Continuing my occasional series on how election leaflets used to look, this one is a Labour freepost election address from the 1955 general election in Clapham constituency.
The front of the leaflet is a design unlikely to be used today:
Dated too is the right-hand side of the inside, with its appeal from the candidate’s wife to female voters – a common tactic at the time. Despite the old-fashioned typography, the layout is clear and easy to read …
The next big event comes very soon and is nothing to do with the Liberal Democrats or the coalition per se – it’s the BMA’s Special Representative Meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) which they say “will form a key part of our activities to step up member engagement and lobbying”. I suspect it will also get a lot more publicity than the Liberal Democrat conference did.
There are some outrider motions of no confidence in Andrew Lansley and calls for “industrial action” which will result in a lot of press noise and no action, but there seems little doubt that the meeting …
David Owen chose the weekend of the Lib Dem Conference to offer his advice for the AV referendum. Having attacked the ‘First Past the Post’ voting system so vociferously for many years, it may seem odd to some people that he now urges support for this system on May 5th. He says that he hopes for a referendum with an option of a Proportional Representation system instead.
Almost all those people who have consistently supported the cause of electoral reform for much longer than he has take a different view. It is very clear that voting against change on May …
There’s a common theme to the party’s official reactions to both the Disability Living Allowance (Mobility Component) and health reform motions being passed at conference today. That is to welcome the party staking out its own views on the issues, even where they clearly contradict those of Conservative ministers, and for two reasons.
First, it more clearly sets out where the coalition partners disagree on policy. As having a relaxed, adult approach to admitting in public that people in government don’t always agree on everything is something I’ve talked about in the past, this is certainly good to see – and …
At one minute to midday on Tuesday 15 March, applications for tickets for the 2012 London Olympics will open.
Over the past twenty years, ticketing arrangements for every Games have created bad headlines. Controversy has ranged from empty seats to excessive prices, ticket touting and counterfeit tickets.
It’s a tough challenge to get the right balance between maximising income to cover the costs and ensuring that each event is accessible – especially as the actual running of the Games by the London Organising Committee for the Olympic & Paralympic Games (LOCOG) is paid for entirely by non-public money.
Portman Capital, an independent corporate advisory firm, has been asked to comment upon the technical issues raised by Mark Pack’s column on Stephen Williams’ proposal to privatise RBS and Lloyds by distributing the shares to the public. Portman Capital is not politically aligned and its comments are intended to explain the technical feasibility of the proposal rather than its political aspects.
The proposal to distribute the shares to the UK people is innovative, and as the British people will participate without having to provide cash up front, it has fairness at its core. Over time, the scheme is likely to …
We Liberal Democrats need no convincing of the urgent need to tackle climate change. Indeed, that’s why there’s a Liberal Democrat minister heading the Department of Energy and Climate Change – one of the most important contributions we bring to the coalition government.
Not everyone in the UK, however, is yet so persuaded, and we also face problems in pressing the case abroad. Last summer, together with my French and German counterparts, I opened a debate in the EU over adopting a more ambitious emissions reduction target for 2020 (of 30 per cent, instead of the current 20 per cent), but …
£500 billion is a lot of money. But that’s roughly how much the UK needs to invest in low carbon infrastructure over the next 10-20 years to have a chance of meeting our ambitious carbon reduction targets. Ernst and Young have estimated that the usual sources of capital can probably raise between £50-£80 billion. That leaves an enormous gap to fill.
One of the government’s top priorities is to put in place the mechanisms needed to unlock the massive investment needed. Given the need to tackle the deficit, the private sector will be needed to deliver this investment – but it …
Long before the Barnsley Chop was felt by the unfortunate Dominic Carman, an increasing number of Liberal Democrats have been murmuring about the longer-term effects of the coalition on our electoral chances in 2015.
That murmur is now a whisper among those who focus four years ahead and feel queasy about our longer-term survival. Putting the Party First does not mean opposing the coalition. Quite the contrary.
