Category Archives: Op-eds

Geoff Crocker

Opinion: Martians report humans are mad (particularly Brits) – they are cutting their own economy

By Geoff Crocker | Thu 4th November 2010 - 10:55 am

Some time ago a TV ad reported the bemusement amongst Martians at human behaviour with mashed potato. They fell over themselves laughing at how we humans grow potatoes in the ground, collect them, peel them, boil them in water, cut them up and then smash them to pieces before eating them. Very bizarre behaviour! Martians began to worry whether humans were sane or not.

Now the Martian press is equally dumbfounded at reports coming from planet Earth that humans are cutting their own production economies because they say they don’t have enough money.

Martians always thought that humans made this …

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Mark Pack

Wanted: a hyperactive online MP

By Mark Pack | Thu 4th November 2010 - 8:55 am

Last week I talked about the role reversal facing the Liberal Democrats, with the party’s traditional stronger record at political tactics than strategy having been flipped around. In that, and the subsequent post Part 2 of the Nick Clegg reshuffle, I highlighted some tactical communication needs the party must get better at. Given my own habit of pointing out that people should not just criticise but should also offer solutions, here are my own suggestions.

Middle-ranking ministers need to communicate more

The large majority of Liberal Democrat ministers are not in the Cabinet. However, the departmental communication structures are set-up to …

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Jo Swinson MP

Jo Swinson MP writes on tuition fees

By Jo Swinson MP | Wed 3rd November 2010 - 6:49 pm

Today the Government has outlined its response to the Browne review, and the future of higher education funding. This is arguably the most challenging issue for Liberal Democrats in the coalition so far.

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. The flagship “penny on income tax for education” was one of the reasons I joined the party in 1997. My first conference speech was in a debate about student funding, as we passed our policy …

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Paul Evans

The Independent View: Political Innovation events in Edinburgh and Belfast

By Paul Evans | Wed 3rd November 2010 - 4:58 pm

Mark has invited me to write (yet another!) guest-post on Lib-Dem Voice about the Political Innovation project. Specifically, this one is to promote the events that we’re doing in Edinburgh and Belfast over the next few weeks – details can be found here.

The agenda? Well, these are ‘unconference’ events – largely bereft of big-name speakers or tied-down timetables. It’s a good deal more democratic than that, and anyone who hasn’t been to one of these type of conferences is particularly welcome. It’s a very democratic way of organising a day, and one that, ironically, works very well in …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Leave a comment
Alex Marsh

Opinion: Spinning the death of affordable housing

By Alex Marsh | Wed 3rd November 2010 - 4:03 pm

At the heart of politics lie battles over meaning. In an uncertain world there is plenty of scope to contest the definition of problems and the perceived effectiveness of solutions. Under Labour we came to think of agenda management as “spin”, and to condemn it. But the Blairites were simply the most egregious and effective exponents of the political arts. All politicians face decisions about the message and how one would ideally like it interpreted.

This seems particularly pertinent in relation to current discussions about affordable housing. We’re seeing the government providing some creative readings of what is on offer.

One component …

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Richard Morris

Opinion: Why we should be trying to win the London Mayor contest

By Richard Morris | Wed 3rd November 2010 - 1:55 pm

Earlier this month, LDV published a piece of mine suggesting Vince Cable would make an excellent candidate for London Mayor, which I wrote because I happen to think that he can win.

Some people agreed with my supposition, others for various reasons disagreed. It was the third set of responses that surprised me. That it was the very fact that Vince could win that made him a poor choice – because the allegedly approved strategy in London was to find a candidate ‘who understands that their role is not to try and win the mayoral election but to help our …

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Also posted in London | Tagged | 9 Comments
Chris White

Chris White writes: FPC, tuition fees and party policy – the inside story

By Chris White | Wed 3rd November 2010 - 11:15 am

No. I don’t like Vince Cable’s announcement today on higher education either.

Nevertheless, Party Policy is clear: we want fees to go. This means that we don’t need to spend a six figure sum on a special conference just to repeat ourselves. Or to say we’re cross with Vince. Nor is there any need of a grand public statement in the Guardian letters page. Or a row at Federal Policy Committee.

FPC is still asking itself what it is for. On the one hand, it must get on with developing new Party policy – but with sharply limited resources. On the …

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Iain Roberts

Is yours a party of principles or scoundrels?

By Iain Roberts | Tue 2nd November 2010 - 2:56 pm

Party A is in politics to gain power so they can put their policies and principles into action.  Without power, what they can achieve is limited so they – sensibly – are willing to compromise and indulge in some give-and-take.

