Category Archives: Op-eds

Why Conservatives should back Lords reform

By Nick T | Thu 1st March 2012 - 7:56 am

There’s a certain irony to the fact that it seems to regularly escape the memory of Conservatives that they failed to win the general election in 2010. Despite Tory MPs having to negotiate on a daily basis with a rival political party just to keep their leader in Number 10, no substantive discussion seems to happen among Conservatives about why, in such conducive conditions, they failed to win a majority.

One reason for that is perhaps that would involve some rather uncomfortable truths.

It’s a fairly uncontroversial statement to say that more Britons share the fundamental beliefs of the Conservative party than …

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Tagged david cameron, featured and lords reform | 8 Comments

The Independent View: The major environmental tests facing the Liberal Democrats in 2012 Part 2

By Joss Garman | Wed 29th February 2012 - 2:53 pm

In my last post, I looked at the most significant environmental decisions facing the Liberal Democrats here at home in 2012. In this follow up blog, I’ll look at what Nick Clegg and his team can do on the global stage to clean up our economies and help curb the emissions driving dangerous shifts in our climate. As Nick Clegg has said, “Because we are leading by example, we can make stronger demands of the international community.”

International leadership on climate change and the green economy

Chris Huhne wrote in his resignation letter to the Deputy Prime Minister, “Climate …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged climate change, environment and greenpace | 10 Comments

The Independent View: Participatory democracy and the People’s Budget

By Phil Teece | Wed 29th February 2012 - 12:27 pm

It’s budget season and here’s a question ….

Is it an exaggeration to claim that there is a crisis in our system of democracy? When so many people don’t bother to vote and there are communities in the UK which no longer have any faith in the willingness of parliament and local government to address their needs and concerns, to actually represent their interests, then I think not. However, the direction of the coalition government’s policy is avowedly towards greater accountability and a stronger role for local people in decisions about local services.

The reality is that, despite the rhetoric about localism …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged budget, community, democracy and Local government | 3 Comments

Tim Farron MP writes… Leap for victory

By Tim Farron MP | Tue 28th February 2012 - 4:53 pm

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Opinion: Hacking scandal should not be an excuse for politicians to settle scores with the media

By Mark Oaten | Mon 27th February 2012 - 4:24 pm

I have deliberately kept away from the hacking and press freedom story over the last few years but now I have had a full apology from News International, it is time to offer a view.

The recent arrest of Sun journalists over alleged payments to police brings to over thirty the number of journalists currently being investigated by the Metropolitan Police as part of the phone hacking scandal. It has become one of the biggest investigations for decades and will result in court cases and further evidence to the Levison inquiry. It’s right that criminal investigations take place, but as …

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Tagged Phone hacking | 17 Comments

Opinion: Our Green and Pleasant Land – and Councillors’ powers

By Michael Parsons | Mon 27th February 2012 - 2:24 pm

Our peaceful occupation of land in England for leisure or gardening or amenity is the result of a century of struggles for land access. “He who controls the land controls the life of the people”: and our native soil was alienated to landlords by the Enclosure movement and in Scotland by the vicious Highlands Clearances; and today such risks are still real. Fortunately Liberals began a defence of the people’s land-rights in the reforms of the 1906-1911 Parliament.

More land cannot be produced by landlords no matter how high its price goes. Charging more for it is no remedy for …

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Tagged green space | Leave a comment

Opinion: Where was Nick Clegg’s summit on the NHS?

By Nick Perry | Mon 27th February 2012 - 11:54 am

Much of the recent column space on Health issues has been filled with criticism or scepticism of the summit that David Cameron held in Downing Street, and more specifically Andrew Lansley’s Health & Social Care Bill.

The sceptics say that Cameron only invited ‘Yes people’ – people who would confirm his own world view of NHS reform, and who would be nice about Mr Lansley.

As usual, I ain’t bovvered about the Conservatives and what they do to attract media criticism. The more the better as far as I am concerned. What concerns me is what the Liberal Democrat leadership has been …

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Tagged NHS | 7 Comments

Opinion: The empowering world of unpaid work

By David M Gibson | Mon 27th February 2012 - 10:54 am

Last week, an article was published here attacking Tesco for exploiting the unemployed. Two major factual errors, albeit fairly understandable ones, were at the heart of the piece.

