By Lembit Öpik
| Fri 12th November 2010 - 11:18 am
As you may know, I’m hoping to be selected as the Lib Dem Mayoral candidate for London. For various reasons, the internal Party process has been postponed till around next summer, though I myself have been short-listed to be part of that selection process.
I’m concerned to ensure that, in the meantime, we don’t vanish off the face of the electoral earth as Boris and Ken forge ahead with their campaigns. For this reason, I’m doing my best to illustrate what “Lembit’s London” would look like, and the nature of the campaign itself.
Part of this will be sharing my policy positions. I’d summarise my campaign as “Freedom for the city, power to the people.” This motif centres on three key areas – Libertarianism, Localism and Labour (not the Party! I mean the workers who keep this city going).
But the best campaigning narrative in the world is pointless unless people are actually interested in it, and have some association with the people putting it forward. Being worthy is not empowering to the public if you’re anonymous and can’t generate the coverage to get the message across.
For this reason, I’ve decided to appear on the reality television show “I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out Of Here!” It’s a great opportunity to get direct to the viewing public, and show, in what I believe to be a generally fair programme, how I operate in a team, under pressure and in a competitive environment.
I was at the tuition fees protest as one of the Lib Dems who had agreed via Facebook to march together at the demonstration. Amongst the (inevitably violence dominated) coverage of the protests, I decided that I would like to give my impression of what occurred for the benefit of those who did not attend.
For me the protest began at 9.30am by boarding a Student Union organised coach to London from the University of Surrey. There were about 100 of us in total from Surrey and the general feeling on the coaches was upbeat as we gave our names and …
Why the housing benefit changes are not about social cleansing, but instead about getting rents reduced for all tenants.
In New York there is a political party named “The Rent’s too damn high”, founded by Jimmy McMillan. What he argues is that life is difficult in New York because rents are too high. It is important to recognise that private sector rents are also an issue in the UK as well as those funded by the state.
Since November 2008 private rents have gone down by 5% and private rents funded by Local Housing Allowance (LHA) have gone up by 3%. The government changed the housing benefit system for private landlords a few years ago replacing Housing Benefit with a Local Housing Allowance. As LHA will be paid regardless of how high the rent actually is, this has driven up the rents paid in this sector. In comparison to the rents on the old Housing Benefit an additional 10% is being paid through LHA.
It is worth noting that the upward pressure on rents from LHA has also driven up rents paid by people who don’t get Housing Benefit. This is neither helpful to the country, where money is being borrowed to overpay landlords nor is it helpful to the lower paid who are renting privately.
The government, therefore, has a number of objectives in controlling housing benefit:
We all knew there would be cuts and some have recently received rather a high profile (and yes – I do condemn the outcome of the tuition fees march).
Local government rarely gets sympathetic headlines at the best of times but it has done extraordinarily badly in the Comprehensive Spending Review – and without much media interest.
Local government will receive cuts in grant of 28%, compared with the 19% in other ‘unprotected’ departments (ie departments other than education and health). Local communities will also see 20% cuts in police funding and 25% cuts in fire and rescue.
It was entirely predictable. The opening moves in a game that could see another hard-won component of the welfare state undermined have now been played.
It may have been predictable, but it is no less distasteful for all that.
The Coalition’s proposals for restricting housing benefit in the private rented sector have been greeted with a chorus of disapproval from informed commentators and the housing policy and practice community. Many grassroots LibDem members are equally concerned. Dire consequences are forecast.
The Government believes that landlords will happily adjust their rent downwards to reflect benefit cuts. Informed opinion says otherwise. (I discuss this issue …
For a party that prides itself on its stance on gender equality, we still have a lot of work to do. Sure, we campaign for greater and more flexible parental leave, and an end to unacknowledged airbrushing. We rightly refuse to acknowledge patronising all women shortlists, both in the party as a whole, and within Liberal Youth. We’ve certainly got a lot better at representation – a third of our target seat candidates in the last election were women. But women make up more than 50% of our population, and around 45% of our membership. A third is simply not …
Since so many of us have fought elections against extremely well-funded opposition candidates, Liberal Democrats are naturally and rightly exercised by the matter of campaign finance. Though Labour made some modest progress with its Political Parties, Elections and Referendums (PPERA) Act, back in 2000, the Act’s focus was transparency, rather than regulation.
When I chaired the party’s policy group on Better Governance in 2007, we set out an objective that no donor should be able to buy influence in the political process, and no party should be able to buy elections. This was the approach we took in the cross-party talks …
The cover of Bruce Riedel’s The Search for Al Qaeda shows a group of armed men working their way up a hillside overlooking a beautiful valley that stretches away to rolling hills. It captures the wonder and the tragedy of Afghanistan in one frame.