We should trust those in government to get on with it, while keeping to the agreement and other pledges. The 2013 Review will be the proper time to voice concerns and make corrections. In the …
When is localism not localism? When it comes to London apparently!
As the Localism Bill makes its way through its committee stages in the House of Commons the clauses that have an impact on London were rushed and hardly discussed on Tuesday afternoon.
This is unfortunate because this is the one part of the bill where the idea of localism is stopped dead in its tracks. In contrast to the localist approach applied across England in the rest of the bill, when it comes to London it seems that devolution stops at a regional level.
This is the first spring conference since we entered Government. In all the years I’ve been a Liberal Democrat I’ve never known of such a potentially explosive spring conference. Or at least that’s what the media would have you believe. Debating policy is part of our DNA. And it shouldn’t change now that we’re in Government. This spring conference we’ll be debating the coalition’s proposals to update the NHS. And unlike in the media, it won’t be a case of who shouts loudest wins.
I understand why people are so concerned. Every time I meet party members …
British people’s attitude to fundamental rights is deteriorating alarmingly. Liberal Democrats in government have a key opportunity to reverse the trend.
When the incoming Labour Government issued ‘Bringing Rights Home’, in the wake of the UK having the worst human rights record in terms of adverse judgments except Turkey, we all applauded.
But the weasel words of the Human Rights act, which explicitly ruled out judicial review of legislation (as happens in Canada under the Charter, and has happeed in the USA since Marbury -v- Madison) has created a climate where the majority of the British people now think that fundamental …
This is the chapter I contributed during the last Parliament to ALDC’s Community Politics Today publication. The John Pardoe quote applies all the more now the party is in coalition government and the general advice to local campaigners is in my view even more important now than it was then:
It’s a common complaint – that modern Liberal Democrat election campaigns have lost the original campaigning and ideological spirit of community politics. Instead, so the critics say, campaigns have become a dumbed-down recitation of techniques, campaigning by numbers, where the only objective is votes and only the ballot box …
I am a public health doctor and a member of the Liberal Democrats. I am also, in the words of Gordon Birtwistle, when he spoke in the debate on the new Health and Social Care Bill, one of the “faceless bureaucrats in palatial offices” that he blames for the failings of the NHS. I’d like to put a couple of arguments against the new health reforms, as I don’t believe that as a party we are very well informed about what these health reforms mean.
The reforms of the NHS are a substantial departure from what we had before. …
Conference is almost upon us once again, and glancing my eye over the agenda I am pleased to see a motion based on Baroness Sal Brinton’s report on party diversity.
You may remember this came up at the last conference. The speech I made at Liverpool was my maiden at a federal conference; the amendment I co-sponsored helped pave the way for the motion on improving diversity we will debate this coming Saturday.
It was also one of the most depressing experiences I’ve witnessed as a party member. Friends who supported the amendment were treated appallingly by supporters of the motion. I …
Less than one year since the Coalition was formed we aren’t doing so well in by-elections (with the notable exception of Oldham East and Saddleworth).
This was totally predictable.
We knew in May 2010 that those who backed us because we were a leftish alternative to Labour would walk away. So would those who liked us as a protest party, forever out of power. And those hacked off with Brown and Labour authoritarianism were likely to flirt with Miliband, even if he currently stands for nothing at all.
Our core support remains, and in addition there are still many who admire the fact …
A final thanks to all those who have contributed to today’s focus on Youth Justice. I trust, dear readers, you have found the debate enlightening and challenging and those of you heading for Sheffield will join us for the debate on Saturday afternoon. We have a fringe event on Friday evening at 8pm in Suite 5 in Jury’s Inn. Peter Oborne will be chairing a debate with Tom McNally, Simon Hughes and others on Youth Justice in an Age of Austerity.
In the midst of all that I personally find unpalatable about the Coalition this is one area where I have …
Since I became Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice last May I have been working with Ken Clarke and the other Ministers within the department to make radical changes to the criminal justice system. Our plans are about finding out what works – the methods of rehabilitation and punishment which actually reduce crime.