The first was that Tesco’s unpaid work experience scheme was being forced upon the unemployed by the Job Centre. In actuality, participation was voluntary and the scheme was not part of the government’s Mandatory Work Experience (aka ‘workfare’). In neither scheme is work unpaid, as benefits are paid in exchange for labour.

The second error was to suggest Tesco was ‘expecting the jobless to line-up’ for exploitation. The truth of the matter …

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Tagged workfare | 32 Comments

Opinion: guaranteed employment for young people

By Joe Bourke | Sun 26th February 2012 - 10:45 am

This is part two of a two-part post regarding policies to tackle youth unemployment – part one is here.

Welcome as the youth contract initiatives have been, I do not believe that they are yet comprehensive enough to adequately address what has been and remains a long-term endemic problem with youth employment in the UK.

For 16-24 year olds not in education, training or employment, we ultimately need to be able to offer a guarantee of paid work within a structured training program, albeit at minimum wage, even if this is in the public sector. The jobs and training would …

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Tagged youth contract and youth unemployment | 5 Comments

‘Workfare’: the depressingly sterile ‘left/right’ debate is a challenge to liberals to sharpen our thinking

By Stephen Tall | Sun 26th February 2012 - 8:50 am

Deborah Orr has a must-read article in the Guardian highlighting the inverted absurdity of this week’s row about the Coalition’s workfare programme, The slanging match over workfare is getting us nowhere.

She points out that the very essence of workfare is government intervention in the workings of the free market, the state urging private companies to offer work experience placements to the unemployed:

For the right, such hapless, inefficient intervention by the state is anathema. When the private sector is left to make its own arrangements, neo-liberals never tire of pointing out, it functions better, to the advantage of all.

…

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Tagged benefits, deborah orr, featured, unemployment and workfare | 24 Comments

The Weekend Debate: Should we boycott the Murdoch machine?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 25th February 2012 - 2:53 pm

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

This week Labour MP Tom Watson and others made a fair amount of fuss on Twitter about ‘Blue Labour’s’ Lord (Maurice) Glasman intending to write for the new ‘Sun on Sunday’, Rupert Murdoch’s replacement for the disgraced News of the World.

Watson’s position seems to be that anyone associating themselves with the Sun or the Murdoch press is tacitly condoning their behaviour over phone hacking.

So firstly, should we as …

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Opinion: tax and benefit reform to help tackle youth unemployment

By Joe Bourke | Fri 24th February 2012 - 6:00 pm

In a two-part investigation, Joe Bourke looks at youth unemployment. Sunday’s part two will have details of policies designed to provide guaranteed employment for 16-24 year-olds. In part one, we discuss changes to the tax system that would make such policies affordable.

If the 2012 budget sees the personal allowance increased to £10,000 we will have achieved a key plank of the 2010 manifesto and provided some welcome relief to the squeeze on incomes that has come not least from the increase in VAT to 20%.

Whether the increase in the personal allowance is achieved in this budget or subsequently, we will soon need to …

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Tagged raising tax threshold, tax, tax reform and youth unemployment | 8 Comments

Opinion: LibsLeft – because it’s the Left’s turn

By Jonathan Hunt | Fri 24th February 2012 - 12:46 pm

Some 18 months ago, just before the Liverpool conference, The Voice kindly carried a piece by me about the need for a body I call LibsLeft.

It is a slight play on words, aimed both at those who felt excluded from the party of coalition, and indicating our direction of travel if the party is to survive the 2015 election. Liberals have always fared badly from coalitions, readers were reminded.

I wrote that the only party to emerge victorious from a coalition was Labour in 1945 – on the back of a Liberal programme. They stole Beveridge’s ideas for a …

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Tagged Liberal Left and libsleft | 51 Comments

Wealth taxation is now firmly on the government’s radar

By Prateek Buch | Fri 24th February 2012 - 12:09 pm

As part of the long-standing Liberal Democrat commitment to fair taxation, expressed so clearly by David Laws, the party has often called for a greater emphasis on wealth taxes.

