Category Archives: Op-eds

Mark Pack

How leaflets used to look: a Tory attack on Labour’s economic policies, 1931

By Mark Pack | Wed 4th July 2012 - 10:25 am

Today’s leaflet in my series on old election leaflets is a centrally produced Conservative Party leaflet from October 1931. Ramsay MacDonald had led a Labour administration under August 1931 when it split over a Budget and economic crisis. MacDonald earned his place in Labour’s hall of infamy by then forming a National Government with Conservatives and Liberals. Only two Labour colleagues joined MacDonald in this government, so the attacks in this leaflet on “Arthur Henderson and other Socialist ex-Ministers” are, nominally at least, directed at Labour rather than MacDonald and co. in the coalition.

Swap references such as the Empire Marketing Board for current ones and the basic arguments being made in the leaflet are remarkably similar to contemporary politics:

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Alex Smethurst

Opinion: Internships – a foot in the door, with a new glass ceiling

By Alex Smethurst | Tue 3rd July 2012 - 5:10 pm

Nick Clegg has admitted that his previous pledge to pay interns working for the Party will be broken. And yet, one of the defining ambitions of the Liberal Democrats, found in the Foreword to The Coalition Agreement, is to increase social mobility. Having experience from six unpaid internships, social mobility is one area that I highlight for supporting the Party. Yet it’s in danger of becoming part of Newspeak: for without money to back up the rhetoric, our Party is in danger of yet again offering an empty promise.

Social mobility and paid internships are connected. But I’m concerned …

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes… Draft Communications Data Bill: send me your evidence

By Julian Huppert | Tue 3rd July 2012 - 12:22 pm

Today is the first meeting of the Joint Committee on the Draft Communications Data Bill. Over the next few months, we’ll be taking evidence from key witnesses, and making recommendations to the Government about how the Bill should change.

As I’m sure you all know, the Bill as it stands is simply unacceptable. It’s vital, therefore, that we’re asking the right questions and posing the right, technical solutions from the off.

The Committee will run a formal, public call for evidence starting very shortly. The more evidence we get, the better, so my first request is that every single Member with an …

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Issan Ghazni

Opinion: UK-US Extradition Treaty Review – now is the time for change

By Issan Ghazni | Tue 3rd July 2012 - 9:56 am

Now that it is holding the reins of power and is in a position to make necessary changes to a universally acknowledged unfair extradition treaty with the US, why is the Coalition government stalling? This is baffling, particularly as both our own party and the Conservatives campaigned strongly against the ‘lopsided’ nature of the arrangement when in opposition.

In fact, every senior member of the current cabinet voted in 2006 in support of a ‘Forum Bar’ amendment, giving our judges greater power to decide on the basis of each individual case, whether or not it is appropriate to order extradition. It …

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Andrew Wigley

Opinion: China and Hong Kong – a missed opportunity

By Andrew Wigley | Mon 2nd July 2012 - 1:23 pm

Last weekend marked the 15th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong. On a torrentially wet evening on 30 June 1997, the UK relinquished control of a territory which was home to almost seven million people and one of Asia’s leading commercial centres.

It also marked the end of the most colossal missed opportunity to further Chinese democracy.

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Yusuf Osman

Opinion: The value of reading

By Yusuf Osman | Mon 2nd July 2012 - 11:54 am

Continuing on from my last post on mobility, I’m taking another look at the replacement for the Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payments (PIP).

The second area where the current proposals on PIP disadvantage blind people is in that of communication. This is one of the activities under the broad heading of ‘daily living’.

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Stephen Tall

The state of Britain: cause for some optimistic pessimism

By Stephen Tall | Sun 1st July 2012 - 9:10 am

David Rennie has been the pen behind the pseudonymous Bagehot column, which appears weekly in The Economist, since 2010. During that time he has been deservedly recognised as the most acute commentator, bar none, writing on British politics. Not that I’ve always agreed with him, not least his indulgence of hoary old cliches with which to whack the Lib Dems.

He has now transferred to the US to personate another Economist pseudonym, Lexington. However, his final missive is a must-read ‘state of the nation’ take on the Britain …

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Antony Hook

Opinion: Scrap the tax on e-books

By Antony Hook | Fri 29th June 2012 - 10:08 am

A liberal success over many decades has been to protect the tax-free status of books and newspapers. A tax on books would be abhorrent as it would be a tax on free speech.

