Category Archives: Op-eds

Opinion: Lib Dems should not shelve House of Lords reform

By Andrew Jones | Tue 10th May 2011 - 11:56 am

Despite our best efforts, we Liberal Democrats failed last Thursday to make electoral reform sexy. Quelle surprise. The economy is faltering, public services have a shaky future and, frankly, how people vote for their MP’s is not of major concern to the British people.

Using my trusty retrospectoscope, I can tell you that the Yes campaign got the message wrong, and it did not resonate with people. The campaign went for the anti-politics, anti-politician approach of saying they were offering the people a way to make their MP’s work harder and suffer more. Britons shrugged. The fundamental nature in which politics …

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Tagged constitutional reform, house of lords, lords reform and nick thornsby | 14 Comments

Opinion: Equidistance is as important now as it ever was in opposition

By Martin Shapland | Tue 10th May 2011 - 10:54 am

Liberals, I put it to you that we are neither wannabe conservatives nor right wing Labourites. We are distinct as Liberal Democrats and need to start making this clear.

The small ‘c’, conservatives who fought for a no vote in the referendum show, at heart, narrow party interest drives activists in both Labour and Conservative parties. As long as they remain tribal, with every motivation checked against what is best for party, it will prove fatal if we continue to seek pluralism in a world where pluralism is derided and to ignore the self preservation of our own party and values.

Instead …

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Tagged equidistance | 8 Comments

Learning the lessons from last week #2: Lib Dem voters don’t want out of the coalition

By Mark Pack | Tue 10th May 2011 - 6:54 am

Even after last Thursday, I’ve come across very few Liberal Democrats saying, “we should have made a deal with Labour last May”. That’s not a surprise, given the Parliamentary arithmetic and also all that has come out since about just how split Labour’s negotiating team was, not to mention the almost farcical lack of preparation from Labour for talks. Peter Mandelson grabbing a quick cup of tea with Ed Balls to sort out Labour’s negotiating line before walking into the first meeting may be very English, but competent or prepared it wasn’t.

That does, of course, leave the question of whether …

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Tagged ed balls, featured, peter mandelson and yougov | 55 Comments

Opinion: Lib Dems must prove coalitions work

By Sam Cannicott | Mon 9th May 2011 - 4:26 pm

So what next for the Lib Dems? The next general election and probably many more will be fought using the flawed and unfair first past the post system. We can vent some steam and complain about the poorly executed Yes campaign. Or look like sore losers and blame Cameron and the No campaign’s underhand tactics. But the fact is electoral reform is not on the cards any time soon.

The challenge for the Liberal Democrats is now prove to the country that coalition government works. Our party needs to provide the country with strong, stable government …

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18 Comments

The Independent View: Good News for Lib Dems in Devon and Cornwall boundary changes?

By Jackie South | Mon 9th May 2011 - 3:26 pm

After the polls, some perhaps more welcome news for the Liberal Democrats.

I’ve recently started running a series of articles on the allthatsleft.co.uk website that set out how the boundary changes in 2015 could play out and what this would mean for the political parties.

On Tuesday, I looked at the impact of changes for Devon and Cornwall. These two counties will be linked in the next review, creating a controversial trans-Tamar seat linking parts of both counties. The two counties are set to lose one seat between them, falling from 18 to 17.

It looks as if the changes could be to the Liberal Democrats’ benefit. I …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged parliamentary boundary review | 9 Comments

Learning the lessons from last week #1: The missing policies

By Mark Pack | Mon 9th May 2011 - 8:24 am

Aside from the major changes in tax rates (such as income tax allowances up, capital gains tax brought much closer to income tax levels, cuts in tax breaks for the richest on pension contributions), one of the most significant economic policies that the Liberal Democrats have brought to government is the massive expansion of apprenticeships.

With Vince Cable overseeing the creation of a minimum of 250,000 more apprenticeship places by 2014, the number will be at record levels – and should bring three major benefits.

