Category Archives: Op-eds

Joan Edwards’ bequest: the dangers of 24/7 news and how we respond to it

Zhou EnlaiWhen asked about the impact of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai was said to have suggested that it was “too early to tell”. Admittedly, he was apparently referring to the 1968 riots, rather than the original, but it was the response of someone who saw politics as a long game.
 
With 24/7 rolling news, it would seem that such a perspective is in danger of being lost forever. In just twenty-four hours, the Joan Edwards legacy story appears to have gone from curiosity to scandal and back.
 
Yesterday, news broke that a …

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Opinion: Three blind men and the UK economy

In Indian folklore there’s a tale that goes a little something as follows:

Three blind men are confronted with an obstacle in their path. Stretching out a hand, each grabs a part and describes what’s in front of them. “My word,” says the first man, “we’re faced with some trees – so strong and thick.” Quoth the second man, “You are mistaken, for we face a snake – thin and wriggly.” Disagreeing with them both, the third man says, “You fools! It’s a wall we must scale – the size of a house.” Passing by, a sighted man takes

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Lessons of Coalition (14): what do the Lib Dems need to learn from the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Joe Otten shares his thoughts.

Government is hard

As it should be. There is an idea that there are easy solutions to all the world’s …

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Opinion: Race must be central to rebuilding and reorientating the party

Black, Asian and minority ethnic voters could help the Lib Dems could win seats from the Conservatives in 2015 if we improve our appeal to the BME community.

The Guardian ran a front page today based on a new study by Operation Black Vote which found 168 marginal seats where BME voters outnumber the majority of the sitting MP, far outnumbering the swing 100 seats that could change the government.

The study, which I authored, also reveals there are 13 marginal constituencies where Lib Dems are in second-place and where the BAME electorate is larger than the majority of the sitting …

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Lessons of Coalition (13): what do the Lib Dems need to learn from the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today David Allen shares his thoughts.

If It Won’t Work, Walk

In 1974, Ted Heath called on Jeremy Thorpe to join the Conservatives in a historic …

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Lessons of Coalition (12): what do the Lib Dems need to learn from the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Patrick Murray shares his thoughts.

Make sure our policies are reflected in our manifesto

One of the great challenges facing our society is the housing …

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Opinion: How can we advance nuclear disarmament?

To many the answer to this question is simple: de-commission Trident and don’t replace it. But this only leads to the next question – how do we get a British government to do this ?  It is a common mistake, and one that I have made too, to believe that passing a motion at our conference changes the world.  Trident

Of course, all we need to do then is win an election on the basis of policies agreed at conference and form a government.  Our brief current experience in government tells us that it may be a little more difficult.

The recent Trident Alternatives Review (TAR) and leaked versions of the party’s Defence Report to conference have become muddled and people are taking positions either before or without reading either document.  Certainly the speeches of Labour and Tory front and backbenchers in the Commons debate on TAR on 17th July revealed a depressing combination of wilful ignorance and prejudice. Both sides fell over each other to praise the need for a full Cold War system of nuclear deterrence and to denounce the Liberal Democrats for challenging it.

A couple of facts may bring some light instead of heat.  Firstly, all options including moving straight to no nukes would save nothing in the next parliament. Even decommissioning is expensive in the short run. As it is we still have old Polaris submarines awaiting safe removal of nuclear material. No option has a significant impact on the country’s current financial problems.

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Opinion: Shale Gas exploration – Why a cautious approach is the right one.

Many Liberal Democrats will, like me, have read with wry amusement the reaction of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph and some Tory MPs to the local opposition to Cuadrilla drilling in Balcombe in Sussex and the potential of fracking in their area given their previous hysterical support for fracking and shale gas.

Clearly there are a number of groups who are taking the opportunity to mount a vigorous campaign against fracking with, for example, the publication of a map of a “licence to frack” raising fears of fracking taking place across the country. In fact the so called …

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Lessons of Coalition (11): what do the Lib Dems need to learn from the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Bill le Breton shares his thoughts.

The Open Coalition and Its Enemies

The most noticeable characteristic of the present Coalition Government is how similar it …

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Opinion: Where does Lib Dem immigration policy go from here?

The recent furore over the home office ‘go-home’ billboards has put immigration back in the headlines and highlighted the divide within the coalition over immigration.

It was Sarah Teather who first voiced objections to the billboards, with a number of Lib Dems including Nick Clegg condemning them since. There has been little or no such criticism from Conservatives, who approved the billboards without consulting any Lib Dems.

This is not too surprising given Conservative immigration policy over the past three years. The Conservatives have been promoting anti-immigration policies and rhetoric since the start of the Coalition, including …

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Lessons of Coalition (10): what do the Lib Dems need to learn from the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Richard Morris shares his thoughts.

Make the red lines deeper and wider

Do you remember the ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’

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David Cameron poaches Lib Dem tax-cuts idea. (But that’s not half as annoying as the Tory ideas my party’s trying to claim.)