Some policies are dropped or changed because to not do so would see less of the programme getting through over all.   Deals have to be done, compromises made, unexpected situations dealt with – this is the real world, after all.

The party pushes through some policies it doesn’t really believe are in the the best interests of the country – because they’re …

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40 Comments
Philip Jones

The Independent View: Liberal Democrats should back Browne

By Philip Jones | Mon 1st November 2010 - 2:27 pm

The Vice Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University writes…

I am opposed to what are commonly called ‘top up’ fees in higher education and would resist any move to impose upfront fees for higher education. But, this is not what the Browne recommendations propose.

The weekend before Browne reported I was in despair and angry. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the Coalition government was going to impose a 75-80% cut on the teaching budget for higher education and expect the shortfall to be recovered through an increase in fees.

I am the Vice-Chancellor of a large metropolitan university, with just under 35,000 students. …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged , , and | 23 Comments
Iain Roberts

The same policy can be good or evil – depends who thought of it

By Iain Roberts | Mon 1st November 2010 - 10:16 am

In May 2010, the Labour Party pledged to cap Housing Benefit. In their manifesto , they argued that the State shouldn’t be subsidising people to live in private rented properties that “ordinary working families” couldn’t afford.

Over 600 Labour parliamentary candidates happily stood on the pledge, not a whisper of opposition to the idea was heard from their ranks.

Fast forward to October 2010, five months later, and the Coalition Government come up with the same plan.

Not only was the Coalition scheme denounced by Labour in the strongest terms, with talk of “social cleansing” echoing the horrific Kosovan experiences, …

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Richard Morris

Opinion: We’ve stopped setting the agenda

By Richard Morris | Mon 1st November 2010 - 9:25 am

In Mark Pack’s generally excellent piece the other day entitled Role reversal for the Liberal Democrats he suggested that, love it or hate it, we have a long term positioning strategy in place at the moment but we’re missing out on tactical battles. On the long term strategy bit, I beg to differ.

I worry we’re being taken to the brand cleaners at the moment.

In the commercial world, brand owners try to turn their ordinary everyday brands into brand icons. They do so for three reasons:

  1. Icon brands tend to have a huge range of appeal stretching far beyond their traditional

…

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16 Comments
Adrian Sanders

Adrian Sanders writes… The cap that doesn’t fit

By Adrian Sanders | Sun 31st October 2010 - 4:50 pm

People outside of London who cannot afford to buy a home or meet their rent without help from the benefit system are missing out in the current debate on the capping of Housing Benefit.

The housing benefit bill doubled under Labour but it wasn’t because of an increase in claimants, it was because Labour failed to ensure enough regulated rent social housing was built for the increasing numbers of people who could not and cannot afford to buy.

The problem didn’t start under Labour; it began in the early 80’s. The ratio between wages and house prices rose at the same …

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Dominic Curran

Opinion: Are there no workhouses? Our skewed housing benefit debate

By Dominic Curran | Sun 31st October 2010 - 12:53 pm

This recent debate about housing benefit has been explosive, with anger and froth expelled by both sides of the debate. And with Christmas coming, I can’t help feeling that there are many out there whose approach to housing the poor is somewhat Scrooge-like. ‘Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?’ they are almost asking.

Housing benefit reform is a tricky beast, no doubt, as the most outrageous (but numerically few) examples of, say, unemployed immigrants getting £1,000 a week to live in Notting Hill have riled many, myself included. But it’s worth asking the question why are so many …

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Colin Eldridge

Opinion: Coalition politics

By Colin Eldridge | Sat 30th October 2010 - 6:25 pm

Going into a coalition government with another party was always going to be hard, particularly with the Tories! It feels to me like a trip to the dentist. Something I know is the right thing to do for the long term, but very painful in the short term.

I supported the coalition. Given that I spent the last eight years as a relatively high profile Liberal Democrat in Liverpool, a city that judges it’s people and particularly it’s politicians by how much you hate the Tories, it was a brave thing to do!

I supported it for two reasons.

Firstly, my liberalism is …

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David Rendel

Opinion: Not the whole truth

By David Rendel | Sat 30th October 2010 - 5:25 pm

On Monday, while in London for a meeting, I picked up a copy of the Evening Standard. (I can never resist a good freebie – I was once an MP after all –  and besides it gave me three extra Sudokus to do on the train home).

