Category Archives: Op-eds

James Taylor

Opinion: The Laws of Politics for the Scottish Lib Dems (Part II)

By James Taylor | Sat 24th September 2011 - 8:50 am

The Scottish Liberal Democrat conference is coming up in the next couple of weeks and having spoken at it in previous years I am unable to attend on this, the first with Willie Rennie at the helm.

However I spent some time this weekend contemplating if any of the Laws of Marketing that I use in my day job could be applied to the Scottish Lib Dems. I recognise in doing this I may be burnt at the stake by some of my more open-toed Liberal friends, but feel free to discard whichever of the Laws …

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Also posted in Scotland | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

A messaging mess: what Liberal Democrats are achieving in government

By Mark Pack | Fri 23rd September 2011 - 11:55 am

As I wrote in the immediate aftermath of Nick Clegg’s conference speech, the party was much better at saying what it was not and what it was against – not the Conservatives, not unhappy, against tax cheats, against overpaid under-performing company directors and so on – than what it was for.

In theory the answer should have been found in the conference packs handed out to people on arrival at the Birmingham ICC, for inside them was not only an “In government – on your side” leaflet but also three others from different Liberal Democrat ministers, all promoting the party’s …

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James Taylor

Opinion: The Laws of Politics for the Scottish Lib Dems (Part I)

By James Taylor | Fri 23rd September 2011 - 9:15 am

The Scottish Liberal Democrat conference is coming up in the next couple of weeks and having spoken at it in previous years I am unable to attend on this, the first with Willie Rennie at the helm.

However I spent some time this weekend contemplating if any of the Laws of Marketing that I use in my day job could be applied to the Scottish Lib Dems. I recognise in doing this I may be burnt at the stake by some of my more open-toed Liberal friends, but feel free to discard whichever of the Laws …

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Also posted in Scotland | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Memo to LabourList’s Paul Richards… Feel free to keep obsessing. It’ll lose you the next election.

By Stephen Tall | Fri 23rd September 2011 - 7:40 am

I think it’s safe to assume that LabourList’s Paul Richards is not Nick Clegg’s greatest fan.

What prompts me to leap to this conclusion? Well, I guess if you headline your article profiling the Lib Dem leader ‘A snivelling, venal, ruthless social climber’ you’re making some kind of statement.

I’d highly recommend reading Paul’s post in full if only to gain an appreciation of the impotent fury, this red mist, which is clouding the Labour party’s judgment. Here’s a flavour:

Some make the mistake of saying that the reason why Clegg so naturally fits into a Tory government is because he

…

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Stephen Tall

Why was this Lib Dem conference cheerful? Simple: because it mattered.

By Stephen Tall | Thu 22nd September 2011 - 9:20 pm

The Economist’s pseudonymous political commentator Bagehot devotes his column this week to the Liberal Democrats, analysing the mood of serenity which prevailed at this year’s party conference to the surprise (and chagrin) of the media.

He notes that activists were cheered by the anti-Tory rhetoric that pervaded speeches by Tim Farron, Chris Huhne and Vince Cable, believing this differentiation will in turn demonstrate to the electorate that the party is punching above its weight — that Nick Clegg is, in the words of Tory MP Nadine Dorries, “the boss”.

Many Lib Dems argue that Tory-bashing is good politics, and long overdue. It is true that differentiation does have a strategic aim: persuading voters that the Lib Dems are not powerless puppets in a Tory government. But those same Lib Dems underestimate the emotional temptations to which they are giving way.

The Lib Dems think it unfair that they are hated. They think (rightly) that inconclusive election results and a mood of national crisis made joining the Tories in the coalition last year the responsible thing to do.

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Bill le Breton

Opinion: Agreeing with Nick

By Bill le Breton | Thu 22nd September 2011 - 10:55 am

I agree with Nick. Following the result of the General Election we had to enter a coalition with the Conservatives.

I go further than him, though.

Especially for those who have supported the party for decades, it was the decisive point for which we had long battled.

