Category Archives: Op-eds

David Allen

Opinion: Why are we waiting?

By David Allen | Thu 12th April 2012 - 2:55 pm

We have played the waiting game before. It didn’t work in the 1980s, and it won’t work now.

In the 1983 Election, the Alliance reached a high water mark with a 26% vote. But there was discord. The Liberals, who won most seats, felt they should take the lead. The SDP, with their heavyweight experience, saw things differently. Problems grew when Owen took over, refused to collaborate properly, and set out to undermine theAlliancefrom within. A stalemate developed, and a waiting game began.

The Alliance announced to a stunned public that two-headed leadership was the new future. Their slogan “Not Left, Not …

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Andrew George

Andrew George MP writes: Liberal Democrats are champions of green economy

By Andrew George | Thu 12th April 2012 - 12:55 pm

Yesterday Nick Clegg set out the Government’s agenda on energy efficiency and the role of a green economy in delivering growth. Important announcements on energy efficiency, tackling fuel poverty and helping consumers find the best tariffs all caught the media’s attention. But for me the real story is that the Liberal Democrats remain the champions of plans to build a green economy.

Nick was right to attack those who say that there is a zero sum game between economic growth and protecting the environment. As the Liberal Democrats have argued for decades, it isn’t about choosing – the two go …

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Mark Pack

Free schools: what should the party’s policy be in 2015?

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th April 2012 - 11:25 am

An empty classroomNews that the National Autistic Society is planning to set up a free school highlights an impending policy dilemma. Currently, the party’s policy is officially one of opposition to free schools. However if, by the time of the 2015 general election, free schools started by popular and worthy organisations such as the National Autistic Society are up and running, would it be either sensible education policy or practical politics simply to say, ‘we don’t like free schools; they have got to go’?

A different option would be …

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Stephen Tall

Labour’s not-so-very-local election broadcast shows how unimportant local decision-making is to Ed Miliband’s party

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th April 2012 - 7:58 pm

Tonight’s Labour local election broadcast, starring telly’s very own Lord (Robert) Winston, climaxes with the rallying cry:

On Thursday May 3rd, vote NHS, vote Labour

Exactly how voting Labour then will help the NHS isn’t explored — not surprisingly, because it won’t. There’s a reason these elections are called local elections, after all.

Before highlighting Labour’s misleading tactics I thought I should first check out the Lib Dem record on fighting local elections. I have to say I was expecting to find comparable examples, times when the party leadership had called …

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Tom Smith

Opinion: Let’s talk about Corruption

By Tom Smith | Wed 11th April 2012 - 1:55 pm

The latest cash for access scandal may well have highlighted yet again the murky world of party financing and lobbying but overall the UK can pride itself on not being corrupt; Transparency International places it in the least 20 corrupt nations in the World.  How does this tally with opinion polls showing that almost three quarters of the British public think corruption is a serious problem in the UK that many consider has got worse in recent years?

Whether the public perception is wrong, there is a profound gap between public and expert definitions of corruption or if there really …

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Joe Bourke

Opinion: Time for the Party to propose the Citizen’s Income

By Joe Bourke | Wed 11th April 2012 - 10:55 am

The Centre Forum paper Taxing Decisions discusses the pros and cons of tax credits and tax allowances. The report reviews tax options for tackling the income and wealth disparities which have become a feature of British society in recent decades.

Reducing the level of inequality benefits everyone in society, rich and poor alike. I would argue that in an inclusive and more equal society, all citizens should pay tax on their income. Means tested benefits have not delivered for us. Child poverty, and unemployment are entrenched with the resulting societal breakdown. The way out of poverty is work. The best …

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Mark Pack

Why election candidates shouldn’t have to publish their tax returns

By Mark Pack | Wed 11th April 2012 - 9:25 am

Remember all the stuff Liberal Democrats such as Vince Cable have been saying for years about how our tax system catches too much income and not enough wealth? You know what – I believe that, and I haven’t suddenly forgotten it in the last few days.

So the idea that somehow getting people to publish their tax returns really gives you a sense of how well-off they are is as flawed as the idea that the tax system those returns illustrate manages to catch how well-off you are. For the same reason that the tax system is out of kilter, so …

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Helen Flynn

Academisation: Is this the equivalent of the FE sector’s 1993 moment?

By Helen Flynn | Tue 10th April 2012 - 2:24 pm

Academies are opening at an exponential rate. But there’s nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes—we have been here before, if we would all but look. A useful lesson can be learned from the FE sector and begs the questions: how long before all our schools are classified as being in the private sector? And what should we as Liberal Democrats feel and do about that?

