Category Archives: Op-eds

Mark Pack

Britain at the Polls: four parts standard fare to five parts novel analysis

By Mark Pack | Fri 11th February 2011 - 10:25 am

The rise of online political coverage has done no harm to the mini-publishing boom brought about by a general election. In addition to the one-off books and the relatively new series there are some long running series that churn out a new edition for every general election. The Nuffield series is the most famous and longest-running but the Britain at the Polls series is a worthy and complimentary series. Its latest offering, Britain at the Polls 2010 (edited by Nicholas Allen and John Bartle), provides something extra even in the face of the latest Nuffield offering, The British …

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Prateek Buch

Opinion: If State multiculturalism has failed, what should take its place?

By Prateek Buch | Thu 10th February 2011 - 2:20 pm

Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech on security and tackling terrorism in Munich in has re-ignited a debate over whether ethnic and racial segregation is the root cause of so-called home-grown terrorism, in particular the species that manifested itself so tragically on July 7th 2005 in London. Given my ethnicity (I’m the UK-born son of Hindu Indian immigrants) you may expect me to be apoplectic over the tone and content of Cameron’s rhetoric; at least I should be according to Labour’s Sadiq Khan MP, who accused the PM of ‘writing propaganda for the English Defence League.’ Yet I find …

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Mark Pack

Dear BBC…

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

Dear BBC,

I’d like you to reconsider your decision to ban the use of the word “reform” when your staff are reporting or commenting on the proposed changes to the voting system for the House of Commons (as reported in The Independent last month).

Given that the phrase “electoral reform” has been a widely used term for decades to describe all sorts of different proposals to change the electoral system and given that it has been widely used by proponents on all sides of those exchanges too, I’m surprised that you now are of the view that it isn’t an appropriate …

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George Kendall

What the think tanks are saying: The IPPR on “How much is Labour to blame?”

By George Kendall | Wed 9th February 2011 - 4:46 pm

(On 14 January 2011, the IPPR published a paper by Tony Dolphin, Senior Economist and Associate Director for Economic Policy at the IPPR entitled Debts and Deficits: How much is Labour to blame?)

Tony Dolphin makes a key point in his paper, that Labour did not seem to realise how much it was relying on revenues from sources associated with rampant lending, such as the City and the housing market.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t develop this point.

Using the Treasury figures for the budget deficit, between 2007 and 2009, the deficit leapt from £37bn to £123bn. These figures are cyclically adjusted, …

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Meral Ece

Meral Hussein-Ece writes: Has multiculturalism failed?

By Meral Ece | Wed 9th February 2011 - 3:32 pm

When did the phrase multiculturalism become synonymous with extremism and segregation? According to the Prime Minister David Cameron, the ‘doctrine of multiculturalism’ has led to communities living separate lives, away from the mainstream and not integrating.

It is blamed for the erosion of ‘basic British values’, and that Muslims – because when we now talk about multiculturalism, what the debate now turns on is that Muslims do not adopt mainstream British values.

What is the evidence for this statement? The majority of Muslims in the UK are well-integrated and support and promote democracy, equality and British rule of law.

I wasn’t …

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Mark Pack

Crime maps: Simon Jenkins has persuaded me

By Mark Pack | Wed 9th February 2011 - 1:55 pm

I’ve been a bit ambivalent about the idea of crime maps, both because of the many categories of crime missing completely from them and also because the provision of a map in itself risks being seen as the final step rather than a preliminary step in making government more accountable and responsive to the public.

But that ambivalence was ended by Simon Jenkins. Not quite in the way he expected, I suspect, for his piece last week arguing vigorously against crime maps ended up persuading me that they are a good idea. That is because all but one of his …

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Mark Pack

Ship of Fools: lessons from the Irish crash

By Mark Pack | Wed 9th February 2011 - 10:25 am

Fintan O’Toole’s Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger is a coruscating account of how the Irish boom turned into biter bust. The sharpness of the prose as O’Toole recounts a tale of property boom, tax evasion and dodgy banking practices both entertains and obscures.