Every Focus written, every door knocked, every pound raised, every campaign fought led us to that moment, that decision, that responsibility which, thanks to our hard earned votes in the House of Commons, we had been able to seize.

It was always going to be the case that when our moment came …

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17 Comments
Oranjepan

Opinion: The Lib Dems need to lead to solve the Eurozone crisis

By Oranjepan | Wed 21st September 2011 - 10:55 am

There are only two possible results to the Euro-crisis: 1) collapse of intra-European trade, or 2) greater European integration. The first has far-reaching negative implications for Britain, Europe and the world. The second indicates a massive area for future growth in our shared economy.

While the current political challenge remains to deliver stability and growth at the same time it’s up to Britain to choose to find the political will and lead on the issue. Why? Because continual continental dithering and endless domestic bickering will mean economic conditions stay in the doldrums until the Eurozone countries wake up to the fact …

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15 Comments
Stephen Tall

What is the Lib Dem position on ‘The Big Society’?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 20th September 2011 - 3:25 pm

I was called by a colleague I know through my day-job last week: ‘What is the Lib Dem position on charitable giving?’ she asked. Beyond a bland ‘We’re in favour of it,’ I found myself a bit stuck for an answer.

Initially I put it down to my ignorance, and decided I should do some research, call a few people up, and find out something a bit more helpful, a bit more substantive. But coincidentally that day I happened to read this article — How can charities exert an influence on Lib Dem policies? — in Third Sector.

And it …

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The Voice

The Independent View: Sorry ActionAid – it’s time to put people in charge of their own development

By The Voice | Tue 20th September 2011 - 11:27 am

This is a response article to ‘The Independent View: Centre Forum is wrong about aid – UK aid makes a difference’ by Centre Forum’s Pauline Dixon and Paul Marshall

Failure to allocate international aid more effectively on a rising budget will lead to a rapid decline in public support for it. This is what the CentreForum paper ‘International aid and educating the poorest’ seeks to address, and this is why ActionAid’s concerns about our paper, set out last week on Lib Dem Voice, are misplaced.

We are not opposed to international aid (ActionAid comes close to implying we are). Nor do we oppose …

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Stephen Tall

Polling the Lib Dems: the good, the bad, and the inbetween

By Stephen Tall | Tue 20th September 2011 - 10:25 am

‘Less anger, but less clarity’ is how UK Polling Report’s Anthony Wells characterises the latest YouGov polling looking at the public’s attitudes to the Lib Dems. It’s interesting to read through the full data, available here, especially as the responses are directly comparable with a year ago, before the Lib Dems’ U-turn on tuition fees sent the party spiralling downwards in the polls.

The bad news

  • Nick Clegg’s popularity has taken a hit: from a net positive of +8% a year ago, to a net negative of -29% today. Worth noting, however, that this is primarily due to Nick’s toxicity with Labour supporters, with whom he has a rating of an astonishing -79%! Both Lib Dem (+51%) and Tory (+17%) supporters have net positive views of the Lib Dem leader.
  • There is greater opposition to the Coalition than a year ago. In September 2010, 43% supported it, while 46% opposed it (net -3%): today the split is 34%/57% (net -13%). Interestingly, among the group identified as ‘lost Lib Dem voters’ — ie, those who voted for the party in 2010 but no longer would — 29% support the Coalition, while 63% oppose it.
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Also posted in Polls | 22 Comments
Tom Papworth

Opinion: I’d rather be boring than bonkers

By Tom Papworth | Tue 20th September 2011 - 9:35 am

Monday night’s Channel 4’s coverage of the Liberal Democrat conference ended with Michael Crick interviewing Ann Treneman and Michael White about the general feel amongst Lib Dems.

Among the usual sniping from a reactionary sketch-writer and the doyen of the urban intellectual elite came a lament that the Liberal Democrat conference did not feel like a Liberal Democrat conference. People were too on message, they moaned; there was not enough rebellion; nor enough eccentricity. Michael White in particular bemoaned the absence of beards and sandals. Lib Dem conference, they felt, had become boring.

Too right.