The book itself is similarly crisp, packing a wide-ranging history of Al Qaeda and its key figures into only 150 pages of moderate size print. It is penned by an ex-CIA man of thirty years service who was frequently closely involved with the figures and events painted in the book, but not so closely as to make the reader fear it is more a justification of his career than a fair account of events.
I have succeeded in tabling a topical question for the House of Lords tomorrow:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, and if so how, they will raise concerns about the imprisonment of the Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo during the Prime-Minister’s visit to China.
This follows me raising the issue on the World at One and in the Guardian because my view is that doing good business in not incompatible with publicly calling for respect for human rights and freedom of speech.
Liu Xiaobo needs to know that people in Britain are appalled that he was sent …
Lib Dem MP Jeremy Browne’s appearance on BBC1’s Question Time last week prompted critical comments for refusing to condfemn control orders, instead saying that the Coalition’s decision on control orders will await the outcome of the government-commission anti-terrorism review of Lib Dem peer Lord (Ken) Macdonald. Here Jeremy responds to his critics…
When I appeared on Question Time last week, I acknowledged that, confronted with a real terrorist threat from ideological zealots hostile to all of our liberal ideals, the government may sometimes, in its response, have to wrestle with the difficult tension between liberty and security. My goal is …
I confess that I cringe a little inside when I hear politicians from one party claiming that their’s is somehow more honest, more decent and better at keeping their promises than another.
Lib Dem politicians have certainly fallen into the trap from time to time, but they’re not alone: every party has its moments (with many Labour people being particularly convinced of their moral superiority at the moment, if some of the comments on this site are anything to go by).
It’s easy to see how people genuinely come to believe it’s true. As I noted a few days ago, we’ve …
I have no natural will to oppose the party leadership – I am, above all, a Liberal Democrat because of our unique party structure and the balance of opinion that allows it through its democratic structure to express a comprehensive view through its representatives. I am one of us because I believe in our ability to hold these representatives to account.
But even internal democracy is difficult to manage – occasionally we don’t work our structure well, and in some recent moves our natural process of internal compromise/external compromise seems to have been reversed. While the technology exists to carry out rapid-fire online and telephone membership votes on party policy, we have not yet built such a system and as such we rely on our Executive and representatives to listen to branches and party organisations and take their views as mandate for or opposition to a given policy.
Now that we are in a position of power, this sensitivity must take on a more concrete form than simple quelling emails or the occasional LDV article. Our problem is that reinvigoration through power of the party at parliamentary level has not been translated into a reinvigorated sense of democracy and power extended to all parts of the party. Conference is simply not regular enough to do us service in our bold new position.
By Paul Burstow
| Tue 9th November 2010 - 11:05 am
Much has been made of the tough choices Liberal Democrats have had to make since we entered government. But not enough has been made of the victories we’ve gained. Unlike the last Labour administration, this coalition is delivering on its promises to reform health and social care for the better.
Let’s start with social care. The funding of care and support is one of the most urgent of all social policy issues we face as a society. Make no mistake; the way we organise and pay for care for older and disabled people is a broken. That’s why we’re taking action …
We had news yesterday that a former Lib Dem parliamentary candidate has announced his defection to the Labour Party. So I think it only fair to provide a bit of balance: I joined the Lib Dems last week because I believe they offer the best opportunity for providing fair government.
I believe in democracy and I feel that the Lib Dems are the most democratic of the three major parties. The Lib Dem base is, by and large, ordinary people who want their voices heard, not big business and not the unions both of whom want their own agendas …
“If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.” Barack Obama
“Our party has long prided itself on its commitment to education as the great leveller; the best way to create social mobility and equality of opportunity in society” – words written by Jo Swinson MP in her article yesterday.
I agree with her, and that’s why I disagree that a near tripling of fees meets that commitment. That’s why I will be lobbying MPs to vote down the measure in the House of Commons in December.
Foreign Secretary William Hague apparently pledged on Thursday to alter Britain’s law on universal jurisdiction – a move which could again bring up the question of Liberal Democrat MPs voting against Government motions.
According to an Israeli Embassy official, Hague told Benjamin Netanyahu that the coalition will be moving as fast as it can to amend the universal jurisdiction law, with the aim being that a draft amendment will be put before parliament in the coming months.
The move comes on the back of Israel’s postponement of all strategic dialogue with Britain as a protest against the current law.