Along the way we have a blizzard of names and details about tax dodging, back handers and absent regulation. We also have the bitter irony of the failed exposure of politicians. When politicians were exposed yet their political careers continued unimpeded, the message to other politicians was – look, it does you no …

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Chris White

Chris White writes: Hodge’s troubling amnesia

By Chris White | Wed 9th February 2011 - 9:55 am

Margaret Hodge was on the Today programme yesterday morning on behalf of the Public Accounts Committee. She lambasted the Government for its policies on the widening of the M25. Money had been wasted, we were told, because the option of using the hard shoulder had not been pursued. Moreover a shocking £80 million had been spent on consultants. She was also disobliging about PFI.

Many may agree with this. But what was not said was ‘Which Government?’ Ms Hodge carefully said ‘They’ at all times. What she meant of course was ‘We’. It was the Labour Government of which she was …

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Gareth Epps

Opinion: A Bigger Society in Reading

By Gareth Epps | Tue 8th February 2011 - 3:48 pm

The Big Society is, at best, an abstract concept. Nonetheless, it poses interesting and different questions for Liberal Democrats involved in local government and the voluntary sector.

In Reading, we have taken a principled decision to maintain overall levels of funding to the voluntary sector as part of our Conservative-Liberal Democrat joint administration. In fact, there is a small increase, alongside benefits in kind in the form of low-cost accommodation to the voluntary sector. This is set against a small decrease in the final year of a Labour administration whose warm words about the voluntary sector were not matched with genuine partnership.

The Reading approach, too, is one that is all too rare in other local authorities. In many parts of the UK, such as nearby Wokingham, the voluntary sector has been the subject of some of the sharpest cuts at all, seen as a soft target for cuts. For many voluntary organisations, this year has been the most traumatic for the sector for many years. With so much radical change in the air, community leaders as well as local government have needed to provide leadership that balances an understanding of communities with an understanding of the sector’s needs. Unfortunately some senior national figures with links to the Labour Party, such as ACEVO’s recently-knighted former Lambeth councillor Stephen Bubb, have taken to politically-motivated doom-mongering which is not going to help anyone.

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Diana Wallis MEP

Diana Wallis MEP writes: Turning Julian Assange from poacher to game keeper

By Diana Wallis MEP | Tue 8th February 2011 - 12:13 pm

As Julian Assange reappears in court this week and as the Wikileaks saga continues to play out in the national media I am tempted to ask if Julian Assange is the new ‘Catch me if you can’ figure of the internet. Not the iconic image of imposter Frank Abnagale Jnr as portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in a pilot’s uniform striding through the airport with glamorous air hostesses in the film, but a correspondingly, bright, articulate and believable Robin Hood of the internet. In short: an attractive rogue with a frighteningly forensic mind.

The ending could be similar: finally captured by his antagonists having maybe taken a step too far, but with them having a sneaking admiration for him. One only has to look at the previous legal case in which Assange was involved, in Australia, where he walked free after years of prosecution attempts to obtain a serious conviction against him. In that case the judges admitted that all his hacking activities up until then amounted to nothing more than ‘an intelligent inquisitiveness’!

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Malcolm Wood

Opinion: In favour of allowing prisoners the vote

By Malcolm Wood | Tue 8th February 2011 - 9:49 am

The current debate about allowing prisoners the right to vote seems very one sided. Most media coverage gives the impression that a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights is forcing the UK government to do something deeply unreasonable, and alternates between bashing the court’s ruling (or occasionally the whole idea of Human Rights itself) and bashing the government for giving in to it. Even Ken Clarke, who advocates giving many prisoners the vote, does so only
on the basis that it’s more palatable than paying them lots of compensation.

But even though the thought of letting …

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36 Comments
Mark Pack

Tax and the Budget: which part of the government will win the upper hand?