First, they are good for the apprentices, giving people the opportunity to learn skills which help them …

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Tagged vince cable | 19 Comments

Opinion: Lib Dems promoting human rights abroad

By Jonathan Baldie | Sun 8th May 2011 - 2:23 pm

As a Liberal Democrat member*, I’m proud of the fact that our party is in government, with ministers making tough choices about the UK.

While most attention is on electoral reform and tuition fees, I want to steer your attention towards foreign policy. In the Foreign Office there is one Lib Dem minister, Jeremy Browne MP. He takes the responsibility in the FCO for human rights policy among other things.

Mr Browne recently made an excellent Q&A video on YouTube last month, focussing on the UK’s action on promoting foreign policy abroad:

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Tagged david kato, human rights, jeremy browne and uganda | 6 Comments

Opinion: Sense prevails on public services?

By Alex Marsh | Sun 8th May 2011 - 11:54 am

The reports this week were that the Government is planning to scale back its proposals for outsourcing public services. A significant policy shift means that the delayed Open Public Services White paper will not feature proposals for “wholesale outsourcing” to the for-profit private sector when it finally emerges in a few weeks time.

Notes drawn up by the CBI following a meeting with Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, leaked to the BBC, suggest that the Government remains committed to “transforming services”. But the White Paper will focus on moving services from the public sector to charities, social enterprises, and employee-owned …

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Tagged francis maude | 2 Comments

The Independent View: Iain Dale on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems

By Iain Dale | Sun 8th May 2011 - 10:27 am

When LibDem MPs return to Westminster this week they could be forgiven for having a collective panic attack. In their 22 year history they have never had such an onslaught of the political heebie-jeebies as they experienced at the hands of 12 million grumpy voters this week.

Cleggmania has turned into Cleggophobia. Every policy Nick Clegg touches now is seen to be toxic.

Westminster pundits are already writing him off as a political busted flush. But then again, these are the very same commentators who didn’t see the SNP landslide coming in Scotland. They are the same people who predicted the Tories …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged av referendum, chris huhne, david cameron, david laws, iain dale, nick clegg, paddy ashdown and vince cable | 54 Comments

The Independent View: How to implement full Lords reform, now that the referendum is lost

By Rupert Read | Sat 7th May 2011 - 5:21 pm

Rupert Read, the Green Party Co-ordinator – East of England, writes:

Dear LibDems

It was good to work with you, and with LabourYes, with UKIP, with people from all parties and none, during the referendum campaign just concluded. We – the YES side – have been defeated by a farrago of money, lies and the worst of propaganda.

What to do now? The answer, surely, is that it is time to press hard for real full Lords reform, with PR as the electoral system. That would be a true prize. It is the very least the Tories can deliver for you / for …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged constitutional reform and house of lords | 49 Comments

Where does defeat for AV leave the dream of electoral reform?

By Lucy Smith | Sat 7th May 2011 - 2:54 pm

The votes are in, and counted. The wait is over but for the YES camp it’s the bad news we’ve been dreading, and reform of Westminster elections is now lost for many years at least. So what does a NO vote mean for the future?

For the Liberal Democrats as a party, it’s undoubtedly a bitter pill to swallow having carried the flag of electoral reform for years. The referendum on AV was the jewel in the crown of the coalition concessions, the final offer that made coalition possible. For many activists a change in the voting system has seemed like …

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Tagged av referendum | 43 Comments

Opinion: Time for a New Deal

By Bill le Breton | Sat 7th May 2011 - 11:53 am

Looking forward and rejecting recriminations, what the country needs now is a New Deal. What the party needs now, within the Coalition and after the deal-breaking of the last few weeks, is also a new deal.

As might have been expected, the economy is flat lining. The bounce that the optimists thought would spontaneously follow a period of recession has not occurred. We are on the verge of a round of public expenditure cuts that will further depress the economy and destroy the life chances of millions.