A democratic, civilised society requires the free exchange of ideas, information and art in books. Books are vital for people, young and old, who wish to educate themselves and improve their prospects.

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Stephen Gilbert MP

Stephen Gilbert MP writes… Welcome news for park home residents

By Stephen Gilbert MP | Thu 28th June 2012 - 3:23 pm

We all deserve a safe and secure place to live. But all too often for the 160,000 people living in park homes up and down the country the reality fails to live up to the utopian dream offered in the marketing brochure.

For those readers not familiar with the term, a ‘park home’ is a static caravan. Usually found grouped together in modestly sized communities (2,000 of them in all) often by the coast or in areas of natural beauty. This ‘peaceful’ life primarily attracts the retired, the elderly and the infirm – often seeking more peaceful surroundings to live out …

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Adam Corlett

Opinion: Ritual slaughter – One law for all

By Adam Corlett | Thu 28th June 2012 - 12:25 pm

Ritual slaughter has had a reasonably low profile in the UK, despite vigorous debate abroad, in the European parliament, and now in the Commons. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Sarah Ludford MEP (FT) have expressed some level of support for the practice, but I must disagree.

The law requires that animals be stunned before slaughter, for their welfare, but there is an exemption for Muslim and Jewish food production.

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Kathryn Parminter

Baroness Parminter writes… Food for thought

By Kathryn Parminter | Wed 27th June 2012 - 4:21 pm

Defra has today launched its Hospitality and Food Service Agreement. This is a new voluntary UK-wide agreement with caterers, pubs, hotels and restaurants to reduce food and packaging waste by 5% and to increase the rate of recycling, composting or anaerobic digestion to 70% (it’s currently around 47%). While we as Liberal Democrats should welcome this and recognise the positive environmental impact it will have, the Government could and should be going much further on food.

Food production and consumption play a key role in public health, the UK economy, and in enhancing natural capital. Everyone should have access to …

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Norman Baker MP

Norman Baker MP writes… A virtuous circle for cycling

By Norman Baker MP | Wed 27th June 2012 - 1:53 pm

Many of you will know that I don’t need to be asked twice to wax lyrical about the benefits of cycling. Cycling isn’t just about getting from A to B. Quite often it’s the quickest way of getting around, not to mention the healthiest, most environmentally friendly and the most predictable. It’s wallet-friendly, for those of us with an eye on rising fuel prices, and it’s space friendly, at a time when parking spaces in town and city centres are both at a premium and becoming increasingly expensive to use. Each car parking space could fit up to 20 bikes, …

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Mark Pack

How leaflets used to look: Sutton, 1972 – no bar chart but a darn good skull

By Mark Pack | Wed 27th June 2012 - 10:25 am

Welcome to another leaflet from the archives, this time courtesy of Sutton Council leader Ruth Dombey who has kindly provided a copy of the first Focus leaflet put out in Sutton back in 1972. It kicked off the winning Parliamentary by-election campaign for Graham Tope and was put together by Liverpool’s Trevor “Jones the Vote” who pioneered many of the campaign tactics now taken for granted.

Some of the issues may feel rather familiar and given its pioneering nature I think we can forgive the missing apostrophes and question marks… Interesting too both the level of personal detail about Graham and the inclusion of a story about what the Liberal Party believed in.

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Stephen Tall

Lords reform: did we really expect any better of either the Tories or Labour?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 26th June 2012 - 9:10 pm

All three main political parties fought the 2010 election promising the electorate that, if elected, they would reform the House of Lords. All three promised the same in 2005, too. And 2001. Yet in 2012 only one party is staying true to that promise: the Lib Dems. The Tories and Labour, in contrast, are happily indulging in party politics to block progress in advancing legislative democracy.

The Conservatives living up to their anti-reform name…

The Conservative Party has fought the last three elections promising to introduce a mainly/wholly elected second chamber to replace the current House of Patronage. They signed up …

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Tom Brake

Tom Brake MP writes… Labour has a lot to apologise for on immigration – it should start with child detention

By Tom Brake | Tue 26th June 2012 - 4:53 pm

On the subject of immigration, Ed Miliband was in apologetic mood this week. And not before time.

Labour has a lot to apologise for on immigration – not just the dog whistle ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ rhetoric and an attitude to the views of ordinary people that resulted in Gordon Brown’s ‘bigoted woman’ slur.