By Mark Pack | Mon 7th February 2011 - 6:59 pm

David Cameron’s comments over the weekend that he wants to cut tax but now is not the time gives a very strong indication as to what the overall impact will be of any new measures in next month’s Budget – no net tax cuts. But no net tax cuts is not the same as no tax cuts.

Two different ideas were also floated over the weekend, from credible looking sources even if they were also both formally denied by the government. They were to move even further towards the planned £10,000 basic income tax allowance and also to tax non-doms …

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Richard Morris

Opinion: there are better adjectives for the Labour Party than ‘progressive’

By Richard Morris | Mon 7th February 2011 - 3:44 pm

I keep banging on about the fact that there’s a fairly obvious programme in place by the Labour Party to steal our natural positions, both philosophically and in policy (see my article on LDV or my recent blog post). Their latest moves to ‘own’ the term progressive are another case in point.

However, as a branding expert (and a Lib Dem) I do find the news that Ed Miliband is considering rebranding the party he leads as ‘The Progressive Labour Party’ pretty funny – and wrongheaded.

There are essentially three reasons why an organisation rebrands:

  1. Costs savings through economies of scale

…

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Terry Scriven

Opinion: policy making is proving pointless

By Terry Scriven | Mon 7th February 2011 - 10:39 am

As the Federal Party prepares for the Spring Conference, in Nick Clegg’s homeland of Sheffield, Liberal Democrat policy making, now we are in Coalition Government, is proving pointless.

The award of a National Defence medal, to hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been prepared to put their life on the line to keep the Nation safe and secure, was the first policy motion approved by the Liberal Democrat Party since being in Coalition Government. A veteran’s medal fund ensures there is no cost to the public purse surrounding this policy.
A review of service medals was contained in …

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Mark Pack

The weekend debate: Paying, or not paying, taxes

By Mark Pack | Sat 5th February 2011 - 8:55 am

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

Here’s an issue which often comes up when tax avoidance and evasion is talked about on this site. Is tax avoidance acceptable, i.e. is it morally acceptable to follow any and every legal means to avoid paying tax? And why (or why not)?

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Terry Scriven

No health without mental health: a Forces view

By Terry Scriven | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 8:53 am

Society is rightly judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. But when it comes to caring for our ex-servicemen and women, it seems that this principle is all too quickly forgotten. As a former army colonel with nearly 40 years service I am well aware of the huge sacrifices, and the subsequent burdens, that are placed on our armed forces. None is greater, or harder to deal with, then the issue of mental health.

Injuries suffered in battle are completely different to those in normal day life and our brave men and women require special care. In the past there …

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Also posted in News | 1 Comment
Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler writes… Radicals and reactionaries on the red benches

By Paul Tyler | Wed 2nd February 2011 - 1:00 pm

Julian Glover, writing on the Guardian website, has called the situation in the House of Lords well today. “This is a ceasefire not an armistice,” he says.

As of midday today (Wednesday), Lord “Charlie” Falconer appears to have retreated from the undertakings he was giving earlier in the week to expedite the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies (PVSC) Bill. Labour Peers are apparently determined both delay and elongate the Report Stage, so making it impossible for the AV referendum to take place on May 5th. As Julian Glover says, “the behaviour of a gang of timeserving Labour …

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Mark Pack

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Charles Masterman

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd February 2011 - 10:25 am

Listen to Liberal Democrats make speeches and there are frequent references to historical figures, but drawn from a small cast. Just the quartet of John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, David Penhaligon corner almost all of the market, especially since Bob Maclennan stopped making speeches to party conference. Some of the forgotten figures deserve their obscurity but others do not. Charles James Fox’s defence of civil liberties against a dominating government during wartime or Earl Grey’s leading of the party back into power and major constitutional reform are good examples of mostly forgotten figures who could …

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert: Winning the battle on the Digital Economy Act

By Julian Huppert | Tue 1st February 2011 - 2:33 pm

In common with many Liberal Democrats, I have opposed the Digital Economy Act since its introduction as a Bill during the dog-days of the Labour government.

