Category Archives: Op-eds

Opinion: Reasons to be Cheerful

By Sean Davey | Fri 9th March 2012 - 7:55 am

Waking up to the encouraging string of headlines as I did on Monday, I’m suddenly wondering if this is the point where we as a party have started getting it right?

If there are three uncontroversial elements to Lib Dem identity then equal marriage rights, campaigning against Trident and defending the individual (Nick Clegg launching the #thisisabuse campaign) are surely good starting points?

Conference is this weekend, so you could be forgiven for thinking these brilliant policies appear pre-emptively in our packs – but no, it’s almost as if we are a party of government: the Deputy Prime Minister appearing …

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Tagged centreforum, equal marriage, nick clegg and trident | 5 Comments

Opinion: What can Sweden teach us about liberalism?

By Mark Goodrich | Thu 8th March 2012 - 5:28 pm

One of the great experiences in life is reading a text which suddenly throws new light on an issue or expresses a feeling which had been nagging away at you without reaching expression. It has happened to me when I have read some of the classics of liberal thought. And, bizarrely, it happened a few weeks ago when reading a column in the Guardian.

The column by Lars Tragardh expressed doubts as to whether the Swedish model (in its current manifestation under a centre-right government) was compatible with Cameron’s conservative ideology. He pointed out that the Swedish combination of a …

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Tagged big society, education, Lars Tragardh, liberalism and sweden | 21 Comments

Opinion: Lost a guru? Try democracy instead

By Maria Pretzler | Wed 7th March 2012 - 1:57 pm

Reports suggest that Steve Hilton’s departure from Downing Street will leave the Conservatives desperately short of ideas. This seems astonishing: Liberal Democrats surely don’t need to turn to expensive advisers for creative ideas, new initiatives and the odd quirky example of tangerine sky thinking! Party members present and debate ideas at conference, and the party does not usually suffer from a shortage of novel suggestions. But these debates also produce serious policies, something which was perhaps beneath Steve Hilton’s pay grade.

These differences in how the two coalition parties handle policy making have a direct impact

…

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Tagged steve hilton | 5 Comments

The Independent View: how Liberal Democrats can provide Clegg’s “gear shift” in infrastructure spending

By Richard Carr | Wed 7th March 2012 - 11:25 am

As Nick Clegg has recently noted, there needs to be a ‘gear shift’ in infrastructure spending. Whilst George Osborne dots the i’s and crosses the t’s on his third budget, it is worth considering how such a ‘gear shift’ may be enacted. Localis has undertaken just such an analysis, and this week launched Credit Where Credit’s Due – produced in partnership with Lloyds Banking Group – that illustrates how local government can help deliver a step-change of this type from the bottom-up. Though our report alights on many policy areas, from increasing the powers of LEPs to astute asset management …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged george osborne, green investment bank, infrastructure spending, Local government, localis and nick clegg | 3 Comments

Opinion: A broad church of the religious and the secular

By George Kendall | Wed 7th March 2012 - 8:28 am

For the party to be strong, we need to be a broad church, and not just in our political views. This is why I think the most important fringe meeting at the coming Spring Conference is the first joint fringe meeting of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum and the Humanist and Secularist Liberal Democrats. This is a chance for us to demonstrate that, even where we fundamentally disagree, Liberal Democrats can debate with mutual respect.

These last two weekends, I have seen concrete examples of the way Christians and atheists can work together: at the two most recent …

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Also posted in Conference | Tagged Gateshead 2012 Conference, liberal democrat christian forum, liberal democrat humanists and secularists and religion | 11 Comments

The Independent View: Do us all a favour and drop the NHS Bill

By Suresh Chauhan | Tue 6th March 2012 - 3:44 pm

About 2 weeks ago, Shirley Williams rightly claimed that the whole competition chapter of the Bill would need to be removed before it could be passed. However, the amendments that Nick Clegg has proposed, as indicated in his letter of 28th February, just do not match up to her reasonable demand. The competition chapter contains clauses 70 to 81. The Clegg amendments only affect clauses 78, 79 and 80. So, clauses 70 to 77 remain unchanged. Hence, a lot of the Lansley ‘nasties’ remain and if the Bill is passed, these ‘nasties’ will become law of our land.