Inside I found four vouchers (one for each of the remaining days of the week) for “i” – Britain’s first new quality newspaper for over two decades. The paper only costs 20p a day. But I am such a sucker for freebies that I just could not resist using the vouchers to try it …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Sue Farrant

Opinion: A post-CSR view from the South West

By Sue Farrant | Sat 30th October 2010 - 3:25 pm

Down here in the South West we are bracing ourselves for the impact of the government’s efforts to reduce the budget deficit.  The public sector is by far the biggest employer here (about 40%) and redundancies seem inevitable, compounded by posts falling empty and not being filled thus reducing the number of real vacancies. Will the private sector be able to grow fast enough to compensate? I live in Sherborne, a pretty little market town which is renowned for its variety of small, independent retailers. They sustain the local way of life, provide some limited employment opportunities and attract visitors …

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Duncan Hames MP

Duncan Hames writes… Time to value

By Duncan Hames MP | Sat 30th October 2010 - 2:25 pm

Almost every working person knows their salary or their hourly rate. Some can even express it as a fraction of the cost of hiring a plumber. Yet our time outside work lacks similar recognition in the choices we make: we should value our time for more than just the contribution it can make to our household budgets and material needs.

There is strong quantitative evidence that beyond a level of around £15,000 per year, extra income has little improving effect on a person’s well-being: put bluntly, the extra money doesn’t pay you back for your time. Despite this, British employees are …

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Mary Reid

Opinion: Pulling the plug on swimming pools?

By Mary Reid | Sat 30th October 2010 - 12:55 pm

Over the last week, we’ve all focussed on welfare issues, tuition fees and housing. The impact of the 7% pa cut in local government funding has yet to register with most of us.

Each council will make its own decisions on how to deal with a total grant reduction of 28% over four years. Coverage will be local, so the public will inevitably blame councillors rather than ministers when popular services disappear.

The media have been, inaccurately, talking about a 28% cut in council budgets (rather than in funding) – it’s not quite as bad as that, although it will still be …

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Also posted in Local government | Tagged and | 13 Comments
Gerald Vernon-Jackson

Opinion: Reflections on local and national power

By Gerald Vernon-Jackson | Sat 30th October 2010 - 11:25 am

Well, Autumn Conference in Liverpool was an interesting experience. Bumping into Ministers and asking them to sort out issues was strange. An odd aircraft carrier here, and regeneration scheme there. Who knows if these discussions had any effect, but at least we could ask the people who might make the decisions. Few of us now remember the last time this happened. The 1929 Liberal Assembly seems a long time ago now.

Being in coalition has this upside. To be able to influence decisions is what we stand for elections for. We think our ideas are better than those of the other …

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Katy Riddle

Opinion: Secret ingredients and the 2010 General Election

By Katy Riddle | Sat 30th October 2010 - 10:25 am

Over the past few months, many people within the Liberal Democrats have asked me for my views on the 2010 General Election campaign, and the lessons that we can learn from the experience ready for next time.

In the South Central region (where I worked as the Campaigns Officer) the results were mixed. We had substantial swings towards us in both Portsmouth South and Eastleigh, but failed to win Oxford East from Labour, and sadly lost our previously held seats of Oxford West and Abingdon, Winchester, and Romsey to the Conservatives.

Clearly any election result is the unique consequence of a combination …

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David Boyle

Opinion: The Tea Party – lessons for the Liberal Democrats

By David Boyle | Sat 30th October 2010 - 9:25 am

The Tea Party movement is even now preparing for its first big electoral test.  Banners are being printed, bumper stickers peeled, computerised push-pollers tested.

They are a frightening prospect for European liberals.  Perhaps any foreign radical movement looks bizarre to outsiders, but the combination of Sarah Palin, red-neck fundamentalists and the shadowy Koch brothers with their billions is a fearsome prospect.

Yet the Tea Party has lessons for us, even if it doesn’t make its way over here – which in some form or another it seems likely to do.

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Also posted in LDVUSA | Tagged | 10 Comments
Chris Huhne MP

Chris Huhne writes… Myth-busting: what the Coalition’s plans for nuclear energy really mean

By Chris Huhne MP | Fri 29th October 2010 - 6:08 pm

Which of these headlines is right?

‘Lib Dem U-turn on nuclear energy sees Huhne announce eight new power stations‘ (Independent)

‘Taxpayer to underwrite expansion of nuclear power’ (The Times)

‘Subsidy for eight nuclear reactors rejected‘ (Financial Times)

All appeared in the papers on Tuesday 19 October, the day after I announced the latest steps in the government’s approach to nuclear energy. They’re a good example of how confused journalists can get – only the FT’s got it right. So let me make it plain: there has been no change whatsoever in the coalition’s policy of allowing new nuclear stations to go ahead as long as they can be built without public subsidy.