The justification for accepting deeper and earlier cuts to public expenditure said more about an …

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25 Comments

Lessons from two Egyptian revolutions compared

By Mark Pack | Sat 7th May 2011 - 9:54 am

The Egyptian revolution of 1919 helped bring about independence, whilst that of 2011 may well bring about democracy. Events of 2011 took place with heavy use of the internet, yet those of 1919 took place before the electronic computer had even had its début. So is talk of the internet’s role in 2011 over-hyped?

One reason for scepticism is that half-way point that Egypt is even now still at. A dictator may have been ousted, but it was as much military coup as popular uprising, for it was the army’s initial unwillingness to try to stop the protests and then its …

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Tagged egypt and history | 1 Comment

Nick Clegg’s email on the election results

By Nick Clegg MP | Fri 6th May 2011 - 10:46 pm

I wanted to get in touch immediately to thank everyone who has worked so hard in the elections. This was always going to be a challenging time. For the first time in most of our memories we were fighting as a party of Government – and a government dealing with the economic mess Labour left us in.

But there is no getting away from the fact that this has been a bad set of results – both the election results for the Liberal Democrats and the referendum outcome. I am certainly deeply disappointed. I know many of you are too. I …

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116 Comments

How to vote – and what to do once you’ve voted

By Mark Pack | Thu 5th May 2011 - 7:55 am

Here’s a few key pieces of information for polling day.

Voting in person

Polling stations are open between 7am and 10pm today. No votes can be cast after 10pm; it’s not like the shops where being in the queue at closing time is enough.
You don’t need your polling card to vote (but in Northern Ireland you do need to bring ID with you).
You have to vote at your local polling station, which is indicated on the card. If you’ve lost your card and aren’t sure where to vote, you can contact your local council.
In most parts of the country you’ll be given more than one ballot paper today. Check the instructions carefully as, for example, you should only put one cross on the referendum ballot paper but you may also live in a ward where you can vote for more than one local council candidate.
EU citizens can vote in local elections even though they can’t vote in the referendum (which is open to anyone qualified to vote in a Westminster general election, plus peers).

Voting by post

Postal ballots can be handed in at polling stations today.
Make sure all the paperwork is completed and put inside the (outer) sealed envelope. It’s best if you return this to a polling station yourself, but if you can’t make it you can ask someone else you trust to take the sealed envelope to a polling station for you.
If you get the paperwork wrong, your postal vote will be invalid. One of the most common mistakes is filling in the date field wrongly, as I explain in this short video:

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4 Comments

The Independent View: Is it time to rethink postal voting?

By Stuart Wilks-Heeg | Wed 4th May 2011 - 11:54 am

Allegations emerged recently of voters in Rochdale being asked to hand postal ballots for the local elections to party representatives to complete and submit to the Returning Officer. A decade ago, this might have made the national news, but now such stories are probably too familiar to make the headlines.

While electoral fraud is not rife in the UK, the scale of the problem is almost impossible to estimate. One thing is for sure – the Rochdale case does not represent an isolated local difficulty. Based on joint reporting by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Chief Police Officers …

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Also posted in Election law and The Independent View | Tagged electoral commission, postal voting, rochdale and sayeeda warsi | 14 Comments

Sarah Ludford MEP writes: Passengers should be able to opt out of body scanning

By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP | Wed 4th May 2011 - 9:38 am

The EU is considering whether to enlarge the list of techniques approved under its aviation security regulations beyond physical searches or metal detectors, and if so with what safeguard provisions.

In the meantime, individual Member States can trial security scanners known as ‘whole body’ scanners – or more popularly as ‘naked’ bodyscanners – and apply their own rules. They are currently in use at many European as well as American airports.

In the UK, they are being trialled at Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports, governed by the 1982 Aviation Security Act and an interim Code of Practice issued last year. A permanent …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged european union | 6 Comments

Opinion: End unpaid internships with MPs? Sure – just show us the money

By Tom King | Tue 3rd May 2011 - 11:56 am

There has been no little discussion in recent days about the cosy world of unpaid internships. Nick Clegg has rightly drawn attention to their increasingly powerful status as a barrier to social mobility. Of course, organisations such as Intern Aware and Interns Anonymous have long been making the same point.

