Our place to talk – an independent website for supporters of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK.

The most-read independent website by and for Lib Dem supporters. Not paid for by trade unions or millionaires.

Advert

Category Archives: Op-eds

Opinion: Prisoner voting rights

By Tom Nicholson | Tue 11th June 2013 - 8:55 am

This week, the Supreme Court is considering the legality of the Government’s ban on prisoner voting. A majority of MPs are set against even limited suffrage for prisoners. The idea makes David Cameron “physically sick” and Jack Straw believes “those who break the law cannot make the law.”

Many supporters advance the same perfectly sound arguments, particularly from a human rights perspective. But a strong, pragmatic case for full prison enfranchisement can also be made by assessing this most populist of policies against the aims of sentencing in the criminal …

Continue reading »

Tagged prisoner voting | 9 Comments

Opinion: We must resist illiberal responses to the Woolwich murder

By Prateek Buch | Mon 10th June 2013 - 6:04 pm

The Social Liberal Forum is urging Nick Clegg to continue resisting the pressure from Conservative and Labour Parliamentarians for a “Snooper’s Charter” as a result of the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

At our recent Annual General Meeting, the SLF passed a motion urging the Liberal Democrat leadership to “resist all intimidation and blandishments by the Conservatives and others to support such legislation and to retain our outright and… to campaign vigorously against all threats to restrict our long-held liberties and rights from unauthorised State surveillance.”

Condemning the murder in …

Continue reading »

6 Comments

Well done, Ed Balls. He’s opened up space for a proper welfare debate. Lib Dems now need to claim that space.

By Stephen Tall | Mon 10th June 2013 - 3:45 pm

Ed Balls has done us all a favour. His announcement last week that if he were Chancellor he would put a stop to winter fuel allowances for well-off pensioners means Labour has joined the Lib Dems in saying we need to focus the welfare budget where it’s needed most, not keep on re-distributing from the worse off to the better off in the name of universalism. It’s why I chose him as my 38th Liberal Hero.

And yesterday he was at it again, highlighting quite how much of the welfare budget the state pension represents — some £74 …

Continue reading »

Tagged bedroom tax, ed balls, housing benefit, legal aid, nick clegg, pensions, steve webb, triple lock, welfare, welfare reform and winter fuel allowance | 13 Comments

Opinion: Choose Life

By Tahir Maher | Mon 10th June 2013 - 10:27 am

The spring conference at Brighton 2012 proposed a motion (F20) on Medically Assisted Dying which was carried and I was the only one who spoke against it. Now Lord Falconer has introduced a Bill on Assisted Dying for which I feel compelled to make a case against. On the wall at Lib Dem head office it say “The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity“.The motion and …

Continue reading »

Tagged assisted dying | 23 Comments

Opinion: Arming the Syrian Rebels

By Joe Bourke | Fri 7th June 2013 - 10:30 am

The Independent reported this week that Cameron faces serious Cabinet split over arming Syrian rebels.

Nick Clegg is said to have warned at a recent meeting of the National Security Council that supplying weapons to the Free Syrian Army might only escalate the conflict, killing many more people without any realistic prospect of decisive victory and that it could be “next to impossible” to ensure that British arms do not fall into the hands of Islamist militants.

A Whitehall source said Mr Clegg did not believe “there was a military-only solution to Syria” and would not back any attempt to arm …

Continue reading »

Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged foreign affairs and syria | 34 Comments

Are employment levels one of the “better stories” of the Coalition, as Fraser Nelson claims? Not really.

By Stephen Tall | Thu 6th June 2013 - 2:15 pm

The Spectator’s editor Fraser Nelson is — rightly — very hot on politicians being accurate in their use of stats. For instance, he’s — rightly — called out both Nick Clegg and David Cameron for confusing (whether accidentally or deliberately) the terms ‘debt’ and ‘deficit’, claiming the former is falling when they mean the latter.

However, Fraser is sometimes a bit casual with facts himself — for instance, wrongly claiming that an old report for the Department for Education ‘proved’ the pupil premium was flawed when it did no such thing.

And today he makes a point of highlighting …

Continue reading »

Also posted in News | Tagged david bell, david blanchflower, david cameron, employment rate, fraser nelson, nick clegg, niesr, ons and unemployment | 10 Comments

Would PR spell the end of the Liberal Democrats?