We are not in the 1970s, when …

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Jo Swinson MP

Jo Swinson MP writes: Quality of Life – A New Purpose for Politics

By Jo Swinson MP | Mon 19th September 2011 - 8:27 pm

Decade on decade, the UK has been getting richer. For the most part, people today are materially considerably better off than they were back in the 1970s; however, statistics stretching back all those years show that our satisfaction with our lives has barely improved. We have more money and we’re pumping out more carbon emissions – but we don’t appear to be getting much pay-off for our own wellbeing.
 
Fortunately, the Liberal Democrats have recognised this problem.
 
For over two years, a working group has been studying the evidence to see whether Government can actually do anything to set us on a …

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James Kempton

Opinion: Conference perspective – media, message and motivation

By James Kempton | Mon 19th September 2011 - 6:22 pm

Looking at the media coverage of the last 24 hours at Conference, it’s all been about tax, boardroom pay and jobs – tackling Labour’s economic legacy. 

But yesterday in the Main Hall, and today in many of the fringes, delegates have also been debating another theme – social mobility, or as Sarah Teather, our Education Minister, powerfully put it – the challenge of breaking the link between the circumstances of a child’s birth and his or her fate. The fact that in this country the richest 16 year-olds are three times as likely …

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Chris White

Opinion: Why I’m supporting creators but opposing the Digital Economy Act

By Chris White | Mon 19th September 2011 - 7:55 am

Kevin (not his real name) drives his son Danny to the shops. Danny pops in and emerges with various items in a bag, for which he has paid. In his pocket there is a packet of biscuits which he trousered while collecting the other items. CCTV spots the fact that he has done it and he is prosecuted for shoplifting.

A few weeks later, Kevin’s garage makes contact and says that the Government has issued an order that he take his car into the garage to be adjusted so that it can do no more than 30 miles per hour. He …

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Laura Willoughby

Opinion: Will the Lib Dems stand up for creative industries?

By Laura Willoughby | Sun 18th September 2011 - 4:50 pm

A Labour friend of mine was smugly telling me about last week’s launch of the Labour Creative Industries Network. Much of this reminded me of their ‘Cool Britannia’ efforts circa 1997.

However, it also got me thinking about how the creative industries see us. We too have some nice words about creative businesses on our website – but do we really have a sense of how we want to support and promote this economically and culturally important sector? The DCMS is the only department where Lib Dems have no ministerial presence. There is a hair’s breadth in arts policy between …

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Alex Wilcock

Opinion: Never Mention “STV” Again

By Alex Wilcock | Sat 17th September 2011 - 3:15 pm

The Liberal Democrat Conference opens today in Birmingham with perhaps the most depressing talking shop ever put on a Lib Dem Agenda. It’s the consultative session for the “May 2011 Election Review”: a big drop in the popular vote; a major setback on local councils; a disaster in Scotland; a total and utter thrashing in the AV referendum. And it’s the last that looks the most hopeless.

Is electoral reform finished for good, or at least for a generation? Instead of endlessly debating what went wrong, there’s one major change we can make right now to improve things next time: …

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Simon McGrath

Opinion: The battle for the Electoral Reform Society – the results

By Simon McGrath | Sat 17th September 2011 - 11:55 am

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about the battle for control of the Electoral Reform Society. The results of the Electoral Reform Society Council election have since come out and they show a clear victory for the ‘reform’ slate, eight of whose 15 candidates got elected. Just four of the existing nine council members were re-elected (the Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer and Michael Meadowcroft, who topped the poll) with the other three successful candidates also being in favour of reform.

There had been talk of a legal challenge to the elections, centering on whether those given …

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Andrew George

Andrew George MP writes… The NHS Bill is putting our health service at risk

By Andrew George | Sat 17th September 2011 - 8:45 am

Liberal Democrats can reasonably claim to have been the architects and cheerleaders of the NHS. However, we now run the risk of being cast as the office juniors and apologists for the architects of its demise.

I used these words when I addressed the Spring Conference in Sheffield this year; during the debate which soundly castigated the Government’s controversial Health & Social Care Bill and which precipitated the unprecedented ‘pause’.