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged NHS and nick clegg | 40 Comments

Opinion: Keith O’Brien’s real problem with gay marriage

By Julian Ferguson | Tue 6th March 2012 - 2:55 pm

In England, we haven’t really been following the debate in Scotland on equal marriage that started with the Scottish Government consulting on opening up civil marriage to same-sex couples. It’s been quite something and we’re finally getting a taste of how it went with Cardinal Keith O’Brien storming across the border to come rally the defence of marriage as he would like to see it.

People have written and spoken about the Cardinal’s views as if it’s about allowing same-sex couples to marry. It isn’t. For His Eminence it’s not about the marriage bit, it’s about the sex bit. It’s not …

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Tagged equal marriage | 8 Comments

Opinion: Handling Israel/Palestine issues can be difficult, but…

By Ed Fordham | Tue 6th March 2012 - 1:35 pm

I can still remember a night in 2009 when our canvass team came back from a night out on the doorsteps asking “Who is Jenny Tonge? We have just been canvassing and had the most awful time over this person who apparently is a Liberal Democrat…” I explained calmly and with a wry smile that Jenny was a former MP, now member of the House of Lords, that she held strong views and was not afraid to voice them. “But these residents are not going to vote Liberal Democrat because of the views she articulates,” said one of the canvassers. It was not a one-off incident.

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged israel, jenny tonge and palestine | 32 Comments

The Independent View: Budget corporate tax changes could cost developing countries billions

By Martin Hearson | Tue 6th March 2012 - 12:34 pm

Ahead of the most important austerity budget in a generation, the government plans to open up a huge new tax loophole that will cost ordinary people around the world billions warns ActionAid in a new report ‘Collateral Damage’

The international development charity has revealed that this loophole will allow UK based multinationals to avoid an estimated £4 billion worth of taxes in developing countries and will also cost the UK Treasury £1 billion.

Until now, the UK’s anti-tax haven rules have provided a deterrent to companies seeking to avoid paying taxes in Britain and poor countries alike. The proposed changes …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged international development and tax | 9 Comments

The Independent View: If I were in your shoes…views from the other side of the Coalition

By Tim Montgomerie | Tue 6th March 2012 - 10:20 am

At Stephen Tall’s suggestion I’m giving advice to Lib Dems on what I’d do if I were in your shoes and, in return, he’s giving electoral advice to my ConservativeHome readers. You can read Stephen’s piece here

My first recommendation is to stay the course. There is no advantage for the Liberal Democrats in pulling out of the Coalition anytime soon. You’ll get the blame for having got into bed with horrible Conservatives like me but little of the credit if the economy does show signs of perkiness by the end of the parliament. I think it is to …

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Also posted in The Independent View | 44 Comments

Baroness Sal Brinton writes: Stalking law reform is needed now

By Sal Brinton | Tue 6th March 2012 - 9:35 am

Last month in the House of Lords I hosted the launch of the People’s Enquiry into Stalking Law Reform. I was also a member of the all-party Independent Parliamentary Inquiry, which took evidence from victims and bereaved parents of murdered victims (including Clare Bernal who was shot dead in Harvey Nichols in 2005 by her stalker, Michael Pech); probation officers; police; magistrates and others in the criminal justice system. I was invited to join the Inquiry because of my own experiences, which I have spoken of in the debate on the need for stalking reform.

What became clear to us during the Inquiry is that the present law is just not working for these victims and their families. The Harassment Act is used equally for neighbourhood hedge disputes as it is for murderous stalkers, and the penalties available to a court are ridiculously inappropriate. Much more importantly, the culture within the criminal justice system needs to change. We’ve seen that start to happen with domestic violence, but not about stalking which is often perceived as a fuss about nothing. Worse, some police have told victims they should be glad of the attention!

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Tagged stalking | Leave a comment

Please can we stop raising tax out of people’s pensions?

By Richard Flowers | Tue 6th March 2012 - 8:50 am

Reading my Spring Conference papers, I saw with interest the motion F7 “Making Tax Fairer”. Would we be doing something to simplify Britain’s massively over-complicated tax system, I thought? Might we be proposing something really radical like linking the personal allowance to the minimum wage or something to address the way people earning much less than the 50% top rate of £150,000 can pay much higher effective rates of tax, more than 50% – sometimes more than 60% – because of withdrawal of tax credits and then Labour’s inequitable withdrawal of the personal allowance?