Miliband could apologise for not reintroducing the exit checks abolished by the Tories and allowing our border controls to descend into farce.

He could apologise for wildly underestimating the number of migrants from Eastern Europe when new countries joined the EU.

But if there is one thing Labour really …

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Mike German

Lord German writes… Welfare – don’t panic! – it’s Cameron being a Tory!

By Mike German | Tue 26th June 2012 - 12:53 pm

So David Cameron has made a speech laying out some welfare ideas for his party’s manifesto in 2015. Some parts of the media portray the ideas as government policy – they aren’t! I was very surprised to see Shelter’s press release saying this was Government policy as well. It isn’t!

Party leaders in a coalition will always want to outline their plans for the next general election. It’s part of being an independent and separate party, and as believers in an electoral system which produces coalitions we should not get anxious about it either. I want Nick Clegg to …

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Nick Clegg MP

Nick Clegg MP writes… Rio+20: We made progress

By Nick Clegg MP | Tue 26th June 2012 - 9:53 am

The dust has now settled on last week’s Rio+20 summit and I’m keen to look back at my initial goals and to let you know what we achieved in terms of meeting them. Of course the final text was not all we would have wanted had we been able to write it ourselves; however I am pleased to be able to report that all three of my priorities have been included in the final text of the document that was agreed last week.

  1. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We agreed to launch a process to develop these, to ensure that countries

…

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Mark Pack

The Liberal Democrats need a core votes strategy

By Mark Pack | Tue 26th June 2012 - 8:50 am

Nick Clegg’s summer tour has one major aim: to reassure, to charm and to motivate Liberal Democrat members and supporters. The risk is that it is done on the basis that all he needs do is meet people, face their questions head on and question by question provide good answers.

The ability to win over people one question at a time has served Nick Clegg well in his ascent up the political ladder, as the key election contests for him have not been winning a council seat from nowhere or a close-fought marginal seat contest at a general election. Rather for …

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Steve Bolter

Opinion: The need for positive engagement on the school exam system

By Steve Bolter | Mon 25th June 2012 - 4:53 pm

The media are premature in supposing that the Liberal Democrats will divide the Coalition by blocking changes to the school exam system. I hope that Conference will provide the opportunity for discussion of the exam system and that positive engagement will produce something far better than Gove’s initial outline proposals suggest.

Liberal Democrats should welcome the proposal for a reduction in the number of exam boards and call for them to be independent of commercial organisations such as text book publishers. We should call for a better balance of experienced teachers, educationalists and subject specialists, from universities or industry, on subject boards.

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William Hobhouse

Opinion: The Lib Dems should be the party of manufacturing

By William Hobhouse | Mon 25th June 2012 - 3:23 pm

There are some good economic reasons for the decline of British manufacturing. But decades of government policy are also to blame.

All manufacturers in rich countries face challenges and threats from cheaper labour costs overseas. We can compete successfully with a combination of high levels of productivity and investment, as well as getting the best out of our people.

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Opinion: Dear Progress, come in and have a nose around

By James Percival | Mon 25th June 2012 - 2:43 pm

In the run up to the 1997 election, Tony Blair led Paddy Ashdown up the garden path with a promise of a progressive alliance between a modern reforming Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats.

Well, ‘fool us once’ and all that.

15 years later the Liberal Democrats remain a broad church. Orange Bookers, social democrats, Coalition supporters, Coalition sceptics, whatever Evan Harris is – there’s room for all of us.

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David Thorpe

Opinion: More QE is not the solution to Britain’s economic challenges

By David Thorpe | Mon 25th June 2012 - 12:23 pm

With the predictability of a partner changing ‘our’ plans at the last minute, the announcement that UK inflation has fallen to its lowest level for two and a half years has been greeted with calls for more Quantitative Easing (QE) to stimulate growth.

Much of the media presentation of the facts of this latest inflation data has focused on the fall being a ‘surprise’. In reality most of the drop was predictable enough, as the article I link to above states, the VAT increase in 2011 fell off the index for the first time in May, while the situation in Iran has stabilised, causing oil prices to fall.

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Alisdair Calder McGregor

Opinion: There is much for the Lib Dems to support in Gove’s embryonic exam proposals

By Alisdair Calder McGregor | Mon 25th June 2012 - 10:53 am

The leak to the Daily Mail of the education secretary’s proposals for replacing the current GCSE system has set off a predictable storm of fury from many quarters.