Though the media didn’t give us credit, two thirds of ‘unfettered’ (by Ministerial or other office) Liberal Democrat MPs rebelled in last week’s debate and votes on the Bill.

In spite of the …

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Charlotte Henry

Project: Lib Dems coming together, to make politics better

By Charlotte Henry | Thu 15th September 2011 - 2:23 pm

Everyone in politics likes to talk about change, none more so than the Lib Dems (who can forget that fabulous piece of election music…) but do we really practise what we preach? In areas such as diversity, campaigning, and our overall political role, we are frequently found to be behind the times. Our party can still say one thing at one end of a road, and another thing at the other end. Shamefully, we also still have woefully few female MPs, and not a single BME MP.

It’s all well and good discussing our failings, but it is much more …

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Mark Pack

Local liberal heroes: Jill Fraser

By Mark Pack | Thu 15th September 2011 - 10:25 am

Earlier in the year, I penned a series of posts profiling forgotten liberal heroes (to which a couple of other people also kindly contributed), looking at some of those who achieved great things for liberalism in their time but have been unjustly forgotten – such as Margaret Wintringham, the very first female Liberal MP.

There is also another group of people who I think are often unjustly obscure – those local campaigners who are often at the heart of their local community and local party, delivering liberalism and helping others, but as their stage is a local one they are often …

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Chris White

Chris White writes: Spare a thought for the Federal Conference Committee

By Chris White | Thu 15th September 2011 - 8:53 am

I really never thought I would say that.

They can appear somewhat cliquey – the only Federal Committee to publish its mugshots in the conference agenda (apparently conference representatives aren’t interested in who looks after their interests on the Federal Executive or the Federal Policy Committee).

They can be a bit insensitive: not the cleverest idea to select a business motion which would increase their powers over emergency motions at a time when representatives are feeling restless. And a tad cynical to have it at 0900 on Tuesday morning when many will still be at breakfast. (Yes: I know you will have …

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 26 Comments
Steve Bolter

Opinion: Caroline Lucas is wrong

By Steve Bolter | Wed 14th September 2011 - 3:43 pm

As a campaigner on environmental issues since the 1960s, I have admired the way Caroline Lucas has publicly championed green issues. However, while I am sad that the Lib Dems have not been able to implement all of their manifesto, I am even sadder that Caroline’s lust for power has overtaken her commitment to the environmental cause.

While the Green Party has played an important role in helping inform the public, it has only a very small proportion of councillors and just one UK MP. The Liberal Democrats, with their far greater number of councillors, their participation in the Coalition …

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Mark Pack

Adrian Sanders is still right

By Mark Pack | Wed 14th September 2011 - 12:22 pm

With the reduction in number of MPs back in the news, so too is the question of how many ministers there are. As I wrote in October last year:

I agree with Adrian Sanders and 22 Conservative MPs
Yesterday in Parliament Adrian Sanders and 22 Conservative MPs voted to reduce the maximum number of ministers allowed in the Commons in line with the forthcoming reduction in the number of MPs

Without a cut in the number of MPs on the government payrolls, reducing the number of MPs will increase the government’s power over Parliament when the whole thrust of other reforms is, rightly, that …

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Dinti Batstone

Opinion: “I don’t like them, you don’t like them… We have to have them”

By Dinti Batstone | Wed 14th September 2011 - 9:25 am

This Saturday, Conference has the opportunity to show that Liberal Democrats are genuinely committed to achieving gender balance in our own distinctively liberal and democratic way.

Conference will debate an amendment which Jo Shaw and I have put forward to Mark Pack and Paul Tyler’s Lords reform motion. Our amendment builds on the approach taken by our party in the late 1990s, when one-off zipping was used to deliver a gender-balanced cohort of Lib Dem MEPs in the first PR elections to the European Parliament.

