Category Archives: Op-eds

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

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 …

20 Comments

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

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 – …

Tagged , , and | 5 Comments

Five of the best political adverts: It’s Time

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!

Tagged and | 1 Comment

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

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 …

Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged and | 18 Comments

Opinion: more than just a pretty face

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 …

Tagged , and | 19 Comments

Opinion: time to end the special treatment for sitting MPs

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.

Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | 10 Comments

Opinion: a Palestinian state cannot wait

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 …

Tagged , , and | 13 Comments

Five of the best political adverts: Daisy Girl

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:

Tagged , and | 2 Comments

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

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 …

Also posted in Books | Tagged | 2 Comments

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

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”

Tagged and | 3 Comments

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

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 …

Tagged and | 9 Comments

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

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 …

Tagged , and | 6 Comments

Opinion: tuition fees – our moment of truth

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, …

Tagged , and | 93 Comments

Opinion: Redefining Fairness

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.

Tagged , , and | 19 Comments

Opinion: A new direction for the centre-left

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 …

Tagged , and | 21 Comments

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

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 …

Tagged and | 42 Comments

Opinion: A letter from students to Lib Dem MPs

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 …

Tagged , , and | 112 Comments

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

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 …

Also posted in News | Tagged and | 3 Comments

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

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 – …

Also posted in Books | Tagged , , , , and | 3 Comments

Opinion: On Broken Promises

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 …

Tagged , , , , , and | 45 Comments

Michael Moore writes… Strengthening Scotland’s future

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 …

Also posted in Scotland | 6 Comments

Opinion: Defining fairness

‘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 …

Tagged and | 33 Comments

How does The Spirit Level withstand a critic?

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

Also posted in Books | Tagged , , , and | 10 Comments

Paul Burstow writes… Healthy lives, healthy people

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 …

Tagged | 12 Comments

The politics of windmills

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 …

Tagged , and | 13 Comments

Opinion: Getting the AV and Lib Dem message right

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 …

Tagged , and | 59 Comments

How election leaflets used to look: Skipton 1885

As a follow up to my City of London election leaflet from the 1930s, here is a single-sided Conservative general election leaflet from 1885 for the Skipton Parliamentary constituency:

Skipton 1885 Conservative leaflet

The name handwritten in the bottom left corner is that of the voter to whom the leaflet was delivered, the handwriting not so much an attempt at personalisation as a reflection of the lack of alternative ways of individually addressing leaflets at the time. Indeed, overall the letter is far less personal than an equivalent is (or should …

Tagged and | 13 Comments

Opinion: A suggestion for an amendment to the AV bill

This article is easier to follow if you understand how STV and AV works. If you’re not familiar with them, I recommend quickly clicking on the links for explanations.

How STV would clean up politics.
When the electoral reform campaign was for STV, one of the arguments we liked to use was how it would help clean up politics by ending “safe seats”. We call a seat “safe” if it has been held by the same party for a long while and it’s pretty much guaranteed that the candidate who runs for that party will win. This means that some …

Tagged | 69 Comments

Opinion: Lords avoid falling into Labour’s “elephant trap” – just

The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituency Bill advanced to its second reading in the House of Lords earlier this month after narrowly avoiding a referral motion tabled by Labour peer Lord Falconer.

Lord Falconer had argued that the bill was hybrid as it treated two existing parliamentary seats – Orkney and the Western Isles – as special cases that would have been exempt from the constituency boundary redrawing element of the bill.

The motion was defeated by 224 votes to 210, allowing the second reading of the bill to take place.

But there needs to be a closer look as to …

Tagged , and | 13 Comments

The Saturday debate: What is fairness?

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

In his recently published book, 22 Days in May, David Laws writes,

The coalition needs to redefine what fairness means. Fairness cannot mean just maintaining people above an arbitrary income line, whatever their personal circumstances. Fairness means giving people the educational and employment opportunities to ensure that they are not dependent on an over-mighty state and trapped in dead-end lives.

Agree? Disagree?

Tagged , and | 48 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • David Allen
    Peter Martin, I agree that the lack of a real financial incentive for many people to take up low-paid jobs rather than living on benefits is a problem. But ...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    David, no apology needed, and less disagreement than you might think. I did not come to this party through its history, I came through its principles and a shop...
  • Jana
    @David Raw “…your message would have more impact if you actually produced some verified empirical evidence..” Perhaps this BBC news item from 15 years a...
  • Peter Davies
    "Labour and nature are the source of all value". The problem is that in the UK, much of that labour was by people long since dead. Unskilled labour these days i...
  • David Raw
    @ Jana "I do not blame people on benefits seeking to maximise their income by claiming PIP, particularly by getting their children diagnosed with ADHD and th...