Category Archives: Op-eds

Mark Pack

Conference: the full-time score

By Mark Pack | Sun 26th September 2010 - 9:20 am

Having blogged ten questions for Liberal Democrat conference, along with a conference half-time update, how do things look now the dust has settled from Liverpool for those ten points?

Party strategy

Love your coalition partner all the time in public: that was the clear line taken by Nick Clegg, reinforced by other senior party figures and not challenged directly in any high profile way during conference (save for one question during the Nick Clegg Q&A). And yet… whether or not the party should let its strong debates with the Conservatives within the coalition show a little more in public was …

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Iain Roberts

Mail on Sunday’s shocking Ed Miliband revelations

By Iain Roberts | Sun 26th September 2010 - 8:45 am

Ed Miliband has a big job ahead of him, to bring the Labour Party back to power following their second worst general election result since the second world war.

I wish him well and congratulate him on his victory. Whatever concerns people may have about the way he came second among both MPs and party members, he’s won fair and square by the rules the Labour Party set for the contest.

Personally, I would have problems being in a party that thought that particular setup was a fair and democratic way to run elections, but I’m not in that party and …

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Eric Avebury

Opinion: International Development and the Coalition – so far, so good

By Eric Avebury | Sat 25th September 2010 - 6:45 pm

With the 10 year Millennium Development Goal Review Summit having taken place this week, now is a good time to take stock of the Coalition Government’s International Development policy so far.

The Coalition Government promised, in their “Programme for Government”, to commit to the internationally agreed goal of 0.7% of Gross National Income spent on aid by 2013 as well as supporting the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and prioritising “aid spending on programmes to ensure that everyone has access to clean water, sanitation, healthcare and education; to reduce maternal and infant mortality.”

As Joint Chair of the All-Party …

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Stephen Tall

Three key issues facing the new Labour leader, Mr Miliband

By Stephen Tall | Sat 25th September 2010 - 3:35 pm

In an hour’s time we shall know who is the new leader of the Labour party. Though the bookies now make Ed Miliband favourite, my hunch is that older brother David will get the nod, just. We shall soon see. The best guide I’ve read on what to look out for as the votes are announced is over at Next Left; Adam Boulton’s blog also has a good guide to the nuts and bolts of what happens when.

But whichever of the Milibands wins through, here are three issues they will need urgently to address heading into the party’s …

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Prateek Buch

Opinion: Perspective – my thoughts on the Liberal Democrat conference

By Prateek Buch | Fri 24th September 2010 - 6:39 pm

Oblivion; rebellion; split; tension. Words that the media reporting on the recent Lib Dem conference – and gosh weren’t there a lot of cameras, reporters and microphones present? – used both before and during the last few days in Liverpool – and crucially, words that were largely conspicuous by their absence inside the arena. Not a surprise given that large parts of the media, and the pubic too perhaps, is still coping with having a democratic, pluralist party at the heart of government. My word of the week, in contrast is perspective – and here’s why.

Paul Reynolds has written …

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Mark Littlewood

Opinion: Looking through the tea leaves of Liverpool

By Mark Littlewood | Fri 24th September 2010 - 4:50 pm

What a strange few months it’s been for the Liberal Democrats. In Bournemouth a year ago, few LibDems would have truly believed that this was to be their last annual conference in opposition.

My sense of the mood in Liverpool this year was that it matched the political and economic times we live in. Serious, but somewhat apprehensive. There seemed a lot of quiet satisfaction – although never smugness – that there were Liberal Democrats in government, but a nervousness about what the “end game” might be.

A few things truly surprised me. Support for the principle of entering Coalition with the Conservatives was close to unanimous. A straw poll at the IEA’s fringe meeting showed about 95% felt that Nick Clegg had made the right decision in those tense few days after the General Election. The national media were, of course, on the look out for any sign of coalition-fatigue, but seemed initially disappointed – and then rather impressed – about the absence of much strategic dissent.