But the almost universal response to this truth – that unpaid internships are wrong, and should be ended forthwith – actually raises more questions than it answers. What people really mean when they say internships should ‘end’ is that interns should be ‘paid’. This is because everyone recognises …

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Tagged internships and nick clegg | 8 Comments

The Independent View: What the Chilcott Inquiry has missed – the role of oil in the Iraq war

By Greg Muttitt | Tue 3rd May 2011 - 10:23 am

While change sweeps the Middle East and fighting escalates in Libya, the Chilcott Inquiry continues to consider the lessons of the Iraq war. The Inquiry has taught us more about the timing, process and legality of key decisions, but the elephant in the room remains the role oil played in those decisions.

“The oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it,” said Tony Blair in February 2003. His protestations were sufficiently effective that in media and parliamentary debates, raising the oil issue became a sure-fire route to losing credibility. And so Chilcott, who …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged chilcot inquiry, iraq and tony blair | 2 Comments

Opinion: The Lib Dems should work with unions

By Adam Bell | Mon 2nd May 2011 - 2:54 pm

One of the most egregious arguments put forward by the No2AV campaign has been that the adoption of the alternative vote will necessarily lead to more coalitions. This is to overlook the somewhat obvious fact that all three main political parties in the UK are already coalitions – the Tories representing an alliance of the remnants of the squirearchy and wealthy metropolitan property owners, Labour the remnants of the working class solidarity movement and the Fabian tendency, and the Lib Dems the alliance between the Liberal Party and the SDP. There are multiple factions I haven’t mentioned – sometimes it’s …

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Tagged av referendum, lord glasman and lynsey hanley | 21 Comments

Opinion: Are we open for business or shutting up shop?

By Simon de Deney | Mon 2nd May 2011 - 12:54 pm

“Let it be heard clearly around the world — from Shanghai to Seattle, and from Stuttgart to Sao Paolo: Britain is open for business,” George Osborne proclaimed rousingly in last month’s Budget. But what does this say about how Osborne views the UK? Unpick the assumptions underlying the rhetoric and the language reveals an intellectual wasteland beneath.

The reductionist’s reductions

There are two arguments against this world view. The first is that it is a highly reductionist view of any country, particularly one as culturally and socially rich as Britain. The second is that it is equally reductionist in its view of …

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Tagged corporation tax, george osborne and martin sorrell | 9 Comments

Deraa, not Abbottabad, is where the future is being shaped

By Mark Pack | Mon 2nd May 2011 - 10:49 am

The death of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad has triggered a wave of speculation about what it may mean for the future of Al-Qaeda and international terrorism.

Leafing through the history of other terrorists movements, by far the most likely answer is “not much” for the death of one key individual rarely causes terrorist organisations or networks to collapse. Moreoever, in Al-Qaeda’s case it is a much more decentralised network than other groupings which survived the death of one or more key individuals.

More relevant are the continuing protests in Deraa and elsewhere in Syria. For the Syria government has been, alongside …

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Tagged al-qaeda, osama bin laden and syria | 5 Comments

New edition of Liberator out

By The Liberator Collective | Sun 1st May 2011 - 4:54 pm

Liberator subscribers have just received the latest edition of Liberator magazine (issue no.345 – April 2011). For those of you who are not yet subscribers, here’s a summary of the contents:

The editorial column Commentary considers the risks of an open-ended commitment to war in Libya. There is also a warning to STV purists and Clegg-haters on the left not to vote ‘no’ in the AV referendum for purist or puerile motives respectively.
The insider gossip column Radical Bulletin begins with an account of the strange handling of the conference debate on the NHS.
Our

…

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Tagged liberator magazine | 6 Comments

The Big Society: the answer’s in the book

By Mark Pack | Sun 1st May 2011 - 9:26 am

One of the curios of some library campaigners extolling the virtues of books whilst also mocking the Big Society for supposedly being incomprehensible or non-existent is that there is a short, clear and well-written book which lays out just what it is. Conservative MP Jesse Norman’s book, The Big Society, is certainly not uncontroversial, but it makes a sufficiently strong and clear case to have received favourable comments from across the political spectrum on its publication last autumn, including from Labour MP Jon Cruddas.