No, I’m afraid we’re not doing any of those things..

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Tagged pensions and tax | 18 Comments

Opinion: An attempt to bring a calm and rational solution to the workfare issue

By Daniel Henry | Mon 5th March 2012 - 10:54 am

There’s been a lot of controversy around the “workfare” issue. However, while individual members have expressed clear opinions on it, our party is yet to take an official stance on the issue. With a policy paper on youth unemployment to be debated this weekend at conference we have an opportunity to decide where we stand on the issue.

I propose that we make the system fairer and ease the controversy by securing the following three compromises from the Tories:

1) Ensuring jobseekers aren’t misled into voluntary work schemes.

Although the scheme is voluntary, many jobseekers report being misled by Job Centres. Some …

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Tagged workfare | 15 Comments

Duncan Hames writes… We must think more deeply about how to rebalance the economy

By Duncan Hames MP | Mon 5th March 2012 - 9:54 am

Despite the much-vaunted claims of “an end to boom and bust”, the last decade, in fact, saw continuing fossil fuel dependency and a credit-driven boom, followed by a financial crisis. Our economy has been propped up by levels of public borrowing, which in Europe have proven to be impossibly large, and have led to levels of unemployment that are an appalling waste. The Labour Government undeniably failed to deliver sustainable prosperity for the UK.

In the years since the global financial crisis first struck, the economy has consistently remained a dominant public policy concern. The effects of the financial crisis hit …

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40 Comments

The weekend debate: Who are the five most influential women of all time?

By Mark Pack | Sat 3rd March 2012 - 4:08 pm

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

Borrowing from Lynne Featherstone’s blog:

It’s International Women’s Day on Thursday – and my local paper, The Journal, have asked me to name my top 5 influential women of all time.

I know who mine are but who would be yours?

Tagged international women's day, lynne featherstone and weekend debate | 30 Comments

Opinion: Liberal Left have short memories

By Michael Taylor | Fri 2nd March 2012 - 1:57 pm

Liberal Left want to be careful what they wish for. In 1977 Liberal Leader David Steel struck a one-year deal with Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan that the 13 Liberal MPs would support the Labour Government in votes of confidence and supply. In return a number of Liberal Policies, most notably PR for European elections, would be enacted. After the pact, the Liberals eventually voted for a motion of no confidence that brought down the government. In the subsequent general election we got 13% and 11 seats.

As an exercise in achieving our policies the results were mixed at …

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Tagged labour party and Liberal Left | 67 Comments

Opinion: Opening up the benefits of renewable energy means considering much more than just the size of subsidies

By Simon Beard | Fri 2nd March 2012 - 11:25 am

At present for somebody to benefit from the subsidies offered to small scale renewable energy production they must have three things:

1 – Ownership of a property suitable for producing renewable energy

2 – A substantial amount of capital to invest in installing the technology and

3 – The opportunity to invest this capital for 25 years, with no possibility of early pay back unless they sell their house, in which case it is an open question what return they might receive.

Unsurprisingly this leave most people unable to access these benefits, even though many may have something to contribute to renewable energy production, …

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Tagged feed-in tariffs and renewable energy | 5 Comments

Opinion: Job Guarantees – an economic stimulus worth considering?

By Joe Bourke | Thu 1st March 2012 - 5:56 pm

India introduced a job guarantee programme, for the rural poor in 2005. It was dismissed by many as fiscal folly. Yet this developing country has weathered the financial storms of the economic downturn far better than most European countries. Argentina ran a successful programme in the wake of their debt default and Canada has had a good experience with such programmes.

Job guarantee as an economic policy builds on the concept of employer of last resort. The policy requires that the public sector offers a fixed wage job to anyone willing and able to work. The job pool expands when private …

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Tagged economy | 26 Comments

Norman Lamont is an excellent example of why the Lords should be reformed

By Mark Pack | Thu 1st March 2012 - 12:25 pm

Yesterday Conservative peer Norman Lamont was the latest in a sequence of Tory peers to take to the pages of ConservativeHome to argue against their own party’s policy and opposed elections to the House of Lords.

However, he is also an excellent example of why the Lords should be reformed, for he is just the sort of MP I had mind when writing a piece for Left Foot Forward last year:

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Tagged constitutional reform, house of lords, lords reform and norman lamont | 10 Comments