Under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 (which took effect in April 1993), colleges were “incorporated”, ie they were given full financial independence, together with full powers to own assets, employ staff, …

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Antony Hook

Opinion: Police Commissioner elections – the Lib Dem candidate won’t spy on you

By Antony Hook | Tue 10th April 2012 - 11:23 am

As a campaigner with a strong interest in the European Elections, I am really happy to see a number of counties moving towards selection of a Liberal Democrat candidate for the Police Commissioner elections in November.

This is because in the European Elections an important message for Liberal Democrats is that we are effective on crime. Crime crosses state borders within Europe. We need co-operation and integration to ensure that our police’s powers to bring criminals to justice, the rule of law, and important civil liberties cross borders too. The other parties won’t make the commitment that we will to tackle …

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Stephen Tall

Mary Ann Sieghart socks it to Quentin Letts for his “witheringly misogynistic” assault on Lynne Featherstone

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th April 2012 - 1:55 pm

I try as hard as possible not to link to the Daily Mail — it’s my small and admittedly token gesture not to encourage them. And Quentin Letts is the Mail at its most unpleasantly execrable, slavering to stick his pen-knife into anyone he cares to disdain, especially if they’re female or have a funny accent or some other personal tic to pick on.

Last week, he laid into Lib Dem equalities minister Lynne Featherstone. It was classic play-the-woman-I’ve-got-no-balls Letts:

Though aged 60 (and counting), she teeters up to the Despatch Box in high heels, grinning girlishly at the Opposition benches before

…

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Mary Reid

Demos: “Religious people are more likely to be politically progressive”

By Mary Reid | Sun 8th April 2012 - 3:55 pm

It seems appropriate on Easter Day to report the findings of the report entitled Faithful Citizens by the think tank Demos.

I have been embarrassed and saddened by the portrayal of “the church” as bigoted and homophobic recently, and this research helps to counterbalance that impression. Demos’ report implies that people of faith are more likely to share Liberal Democrat values than to hold the conservative fundamentalist views often described in the media.

13% of citizens claim to belong to a church or other religious organisation, so these findings refer to believers across all the faiths in the UK, although Christians are …

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Joe Bourke

Opinion: Good borrowing and bad borrowing

By Joe Bourke | Sun 8th April 2012 - 2:35 pm

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” So says Lord Polonius to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Good advice for young people starting out in life, but the modern economy of the 21st century depends on the constant circulation of money and credit. We all need to borrow to buy a house, for University etc. Firms need to borrow for investment in equipment and working capital. Government needs to borrow to finance infrastructure. That’s good borrowing.

If, however, debt is being racked up to buy imported tack or fund boozy nights out, we would think of that as bad borrowing.

There …

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25 Comments
Robbie Simpson

Opinion: Why parts of the government want to store your entire internet history

By Robbie Simpson | Sun 8th April 2012 - 9:50 am

On Monday I arrived back in the United Kingdom after a visit to Georgia – a beautiful country, but one with an authoritarian government. Imagine my surprise when I picked up a newspaper at Heathrow and read claims that the government was proposing to monitor and store all internet communications in the country.

We have since attempted to play down the scale of this proposal, but I am incredibly concerned that it would be far wider than is generally believed – and this is because of the technical difficulties of interception.

A key distinction that has been put forward is that these …

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Mark Pack

Why RIPA is flawed

By Mark Pack | Sat 7th April 2012 - 11:15 am

Greg Callus’s excellent post dissects in documented detail some of the problems with the RIPA regulatory mechanism – and why therefore simply extending the range of data that can be accessed under RIPA would be extending the range of data that can be accessed without proper control.

In particular:

Sometimes, there isn’t time for a written request because of an imminent threat to life and limb, and so the Urgent Oral procedure kicks in – the SPoC will normally be rudely awoken by a police officer explaining they have (eg) an urgent terrorism/kidnapping situation, and they need a notification to be

…

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Stephen Tall

The Weekend Debate: Should election candidates have to declare their tax records?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th April 2012 - 8:45 am

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

The race to be London mayor took a fresh twist this week when the leading candidates pledged on BBC Newsnight to release their tax records. Lib Dem mayoral candidate Brian Paddick declared himself very happy to publish full details, which appear here on his website:

Brian Paddick has nothing to hide and is very happy to be open and transparent about his income and tax returns as a registered sole trader. His figures show he has never attempted to use any complex

…

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Natasha Adams

The Independent View: Should G8 leaders be making a new commitment to reduce hunger?

By Natasha Adams | Fri 6th April 2012 - 3:30 pm

There are close to a billion people going hungry every day. I find the scale of this hard to imagine, but if I’m honest even the personal experience of going hungry for a day is something I can’t easily relate to. I’m lucky enough to have never really experienced hunger, living as I do in a relatively wealthy country, where even if I were unwell or unemployed the state would support me with basic social protection.