In an ideal world we wouldn’t need these kinds of measures. But with just 12% women …

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Terry Scriven

Opinion: Veterans ‘stuffed’ again

By Terry Scriven | Tue 13th September 2011 - 9:45 am

The UK Military Covenant Commission report identified injustices in a lack of past medallic recognition for those who had served in the British Armed Forces. This led to the Conservative Party policy in their 2010 General Election manifesto and the Coalition “Programme for Government” commitment to undertake a comprehensive Medal Review. But the Ministry of Defence has stuffed our veterans.

The Ministry of Defence failed to publicly notify when the medal review started; what its terms of reference were and when it would report; failed to consult with veterans, and produced unsubstantiated findings based on false arguments. In a matter of weeks MoD …

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Dick Newby

Dick Newby writes… Banking – a Lib Dem win

By Dick Newby | Mon 12th September 2011 - 10:41 pm

As I write this, the top headline on the BBC online news reads Acclaim for Bank Shake-up Plan. The report states that there is broad support for the Vickers’ report’s proposals to separate domestic retail banking and global wholesale and investment banking operations. This support extends to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister.

What the BBC doesn’t point out is that this a complete victory for the Liberal Democrats – particularly Vince Cable. When the banking crisis broke , we quickly decided that we had to ensure that the state couldn’t be put in the position again where it …

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Karen Wilkinson

Opinion: What’s your prism?

By Karen Wilkinson | Sun 11th September 2011 - 11:55 am

The perennial question cropped up again the other day, on the beach this time: “What do the LibDems stand for?” I replied that the Tories and Labour view British society through the same prism of class or socio-economic groups, but that the LibDems see individuals.

We don’t believe that your gender, the colour of your skin, religion, social background, the number of parents you have, your weight or body shape or ability, your education level or bank balance say anything at all about your compassion, your willingness to get involved in your community, your intelligence, your wisdom, your sense of humour, …

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Simon McGrath

Opinion: Time to face reality on conference security

By Simon McGrath | Sat 10th September 2011 - 2:28 pm

Lib Dem Voice has carried a number of articles in recent weeks, reflecting wider discussions among Lib Dems, about the security arrangement for the Birmingham Conference. The tone of many of these discussions has reached a quite extraordinary pitch of self-righteousness and vituperation, in many cases based on hearsay and rumour.

Perhaps it would be worth looking at some of the facts about the security arrangements.

Firstly the idea that this is a decision which Lib Dems can take on our own is simply wrong. Many others attend our conference, the media, exhibitors and the workers in the venue, who in …

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Opinion: New MSM blood donation criteria do not go far enough

By Chris Ward | Sat 10th September 2011 - 12:28 pm

Paul Burstow MP recently wrote in these pages explaining the government’s decision to lift the lifetime ban on MSM blood donations. I have tabled an amendment to my motion at Conference next week, Science Not Stigma: Ending the Blood Ban, to oppose the deferral on the MSM group.

First and foremost, I’d like to emphasise that throughout this campaign, I have avoided use of the words “discrimination”, “homophobic” and “bigoted”. I am aware that this separates me from some others who have campaigned on the matter, but I think it’s really important. I have great respect for the NHS and the fantastic people who work within it and I personally believe that the methodology and the conclusions of the review were all the product of good intentions. Attempts by others who stand on my side of the campaign to malign doctors and nurses as “homophobic” or “bigoted” detracts the argument from the priority subject – the safety of the patient – and suggests that the lifting of the ban is all about us, the gay and bisexual men. It’s not.

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The Liberator Collective

New Edition of Liberator (September 2011)

By The Liberator Collective | Fri 9th September 2011 - 3:53 pm

Liberator subscribers have just received the latest edition of Liberator magazine (issue no.348 – September 2011). For those of you who are not yet subscribers, here’s a summary of the contents:

  • The editorial column Commentary contrasts Nick Clegg’s pre-election prediction of riots with the situation now. There is also criticism of the declining proportion of time allocated to policy motions at party conference.
  • The insider gossip column Radical Bulletin begins with an exposé of a ‘policy and strategy’ document prepared by Nick Clegg’s adviser Richard Reeves.
  • ‘Cut the cringe’ – Matthew Oakeshott (former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman in the

…

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