But looking through the tea leaves of Liverpool, there are some longer term issues which the party will have to address.

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Meral Ece

Opinion: The last chance saloon on diversity?

By Meral Ece | Fri 24th September 2010 - 3:24 pm

I went to conference expecting something entirely different, perhaps influenced by the daily articles and news reports, that this conference was going to be like no other. That there was much unrest, and even anger amongst the Party’s ranks. Instead I found myself amongst many Lib Dem party members and friends who were upbeat and positive.

I didn’t speak to anyone – nor as far as I can gather did the media – who was vehemently opposed to the Coalition Government. Yes, this conference was like no other. It was the largest conference we’ve ever had, and our Leader is …

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Linda Jack

Making LGBT History – An Interview with Adrian Trett

By Linda Jack | Fri 24th September 2010 - 1:38 pm

Adrian Trett is Chair of DELGA, the person responsible for the Equal Marriage motion and someone I am proud to call a dear friend. Following the success of the motion I interviewed Adrian about his feelings about conference in general and the motion in particular

Q: What was your overall impression of conference?

A: I was really pleased, I thought it was exhilarating, everyone was so enthusiastic. On the way to conference I thought there may be arguments, but I found it to be a pleasing atmosphere and was thrilled to be there.

Q: How did you feel when you left?

A: I left …

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John Howson

Opinion: Nobody ever said government was easy

By John Howson | Fri 24th September 2010 - 11:59 am

I attended my first Liberal Party Conference at Blackpool in 1968, in the days when our MPs could all fit in a taxi, rather than needing a rather large bus. Work in education prevented me attending regularly again until 1998, but I have been at every autumn conference since.

For those with long memories, 1998 was the year of the community school motion when, despite an impassioned speech by Phil Willis, the leadership lost the day, just as they did with amendment 2 on Monday: more about that later.

When I arrived in Liverpool on Friday afternoon, I detected a palpable …

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Paul Reynolds

Opinion: Subtly different

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 24th September 2010 - 10:54 am

The Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference this year was subtly different from all others I have attended.

Being part of the Coalition of course meant a larger UK and international press contingent, and a greater diplomatic representation from around the globe. Lib Dem ministers talked of the problems of persuading their Conservative colleagues of the benefits of key Lib Dem policies and approaches, as well as the more general problems of working with the slippery inflexibilities of government administration.

However by far the more significant difference was for me something unseen, almost unconscious. It affected every conversation, every fringe meeting, and …

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Linda Jack

So how was it for you?

By Linda Jack | Fri 24th September 2010 - 9:05 am

Well fellow Lib Dems, Bloggers and Tweeps… what did you make of conference then? Having been granted the honour of being “Guest Editor” (quaking in me boots it has to be said!) I thought, given the timing, it may be an opportunity to reflect on the last week in Liverpool.

What I want to do is to try and get a feel from members across the spectrum of our party, has conference left them feeling uplifted, confused, motivated, anxious, hopeful, proud?
I hope what follows today, especially for those of you who weren’t there, will give you a bit of …

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Davina Kirwan

Opinion: Liberal Youth amendments ripped the heart out of the diversity motion

By Davina Kirwan | Thu 23rd September 2010 - 5:21 pm

The Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats’ (EMLD) motion containing positive action measures to practically address the diversity of Lib Dem elected representatives was ripped to not much more than a review by amendments mostly from Liberal Youth, with the requirement to have at least one BME candidate on shortlists where a Lib Dem MP has resigned, or within a by-election, being lost.

Goodness me. I think the Liberal Democrats are the new Conservatives. Deciding not to act because doing so would be hypocritical? Is this not the worse kind of irony that has seen the ill-representative nature of the party prevail? WAKE-UP! …

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Peter Jones

Opinion: an easy £25 billion to cut

By Peter Jones | Thu 23rd September 2010 - 1:50 pm

I’m sorry I couldn’t join you at Liverpool, but my absence hopefully left more of the wine lake provided by our generous sponsors for the rest of you. As ‘cuts’ were in the air and in your conversations. I’d like to suggest an easy one.