It’s amazing how much more popular with David Cameron the Lib Dems’ flagship policy of taking the low-paid out of income tax is these days… Just today he celebrated delivering an income tax cut for 25 million people and lifting 2.4 million low earners out of tax:

It’s all a bit of a contrast from the first 2010 televised leaders’ debate, when David Cameron argued the policy was unaffordable… unlike the Tories’ own proposals for raising the inheritance tax threshold to £1m or tax breaks for married couples, of course.

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Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

 Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Moore MP, writes a regular column for newspapers in his Borders Constituency. Here is the latest edition. 

Surgeries and Shows

Over the past fortnight I have held my annual summer advice surgeries during which I have visited around 50 villages and communities across the Borders. These are an opportunity for me to hear the concerns of my constituents and are a highlight of my work as local MP.

In recent weeks I have also attended the annual rideouts, Common Ridings and Shows which take place across the Borders. This year’s have been as entertaining as …

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Opinion: The Dark Satanic Wells of Fracking

Like many enthusiasts, I’m looking forward to the bombastic Last Night of the Proms, one month today. And I bet I’ll not be alone in bellowing out the words of England’s most popular anthem, Jerusalem.Blake Newton Fracking

Two centuries ago, William Blake began writing his epic poem Milton, including perhaps Jerusalem, while living in Felpham, Sussex. A few years later, he was back in London where the streets were being illuminated for the first time by gas lamps. The coal gas of Blake’s era gave way in the late 1960s to the cleaner supplies from the North Sea. Now we are witnessing the third coming of gas – hydraulic fracturing of shale. And this takes us directly back to Sussex, where protesters are mounting a blockade against fracking at Balcombe.

Green campaigners’ passions flare at any mention of fracking. The Campaign to Protect Rural England seems less certain that fracking is out of order, at least as a temporary energy fix. But it is at one with the Financial Times in believing that Balcombe is far from the best place to start. The drilling site is within the protected High Weald area of outstanding natural beauty and, even though the blockade is being led by eco-activists, most villagers say they are opposed to fracking in their parish.

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Lessons of Coalition (9): what do the Lib Dems need to learn from the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Rob Parsons shares his thoughts.

Understand the mechanics of government

Be grown up. It is possible to be grown up in politics, as exemplified by …

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Falling living standards are a problem of Labour’s making

Making use of the slowest news month of the year, the Labour party has released details of a report which (shock horror) has shown that living standards have fallen as a result of the financial crisis and subsequent recession.

Of course, they don’t put it quite like that, choosing to blame the coalition rather than the bust they promised would never come. Here’s Chris Leslie, Labour’s shadow financial secretary to the Treasury (presumably Balls is on holiday…):

David Cameron will go down in history as a disastrous Prime Minister for people’s living standards. He is totally out of touch, his economic policies

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Opinion: Why no UKIP Peers?

House of Lords chamberBy surrendering the principle of proportionality we surrender part of ourselves

The Coalition Agreement stated that “Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election”. It is therefore difficult to justify why UKIP, having secured over 3% of the vote at the last General Election and only currently having 3 of the over 500 Peers aligned to a political Party, has not been given the opportunity to have ennobled a cohort of Peers of its choosing. The same is true for other minor parties.

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The Daily Mail gets it wrong again

Parents and child - Some rights reserved by Ed YourtonThe Daily Mail still doesn’t ‘get’ the Liberal Democrats, although many of us take that as evidence that we must be doing something right.

According to the headline today Clegg tells new dads they must take a month off or get nothing: Deputy PM wants to follow Scandinavia’s lead to make sure fathers play a bigger role in childcare, Nick Clegg and the party have  apparently already adopted a policy that is to be debated in Glasgow next month.

So this presents us with another opportunity to explain how policy making works, or is supposed to work, in the Liberal Democrats.  A year or so ago the Federal Policy Committee set up a policy working group, chaired by the inestimable Claire Tyler, to look at work/life balance. They took evidence from a wide range of experts and organisations and have now published their policy paper entitled A Balanced Working Life: Policies for Low and Middle Income Households (pdf).

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15 things to look out for at the Lib Dem conference

The Lib Dems have published the agenda for our autumn conference — I’ve uploaded it to read at the foot of this post. It’s a pretty meaty agenda, too, with big issues up for debate. This, after all, is the penultimate autumn conference before the 2015 general election, which means it’s important for determining what makes it into the party’s manifesto.

I’ve skim-read the agenda this morning. It seems it can be read in alternative ways. My main impression was “How different is this to what a Conservative agenda would look like?” I don’t just mean that Lib Dem conferences give our members a real say in our policy-making (compare that with the Tories who won’t even publish their official membership numbers). I mean that if you look at the topics being discussed and the recommendations arising you wouldn’t for a moment confuse this with a party that’s a sub-set of the Tory party. Which is more or less the impression you’d get if you relied on Patrick Wintour’s reporting in The Guardian.

Anyway, here are 15 things which caught my eye based on a quick skim-read (so apologies in advance if I’ve missed out the bit you think’s most important):

1) Commitment to a living wage:

Saturday afternoon’s debate on policy motion F4, A Balanced Working Life, calls the establishment of an official living wage, one that it is paid by central government (with local government encouraged also to lead by example), and making companies that employ over 250 people be transparent about how many of their employees are not paid the living wage.

