Category Archives: Op-eds

Caron Lindsay

A day of light and ideas

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 28th May 2014 - 9:51 am

Sunrise Little Trout Bay 4These last five days have been among the worst I have known in my almost 31 years of being a part of this wonderful party. I’d pretty much prepared myself for winning only a couple of MEPs. Even those limited ambitions proved to be wildly optimistic. Seeing massive Labour fiefdoms recreated in London and Manchester. t’s been bruising, brutal and fraught. Seeing friends and colleagues lose their jobs and seats through no fault of their own is heartbreaking. And to lose them to wrecking, scapegoating UKIP types …

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Ben Nicholls

Opinion: A change of leader will make no difference. A change of heart and pride just might.

By Ben Nicholls | Tue 27th May 2014 - 5:33 pm

RomseyAs a young, recently-selected Lib Dem candidate for next year’s general election and in a winnable marginal seat, I’m rather more interested in what my fellow voters think – over 70,000 of them in my area – than a small number of disaffected Party members looking for a scapegoat after recent election results.

Standing in an area which includes smart middle-class patches as well as tougher urban ones, I’ve spent the past few weeks meeting hundreds of constituents. The words ‘Nick Clegg’ have been mentioned about three times. Nobody I’ve met really seems to mind who the leader is. They DO mind that the Lib Dems are no longer clear enough about what we stand for and that we once appeared human but increasingly sound like political robots.

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Nick Perry

Opinion: Where we work we get a pasting

By Nick Perry | Tue 27th May 2014 - 3:08 pm

Blackadder Quote From DVDAfter another bruising local government election in Hastings & Rye – a parliamentary target back in 1997 – the Liberal Democrats remain without any councillors on Hastings Borough Council and notched up a pallid 7% of the vote across the town.

This is pretty much a re-run of the 2012 result. Once again, targeting just one Council ward, we achieved a swing from Labour to Lib Dem, but did not come close to a gain.

This is one of the foremost bellweather constituencies of the South East, and is already a key Tory-Labour battleground for the 2015 General Election.

We have a functional local party here, with committed folk, many of whom have been members for a very long time.

I know that we have worked like stink for as long as I have lived down here (since 2007, when I was first selected as PPC) trusting in the leadership and the old slogan of ‘Where we work, we win’. Except it’s not true.

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Paul Burstow

Paul Burstow writes … How can we achieve the home care workforce that we all deserve?

By Paul Burstow | Tue 27th May 2014 - 1:35 pm

Care in the home Some rights reserved by British Red CrossA couple of weeks ago the diary of a home care worker shone a light on highs and frankly far too many lows that care workers all around the country face, day in, day out.

When we have all heard too many shocking stories of neglectful, malicious, taunting “carers” which now dominate perceptions of social care, this is the antidote. It was been truly inspiring to read the dedication, compassion, and genuine care motivating this fantastic woman.

But it is also deeply depressing …

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Paul Reynolds

Opinion: Six reasons why Lib Dems need to support the leader

By Paul Reynolds | Tue 27th May 2014 - 12:20 pm

Nick Clegg Q&A 8(Warning. This is not comfortable reading)

The decline in popular support for the Lib Dems since 2010 has been painful, culminating in Sunday’s near-wipeout in the European elections – and being beaten in the popular vote by the Greens.

We are a year away from the general election. The improving economy and Lib Dem policy successes like the Pupil Premium and larger tax allowances have not fed, so far, into electoral success. Can and should anything be done to recover the situation in the coming year ? Is ‘holding one’s nerve’ (or as critics might say, ‘doing nothing different’) a viable option ?

There have been a few calls for the leader to resign.  Uncomfortable though the reasons are, here are six why the leader should stay beyond the general election:

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John Abrams

Opinion: we lead when we’re brave

By John Abrams | Tue 27th May 2014 - 10:47 am

UKIP logoLike many others I was a sub-agent for the European Elections. My ‘chosen’ borough was Tameside where we stood precisely zero candidates at the local elections. A bizarre contrast compared to Lib Dem led Stockport just down the road where I live.

It will come as no surprise from the North West results that one of my samples was devoid of any Lib Dem votes at all – a first after 30 years in politics. (Luckily there were samples that were a bit rosier!)

Once proceedings were complete something troubled me: there were Labour, Green and Conservative sub-agents and little old me. What was missing: ah yes, good old UKIP. I wonder if this is a sign of how they’ll be acting in the European Parliament? For a party who came second to absent themselves at a count so as not to represent the democratic process let alone their own voters is baffling and perhaps a little alarming.

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Mike Biden

Opinion: The messenger or the message?

By Mike Biden | Tue 27th May 2014 - 10:07 am

nick_clegg_vince_cable_budget_2009_bCoalition government is very tough on the junior party.  No surprise there. The prize, in our case, was lots of our favourite policies implemented – something we haven’t achieved for 100 years. The downside is a massive amount of negative media coverage.

