Category Archives: Op-eds

Richard Huzzey

Opinion: Richard Huzzey – “I resign”

By Richard Huzzey | Thu 9th December 2010 - 7:30 pm

Vince Cable and Nick Clegg have pursued a strategy that has resembled a poorly-scripted comedy as much as a bitter tragedy in the past month.

This week we have reached the final act of a farcical and disastrous process whereby Liberal Democrat MPs have squirmed to escape an explicit pledge and desperately tried to equate their promise to the level of a policy aspiration.

By now all readers know the argument that a pledge is more than policy and the arguments why more help for part-timers does not balance out the damage of full marketization of fees. So, instead of repeating them, …

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Alex Foster

Telegraph turns on NUS over fees

By Alex Foster | Thu 9th December 2010 - 3:41 pm

Today’s Telegraph reports that the NUS would prefer to remove almost all of the hardship grants than charge higher fees.

The Daily Telegraph has seen emails from Mr Porter and his team in which the NUS leadership urged ministers to cut grants and loans as an alternative to raising tuition fees.

In private talks in October, the NUS tried to persuade ministers at the Department for Business to enact their planned 15 per cent cut in higher education funding without lifting the cap on fees.

I’m not sure this is anything other than an exercise in the dark arts on the day …

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Chris White

Chris White writes: silencing the whistleblowers

By Chris White | Thu 9th December 2010 - 11:29 am

Hertfordshire County Council has just received a £100,000 fine for breaching the Data Protection Act. The charge sheet as published by the Information Commissioner is serious.

The council had faxed confidential details about a child abuse cases to the wrong number that of a private individual (P). On the day the Information Commissioner’s staff were at the council persuading them to change their practices to prevent further breaches, another fax, containing confidential and sensitive details of care proceedings, was wrongly sent to a set of lawyers’ chambers.

The Information Commissioner clearly wanted to make an example of the council, …

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Mark Pack

Five of the best political adverts: Britain deserves better

By Mark Pack | Thu 9th December 2010 - 10:25 am

This week we’re running a series featuring five of the most effective political adverts. After looking at the US and Australia, today it is back to the UK and the 1997 general election campaign:

Yesterday’s Australian advert, It’s Time, looked as much like a music video as a political advert. Music too played a major role in one of the UK Labour Party’s 1997 general election broadcasts, and the most powerful of all the ones I’ve seen ‘live’ at the time of broadcast.

As in the Australian Labor Party’s case, Labour too had been out of power for a long time – 18 years this time – and also faced an incumbent government that many felt had passed its sell-by date. The genius of the Labour ’97 effort was to put together ingredients which usually featured in Conservative broadcasts – patriotic music, Union Jacks, Conservative ministers, celebrating Conservative members – and turn them into a devastating attack, raising fears of what another term of Conservative government might do.

As I noted in my previous blog post about this broadcast, watch out for the very different way in which Ken Clarke was viewed then compared with now:

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Ruth Edmonds

Opinion: I’m helping beat Labour in Oldham East & Saddleworth, you can too

By Ruth Edmonds | Wed 8th December 2010 - 4:05 pm

I’ve been a member of the Liberal Democrats for two years now. When I saw the leaflets Phil Woolas produced to win Oldham East and Saddleworth in May, it made me angry. When he was expelled from Parliament, I decided to make the trip to help out.

It’s not the quickest journey for me by public transport from Bakewell, Derbyshire (2 trains, 1 tram and 4 hours to be precise!) but I’ve already met people who have travelled just as far and some from even further afield.

I’ve met so many new people here. It’s been a great chance to make …

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert: Why I’m supporting calls for a PFI Rebate

By Julian Huppert | Wed 8th December 2010 - 12:43 pm

Ask most people about the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and they will associate it with just one individual: Gordon Brown.

In fact, the PFI was introduced by the Conservatives as long ago as 1992, when Norman Lamont announced it in his Autumn Statement. On the surface, it was a simple idea, aimed at increasing the involvement of the private sector in the provision of public services. Rather than simply building public facilities, the PFI enables the design, financing and operation of public services to be carried out by the private sector.

