she will be able to help others and raise awareness.

Surely she should now devote her energies to recovery or, if that proved elusive, draw up a bucket list? People in her situation book trips to Rome or the Galapagos rather than yearning to tramp the streets of Dover and Deal.

Sarah laughed at the comparison but remained obdurate. Her candidacy had validity before her diagnosis, she said, and she refused to accept that illness would stop her from being effective. Her local party agreed so she posted an open letter to constituents revealing her condition. “I am telling you about this because I want to be open about what is happening to me, and because my treatment will undoubtedly affect my campaign. It will be harder for me to get out to meet you on the doorstep, although I will do that as much as I can.”

Mayer outlines what Sarah has been through in the last 6 months:

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Paul Walter

Nick Clegg’s statement on the SNP doesn’t preclude voting with them

By Paul Walter | Sun 26th April 2015 - 8:52 am

There has been much revolution and intertwinement of under-garments over Nick Clegg’s statement about the SNP yesterday. In its refined form he talked about “not entering into a post-election coalition that relies on life support from the SNP or UKIP”. Earlier he talked about no entering into “arrangements” which involved the SNP.

This is all a bit of a non-event or non-story.

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