As a direct result of these calls, it is now clear that the government is considering some form of wealth taxation to help deliver another long-standing Lib Dem tax policy – giving millions of low- and middle-earners a welcome boost by raising the income tax threshold to £10,000.

The precise nature of increased taxation on wealth is a topic of much discussion. Radio 4’s Today programme carried an interesting discussion of …

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Tagged david laws, mansion tax, raising tax threshold, tax and wealth taxes | 8 Comments

Opinion: An Unlikely Defender of the Faith

By Nick Hollinghurst | Fri 24th February 2012 - 9:00 am

Eric Pickles recently sent forth an encyclical and counterblast to the “illiberal and intolerant secularists” seeking to overturn “the right to worship a fundamental and hard-fought British liberty” and reverse “the fight for religious freedom in British history, deeply entwined with our political freedom”.

Our Town Clerk at once e-mailed us all a copy – on the very day, as it happened, that I went to Hertford for a County Council Meeting.

As usual, the meeting started at 10 30 a.m. And as usual those councillors who wished to pray met in the Council Chamber a little earlier at 10 20 a.m. Nothing wrong with that – their Prayer Meeting is not part …

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Tagged eric pickles, prayers, religion and secularism | 21 Comments

The Tories’ tax problem

By Nick T | Thu 23rd February 2012 - 3:27 pm

Cut national insurance contributions, says Liam Fox. Cut capital gains tax, says David Davis. Give tax breaks to married couples, say Stewart Jackson and others. Back wealth taxes to cut taxes on “families and employers”, says Tim Montgomerie.

There’s no shortage of Tories suggesting taxes for George Osborne to cut when he delivers his budget. Yet it’s the junior party in the coalition which is leading the debate on tax cuts – a curious situation which no doubt shocks Tories as much as it infuriates them.

The reasons the Lib Dems are leading the way on tax cuts are straightforward. First, the …

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Tagged david davis, liam fox, stewart jackson, tax cuts (Lib Dem) and tim montgomerie | 12 Comments

Labour’s new approach to education: ‘Evidence, evidence, evidence’. What can the Lib Dems learn from this?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 23rd February 2012 - 9:15 am

I’m going to do something now I haven’t had cause to do in a good few months: praise a Labour policy. Here’s why.

On Tuesday night, I went along to listen to Stephen Twigg, Labour’s shadow education secretary, deliver a speech to a ProgressOnline debate on raising standards in education. (The event was in parliament’s Grimond Room, so I felt reasonably at home.) The theme was ‘Evidence, not dogma’, and Mr Twigg stayed true to the spirit of it, announcing a heavily-trailed proposal that Labour will establish an Office for Educational Improvement. You can read his speech here, and …

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Tagged education, featured, labour party, pupil premium, sarah teather, schools and stephen twigg | 20 Comments

Opinion: Work-fare or work fair? Why I shan’t be shopping at Tesco

By Former Organiser | Wed 22nd February 2012 - 6:56 pm

It seems that Tesco finally bowed to public pressure and is no longer expecting the jobless to line-up and provide them with four weeks of unpaid labour. Whilst I was pleased to read this, it was too little, too late for me. Do Tesco expect us to be pleased that they’re finally offering to pay people in return for their hard work?

This has taught us an awful lot about Tesco’s ethical beliefs. The company was happy to accept unpaid labour before the public knew about it, but as soon as they started receiving negative press coverage, they brought the scheme …

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Tagged tesco, unemployment and workfare | 54 Comments

The Independent View: The major environmental tests facing the Liberal Democrats in 2012 (Part 1)

By Joss Garman | Wed 22nd February 2012 - 1:50 pm

The Liberal Democrats have long been seen as the greenest of the biggest three political parties. Now in government, the party is facing tough decisions with huge implications both for our country’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and for wider protection of the natural world.