At times the book seems to have two, almost contradictory, purposes – to persuade traditional Conservatives …

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Also posted in Books | Tagged big society, community politics, featured, jesse norman, jon cruddas, nick clegg and social mobility | 2 Comments

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Earl Grey

By Mark Pack | Fri 29th April 2011 - 9:24 am

Nick Robinson has returned to the radio for a second series of his short portraits of British Prime Ministers and in the list this time is Earl (Charles) Grey, one of the figures I’ve previously highlighted as a forgotten Liberal hero.

Robinson’s piece is history as light entertainment – so it starts off with the connection between Grey and the tea that we now know as Earl Grey and then moves on to his high profile affair before getting stuck into the more serious aspects of his record. But as a quick canter through his life in a style that …

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Tagged 1832 great reform act, charles grey, forgotten liberal heroes, history, nick robinson and philip salmon | 5 Comments

Chris White writes: Will the Coalition end with a commercial?

By Chris White | Thu 28th April 2011 - 12:47 pm

It is always slightly too easy to exaggerate the importance of Prime Minister’s Question Time. To the uninitiated (and there are some, mainly in more genteel democracies) it is a form of reality TV in which a normally dignified man or woman, with much on their mind and better things to do with their time, is forced to stand up for half an hour on live TV and be accurate, well-informed, witty and, well, abusive.

One slip and he/she reads about it in all the papers for the rest of the week.

The latest contestant (let us call him Mr Bullingdon) discovered …

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Tagged bullingdon, calm down dear, PMQs and winnergate | 16 Comments

Why I’ll be voting Yes to AV on 5th May: it’s all about choice

By Stephen Tall | Thu 28th April 2011 - 10:45 am

I will be voting ‘Yes’ to the alternative vote in the referendum on the 5th May. Here’s why.

For me, this referendum is all about choice. The ‘Yes’ campaign stands for giving voters greater choice — the choice to rank candidates standing for election according to our individual preference.

But, in fact, the ‘Yes’ campaign stands for more choice than just that. If you prefer, you don’t have to rank your candidates by preference. That’s right, under the alternative vote, you can express as much preference, or as little preference, as you choose:

If you love only one party —

…

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Tagged alternative vote | 43 Comments

Opinion: The liberal case for super-injunctions, and protecting the human right of privacy

By Jack Holroyde | Tue 26th April 2011 - 6:25 pm

Today, a certain Mr Andrew Marr has confirmed the oldest rumour in the book – that he obtained a super injunction several years ago, to protect his family against allegations that he had an affair.

Personally, I couldn’t care less what he does in the bedroom, providing that it doesn’t impact on his professional life and his ability to be politically neutral (ho, ho, ho!).

I’m going to come out with it straight: I’m a Liberal, and I fully support both the superinjunction, and Andrew Marr’s application for one in 2008.

I feel that the press has gone too far, on many …

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Tagged andrew marr and chris huhne | 26 Comments

Opinion: The best way to get banks to lend more is to reduce the deficit

By David Thorpe | Mon 25th April 2011 - 1:58 pm

From among the blizzard of economic forecast, commentary and political point scoring which presently dominates the airwaves, there is very little consensus but the need to get the banks to lend more is something which brings all sides of the debate together.

The dividing line appears to be on how best to achieve this.

Those who subscribe broadly to the neo-classical or neo-liberal economic world view believe that banks will start wanting to lend as the economy recovers and businesses become more viable. This ‘leave it to the market’ approach is something which Lib Dems should (and do) reject, not just on …

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Tagged banking, deficit, economy and lending | 4 Comments

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