Your coalition allies hate you because they see you as imposing policies on them. The opposition see it as an open goal, a chance to squeeze you out of the next election.  It is a two party nut-cracker with the potential to crush us.  The voracious appetite of the press pack has a constant supply of stories.

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Andrew Garratt

Opinion: A perspective on the 2014 European elections

By Andrew Garratt | Tue 27th May 2014 - 9:13 am

European Union flagThe Lib Dems have suffered their worst European election performance for 25 years.

In 1989, that election was fought by six parties – Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem (as SLD), Green, SNP and Plaid Cymru – which also fought the 2014 election.

Of those six parties, five got fewer votes in 2014 than they got in 1989. One got more. Can you guess which one?

Let’s look at the figures:

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Iain Roberts

Opinion: We need to stop helping the other parties and change our message

By Iain Roberts | Mon 26th May 2014 - 7:03 pm

The Liberal Democrats have achieved many good things in Government and stopped the Tories doing many bad things. As with every government, there have been mistakes and much that could have been done better, but with fewer than one in ten MPs the party has punched well above its weight and, as a result, many good Liberal Democrat policies are now being put into practise.

And yet the party is being hammered in the polls and we’ve just seen a disastrous set of local and European elections with the Liberal Democrats down to just a single MEP.

What’s gone wrong, above all …

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40 Comments
David Schmitz

Opinion: Political scalps grow back

By David Schmitz | Mon 26th May 2014 - 5:34 pm

Nick Clegg listening York Some rights reserved by Liberal DemocratsUntil Friday, I was a Lib Dem Councillor in the London Borough of Haringey, where I enjoyed a reputation as an effective local representative. As one constituent put it

I have never been able to fathom why for example, people express their anger at the government in Westminster by voting out of office the guy in  the next street who gets your drains unblocked or your broken windows  fixed. And the same here is true of David. I hope that when election time comes around, people

…

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Benjamin Mathis

Opinion: An open letter to Nick Clegg

By Benjamin Mathis | Mon 26th May 2014 - 4:16 pm

Nick-CleggDear Nick,

When I joined the party in 2006, one of the first things I did was to hit the streets of Dudley, my hometown, delivering Focus and canvassing voters. I’ve been an active, campaigning party member ever since.

Another of the first things I did was to locate and read a copy of the Orange Book. And I liked it. I agreed with a lot of it, and “Orange Booker” has been a badge I have worn with slightly perverse pride ever since.

I like what you’re doing, Nick – and I like …

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Caron Lindsay

Some quick questions for LibDems4Change

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 26th May 2014 - 1:44 pm

In the interests of transparency, a key Liberal Democrat value, it would be good if a representative of LibDems4Change could answer the following questions about their campaign:

1. Who registered for and paid for the domain name and website?

The website was registered either late on Thursday evening/early Friday morning, but who set it up and who financed it?

2. Where did you get the email addresses from? Which email lists did you use and what are the Data Protection implications of this?

In 2012, I signed up to the No to Secret Courts campaign. I expected to receive correspondence on that campaign, not …

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Stephen Tall

Ouch. My first thoughts on the European election results for the four main parties

By Stephen Tall | Mon 26th May 2014 - 11:55 am

The results are all but in (Scotland will formal declare later today) and the scores on the doors make depressing reading for the Lib Dems – here’s the BBC’s breakdown:

euro elections 2014

Here are 5 quick points:

1) A good night for Ukip

Fair do’s to Farage: he inverted the usual expectations management game by vowing Ukip would top the poll, and they did. Their share of the vote, 27.5%, means they become the first party since 1906 to beat both the Conservatives and Labour. They’ve gained at least 10 MEPs, and may …

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62 Comments
Jonathan Russell

The Independent View: Positively fighting back online

By Jonathan Russell | Mon 26th May 2014 - 11:07 am

Circuit Bending Orchestra: Lara Grant at Diana Eng's Fairytale FWith the seemingly endless news of global and domestic extremism –  whether about the 250 girls kidnapped in Nigeria, the 500 Britons reportedly waging jihad in Syria, or the worrying allegations made against several Birmingham schools – it is rare that a report devoted to countering extremism should fill us with positivity. However, research released last week by Quilliam about the state of online extremism should encourage us all, not …

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Paul Scriven

Opinion: Let’s not throw away all we have worked for just as it’s starting to pay off

By Paul Scriven | Sun 25th May 2014 - 7:36 pm

nick clegg rally 1

As a working-class Northern lad it would be fair to say that in terms of personal background I don’t have much in common with Nick Clegg. And like Carl Minns and Richard Kemp I’ve been on the wrong end of some tough election results in recent years.  But I totally disagree with George Potter – I passionately believe Nick should lead our party into the next General Election and beyond.