During his time in office Lib Dem Climate Secretary Chris Huhne won a couple of significant battles with Cabinet colleagues. Most notably, despite opposition from the Chancellor, he won the backing of David Cameron to put into law tough new carbon targets for the 2020s that were recommended by their independent advisers the Committee on …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged chris huhne, climate change, ed davey, environment, greenpeace, nick clegg, the independent view and wildlife | 6 Comments

Opinion: Secularism is a friend to Religion, not its enemy

By Andreas Christodoulou | Tue 21st February 2012 - 9:36 am

Baroness Warsi’s recent comments about secularism showed her ignorance about how it can be religion’s greatest friend, and should always be. Secularism, at its heart, represents a separation between religion and the state, which benefits both the atheist and the believer.

For atheists, secularism gives us assurance that religion will not be an officially supported part of our government system. That we will have no direct religious influence over our Government, no bishops in the House of Lords, and no official religion. Of course, we can’t stop people being elected who have religious beliefs, and their beliefs will affect their …

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Tagged religion and secularism | 36 Comments

Opinion: The Liberal Democrats must welcome disaffected Blairites and One-Nation Tories

By Richard Clare | Mon 20th February 2012 - 2:54 pm

Campaigning alongside a Lib Dem councillor recently, I mentioned the several recent high profile defections of Blairites to the Conservatives. I was a little disappointed they’d felt that the obvious choice was to go to the Blues.

People that liked Tony Blair more than they liked the Labour brand in general are precisely the kind of people that handed the party thirteen years of office. Their exodus from Labour, a backlash fuelled by the anti-New Labour revolution that put Ed Miliband in power, was a sign that the party was letting an election victory slip out of its sights.

To my surprise, …

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Tagged liberal democrats | 23 Comments

Opinion: Size does matter – UK under-investment in research and development

By Issan Ghazni | Mon 20th February 2012 - 11:54 am

I welcome Julian Huppert’s important contribution towards updating our party’s science policy and, along with others, efforts in making the case for science in politics.

In his 30th January article on LDV, Julian, quite rightly, made the point that UK science and research is definitely world class, and it’s in all our interests not to be complacent about that.

As a Party, we can come up with lots of ideas and innovative policies to boost UK science, and to campaign tirelessly to get them implemented. However, the key barrier to better utilising science to drive forward the economy is our …

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Tagged research and development | 3 Comments

“A shitty time to be a liberal”: The Economist’s must-read piece on the Clegg paradox (and 2 reasons why it’s wrong)

By Stephen Tall | Sun 19th February 2012 - 9:55 am

There’s a must-read column by The Economist’s Bagehot this week focusing on the Lib Dems’ dilemmas, titled The Clegg paradox. It’s a serious and weighty analysis, which asks some uncomfortable questions of the party’s strategy. Here’s it’s conclusion:

At a recent meeting of the Lib Dem parliamentary party, Tim Farron, an ambitious left-winger and party president, reportedly cheered this anti-Tory success, but bemoaned the fact that unelected peers had led the charge against the NHS reforms and got the credit for it, rather than Lib Dem MPs who need votes. That drew a rebuke from Jeremy Browne, a foreign office

…

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Tagged bagehot, featured, nick clegg and the economist | 18 Comments

The weekend debate: Should music be priced by morality?

By Mark Pack | Sat 18th February 2012 - 1:25 pm

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

Sony caught a lot flack this week for initially raising the price on Whitney Houston’s songs after her death (a rise since recanted). Was Sony initially right and the pricing of products like music should be left to market forces? Or was Sony’s second view right and is there also a moral angle? If so, which prices does it cover and when?

Post your comments below…

Tagged weekend debate and whitney houston | 23 Comments

Chris Davies MEP writes… To tithe or not to tithe?

By Chris Davies | Fri 17th February 2012 - 4:26 pm

Money is tight. The party is far from being flush with cash and there is not enough in the coffers to fund the level of campaigning we need. We rely heavily on voluntary donations, and equity demands that we dust off a recommendation of the 2008 Bones Report – the one calling for Lib Dems at every level of government to give a proportion of their income to support activities that can enhance the effectiveness of the party.

Most councillors already do this, donating 5-10% of their allowances. ALDC even provides model standing orders that require each voting member of a …

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Tagged aldc, chris davies, featured and party funding | 19 Comments