By Nick T | Thu 6th June 2013 - 12:23 pm

It is one of the biggest yet most under-appreciated ironies of British politics that the policy that unites the Liberal Democrat party membership in its most fervent rapture — the introduction of proportional voting to Westminster elections — is also, probably, the thing most likely, if implemented, to lead to the end of the party is we know it.

That is not to say that PR would necessarily lead to the break up of the party, but it is undeniable that majoritarian electoral systems force together the relatively broad coalitions that are the pre-requisite to winning elections.

The way in which individuals …

Continue reading »

Tagged electoral reform, featured and the economist | 39 Comments

Opinion: Feeling at home with housing policy

By James King | Thu 6th June 2013 - 9:04 am

With the general election less than two years away, it is increasingly important for the Lib Dems to pursue ‘differentiation’ from our coalition partners. This includes advancing clear and specific Lib Dem proposals that we will seek to deliver this side of the election. But we should also start highlighting priorities which will form the basis of our pitch to the electorate in 2015.

The emerging agenda includes support for wealth taxes, defence of EU membership and the protection of civil liberties. These issues are as important as ever, but at this stage our platform seems light on ‘social liberalism’ and …

Continue reading »

Tagged 2015 general election and housing | 13 Comments

Registers and recall: I support them both. But they’re not going to clean up our democracy

By Stephen Tall | Wed 5th June 2013 - 7:25 pm

The weekend’s revelations that two Labour peers and an Ulster Unionist were filmed offering to lobby ministers for cash, following hot on the heels of Tory MP Patrick Mercer’s resignation of the Tory whip over similar allegations, has re-ignited the question of how to clean up Parliament.

Two proposals are being pushed, both of them originally pledged in the Coalition Agreement.

Register of lobbyists

First, there’s a register of lobbyists, intended to bring greater transparency to the way in which professional lobbyists seek to influence government decisions. This is one of Unlock Democracy’s top campaigns:

If we don’t know

…

Continue reading »

Tagged alliance for lobbying transparency, david cameron, douglas carswell, john rentoul, nick clegg, parliamentary reform, register of lobbyists, right of recall, unlock democracy and zac goldsmith | 12 Comments

Opinion: London is not a foreign country

By Kirsty O'Brien | Wed 5th June 2013 - 11:00 am

London is a world city so it’s no wonder tens of thousands of Scots like me call it home. Some come to work for a while then head home, others put down more permanent roots and stay for the long-haul. I can’t speak for all of them but I don’t know anyone who has considered the move a ‘migration’. Leaving Scotland is a wrench but you don’t feel you’re moving to a foreign country.

I love this city – I love how busy, diverse and vibrant it is.

…

Continue reading »

Tagged better together, Scotland and Scottish independence referendum | 8 Comments

Labour and Tory MPs have a new twist on an old game. Block democratic reform. Then criticise lack of democratic reform

By Stephen Tall | Wed 5th June 2013 - 10:25 am

Labour and Tory MPs have a new favourite hobby. It’s one they’ve been practising for decades, but they’ve really refined their art in the last three years.

Basically it works like this…

A political scandal happens. Abuse of expenses by MPs or cash-for-questions/honours/favours, that sort of thing. Everyone demands reform. This must never happen again, they say. Cross-party talks are immediately convened. Then re-convened a few months later once the pressure’s off a bit. And finally they’re abandoned once they’re sure people have got bored with it all and …

Continue reading »

Also posted in Parliament | Tagged kevin brennan, lobbying, lords reform, nick clegg and party funding | 10 Comments

Opinion: Evidence-Based Policy and the Culling of Badgers

By Craig Brown | Tue 4th June 2013 - 5:47 pm

Tomorrow, our MPs will have the opportunity to vote in an Opposition Day debate on government plans for a badger cull. It is almost unheard of for the government to lose an opposition day motion, the last one being on settlement rights for veteran Gurkhas in 2009 – the first time since 1978. I have it on good authority that our parliamentary party has made up its mind that badgers are to be culled in the UK.

I would like to make a few things clear before I get into the meat of this post. Firstly, I’m not an ‘animal lover’ …

Continue reading »

Tagged badger cull | 14 Comments

Opinion:The Ministry of Justice’s latest reforms to legal aid will cut access to justice, not the deficit

By Jonathan Featonby | Tue 4th June 2013 - 3:49 pm

Tuesday 9 April 2013 was Be Kind to Lawyers Day – it was also the day that the Ministry of Justice launched its consultation on proposals to further reform the legal aid system in England and Wales. The proposals will affect both civil and criminal legal aid and, while the changes to criminal legal aid have attracted some media coverage, the changes to civil legal aid have received scant attention.