 I’ve probably had more arguments with Nick than most commentators on

…

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Caron Lindsay

Now THAT is how to write an email to supporters

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 25th May 2014 - 6:32 pm

imageOn Friday night at 18:42, we sad Liberal Democrat election geeks were almost feeling punch drunk as the results came in from London. It was bad enough at a distance of 400 miles to hear of wipeout after wipeout, of decades of hard Liberal Democrat representation on councils coming to an end. Heaven knows what it must have been like to have been there. Actually I do know what that feels like, having gone through the Scottish elections in 2011.

Just as all that horror was unfolding, into my inbox came an …

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31 Comments
Caron Lindsay

How did shuttleworths get their name?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 24th May 2014 - 8:00 pm

imageIt is a truth universally acknowledged that if you want to know anything about the olden days of liberalism, you ask The Lord (Tony) Greaves. A few days ago, somebody emailed a group of friends how shuttleworths got their name. For those of you who don’t know, these are the pads that used to have the names and addresses of supporters in a particular area for use on polling day. I knew I’d heard the story before and the various answers  that were being told didn’t seem right but I couldn’t remember what it was and, frankly, I had lots of voters to talk to so I didn’t look any further.

Then, with extraordinary serendipity, a comment from Tony Greaves got caught in auto-moderation. I actually saw his slight grumble about it in the main thread before I saw the actual comment. Anyway, it was the first thing that made me smile all day yesterday, so I emailed him to tell him. I also too my chance to ask him. This is his reply, reproduced with his permission.

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Steve Coltman

Opinion: Prince Charles has gone too far this time

By Steve Coltman | Sat 24th May 2014 - 10:07 am

Prince CharlesIt was ironic to watch the news today. Two politicians who (I suspect) do not much care for Prince Charles’s views in general  were speaking in his defence, whereas one who might be expected to be more sympathetic was being more critical. It was the latter, Nigel Farage, who was right. He said of Prince Charles’s comments, likening Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, that there are some things the Prince should leave to the professional politicians.

Nick Clegg and Ed Milliband, on the other hand, were arguing that the Prince had a right to have his views and express them, or words to that effect. Prince Charles does indeed have a right to have his own private opinions, and he is not the first to have compared the actions of today’s Russia with yesterday’s Nazi Germany.

BUT, Prince Charles does not have the right to drop a bomb into the middle of British-Russian relations like this. It’s not just indiscreet, it is downright dangerous. There is no knowing what sort

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George Potter

Opinion: Why I was persuaded to back LibDems4Change

By George Potter | Sat 24th May 2014 - 8:37 am

N30 Public Sector Demonstration, Not HappyI’m no one special in the party. I’m Secretary of my local party, acting Chair of South East Liberal Youth and I once sat on a regional executive for a year.

And since 2010, despite the mistakes I think we’ve made in how we’ve handled being in coalition, until now I’ve always thought that getting rid of Nick Clegg as leader would be a very bad mistake. I thought that by doing so we’d be seen to be rejecting our achievements in coalition whilst failing to win back any of the people we’d already lost.

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335 Comments
David Boyle

Opinion: Public services need public involvement

By David Boyle | Fri 23rd May 2014 - 11:28 am

arrest in chicagoI must admit, I have become sceptical about the word ‘empowerment’.  For two reasons.  One is that it is a Blairite word, and based on a misunderstanding about where sovereignty lies.  Power isn’t distributed by an all-powerful prime minister. People already have it – they give it to the governments – but sometimes they have to be encouraged, persuaded or cajoled to use it.

The other reason I have become sceptical is my experience of the word.  I have sat in too many conferences where disabled people are encouraged to …

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Caron Lindsay

Wondering who to vote for today? #EP2014

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 22nd May 2014 - 12:30 pm

Liberal Democrat badge - Some rights reserved by Paul Walter, Newbury, UKOnly about a third of people normally vote in European and Council elections. If you are one of the two thirds who hasn’t made their way to the polling station yet, please read on. This stuff actually matters.

Your MEPs and Councillors make decisions that affect your daily life, be it mobile phone charges on your holiday, potentially your job if it’s funded by European money, or the care your parents receive or the quality of your local parks.

Clearly I’d love it if you voted Liberal Democrat for your benefit as much as mine as a party member. Here are some reasons why:

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Mark Valladares

European elections: vote Conservative, get Liberal?

By Mark Valladares | Thu 22nd May 2014 - 10:58 am

election day 2014It’s polling day here and, indeed, in the Netherlands, as four days of voting for the European Parliament kick off. And, just possibly, whilst the Liberal Democrats are predicted to suffer losses here in the United Kingdom, the groundwork for the appointment of a liberal as President of the European Commission might be being prepared.