The worst thing about global hunger is that it is an unnecessary injustice. We actually produce enough globally to feed everyone, but people don’t have …

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Helen Duffett

Listen: Baroness Williams on her moral and religious beliefs

By Helen Duffett | Fri 6th April 2012 - 2:53 pm

There’s still time to listen to Shirley Williams on this week’s edition of Belief on BBC Radio 3:

The new Easter series of Belief opens with a conversation between two baronesses: Joan Bakewell and Shirley Williams.

Shirley Williams was born in 1930. Her father, the philosopher and political scientist George Catlin, was a great influence. He bought young Shirley a copy of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets when she was two years old. He also introduced her to the Roman Catholic Church. She has also been greatly influenced by the moral and political convictions of her mother the feminist and pacifist writer,

…

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The Voice

An open letter to Lib Dem party president, Tim Farron: Concerns over our liberal identity and mission in government

By The Voice | Fri 6th April 2012 - 1:55 pm

The following letter, written by Martin Eakins a Lib Dem councillor in Manchester and co-signed by more than 150 fellow party members, has been sent to party president Tim Farron:

Dear Tim,

We understand that the leaked policy on RIPA internet surveillance is now being reviewed more thoroughly, rather than rushed into the Queen’s speech. As such we would like you, as our president, to convey the following thoughts to appropriate Liberal Democrat ministers.

The Home Secretary wrote in the Sun on Tuesday that “Only suspected terrorists, paedophiles or serious criminals will be investigated.” This is akin to saying “if you’ve

…

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Sam Barnett

Opinion: Time to take back the initiative

By Sam Barnett | Fri 6th April 2012 - 10:55 am

The hard part of coalition is over. As the result in Bradford shows, three things are now true. Our Conservative colleagues have finally overreached themselves. Labour is now known to be as ineffective as it really is. And there is a howling void of dissatisfaction where our support used to be. The country has changed since 2010, and we must move to capture the mood, or we are done. Key to this is winning the votes of students, the young, and the disenfranchised.

We have, however we colour it, had a hard time. Most of our policy ‘wins’, like the …

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17 Comments
Issan Ghazni

Opinion: Support for emerging democracies – we’ll do it our way

By Issan Ghazni | Fri 6th April 2012 - 8:57 am

Speaking at the recent Munich Security Conference, US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton said “Americans and Europeans must send a clear and common message to despots that they must respect the rights of their people….America and Europe stand shoulder to shoulder.”

However, the UK role in encouraging emerging democracies must be determined through a process of working closer with the EU and by identifying limited areas in which tangible gains can be made through shared resources. That is to say that we do what we can with our European partners to achieve the best results within our areas of influence. Continually …

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Antony Hook

Opinion: Does control of search warrants matter to you? Then become a magistrate

By Antony Hook | Thu 5th April 2012 - 11:25 am

In recent days Liberal Democrats have united against reported Home Office plans for the state to acquire unprecedented power to search private online communications. As Mark Pack noted, resistance to this has even won Nick Clegg rare praise from the Daily Mail.

Many Liberal Democrats have the necessary habit of not just debating how society ought to be, but carrying liberal values into effect in daily life. Many Lib Dems who are passionate about education, including myself, serve as school governors. Likewise, party members volunteer as neighbourhood watch coordinators, Citizens Advice …

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Stuart Bonar

Opinion: Time for a deal on surveillance

By Stuart Bonar | Thu 5th April 2012 - 8:50 am

Like many of my fellow Lib Dems I have had steam coming out my ears these last few days after reading over the weekend that the Coalition was considering the mass, unchecked surveillance of the entire population’s emails, telephone calls, texts and tweets, as well as messages sent through Facebook and through games consoles like the Xbox.

Initial attempts at comforting growing rage amongst Lib Dems – the fact that there was to be no central database and that the contents of communications would still only be viewable with a …

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Nicola Prigg

Opinion: Ed Miliband is out of touch

By Nicola Prigg | Wed 4th April 2012 - 2:05 pm

On Monday, Ed Miliband, Leader of the Opposition, launched the Labour Party’s local election campaign.

Ed proclaimed that the government is “out of touch”, and challenged us on growth, fairer taxes and a stronger society.

On growth, he claimed that we need to deal with the deficit otherwise we won’t have growth in the future.

On fairer taxes, Ed said we “are raising taxes for pensioners but cutting them for millionaires”.