The civil legal aid changes fall into two categories and they represent a fundamental shift in the relationship between the state and those who are affected by its actions. Firstly, there will be a residence test which will require individuals to be in the UK at the time of the claim and to have been “lawfully resident” for at least 12 months.

Continue reading »

Tagged legal aid and ministry of justice | 8 Comments

Opinion: My marriage will be different, but equal, my Lords and Ladies…

By Ed Fordham | Tue 4th June 2013 - 2:26 pm

It has been said that people who vote against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill will be ‘standing on the wrong side of history’ – as those of us who know and study history accept, only time will tell. But yesterday, as we led the Equal Marriage Vigil outside the House of Lords I was struck that we were witnessing and perhaps even making history.

What occurred at our Vigil can be variously described as glorious, fashionable, tuneful and positive. In short we gathered together the LGBT+ communities and their families …

Continue reading »

Tagged equal marriage and same sex marriage bill | Leave a comment

Ed Balls shifts Labour’s position closer to the Lib Dems: is this the start of a Lib-Lab realignment?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 4th June 2013 - 11:15 am

Ed Balls’ speech to Thomson Reuters yesterday grabbed headlines for its concession that paying a winter fuel allowance to the wealthiest 5% of pensioners could no longer be justified. The likely saving — at c.£100m a year, no more than a rounding error in the national accounts – may be modest, but the symbolism is significant.

This is Labour accepting (at long last) the new normal of austerity: current departmental spending will continue to be reduced in the next few years even as the long-hoped-for economic …

Continue reading »

Also posted in News | Tagged ed balls, featured, nick thornsby, vat and vince cable | 27 Comments

Sarah Ludford writes …Creating EU Data Protection rules that safeguard both privacy and jobs

By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP | Tue 4th June 2013 - 10:29 am

As those who read this LibDem Voice article by Peter Bradwell of Open Rights group will know, I am currently the ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) group ‘shadow rapporteur’ on the draft EU Data Protection Regulation in the European Parliament.

I was not originally expecting to play a major role on this particular piece of legislation. But when my German FDP colleague Alexander Alvaro unfortunately suffered a serious car accident in February, the ALDE group appointed me as his interim replacement. I unwisely promised a response to Peter’s article ‘soon’! – but the last few months of negotiations have been very demanding. The new Regulation, unlike …

Continue reading »

Tagged ALDE, Data Protection Regulation and european parliament | 2 Comments

Opinion: The lobbying scandal is nothing of the sort

By Alexander Ehmann | Tue 4th June 2013 - 8:49 am

In recent days the rhetoric regarding lobbyists has notched up a few gears. These attacks have come from a surprising range of critics. Yesterday morning Lorraine Kelly on Daybreak suggested to Tom Brake MP that we should ban lobbying altogether and shortly afterwards Lord Oakeshott likened lobbyists to mosquitoes.

I am a lobbyist. My job requires me to talk and debate issues with politicians, civil servants and others on a daily basis. There is a great deal of twaddle talked about lobbying. Some of the nonsense is puff peddled …

Continue reading »

Tagged lobbying | 10 Comments

Stephen Gilbert writes … Liberal Democrats should be proud of the Energy Bill

By Stephen Gilbert MP | Mon 3rd June 2013 - 7:00 pm

The Energy Bill will, today and tomorrow, be going through its Report Stage and Third Reading in the Commons. Ed Davey set out clearly on Lib Dem Voice why this is so important for decarbonising our power sector and keeping on the lights at an affordable price for consumers. As a party we should be pleased that there is general cross-party support for the bill as it is vital that we maintain as far as we are able cross party consensus to provide the certainty for investors for our transition …

Continue reading »

Tagged ed davey and energy bill | 6 Comments

Opinion: A liberal future for police and crime commissioners

By Nick O'Shea | Mon 3rd June 2013 - 5:55 pm

I was the Lib Dem candidate for Police & Crime Commissioner in Surrey, although I am yet to be convinced that such roles are necessary or desirable as the right way to tackle the problem, or even if ‘we’ understand what the ‘problem’ is. But our government set them up, they are a publically elective post, and we are in the business of standing for public office.