The numbers of animals used in experiments has been rising steadily over the past few years; up to 3.6 million in 2009 (whilst the number of individual procedures is far higher). It represents the presence of a vast amount of suffering. In its Programme for Government the Coalition promised to ‘work to reduce the use of animals in scientific research’. Our work has been supported by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) who warmly welcome our pledge, which is undoubtedly overdue.
But how does the Coalition intend to turn aspiration …
The law gives very broad scope to contentious and aggressive claims, partly because – as Arthur Balfour succinctly put it when pushed to expand the law in 1905, “It is evidently not easy to go further, if only because of the difficulty of distinguishing between the mis-statements which are due to malice and those which are due to mere stupidity.”
The offence was introduced in 1895 with, until then, the only offence under election law regarding false statements about candidates being if you falsely claimed that someone had pulled out as a candidate.
It is worth considering what, however, would be the position if even this narrow legal offence did not exist. Imagine case, say, of a candidate campaigning to oust a Labour MP and making false claims about the Labour MP being a supporter of terrorism. The Labour MP loses, sues for libel and wins. During the court case it is revealed that the victorious candidate always knew the claims being made about the now ex-MP were false but even so deliberately decided to include them in leaflets distributed during the election.
Without the sort of offence for which Phil Woolas was found guilty the victorious candidate might have to pay up in libel damages but could continue as an MP. (Eagle-eyed readers will have noted by this point that there are some important difference between the Representation of the People Act 1983 and libel law, but they don’t affect this example.) They would be able to continue speaking and voting in Parliament, drawing a Parliamentary salary, accruing a Parliamentary pension and so on for the next few years. Would that be a satisfactory outcome?
Your answer to that determines whether or not the principle of provisions like those in the Representation of the People Act 1983 is right. I think it is – we should give very broad scope to the public getting to determine who wins and loses in elections, but that is not the same as saying that anything goes.
Those who argue otherwise are wrong and, in fairness to Labour, it should be pointed out that the vast majority of the online coverage from Labour bloggers has been to condemn what Phil Woolas did. I also had the experience of listening to Harriet Harman on the radio at the weekend and agreeing with her. She is right that what we know Phil Woolas did has no place in politics even if he manages a successful legal appeal. What puzzles me, however, is that very little new came out during the case. There have been some interesting details – such as the forged diary, the evidence of the Labour Party agent being called “not reliable” by the judges and the complaint about a cat. At heart, however, what we now know Phil Woolas did is what we always knew he did, which makes Ed Miliband’s decision to appoint him not merely a Shadow Minister but one for immigration, all the odder. Hopefully, however, that will soon become no more than a curious political footnote.
As for political campaigning more generally, I don’t think the ruling will have a major impact – nor should it, because the law should only be for exceptional cases. Leafing through the advice I’ve co-authored for candidates on what you should or should not say in political literature (which was quoted in the court case and described by Phil Woolas as “naive”!), there does not look to be anything that needs changing based on this case. In that, there’s nothing new – for when the original provision was brought in by the 1895 act, the Liberal Party’s then election manual, Woodings, was updated to mention this new offence. It rightly noted it but did not make a song and dance about it for it was rightly considered then, as has been the case, to be a provision that only covers unusual and extreme cases. As the Judge put it in the 1911 case which hinged on this offence:
The primary protection of this statute was the protection of the constituency against acts which would be fatal to freedom of election. There would be no true freedom of election, no real expression of the opinion of the constituency, if votes were given in consequence of the dissemination of a false statement as to the personal character of conduct of a candidate.
The law has been in place for 115 years. That Phil Woolas is one of only a very small number to fall foul of it shows not that the law is too broad but that his behaviour was so awful.
Credit, by the way, to the judges for their understanding of how easy it is to find coverage of election candidates online – para 123 of the ruling shows a familiarity with the internet that counters some of the stereotypes about an out of touch judiciary.
This month there has been an earthquake in the Wikio Political Blog Rankings Top 50; almost a third of the sites have moved by more than 20 places, and roughly another fifth by more than 10 places. There are plenty of new entrants, and quite a number of sites seem to have simply “tanked” in this list.
Mark Pack asked if there had been a change in the algorithm this month, so I’ve done this guest post. The answer is that yes, the algorithm has been “tweaked”, in Wikio’s words. The main tweak seems to …
From the moment in 1999 when Kosovo with its mass burials and brutal imagery shocked the world – especially Europe, which had not had a war on its soil since the defeat of Hitler – the term ‘War Crimes’ has come back into the lexicon with a vengeance.