2) Extending free childcare:

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Opinion: Who cares about the environment? The coalition doesn’t seem to

fishSunday’s Observer features two related stories (Revealed: how water firms are polluting our rivers and beaches and Ministers putting seas and marine life in peril) which suggest that the coalition does not plan anything more than a minimal response to major environmental problems and opportunities.

There is an opportunity for this government to act on ready-made recommendations from the sentencing council, from select committees and from a representative group of environmentalists and fishing industry interests. The “greenest government ever” seems likely to deliver either nothing at all or a merely pathetic set of proposals.

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Lessons of Coalition (8): what do the Lib Dems need to learn from the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Robin McGhee, co-treasurer of Liberal Youth, shares his thoughts.

We should organise ministers better

When entering coalition, Nick Clegg decided to spread out his party’s …

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Opinion: Forget #twittersilence, we need to be #shoutingback

I read Kelly-Marie’s article about her ‘#twittersilence’ yesterday with great interest, and not just because I couldn’t believe that a Dr Who fan would be able to stay out of the twitter discussions on ‘Number 12’!

As a feminist, social-media addict and aspiring MP too, Kelly-Marie and I have much in common. However, it was for exactly those reasons that I decided to be part of the ‘#shoutingback’ crowd yesterday – those users who refuse to be intimidated by nasty people hiding behind their keyboards, spouting bile because they think that they can get away with it.

I’ve been utterly …

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Opinion: Why I stayed off Twitter on Sunday (despite Doctor Who)

Lots of discussion was had about “#twittersilence” this weekend.

The premise is clear. Following the diabolical harassment of feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, threats included the most heinous debasement, the threat of rape; feminists around the world pledged to go silent on Twitter for National Friendship Day.

As a feminist and social media user myself, as well as being an aspiring politician, I’ve experienced my fair share of offensive behaviour, comments and abuse. Indeed the downside of social media in society seems to be that it creates a form of mask through which people can hide in order to persecute and …

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Opinion: Zimbabwe election

The ‘Grave concerns’ voiced by William Hague over Zimbabwe’s election make clear their displeasure at Robert Mugabe winning a seventh presidential term. But would the result be any different were it not for voter fraud? Britain has implied this but not even opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai claims he really won.

The issue is not whether Mugabe stole the presidential election but whether he stole the all-important two-thirds majority in parliament which allows ZANU-PF to make constitutional changes. Tsvangirai lost because the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is a mess. There are two MDC’s, one run by Welshman Ncube, and many activists …

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Opinion: Fairer taxes

You don’t have to talk to many people about tax these days before someone brings up how unfair it is that some of the biggest international companies and brands seem to be able to find ways of getting out of paying any.

And at the same time, many people are themselves feeling the financial squeeze in their own budgets.

So in preparing new tax policy for the party to debate at autumn conference, we have worked to create a fairer balance: a tax system which helps those on low and middle incomes, and ensures that the richest companies and individuals …

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Lessons of Coalition (7): what do the Lib Dems need to learn from the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Mark Pack  shares his thoughts.

The invisible ministers should up their game, or be sacked

For the start of both 2011 and 2012, I wrote …

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Opinion: Can anyone explain the Lib Dem obsession with potholes?

Ruwan pot holingI read August’s AdLib today with much dismay. I wonder how many of us have found ourselves squatting beside a hole in the road, posing for a photograph, and subsequently pondered on why we weren’t voted in?

I completely understand the rationale of acknowledging local priorities and the important safety considerations of potholed roads, but are we getting our priorities right when we establish major campaigns over such mind-numbing issues?

Surely the focus on these little concerns, at the expense of far more important and life-altering policies, only diminishes LibDems in the perceptions of potential voters?

Do we really want to be viewed as pettifogging obsessives about the depth of tarmac when essential services such as schools, health, housing and social care are under threat?

Although I am repeatedly advised by the pundits and pollsters “This is what the focus groups are talking about” I do not find that this is the first concern on the electorate’s lips when we talk on the doorstep. Voters want to know about drops in local education standards, the lack of public transport to enable rural employment and, increasingly, the loathed bedroom tax.

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Lessons of Coalition (6): what do the Lib Dems need to learn from the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Louise Shaw shares her thoughts.

One member, one vote for all party elections

Coalition has exposed and accentuated the differences between two powerbases within the …

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Lessons of Coalition (5): what do the Lib Dems need to learn form the first 3 years?

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Caron Lindsay shares her thoughts.

That old “walk a mile in each others’ shoes” thing works

In the first few days of Coalition, I

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Opinion: Typing – an important skill that we neither teach nor require

Recently I was sat in a GP’s surgery waiting for him to type out a prescription for me. Until that point I had been nothing but impressed with his patience and knowledge. Then I saw how painfully slowly he attacked the keyboard, poking at it with a few select fingers as if it was too hot to touch, swiftly withdrawing his fingers to safe distance after each quick poke at a key.

The prescription that rolled off the computer was accurate, so what was the problem save for a few extra seconds passed in chit chat whilst he did the fingers …

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