These proposals are – as Nick Clegg has laid out in forthright terms – not coalition policy, haven’t been discussed in cabinet, and haven’t been seen by the Lib Dem in the Department of Education, Sarah Teather.

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg needs to condemn Cameron’s welfare plans in the strongest language imaginable

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 25th June 2012 - 8:53 am

Many Liberal Democrats will have been choking on their Sunday Corn Flakes yesterday as they read, with horror, David Cameron’s plans to slash benefits even further than this year’s Welfare Reform Bill. If he had his way, there would be no Housing Benefit payable to anyone under 25. The critical part of the reports is, however, this sentence:

Downing Street said they were Conservative plans for after the next general election.

That’s all right then. This rubbish isn’t going to happen on our watch.

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Kate Hudson

The Independent View: The Trident review risks being a damp squib

By Kate Hudson | Sun 24th June 2012 - 4:55 pm

This week the Ministry of Defence (MOD) announced a £1.1 billion contract with Rolls Royce for building nuclear submarine reactors. This has caused quite some controversy and Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was immediately called to answer an Urgent Question in the Commons on the implications of this spending and whether it preempts a future decision on whether or not to replaceBritain’s Trident nuclear weapons system.

The contract itself will see £500m spent on the refurbishment of Rolls Royce’s Raynesway plant in Derby, while £600m will go on building new nuclear reactor cores to powerBritain’s submarines. Most of these will be …

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Stephen Tall

David Laws: let’s cut taxes and spending. For once, I’m unconvinced. Here’s why…

By Stephen Tall | Sun 24th June 2012 - 2:45 pm

David Laws has earned himself a generous write-up in today’s Telegraph, with the paper which triggered his resignation from the cabinet two years ago hailing his ‘radical vision of a liberal state’, and lamenting with crocodile tears that his downfall was ‘a great loss to the Cabinet’.

The cause is an interview David has given to the paper in which he makes the case for further public spending cuts and lower taxes — a case he has outlined in greater depth in an article in the current Institute of Economic Affairs journal, highlighted last week on LibDemVoice. Here’s …

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Paul Haydon

Opinion: European countries need to work together on asylum

By Paul Haydon | Sun 24th June 2012 - 1:25 pm

The EU plans to reach an agreement over a Common European Asylum System by the end of this year, aiming to strengthen common standards on asylum, establish greater solidarity between member-states, and ensure fair and decent treatment of refugees. Currently countries on the EU’s periphery continue to shoulder the brunt of refugee flows relative to their capacity, burdening the already strained living conditions in immigration reception and detention centres.

Malta provides a case in point. During 2011 Malta received more asylum requests per-capita than any other EU country, with

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Mark Pack

The weekend debate: Is mandatory arbitration the answer to public transport strikes?

By Mark Pack | Sat 23rd June 2012 - 9:25 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

With the Olympics approaching and not all the details of staff conditions on London’s public transport settled, talk of how easy or not it should be to call a strike is often popping up in political debates. The answer from many Conservatives is to make strikes harder by demanding a minimum turnout threshold for strikes. That idea often runs into criticism and the one time I’ve sent a tweet which trended on the front page of Twitter’s website in its old guise …

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David Freeborn

Three more myths about the UK economy

By David Freeborn | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 2:21 pm

A few days ago, Stephen Tall posted his Five Myths About the UK Economy. But in fact understanding what is really going on in the economy is much harder than it first looks. One thing he was definitely right about was that the economy is the big issue and trying to get behind the political rhetoric to discover the economic reality is surprisingly tricky. I decided to post my own three myths about the UK economy.

Myth 1: Cuts aren’t really taking place

The latest fashion for conservative commentators is to deny that real cuts are even taking place. This government, …

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes… Libel reform is an admirable prize for Liberal Democrats

By Julian Huppert | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 11:53 am

In my experience, Second Reading debates are often lengthy affairs. Everyone wants to say their piece; few have something new to contribute.

The second reading of the Defamation Bill last week was no exception. We even heard the odd diatribe against threatening behaviour and internet trolls; some of which belied a complete misunderstanding of what we were actually debating.

But, for once, there was some clear consensus. In the words of John Kampfner, the chief executive of Index on Censorship:

When we launched the Libel Reform Campaign in 2009, only the Liberal Democrats backed change. Now the cause has cross party support.

Campaigned …

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