Along with Bridget Fox, Obhi Chatterjee and an army of activists online and offline, I helped to get an emergency motion passed almost unanimously at Spring Conference last year that condemned the Bill, in particular for its provisions on website-blocking.

The motion also called for a working group to be created to draw up policy papers on information technology and intellectual property. I now act as chair of that working group, and you can find details of its progress at www.makeitpolicy.org.uk, among other places.

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Kirsty Williams AM

Kirsty Williams writes… Education is a cause that unites us all

By Kirsty Williams AM | Tue 1st February 2011 - 11:35 am

Education has always been particularly important to Liberals. Wales has always prioritised education but this great tradition has been left to slide.

Alarm bells rang when last summer, our GCSE and A level results fell behind England for the first time.

Now, two recent reports have exposed just how badly Labour and Plaid Cymru have mismanaged the Welsh education system.

Firstly, an international assessment of performance (PISA, run by the OECD) has shown that Wales is the lowest achieving nation of the UK and falling behind many European countries. Welsh students have fallen behind in reading, mathematics and science. …

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Also posted in Wales | Tagged and | 11 Comments
Chris White

Chris White writes: LGA all in a Pickles

By Chris White | Mon 31st January 2011 - 11:15 am

Lib Dem Voice, the Local Government Chronicle and the Daily Mirror all featured a story recently about council leaders reaching the end of their tether with Eric Pickles. The event was a routine meeting of the Local Government Group Executive (LGA to you and me). I was one of those quoted as hurling my toys out of the pram. The Tories were more muted at that meeting but have nevertheless been pretty vocal elsewhere in their hostility to the Secretary of State for Local Government.

Surely it was ever thus? New Government comes in. Local Government gets its hopes up. New …

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Also posted in Local government | Tagged and | 14 Comments
Jonathan Featonby

Opinion: A hurting Lib Dem and the stagnant economy

By Jonathan Featonby | Sun 30th January 2011 - 6:12 pm

For the first time since his election as leader of the Labour party, I found myself agreeing with Ed Miliband during Prime Minister’s Questions this week.

With his new Shadow Chancellor sat next to him and in response to the news earlier in the week that the economy had contracted by 0.5% during the final quarter of 2010, Miliband urged David Cameron to think again over the upcoming spending cuts and VAT rise.

To make matters worse for the Coalition, the outgoing director-general of the CBI accused the government of putting politics before growth. Sir Richard Lambert argued that “politics …

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Ruth Irwin

Opinion: Where are the girls?

By Ruth Irwin | Sun 30th January 2011 - 10:15 am

There are more Labour MPs called Ann than women Lib Dem MPs. There are more ‘David’s in the coalition cabinet than women. How can we dare to call ourselves a progressive party whilst continuing to operate tacit acceptance of male domination? And, just as importantly, why are more women not banging on the doors of power, trying to become PPCs and councilors? Why is the organisation I intern for, Women Liberal Democrats, limited to one part-time staffer and a fast-diminishing grant? Virginia Woolf famously wrote that women needed independent means in order to pursue professional careers – “a room of …

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Chris Rennard

Chris Rennard writes: The row over the AV referendum will bring forward major changes in the House of Lords

By Chris Rennard | Sat 29th January 2011 - 11:30 pm

The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill has now had a longer Committee stage in the House of Lords than any legislation taken there since at least 1945. The Bill is not a particularly complicated Bill when compared with, say, the last Labour Government’s Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. Labour’s last constitutional Bill covered thirteen different areas of constitutional reform (including an AV referendum) and was dealt with in the Commons in a few days by use of a ‘Programme Motion’ (guillotine).

The PVSC Bill has been subject to an extensive and well organised filibuster on Labour’s benches abusing …

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Mark Pack

The weekend debate: Was Beveridge right to oppose the creation of a welfare state?