What we’ve done is to publish four key sets of documents:

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Fred Carver

Opinion: Condorcet 101, or We Can Do Better Than AV

By Fred Carver | Fri 29th October 2010 - 10:42 am

Attentive readers may have noticed I am not a fan of the alternative vote. I don’t think it is proportional – because it isn’t. However, it is not a bad system for selecting a candidate for a single vacancy. On this basis the Lib Dems use it extensively for internal elections when there is only one vacancy. However it is, to my mind, not the fairest such system.

No single vacancy system can be proportional. That is why the Lib Dems rightly push for Single Transferable Vote in every election they can. However, there will always be single vacancy elections: for …

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Mark Pack

Dear John Gray…

By Mark Pack | Thu 28th October 2010 - 9:26 pm

Dear John Gray,

You have me  baffled, I’ll confess.

Writing recently in the London Review of Books you talked about how in your view Vince Cable and others in the Orange Book a vision of a “small government”.

I’m confused because it’s true that Vince Cable’s chapter does call for a cap on the maximum that the state can raise in taxation. However, that maximum was set higher than the Labour government was taking in at the time in 2004, several years after they had ‘turned on the taps’ on public expenditure and left previous Conservative Party spending targets well behind.

Blair and …

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Jonathan Featonby

Opinion: Bob Russell’s advice over housing benefit should be heeded by the coalition

By Jonathan Featonby | Thu 28th October 2010 - 10:55 am

During yesterday’s PMQs, the most vocal Lib Dem rebel MP today made an exceptionally well-stated and compassionate plea for the coalition government to rethink their plans to cut housing benefit.

Bob Russell, who stood to cries of “hear, hear” from those on the benches opposite when John Bercow called his name, voiced his concerns that as a result of the changes, thousands of children could possibly become homeless.

It is certainly a consideration that has to be taken seriously by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and their cabinet colleagues.

They may well respond – as the Prime Minister did this afternoon – by saying …

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Simon de Deney

Opinion: emotional cleansing or ‘oops, your metaphor’s slipped’

By Simon de Deney | Wed 27th October 2010 - 4:15 pm
Fluff over substance
I have a confession. While I have reservations about the current policy on social housing, that’s not what this piece is about. Andrew Stunell has written compellingly about our policy as has Dominic Curran.

All I’ll say is that successive Labour and Tory governments have failed abysmally over the last thirty years to invest in affordable housing. They’ve helped exacerbate social and community division, inflate housing price bubbles and distort the economy and our attitudes to wealth. Unwittingly or not, they are the architects of the ghetto. So

…

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Matt Gallagher

Opinion: Labour needs to be honest with its core supporters

By Matt Gallagher | Wed 27th October 2010 - 2:03 pm

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. This quote, usually attributed to Abraham Lincoln, goes to prove that some things in politics never change.

After thirteen years of spin, media manipulation and bare-faced lies (don’t believe the rumours folks, Gordon and Tony really do have a very good working relationship), one might be forgiven for thinking that there was no one left who believed a word the Labour party had to say on anything. Nevertheless, they …

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Oranjepan

Opinion: the IFS, the buts and the maybes – questions of fairness and the CSR

By Oranjepan | Wed 27th October 2010 - 10:25 am

Last week Nick Clegg and the Institute of Fiscal studies squared up over the issue of whether the cuts proposed in the Comprehensive Spending Review are fair.

It is a debate which strikes at the heart of Lib Dems in the coalition government and it will determine the shape of politics in this country for next decade.

For the first time ever the Treasury included an impact analysis of the announced changes within the CSR, the effect of pressure from Lib Dems. These were calculated according to the sections of society that will bear the burden of the changes (ie how …

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Mark Pack

Role reversal for the Liberal Democrats

By Mark Pack | Wed 27th October 2010 - 8:55 am

Hopi Sen has blogged thoughtfully several times recently about the risk to Labour of slipping into focusing on the tactics without getting the strategy right. In Labour’s case that means, for example, an undue focus on how to next best shout – “those cuts are awful!” rather than working out how to deal with the public mostly blaming Labour for the need to cut in the first place. Tactical triumphs at PMQs only gets you so far; rebuilding a reputation for economic competence is what is needed to win – as William Hague found in his time as Conservative …

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Don Foster MP

Don Foster writes…the BBC licence fee settlement is a win for the Lib Dems

By Don Foster MP | Tue 26th October 2010 - 1:13 pm

The BBC is at the centre of a continuous storm of criticism over everything from pay to politics. Some of it is even contradictory – it sometimes seems like everyone on every side of every debate is convinced that the BBC is biased in favour of the other side. This is a symptom of the BBC’s situation, unique amongst broadcasters: because it is funded by everyone, it is in the unenviable position of having to please everyone.

It should not be immune to criticism. The detractors are correct in that the BBC isn’t perfect and doesn’t always get it right. But …

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