There were obvious benefits to be gained from such partnerships – …

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Mark Pack

Five of the best political adverts: It’s Time

By Mark Pack | Wed 8th December 2010 - 10:25 am

This week we’re running a series featuring five of the most effective political adverts. Today it’s the turn of Australian politics and an early 1970s musical classic:

Yesterday’s Lyndon B. Johnson Daisy Girl advert was a one-off, but by contrast one of the most effective TV advertisements in Australian political history was part of a well-planned wider campaign. After 23 years of Liberal Party rule, Gough Whitlam’s Labor party in 1972 used the slogan “It’s time“ to sum up its argument that it was time for a change. This theme was reflected widely in the Labor Party’s activities and also in the classic TV advert.

Looking more like the sort of pop video that subsequently became popular, the advert featured an Australian rock singer, Alison McCallum, singing a song about how it was time to change, intercut with stills of Gough Whitlam’s background and a supporting singing chorus of Australian celebrities. It worked far better than that might make it sound!

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Jeremy Browne MP

Jeremy Browne writes… Given citizens control over future proposals to give the EU more powers

By Jeremy Browne MP | Tue 7th December 2010 - 3:25 pm

Today the Coalition will bring forward legislation to allow every British citizen to have a say on future changes to the EU Treaties where those changes transfer power or competence from Britain to the European Union.

Britain has been a member of the European Union since the 1970s and we have benefited from closer cooperation. We should also remember that the union is one of the greatest successful demonstrations of the expansion of democracy and liberal values in history. From the post-war stabilisation of western Europe to the removal of the Iron Curtain, the European Union has provided its members with …

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Alex Scott

Opinion: more than just a pretty face

By Alex Scott | Tue 7th December 2010 - 2:10 pm

We’re used to seeing the media discuss women in terms of their attractiveness, no more so than when those women are in politics. And ordinarily the subjects of this interest are firmly on the politicians. Has Ann Wideombe lost weight since she entered Strictly Come Dancing? Is Caroline Flint too sexy? I could go on and on. But now the media have a new subject, (you can almost hear their excited cheers) the women behind the scenes. The focus has shifted to researchers.

Since allegations about Mike Hancock’s researcher arose in the Sunday Times (and previously in the summer recess) the …

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Opinion: time to end the special treatment for sitting MPs

By Hywel Morgan | Tue 7th December 2010 - 12:26 pm

Like many other Lib Dem local parties my own is currently working its way through selecting candidates for next May’s local elections.

In at least one ward a sitting councillor will be facing a challenge and a contested (re)selection meeting. I think that few people would argue that that was a bad idea, that the person who had been the representative should have to show that they still have the confidence of their local membership.

On a wider scale we are seeing selections for the list members for the Greater London Authority. Two sitting members are standing down but the one person restanding is having to put herself in front of the membership and seek their continued support.

A similar process applies for the re-selection of MSPs on both the lists and for the constituencies.

At some point in the next 18 months or so our MEPs will, if they want to restand, have to do the same. Just as they did before the 2004 and 2009 elections.

When our elected Mayors come up for re-election they also will have to go before their membership to show they still have their support.

Of course in many of these cases, particularly at a more local level, such re-selections are done unopposed. However the principle, that re-selections are open contests still remains.

However there is one group of Liberal Democrat elected representatives who don’t have to face an open reselection contest: Westminster MPs.

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | 10 Comments
Daniel Furr

Opinion: a Palestinian state cannot wait

By Daniel Furr | Tue 7th December 2010 - 11:26 am

The superstition and messianic belief, that Israel was founded on in 1948, has helped to establish an apartheid esque society. Now I do not deny the existence of Israel, of course not. Many nations have been founded on injustices but Israel’s demagogic lie has done enormous damage. The schism, which can be summarised by the phrase “A land without a people for a people without a land” suggested that the people in Palestine did not really exist or were a coherent genuine people. Refusal to acknowledge the Palestinian ethnic group has been a problematic area for Israel, especially since …

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Mark Pack

Five of the best political adverts: Daisy Girl

By Mark Pack | Tue 7th December 2010 - 10:25 am

This week we’re running a series featuring five of the most effective political adverts. Today it’s a trip back in time and across the Atlantic to a US Presidential campaign:

As yesterday’s featured Conservative Party advert showed, often with political adverts a little bit of controversy makes the message go a long way.