Until then, the words brought to mind the Japanese in Manchuria and Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but hardly anything closer in time.
Conflict in the Balkans brought with it a whole new dimension of war. Ugly new phrases like ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ appeared. Albanian Kosovar civilians, especially women, became …
By Prateek Buch
| Sat 6th November 2010 - 12:46 pm
You don’t usually raise an eyebrow when Lib Dems stand up for civil liberties – it’s what we do, it’s what we are. We even know that there are liberal-minded Tories (you, stop sniggering…) with whom the greatest common ground we share is on defending the freedoms, rights and liberties we enjoy; just look at the civil liberties paragraphs in the Coalition agreement.
It is right, however, to raise an eyebrow – possibly both – at the widely anticipated rebellion over whether to retain or rescind control orders for terrorist suspects; not just at the timing, coming so soon after …
Coalition: esp. in Politics. An alliance for combined action of distinct parties, persons, or states, without permanent incorporation into one body.
During the general election, if you asked my politics class who they would vote for if they could vote, the result was almost unanimously Liberal Democrat, with the occasional Conservative blip (but I’m fairly sure that those people merely said Conservative because they thought David Cameron was good looking. No comment.) Now? Now it’s a different story.
Take today, for example, discussing the peculiarities of the US political system. “I don’t understand how two parties can rule a country,” Classmate A …
Phil Woolas has vowed to fight on to keep his parliamentary seat of Oldham East and Saddleworth, following the ruling on Friday that voids his General Election victory and bans him from standing as an MP for three years.
He no right of appeal against the judges’ decision, but wants to take it to judicial review, though on what grounds isn’t clear.
Mr Woolas would like us to think that the judgement is not only wrong but fundamentally damaging to political discourse – that it will allow politicians to get away with all sorts whilst their opponents cower, unwilling to risk …
So, another week, and more policies announced that are definitely not Liberal Democrat in origin. Particularly one close to my liberal heart on the issue of paying for University education. Now that debate will rumble on and on, but I want to look more closely at whether the Lib Dems did indeed “sell out” on their principles, or whether they …
If you remember, this is the opening frame of the party political broadcast the Lib Dems aired just a few days before standing for election in May. You may remember it: Nick Clegg wondered around what appeared to be the set of “I am Legend” on a day when the prevailing wind was coming from the foolscap factory wearing a jacket 8 sizes too big for him. The tagline, the message, indeed the point of the advert was “no more broken promises” – the …
Whenever I utter the phrase ‘free trade’ within those Liberal Democrat circles in which I am permitted to mix, the reaction is akin to that which I might get if I suggested making it compulsory for all party members to worship statues of me.
And that’s a pity (the reaction to the free trade, not the statues) because most people when they meet an advocate of free trade, mutter darkly about the effects of ‘light touch regulation’. But free trade and light touch regulation are not the same, indeed in many ways they are inimical to each other.
By Stephen Tall
| Fri 5th November 2010 - 11:57 am
At face value, the figures released by News International this week showing that The Times and Sunday Times had registered some 105,000 customer sales since its paywall was erected in July sounded like good news. As analysts attempted to decipher the company’s ‘fuzzy numbers‘, doubts began to creep in.
Understanding those paywall figures
The reality appears to be that roughly 50,000 individual users have subscribed to gain access to the newspapers’ content, whether online or through the iPad app or the Kindle edition. The other c.50,000 customer sales are for single-use or pay-as-you-go access to the website, and will …
The Australian Parliament building in Canberra is a gem of democratic political architecture. Australia’s capital city was facing the need to expand and replace its existing Parliament building. But where to put the new one? The old one had deliberately been placed at the foot of the hill in Canberra, so that politicians would not be looking down on the public. Now the only suitable free space left was on top of that hill. The solution was clever: chop the top off the hill, build the new Parliament and then stick the top of the hill back on top of …
One of the lasting legacies of the Liberal Democrats in power will be the efforts to push through what has been named the ‘Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill’.
Returning to conference as Deputy Prime Minister in 2010, Clegg triumphantly declared that “In November, we will publish a Freedom Bill to roll back a generation of illiberal and intrusive legislation.”
The Liberal Democrat draft addresses some of the most obvious anti-campaigning laws. For example it proposes …
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...
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Has racism and sexism become normalised in the UK?
A vanished island in the Trent near Nottingham
Jeffrey Archer's 'First Among Equals', with Shane Whaley (part 1)
Getting people off the streets is the easy bit, keeping them in their accommodation is much harder
David Allen 
Pawel Urbanski 
Jana 
Peter Davies 
David Raw 