By Mark Pack | Sat 29th January 2011 - 8:55 am

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

Though he is often thought of as the father of the modern welfare state in this country, William Beveridge in fact had other views on the matter. As he said of the Beveridge report, the aim, “was not security through a welfare state but security by cooperation between the state and the individual”. In other words, the state should assist people in achieving self-reliance (and so the contributory principle in the report) rather than being simply a benevolent charity writ large (and …

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The Independent View: Holocaust Memorial Day

By Carly Whyborn | Thu 27th January 2011 - 12:45 pm

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day and the national event in London will bring together survivors from the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, politicians, religious leaders and dignitaries.  In addition hundreds of local events will be held across the UK giving everyone the opportunity to get involved in some way.

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust took over responsibility for delivering HMD from the Home Office in 2005 and six years on our aims remain the same as they did then – to ensure that we remember the victims and honour the survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution and those from subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and during the ongoing atrocities in Darfur.

This year’s theme

This year’s theme for HMD is Untold Stories and builds on the success of HMD 2010 which focused on The Legacy of Hope. In 2010 tens of thousands of people signed up and pledged to become part of this ‘legacy’, ensuring that the experiences of Holocaust and genocide survivors were never forgotten, and that we can all learn from the lessons of the past.

The Untold Stories theme ensures that these pledges become a reality. This year we have focused on listening to stories of suffering, persecution, but also hope.  Importantly we heard many stories that have never been told before. Already we’ve lost millions of stories through acts of hatred and this year’s theme sends out a clear message that we cannot allow this to continue. Just some of the Untold Stories that we’ve heard can be seen in our film:

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Mark Pack

The political thought of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats since 1945: book review

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th January 2011 - 10:25 am

Kevin Hickson’s volume, The political thought of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats since 1945, may be a short volume from an academic publisher with an academic book price tag to boot (look out for cheaper second-hand copies) but its contributors include many political practitioners. With Vince Cable, Steve Webb, David Howarth , Richard Grayson and Duncan Brack amongst them, this book has a very strong representation of people at the coalface of policy making rather than simply those who know of it only in theory.

As Hickson points out in the book’s introduction, the policies of the Liberal Democrats – even more so than other aspects of the history of the party and its predecessors since 1945 – have had very little coverage in books, an omission which this volume sets out to remedy and which political fortunes in the year after the book’s publication has made all the more useful a task to tackle.

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Mark Pack

Anti-terrorism review: 6 questions to judge the government by

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th January 2011 - 8:56 pm

With the publication of the government’s anti-terrorism review just about to happen, and likely to include a large number of details, what are the key points to look for in judging how the review has gone?

So far, we know one outcome – the reduction in the maximum period people can be held without charge from 28-days to 14-days (which is in line with the Liberal Democrat manifesto). Yet to be published are the plans on control orders (the abolition of which has been another key Liberal Democrat demand) and on a host of other anti-terrorism legislation.

What to look out for

…

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Mark Pack

Today’s the anniversary of the Limehouse Declaration

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th January 2011 - 2:55 pm

On 25 January 1981, four senior Labour politicians – Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams – issued the Limehouse Declaration, so called after David Owen’s East London home. It set out their plans which were to result in the formation of the SDP. As you can see, many of their policy concerns are still highly relevant:

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Mark Pack

E-voting: why it was abandoned in the UK

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th January 2011 - 11:55 am

Back in the early years of this century, the UK was at the forefront of testing out e-voting for public elections. An extensive series of pilots were held and then … e-voting fell out of favour, because the pilots were not a success for a wide range of reasons. The issue still keeps on popping up, so having recently come across again what I wrote back in 2003 about those pilots, those lessons are worth restating. Here is what I wrote back in the summer of 2003. Luckily the last paragraph turned out to be wrong.

E-voting: triumph or disaster?

According to …

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