That too is true of probably the most famous political TV advertisement, the “Daisy Girl” advert screened but the once by the 1964 Lyndon Johnson Presidential campaign. It starts with a young girl innocently counting the petals on a flower, but then switches to an ominous voiceover counting down to zero. The screen is then filled with a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion.

The advert played on fears that Johnson’s opponent, Barry Goldwater, was willing to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. The controversy resulted in the advertisement being pulled – but also in widespread media coverage which spread the advert’s message far and wide:

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Mark Pack

An unsatisfactory road back to power: Chris Cook’s history of the party

By Mark Pack | Tue 7th December 2010 - 8:57 am

The newly published seventh edition of Chris Cook’s A Short History of the Liberal Party, this time covering events up to 2010, is much like the previous editions. That is, unfortunately, a case of damning with faint praise.

The book deserves some praise. Above all, it exists – and Chris Cook has been one of the few to regularly take to print to record the party’s history. There are very few other books which cover the history of the party and its predecessors all in one volume. It provides a detailed electoral record of the Liberals, Alliance and then Liberal …

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Mary Reid

Opinion: Do social networking sites support democracy and the Open Society?

By Mary Reid | Mon 6th December 2010 - 11:47 am

The obvious answer is, yes. But do they?

Let’s track this idea back.

In 1979 Christopher Evans published “The Mighty Micro”. His bold and prophetic book looked at the impact of the microchip on society over the next 10-15 years.

In the same year, 1979, I wrote my first computer program on a teletype terminal and stored it on paper tape. Some desk top computers had been built, but they were very uncommon.

The chapter that really inspired me when I first read it was the one on Political and Social Issues. He predicted that the 1980s and 1990s would be dominated by “virtually infinite data transmission”

“This kind of development will encourage lateral communication – the spread of information from human being to human being across the base of the social pyramid. Characteristically this favours the kind of open society … the opposite effect on autocracies who like to make sure that all information is handled very firmly downwards”

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Mark Pack

Five of the best political adverts: Labour isn’t working

By Mark Pack | Mon 6th December 2010 - 10:25 am

This week we’re running a series featuring five of the most effective political adverts. Today it’s back to the 1970s and the then opposition Conservative Party:

In the summer of 1978 phone calls went out to members of Hendon Young Conservatives, asking them to turn up with their parents at a council car park for a secret project. Partly due to the short notice, less than a fifth of the hoped for 100 volunteers turned up, nearly causing the plans to be cancelled. Instead, some clever trick photography – melding together repeated images of those who did turn up standing in different …

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Chris Rennard

Lord Rennard writes… Lord Blackadder, Baldrick, by-elections and reform of the Lords

By Chris Rennard | Sun 5th December 2010 - 6:55 pm

The House of Lords debated (again) this week the second reading of David Steel’s Bill to make some very modest and minor reforms to the House of Lords.

I compared the process of by-elections to elect hereditary peers to the campaign run by Lord Blackadder to elect Baldrick in the rotten borough of Dunny on the Wold. David Steel’s Bill would end these by-elections and allow peers to retire voluntarily. A much more fundamental draft Bill for Lords reform is expected early next year.

But this debate showed again how hard it will be to achieve fundamental reform of the House of Lords.

The …

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David Allen

Opinion: tuition fees – our moment of truth

By David Allen | Sun 5th December 2010 - 9:07 am

Sometimes political life is just one controversy after another. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, a special issue takes centre stage and becomes totemic – a key decision which sets the course for a whole period of government. So it was for Blair’s Iraq. So it is now for Clegg’s tuition fees.

William Cullerne Bown has described our dilemma well. The options are to trash the Coalition or to trash the Liberal Democrat brand. There is no third way. It is far too late to rethink whether we should have signed the NUS pledge, …

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Adam Bell

Opinion: Redefining Fairness

By Adam Bell | Sat 4th December 2010 - 2:52 pm

Our political discourse has become increasingly dominated by insubstantial ‘buzzwords’ like ‘fairness’ and ‘progressive’ to the point where discussions about politics have begun to focus less on policy differences and more on how these words are to be used. Truly, British politics has entered an era in which the works of Wittgenstein are more relevant to the debate than any properly political philosopher or theorist.