Christopher Flores, writing in the EU Observer, explains how;

Should a left coalition be blocked, the left will likely rally around one candidate in hopes of salvaging the loss of the Parliament by being able

…

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Stephen Tall

The two Orange Bookers who’ve won over the Lib Dem membership

By Stephen Tall | Thu 22nd May 2014 - 10:00 am

Orange_BookIt’s 10 years since The Orange Book was published. Edited by David Laws and Paul Marshall it was widely regarded as an attempt by economic liberals within the Lib Dems to wrest back control of the party from social liberals.

Both Laws and Marshall would argue their attempt at ‘reclaiming liberalism’ (the book’s sub-title) was more about re-balancing liberalism as practised by the Lib Dems — that the party had grown intellectually lazy, happiest with simply saying ‘tax more, spend more’ as the answer to every public policy problem without thinking …

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Caron Lindsay

Danny Alexander and Alison McInnes challenge SNP on armed police in Scotland

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 21st May 2014 - 10:27 am

Police motorbike - Some rights reserved by Metropolitan PoliceI’ve written several times recently about how policing has changed in Scotland since Scotland’s eight police forces were merged into one.  Concerns have been expressed on a number of issues:

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Caron Lindsay

Not everything you read on the internet about UKIP and Nigel Farage is true

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 20th May 2014 - 3:29 pm

nigel farageThis morning, Facebook timelines were bombarded with an image of Nigel Farage next to a quote in which he is supposed to have said that UKIP wanted to ban beards of more than 2 inches. “The beard goes or you go” he is supposed to have said on Anglia Radio on Saturday. After a quick (and horrible) mental image of Prime Minister Farage banning Z Z Top from entering the country, I quickly realised that it didn’t sound right. And if it had been true, such a juicy quote as …

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Toby Matthews

Opinion: Miliband, Piketty and the Liberal response

By Toby Matthews | Tue 20th May 2014 - 10:15 am

milibandThree weeks ago, Miliband crossed the Rubicon and entered the heartland of Tory ideology. His support for European-style longer and more secure tenancies — and by extension capping rent increases — runs roughshod over a hitherto post-Thatcherite consensus.

Grant Shapps led the Tory riposte with a quick and ludicrous barb: Labour were proposing “Venezuelan-style rent controls”. Most people won’t know the details of Venezuela’s housing policy, but will be sure it’s unlikely to be any worse than our own.

Times have changed. We can see this clearly in that most …

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Joe Bourke

Opinion: Immigration and unemployment – an idea

By Joe Bourke | Mon 19th May 2014 - 11:48 am

Words.Two popular arguments deployed against immigration are that immigrant’s take jobs from British workers or that immigrants are a burden on the welfare state. Both arguments have been shown to be largely invalid: the Lump of Labour fallacy  has long been dismissed as economic bunkum; and existing evidence suggests that the net contribution of recent migrants to Britain’s public finances is positive. However, according to this evidence from  Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) at University College London not all groups of migrants make a positive fiscal contribution …

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The Voice

“Big job but low pay” moans Bristol’s Green Party Assistant Mayor about £32k salary

By The Voice | Mon 19th May 2014 - 10:25 am

SONY DSC£32,000 a year is well above the average wage. Many people earn significantly less. Yet Bristol’s Assistant Mayor Gus Hoyt has been moaning on Twitter about his low pay.

It all started when someone suggested on Twitter that he might like to go to New York. His reply was that he couldn’t afford it. When his correspondent suggested that was a shame, he replied:

Yeah, Big time. Am in big job but low pay…local government

When Liberal Democrat Councillor Alex Smethurst and his colleague Chris Martin questioned his view of low pay, and …

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Libby Local

Libby Local Episode 19: I’ll plan your every move

By Libby Local | Sun 18th May 2014 - 3:15 pm

"Demsbury" - Bekonscot Model Village and Railway - London - Some rights reserved by bortescristian“As you all know,” Melissa said in a rather officious voice, “Maxwell Tarmac-Smyth has resigned with some haste and we have a by-election on our hands.”

We were clustered in the back room of the Market Tavern at a hastily convened meeting of our local campaign committee. Melissa had been my campaign manager for the 2013 election and had called the meeting as soon as the news of the by-election reached Demsbury.

Before she could continue with her introduction, …

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The Voice

LDV’s Sunday Best: our 7 most-read articles this week

By The Voice | Sun 18th May 2014 - 1:21 pm

7 ver 4 fullMany thanks to the 17,300  visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here’s our 7 most-read posts…

New ICM Poll: Do you want the okayish news or the bad news? (48 comments) by Stephen Tall

WATCH: Nigel Farage come a cropper at the hands of LBC’s James O’Brien (37 comments) by Stephen Tall

Opinion: The Bedroom Tax: A great socialist policy (39 comments) by Patrick McAuley

“Label the behaviour not the person”: why we shouldn’t call Ukip a racist party (107 comments) by Stephen Tall

Are the …

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