PCCs were the Tories’ solution looking for a problem: they were determined to put these posts into place whatever the situation, irrespective …

Continue reading »

Tagged police and crime commissioners | 12 Comments

EDMWatch #2: Beer, moths, space and human rights

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 3rd June 2013 - 4:45 pm

We take a regular look at the Early Day Motions tabled by MPs. These are basically House of Commons petitions and are used to raise awareness of an issue. One of the biggest elements of an MP’s postbag or inbox is a pile of requests from supporters of a particular organisation or charity to sign a particular EDM. As a rule, ministers don’t sign EDMs. A look at EDMs can be a useful insight into what’s on MPs’ minds.

The second week of the parliamentary session saw a flurry of motions, going up from 71 to 155.

Most popular

The most …

Continue reading »

Also posted in Parliament | 1 Comment

Book Review: Austerity: the history of a dangerous idea

By Geoff Crocker | Sun 2nd June 2013 - 1:34 pm

Mark Blyth delivers a masterful, blistering, devastating, and totally convincing critique of austerity in his book Austerity: the history of a dangerous idea. It’s impossible to read this book and still believe that austerity is the right policy. Blyth writes engaging, powerful economic history of economies applying austerity, including the US, UK, Sweden, Germany, Japan and France in the 1920s and 1930s, Denmark and Ireland in the 1980s, and the Baltic states in 2008, demonstrating in each case that austerity does not work. It does not generate growth or reduce debt. He shows that the current hot spot crises …

Continue reading »

Tagged book reviews and mark blyth | 45 Comments

Andrew George MP writes…Liberal Democrats must defend green promise

By Andrew George | Fri 31st May 2013 - 1:46 pm

It’s crunch time for parties across the political spectrum: will parliamentarians do the right thing for our climate and the UK economy or will they let the sceptics drive investors overseas?

The Energy Bill returns to the Commons next week, just as the Conservatives are retreating to their traditional political stomping grounds in the face of competition from the right. Writing in Lib Dem Voice last month, Nick Clegg noted that: “Compassionate conservatism has been sidelined…the blue team used to claim to have gone green, yet have now publicly denounced the importance of environmental protections”. It’s up to the Liberal Democrats to …

Continue reading »

Tagged chris huhne, climate change, decarbonisation, ed davey, energy bill, environment and nick clegg | 3 Comments

Opinion: It’s time to prioritise electoral reform for local government

By Crispin Allard | Thu 30th May 2013 - 11:16 am

As Liberal Democrats, we all know First Past the Post is a terrible voting system. But in this year’s local elections it has sunk to new depths.

With the arrival of genuine four-party politics in England, the proportion of votes that actually make a difference to the result has reached an all-time low. And of the 16 county councils that returned a single party majority, not one of those ruling parties gained a majority of votes – in fact most got less than 40%.

This is not just a dry academic point or a moan about unfairness. It makes a real …

Continue reading »

Tagged electoral reform and Local government | 22 Comments

Thoughts on a windy moor

By Mary Reid | Tue 28th May 2013 - 6:40 pm

Yesterday afternoon I was standing on a windy moor in Scotland and reminding myself that, over 250 years ago, my ancestors, the Prices, had stood directly opposite my husband’s ancestors from Clan Donnachaidh, preparing for what was to become the last full-scale battle in Britain. After one hour of intense fighting, 1250 Jacobites lay dead on the moor alongside 50 Government troops. The field of battle is still honoured as a war grave.

My memories from school history had romanticised Culloden as a confrontation between the Scots – Bonnie Prince Charlie and …

Continue reading »

Tagged better together, Scotland and Scottish independence referendum | 10 Comments

The Independent View: Government must do more on youth unemployment

By Lottie Dexter | Tue 28th May 2013 - 8:55 am

More than a year has passed since Nick Clegg launched his flagship £1 billion Youth Contract. The Deputy Prime Minister pinned his hopes on the scheme, hailing it as “a major moment for Britain’s young unemployed people”. Clegg’s scheme, it was promised, would set young people on “the path to work” before the long term damage is done.

Yet one year on and youth unemployment remains one of the biggest challenges we face as a nation. The number of young adults seeking a job continues to cling to one million – and it has done for nearly four years. There is …

Continue reading »

Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged lottie dexter, million jobs and youth employment | 9 Comments

Eric Schmidt’s perplexity – a challenge to governments

By Joe Otten | Mon 27th May 2013 - 5:45 pm

Google’s Eric Schmidt has been reported as being perplexed by the UK’s debate on tax avoidance.