One of the key aspects of this vision is preventing and tackling offending by young people. In England and Wales the number of children aged 10 to 17 grew rapidly during the course of the 1990s and into the second term of the Labour government in …
just over 100 years ago a Liberal government decided that young people should no longer be routinely tried in the same courts as adults. Thus was born the juvenile, now youth, court system in England and Wales. During the last hundred years much has changed in penal policy, both corporal and capital punishment have been abolished, and the prevention of re-offending has taken on a greater importance over the punishment of offenders. There is also a live debate about the minimum age of criminal responsibility.
For some, magistrates, and especially lay magistrates, sometimes seem like the ogres in the system. They …
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that states should set an age below which children cannot be held criminally liable – but does not specify a minimum age. A quick survey of other jurisdictions confirms that by comparison the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales – at ten years – is extremely low. Indeed, it is the lowest in the European Union. In other member states it ranges from 13 to 18. A survey of 90 countries by found that the most common age of criminal responsibility was in fact 14 years
One of the most powerful pieces of learning for me during 34 years of being in and out of custodial establishments is the capacity of their residents to respond to opportunities; to being appreciated and congratulated for work well done; to being respected for doing something worthwhile. It is the realisation that this might have been their first experience of any of this that initially takes the breath away, and always disturbs. Although, therefore, Governors have to concern themselves with secure and safe custody and, yes, maximising resources to provide opportunities for offenders in their custody, and doing …
At Spring Conference we will finally get the opportunity to debate our Youth Justice policy – we have taken a “muscular liberal” approach – recognising that the present system fails not only some of our most vulnerable young people – but more importantly, society itself.
Other countries, even the most unexpected, have a far more enlightened approach to youth justice, recognising that punishment and rehabilitation have to be combined with meeting welfare needs of children and young people who have often been badly neglected.
Today a number of fellow Lib Dems express their professional and personal views of what our response should …
This morning saw the launch of a plan for giving away bank shares from Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams. Laid out in a pamphlet published by CentreForum, Stephen Williams’s plan is to give shares owned by the government in the banks to everyone on the electoral register. A floor would be set so the shares could not be sold until they had passed the price paid by the government and individuals would only keep any gains made above that floor price. In other words, as the shares rise in price and get sold the government gets back the funds it put into the banks and, if the banks do well, the public gets to profit from that.
It’s a neat idea, and one of the first substantive plans for what the government could do with its 83% of RBS and 41% of Lloyds. As is to be expected with any plan for such a controversial area, it raises a number of questions.
First, the government only gets back the money put into the banks if people sell their shares. If people hold on to them, those funds do not come back to government – and in particular that means a large source of possible government funds ends up being highly dependent on what can be very volatile stock markets. Such uncertainty would apply to other policies too – including direct government selling of shares on the stock market – but it is still an issue.
Second, even leaving aside the uncertainty, would this route raise more or less money for the government than a straight-forward sell off of shares? Stephen Williams and colleagues think so, as their Q&A explains,
The absolute and relative size of the Government’s shareholdings in Lloyds Group, and RBS make it conventional exit through share sales impossible at a reasonable price. In other words, shares would have to be sold at a substantial discount over many transactions over a number of years. This increases the risk that the public would never get its money back – as has happened in the US, where the Obama Administration has lost at least $10bn in selling a tranche of its GM shares.
Third, the degree to which shareholders have failed to hold boards of directors to account has been bad enough even with big institutional shareholders, let alone with mass small-scale shareholdings. But given how poor institutional shareholders have been, would this situation really be that much worse?
Fourth, by giving the same amount of shares to everyone, there is a neat piece of simplicity combined with fairness. Because the sale of shares would be subject to capital gains tax, the initial allocation of shares would have the virtue of simplicity whilst subsequent capital gains tax revenues would mean that the richest end up paying more of what they have been given back in tax.