HS2. Or High Speed (Rail) 2 to give its full title. The proposed new high speed rail link from London past Birmingham to the great cities of the North, such as Leeds. I’m told it may go near somewhere called Manchester as well on its way to Scotland.

Now I am no engineer. If the …

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Tom Paul

Opinion: Do the media now ‘get’ Liberal Democrat conference?

By Tom Paul | Wed 22nd September 2010 - 4:31 pm

Recent years have seen a consistent stream of conference reports on ‘splits’ within the party. With Coalition, and more interest in the party than ever before, has the media finally learned how to read our public disagreements? Do the media now ‘get’ conference?

Whilst Labour and Tory conferences are stage-managed affairs, with policy arguments taking place behind closed doors, the liberal approach is to discuss and debate in the open. The way Liberal Democrats make policy – and the power we members have to shape our movement – is reflective our commitment both to transparency and to democracy.

But public debates …

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Stephen Tall

What did you make of Vince Cable’s speech?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 22nd September 2010 - 2:30 pm

It was the speech which revived the Lib Dem conference, oddly listless after Nick Clegg’s speech on Monday: Vince Cable’s rallying final day speech gave members and activists a real lift, and provided plenty of red meat for the media to chew on. Here’s my first impression…

Perhaps what was most impressive about Vince’s conference speech was how unchanged it was from his usual fare: uncompromising, wise-cracking, punchy, intelligent.

The right-wing media has focused on Vince’s attacks on capitalism, with the Daily Mail in typically shrill mood, and ConservativeHome giving it the silly billing of ‘Red Vince Day’.

That’s the thing about some right-wingers: too often they are unable to see past their own dogma which assumes Big Business must always be right. It’s the same blind spot left-wingers have about the unions.

Liberals — and I’m not using that as a party label because it also encompasses Adam Smith — understand that unfettered capitalism is not the same thing as the free market, and capitalism does not automatically promote market competition. That is why liberals, and Liberal Democrats, believe in a regulated free market, to curb the excesses of capitalism and to promote the interests of healthy market competition from which individuals and society can benefit.

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Andy Mayer

Opinion: Evan Harris’s major error

By Andy Mayer | Tue 21st September 2010 - 1:15 pm

So defeated Oxford West & Abingdon MP and left-liberal firebrand Evan Harris doesn’t like the coalition and worries about the message it sends to his preferred allies on the old left of Labour. Or so says in his article for The Guardian.

What’s new? Evan has shown disquiet about non-lefto-neo-revisionist-libero-economism by the party leadership for much of his career. He is about as likely to embrace a broad centre-ground positioning for the Liberal Democrats as Bob Crowe welcoming a restructuring plan on the London Underground.

He isn’t, though, a thoughtless polemicist, and much of what he says is …

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Mark Pack

Good news for minor parties, unelected politicians and those who dislike election expense controls

By Mark Pack | Tue 21st September 2010 - 9:27 am

Slipped in near the end of Nick Clegg’s keynote speech to Liberal Democrat conference was the news that the first democratic elections to the House of Lords are pencilled in for 2015.

Party sources have confirmed that the reference to Liberal Democrat candidates at the next general election fighting alongside candidates for a reformed Upper House means the draft Lords reform legislation due to be published early in 2011 is being planned on the basis of elections in 2015.

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Stephen Tall

What did you make of Nick Clegg’s conference speech?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 20th September 2010 - 6:05 pm

As the music fades, and the hoardes of conference delegates file out of the Liverpool hall, what did Voice readers make of what he had to say? Here’s my first impression…

First, and above all, this was a sober speech. It wasn’t a barn-stormer, it didn’t grip by the throat or tug the heart-strings. This was a serious analysis of why the Lib Dems have gone into government, and what the party wants to get out of it for the country. Nick was careful to go through the famous four pledges — fair taxes, a fair start for children, a fair …

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Mark Pack

Conference: the half-time score

By Mark Pack | Mon 20th September 2010 - 2:27 pm

At the start of conference, I blogged the ten issues that I thought would shape conference. Half-way through, how are things looking on the ten?