I view that you should pay the taxes that are legally required. It’s not a debate. You pay the taxes.

If the British system changes the tax laws then we will comply. If the taxes go up we will pay more, if they go down we will pay less. That is a political decision for the democracy that is the United Kingdom

There’s a contrast here with the case of Starbucks, volunteering a little extra tax in a failed attempt to head …

Continue reading »

Tagged tax avoidance | 40 Comments

Is it time for retailers to lose the lads’ mags?

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 27th May 2013 - 3:56 pm

Every time you go into a supermarket or newsagent to buy a magazine, you are likely to be confronted with the following:

A women’s section, which contains magazines on, mainly, celebrity froth, sewing, cooking and child-rearing;
Everything remotely interesting,like current affairs, photography, fishing, sport, computers and science fiction being displayed elsewhere;
Magazines with pictures of half naked women prominently displayed in a way that you can’t miss.

What does this tell children about the world in which they are growing up? The message seems to be that women are there to keep everyone else fed (while keeping themselves unrealistically thin, of course), …

Continue reading »

Also posted in News | Tagged Jo Swinson, lose the lads' mags campaign, lynne featherstone, nick clegg and sexism | 38 Comments

Opinion: TTIP – whose freedom will it promote?

By Gordon Frankland | Mon 27th May 2013 - 2:34 pm

Few things press Liberal Democrat buttons like the promise of free (or freer) trade. So, London MEP Baroness Sarah Ludford’s recent post for LDV noting that the European Parliament has just given the go-ahead for negotiations towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP, a.k.a. TAFTA), a free trade treaty that will be the biggest in history, was generally welcomed in comments.

But what exactly is proposed? Tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic are already low – averaging only about 4% – so the possible gains from further reductions are modest. A quick root around …

Continue reading »

Tagged free trade | 11 Comments

Ed Davey writes… Europe must stay ambitious on climate change

By Ed Davey | Mon 27th May 2013 - 12:56 pm

There has been a lot of talk over the last few weeks about Britain’s place in Europe, but there’s one thing that I hope we can all agree. We need the EU to help prevent climate change.

We are an island nation, a trading nation, dependent on the global market for prosperity – for food, for energy, for many of the products we rely on in. It is unsurprising that the UK was one of the first countries to recognise that significant climate change will directly affect our way of life. And we were the first country to bind …

Continue reading »

Tagged carbon emissions, climate change, energy and renewable energy | 9 Comments

Opinion: The 2015 manifesto – the need for a certain … clairvoyance

By Paul Reynolds | Mon 27th May 2013 - 10:55 am

Political parties the world over are often accused of ‘re-fighting the last election’ when they develop their manifestos. This is by way of a plea to all UK LibDems to be mindful of the need to avoid this tendency.

In practical terms this means thinking about the ‘record in government’ we wish hypothetically to be able to put together at the end of 2019, ready for presentation to the electorate in the run up to a 2020 election.

But hold on a minute – that means predicting issues in 2019 and the preceding 4/5 years. Exactly. I will suggest a few.

Constitution
By …

Continue reading »

18 Comments

Most Read

Op-eds

Local democracy should not be an excuse to stop building homes (Massimo Ricciuti)
The need for a nationally relevant message (Mark Corner)
Chris Coghlan MP writes…SEND reform must put children with complex needs at the centre; not treat them as an afterthought (Chris Coghlan MP)
What a night! Democrats smash the midterms (Caron Lindsay)
Choosing a new leader in Wales: why the process matters (Steve Aicheler)

Advert

Recent Comments

Roland
>"Britain needs more homes." Err no, it actually needs fewer people; just that Westminster politicians are too scared to face the truth that they have been ...
Jana
“ Yet we should resist the temptation to confuse the power to obstruct with the right to govern.” No, local democracy is about allowing communities freed...
Mary Reid
PM - Tom Arms should be posting again this week. Good that you missed him but it has only been two weeks....
Susan
I am in the USA at present and watched Jon Ossoff's victory speech. "Next President" was my immediate thought. It ticked all the boxes,...
PM
Many of us on the left are justified in feeling just a little smug right now after seeing President Trump have his wings clipped a little. There is also a...