This is perhaps exemplified by the debate within our party over the meaning of the word ‘fairness’. Prompted by Nick Clegg’s Hugo Young lecture, the Social Liberal Forum (SLF) recently wrote in an article here on LDV concerning this subject, and claimed that it means:

“…that society is fairer when absolute poverty is eliminated, the gap between rich and poor is reduced and where people can rise (and fall) through the income hierarchy regardless of their starting point.”

On this definition, fairness is a question of outcomes, rather than principle. It is a term subsidiary to the moral principles that dictate which outcomes are to count as good, and which assign values to the decisions made by individuals inasmuch as they move towards those outcomes.

I am going to argue that this definition is incorrect, that it speaks to an undeveloped concept of liberalism, and that adherence to it will result in our subsumption into a Labour Party moving inexorably rightwards. I will then sketch out a new definition of fairness that aims to avoid these consequences.

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Paul Walter

Opinion: A new direction for the centre-left

By Paul Walter | Sat 4th December 2010 - 1:27 pm

Compass director Neal Lawson and the Guardian’s John Harris have written a very thoughtful and forward-looking article for the New Statesman. It proposes a new direction for the centre left, which they call “New Socialism”.

The authors start from the premise that the Labour party suffered a stunning defeat in May. Currently, they say, the party is “sleepwalking from the car crash”. Old Labour ran out of steam. New Labour ran itself into the sand. Now, however, “the party seems to have switched off”, while “social democracy” dies throughout the world. Labour has “almost forgotten how to think, or even …

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Mark Pack

The Saturday debate: Time to let the public vote in party elections?

By Mark Pack | Sat 4th December 2010 - 8:56 am

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

With the news that Ed Miliband wants to give the public a share of the votes in future Labour leadership elections, and with the Conservative Party already having run several open primaries in which the public could vote for Parliamentary candidates, the Liberal Democrats are currently the only one of the three main parties looking to keep such party elections in the hands of party members only.

Should the Liberal Democrats stick to that position or should the rules for leader and/or …

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The Voice

Opinion: A letter from students to Lib Dem MPs

By The Voice | Fri 3rd December 2010 - 2:44 pm

LDV has had sight of this letter, written by a group on facebook, and sent to Lib Dem MPs.

Dear Liberal Democrat MPs,

We, the undersigned students, recognise the benefits of tuition fee reform and urge you to vote for it.

We see that our annual loan repayments will fall due to the substantial rise in the loan repayment threshold, and that the grants system will become more generous. We see that part-time students will no longer be forced to pay up-front fees and that poorer graduates will benefit from a rise in the repayment threshold.

We feel that the NUS, by spreading …

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Nik Alatortsev

Opinion: the forgotten deadline in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

By Nik Alatortsev | Fri 3rd December 2010 - 12:22 pm

With the Yes to AV campaign getting into full swing (and attempts by the No camp to do the same), it is perhaps unsurprising that the majority of the recent commentary on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill has revolved around Part I of that Bill, which deals with the AV referendum (and the earlier post on LDV by Keith Sharp about the message of the pro-AV campaign is essential reading). But in the excitement, we seem to have allowed a very significant deadline to pass by – the deadline for the compilation of Electoral Rolls on …

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Mark Pack

5 Days to Power: could there have been a Lab-Lib Dem deal?

By Mark Pack | Thu 2nd December 2010 - 8:55 am

Conservative MP Rob Wilson’s book on the formation of a coalition government in May 2010, 5 Days to Power: The Journey to Coalition Britain, plays up the drama of the events, talking of how “Gordon Brown and David Cameron were both determined to do whatever was necessary to secure the position of Prime Minister” as if the story is one of a cliff-hanging drama which could have gone either way.