Fifth, although I said “simplicity”, relying on the electoral registers raises issues of principle and practicality. The principle is about whether the electoral register should be used solely for electoral purposes. The practicality is about the accuracy of the electoral register. The offer of money in return for being on the register would most likely be an extra incentive for people to register, but what about then deliberate fraudulent register entries? Having a system that is resistant to fraud makes the idea not quite as simple as it looks at first.
(Strictly speaking, it’s not just the electoral register the proposal uses. As the Q&A explains, shares would go to “those on the electoral roll for UK elections who are resident in the UK for tax purposes. In addition, non-UK nationals serving in HM Forces and their dependents should be eligible on the same basis”.)
In other words, there are plenty of questions that the scheme raises, but as this is a proposal designed to help set the political agenda rather than a finely worked out imminent piece of legislation, that is as much a compliment as anything else. It’s a good contribution to the debate.
A matter of hours after his party finished a humiliating sixth in the Barnsley Central by-election, Nick Clegg’s ‘Muscular Liberalism’ speech gave him an opportunity to appease disillusioned party members ahead of the spring conference. Amid the continuous onslaught of accusations of ‘selling out’, Clegg’s defense of multiculturalism showed clear water between his policy and that of the Conservatives.
In this speech, Clegg highlighted an indisputable split in the Coalition Government’s approach to tackling extremism. The deputy prime minister showed that he is unwilling to compromise on the communities agenda that remains the Liberal Democrats’ strongest suit amongst the inevitable compromises …
As people across North Africa and the Middle East rise up against their oppressive regimes, the international community is preparing to let Sudan’s dictator, Field Marshall Omar Bashir, off the hook for killing millions of his own citizens.
In 2009 the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Bashir for genocide in Sudan’s remote western region of Darfur where his policy of ethnic cleansing led to the deaths of 300,000 people. For years Khartoum used the same tactic, arming poor Arab nomads to kill their black Africa neighbours to similar effect in South Sudan, where an estimated two million died. …
Delivery slips are the neglected corner of Liberal Democrat literature. They should be a crucial tool – being a key communication with helpers, making it easy for them to help and keeping them informed – but far too often they are a poorly laid-out mishmash of minimalist content and third-rate layout.
So here are six tips to make your delivery slips more effective: more effective at keeping helpers happy, more effective at gathering in useful information and more effective at getting the right work done.
Design the slips well: they are a communication between the party and our helpers. A badly designed
Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
The military coup in Egypt was met with widespread international support – because it deposed President Mubarak. Similarly, the sending of troops into Libya by Britain and other countries to help people leave has been met with barely a whisper of concern about whether or not troops should be sent into another country without any UN motion or similar. Yet pragmatism and self-interest is hardly all the rage – for Tony Blair’s attitude to Libya has been coming under much criticism as has …
Yesterday evening, at an event to celebrate the “ennoblement” of Lord Qurban Hussain I was reminded of the heady days of the leader’s debates when Nick Clegg totally caught the imagination of the country. The Chiltern Hotel in Luton was packed and there was a palpable sense of excitement and genuine warmth towards Nick. Those from minority communities in this country understand the integrity of Nick’s position when he talks about multiculturalism- no fancy words – just a history of putting his money where his mouth is.
Earlier in the day Nick had chosen Luton as the place to make …
Graham Evans Whatever the message, we need a leader who can clearly enunciate it, and not simply make party policy on the hoof. Ed Davey's intervention on the issue of local...
Peter Davies "Wanting to tear down historical statues , monuments , portraits, sanatise books etc ….It’s what the Taliban did in Afghanistan." It's also something Cromwe...
PM If Brexit is the cause of all our problems in the UK, what is the cause of the similar, or even worse, problems in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy etc?
The ...
David S Even if one's conclusion after examining all the complexities of the Civil War (which is a good deal more than "monarchy vs. democracy") is that Cromwell was a ...
Pawel Urbanski Much-needed piece. You are right that young people are the audience, but I am not sure Europe is the way in. The polling you quote shows they already agree with...
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