Actually, this month has seen the personal tax allowance for pensioners increase, and from next year they are frozen until the personal tax allowance catches up. Or does Ed believe that pensioners …

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The Voice

The Independent View: A note to the Liberal Democrats on university access and information

By The Voice | Wed 4th April 2012 - 12:50 pm

A child’s fate is often decided very early on in its development. That is why government intervention must happen early. Liberal coalition policies such as parenting classes and the pupil premium will help us move away from what Nick Clegg calls a “closed society” where people’s circumstances at birth haunt them for the rest of their life.

The most effective intervention happens before the age of 11, but this mustn’t be where it ends. A lack of decent careers advice and university guidance at some secondary state schools means that many talented pupils are failing to meet their potential.

Just as worrying …

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Stephen Tall

Time for Nick Clegg and the Coalition to see sense and stop the ‘Charity Tax’

By Stephen Tall | Wed 4th April 2012 - 9:15 am

This year’s budget was, in general, a good one for Lib Dems. Most notably, the party’s number one priority of taking more low-paid workers out of tax was fast-tracked, while the controversies, and specifically the cut in the 50p top-rate at a time when pensioners’ tax allowances are being frozen, have hit their Tory backers’ support in the polls.

However, there is one lesser noticed and malign Budget change, the ‘Charity Tax’ — a cap on tax relief which threatens to cost the charitable sector hundreds of millions of pounds — which has not attracted mainstream media attention. That needs to change if the Coalition is to be talked down from a policy with Lib Dem fingerprints on it, and which will undermine philanthropic giving at a time when it is needed more than ever during the public funding squeeze.

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Joe Bourke

Opinion: Getting radical with the money supply

By Joe Bourke | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 1:34 pm

Last week the OECD forecast that Britain was about to experience a double-dip recession, for the first time since 1975. Vince Cable in his Centreforum paper Moving from the financial crisis to sustainable growth asks “How far should monetary policy now be expanded further in the UK to boost demand and head off a period of poor growth?

He goes on to say “There is no possibility for further meaningful interest rate cuts – real short term rates are now minus 4 percent. That means further recourse to quantitative easing.

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Dan Rogerson MP

Dan Rogerson MP writes… The crusade to protect the Cornish Pasty

By Dan Rogerson MP | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 12:11 pm

As the national political debate around the Budget moves on, one specific proposal is continuing to dominate both the headlines and my inbox – the so called ‘Pasty Tax’. The Chancellor’s proposals to change the VAT arrangements on hot food could see the tax being levied on pasties for the first time. The Treasury are currently consulting on the idea, and there remain some uncertainties that will need to be clarified.

I certainly understand the logic behind making sure that VAT is charged on hot food in places like large supermarkets to stop them undercutting local cafés and takeaways. But aside from the inevitable pasty puns in the press, there is serious concern across Cornwall.

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Donnachadh McCarthy

The Independent View: Why the Lib Dems should put cycling at the heart of their transport policy

By Donnachadh McCarthy | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 11:06 am

More motorways, airports and cities, cried the leader of the “greenest” government ever. The Prime Minister is absolutely right that we need new infrastructure but what we need is not ever wider motorways but a modern cycling infrastructure, to get the ridiculous 50% of journeys under 5km that are currently taken by car, out of the way of essential business traffic.

Millions of UK citizens are too old, young, poor or eco-conscious to own a car. In countries from Denmark to Japan, their governments provide safe cycle-paths. Our roads however are not fit for purpose, as …

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Jonathan Hunt

Opinion: Gorgeous George steals our place on the Left

By Jonathan Hunt | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 9:54 am

Well done George Galloway for last week’s Bradford West by-election victory. He was astutely aware of the state of a vacuous Labour party lacking leadership and direction, and took full advantage of it.

Now, no-one can say that a Left-wing party is doomed to automatic failure. And it is little use Lib Dems complaining: “That’s our job.”

It is our job, but we have failed completely. A strong left-wing challenge from us, the true party of the non-socialist Left could have produced a …

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Linda Jack

Opinion: 1984 and all that

By Linda Jack | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 8:32 am

If you wanted to pick an issue guaranteed to unite the whole party – protecting our civil liberties has to be it. So the last 48 hours have been a frenzy of claim, counterclaim, the candyflossesque spin of internal briefings and Lib Dems across the blogo/twitto/facebooko/forumosphere reaching dangerously apoplectic levels of disquiet.

Mark Pack, in his inimitable unflappable style offered an informative briefing via LDV – taking the optimistic view, reassuring us that “what the Home Office proposes is not the same as what Parliament will legislate. No matter how flawed the initial proposal put to Parliament by Theresa May are, they put the RIPA rules on the table – giving the opportunity to get them changed to meet what a liberal approach should be – as little intrusion as possible, only for the most serious of offences and with rigorous, independently verified safeguards”.

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