Whilst the outcome is certainly significant for British political history, what the book is far less convincing on is that there was really any serious chance of a Labour – …

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David Parkes

Opinion: On Broken Promises

By David Parkes | Wed 1st December 2010 - 2:45 pm

I’m sure many of you, like myself, watched Vince Cable’s interview on the Politics Show last week where he denied breaking any promises to oppose a rise in tuition fees, with a certain feeling of discomfort. But now I think the time has come to discuss a change in narrative.

Lib Dem MPs and Ministers (including up until now Vince Cable,) have a reputation for giving straight-forward honest answers to journalists questions without coming across as evasive or revisionist. However, with the tuition fee pledge to deny a promise was ever made and as such never broken is not a …

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Michael Moore

Michael Moore writes… Strengthening Scotland’s future

By Michael Moore | Wed 1st December 2010 - 1:58 pm

Yesterday the Government published its Scotland Bill. When this becomes law, a second and exciting phase in Scottish devolution will begin. We are strengthening Scotland’s future based on three principles: empowerment, accountability and stability.

This Bill starts its parliamentary process with the support of the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Each of our parties – plus business and civil society – contributed to the Calman Commission, which drew up the blueprint for it. It is right that change of this sort should be built on a broad consensus. But now it is this government that …

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Also posted in Scotland | 6 Comments

Opinion: Defining fairness

By Prateek Buch and David Hall-Matthews | Wed 1st December 2010 - 10:08 am

‘Fairness’ is a word often used by Liberal Democrats – but how do we define the term? Virtually everyone in politics says ‘our policies are fair, or fairer,’ but there are many different conceptions and definitions thereof; the concept of fairness to a Tory may be very different to that used by a socialist or a liberal. Even amongst liberals, there is a debate to be had.

Delivering last week’s Hugo Young memorial lecture, Nick Clegg made it clear that he thought, “Social mobility is what characterises a fair society, rather than a particular level of income equality.” and that he …

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Mark Pack

How does The Spirit Level withstand a critic?

By Mark Pack | Wed 1st December 2010 - 8:55 am

The success of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s The Spirit Level (reviewed here in August) in setting the terms for much political discussion unsurprisingly triggered a burst of publications taking a sceptical look at their case. Prime amongst these is Policy Exchange’s publication Beware False Prophets, by Peter Saunders, whose title gives you a fair clue as to its line.

As the book says on its back cover:

In The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett claimed that egalitarian societies benefit rich and poor alike. Crime rates are lower, infant mortality is reduced, obesity is less prevalent, education

…

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Paul Burstow

Paul Burstow writes… Healthy lives, healthy people

By Paul Burstow | Tue 30th November 2010 - 6:14 pm

Britain is now the most obese nation in Europe. We have among the worst rates of sexually transmitted infections on record. Rising levels of harm from alcohol, and over 80,000 lives lost every year because of smoking. These are the public health challenges the Coalition Government faces.

And what of Labour’s public health legacy? Under Labour inequalities in health and life expectancy between rich and poor got worse. As a result people in the poorest areas can expect to live up to 7 years less than people in richer areas.

Under Labour huge amounts of money was spent on public …

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Mark Pack

The politics of windmills

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th November 2010 - 8:56 am

I recently spent a couple of days visiting some of England’s surviving windmills with a couple of friends. Though it was a holiday rather than a deliberate exercise in political education, two political points came out clearly.

One, which I’ve blogged about previously, is how the windmill not only used to be a key part of the English landscape but also, in its horizontal axis / vertical sail form, is an English invention.

So windmills not only are a British (or perhaps more accurately English) tradition, they are also an example of technical inventiveness of which we can be proud. And yet …

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Keith Sharp

Opinion: Getting the AV and Lib Dem message right

By Keith Sharp | Mon 29th November 2010 - 1:31 pm

The ‘No to AV’ campaign is beginning to take shape, and alongside the familiar figures of John Prescott to name but one, some arguments of theirs are also emerging and we have to be firm in rebutting them — especially those which take aim at the Lib Dems. So here we go:

AV will lead to more hung parliaments and coalition governments

Not so. Let’s remember that AV is NOT a proportional system and there is therefore nothing intrinsic to it that spells out more likelihood of minority parliaments. Pundits and experts have assessed likely General Election results under AV and there …

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