  1. Strategy: the party’s official line of loving our coalition partners in public has been firmly stuck to by the party’s senior figures, and argued for by Nick Clegg during Q+A at the weekend. Bubbling under the surface are many questions about whether this is the right strategy and if the party could and would be better if it more often made public its disagreements, such as over the opting out of the EU directive

…

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Mark Pack

The dirty little secret the Coalition Government should address

By Mark Pack | Mon 20th September 2010 - 11:54 am

The coalition government is pledged to introducing a package of reforms to our electoral system, including extending it to cover the House of Lords. Quite what the impact of these changes will be is an issue addressed in the Litmus newspaper jointly produced by Lib Dem Voice, Left Foot Forward and Conservative Home. Here is my piece on the topic, and you can read the full newspaper, including the other pieces on this topic from Lord Norton and Will Straw, either via the hard copies in conference registration packs or online at www.litmustest.org.

Litmus newspaper badgeThe present House of Lords model gives a seat in Parliament for life without having to face any election. We need constitutional reform and an electoral system that reduces the number of safe seats, argues Dr Mark Pack.

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Stephen Tall

Grappling with government: how will we change our minds when the facts change?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 20th September 2010 - 10:28 am

Sky News’s Adam Boulton has an interesting take on this year’s Lib Dem conference:

… there is an overbearing sense of seriousness as the Lib Dems cogitate on the political hand dealt them after the last election. Far from glibly queuing to speak in debates, conference organisers report that party members are hanging back, wanting to listen to the explanations from the leadership.

It’s a perception that perhaps helps explain why there are relatively fewer requests to speak in debates, especially considering how much higher attendance at conference is this year. Most Lib Dem conference delegates choose only to speak in …

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Mark Pack

Facing the Future: the missing international question

By Mark Pack | Mon 20th September 2010 - 8:56 am

A combination of meetings and media mean I cannot make it into the hall later this morning for the debate on the party’s Facing the Future policy consultation (pdf copy of document here). It is a document setting out the broad questions (sixty-two in all, though Q59 bears a striking resemblance to Q53) intended to shape the party’s future policy development. Had I been able to make it, this is the necessarily brief speech I would have wanted to give about the last three in the document, on international affairs.

There are two near certainties about any broad policy review …

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Peter Welch

Opinion: Don’t believe the Fraser-tendency

By Peter Welch | Sun 19th September 2010 - 12:27 pm

With Liberal Democrats in government, and a massive increase in the number of journalists coming to Liberal Democrat conference this year, you might think the press has a different story to tell this year.

In some ways they do. My first conference (as a teenager…) was the Llandudno conference that saw the launch of the Alliance. David Steel made his famous speech about “preparing for government” – and it has been used to mock at every conference since. Until now that is.

Some of the papers this time are looking at how much of our manifesto is being implemented. That is definitely …

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Mark Pack

The flaw in war reporting from Afghanistan, or why Robert Peston should not be embedded in a McDonald’s for a fortnight

By Mark Pack | Sun 19th September 2010 - 10:24 am

On Wednesday evening I went to a Frontline Club event titled Who is winning the media war in Afghanistan? and was reminded of the way what journalists call “the kinetic stuff” (that is soldiers and shooting to you and me) dominates mainstream TV footage. The set of clips shown to set the scene at the start of the event were all of the kinetic kind and although during the event some journalists made the point that other types of footage is also used – they also conceded that those other reports are not the ones which grab the public …

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Fringe meeting: How motor sport can benefit local communities

By Ben Taylor | Sun 19th September 2010 - 9:27 am

The Motor Sport Association (MSA) recently commissioned the Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) at Sheffield Hallam University to evaluate the case for allowing local communities in Britain to stage ‘closed road’ motorsport events.

The study found that the economic impact of the current portfolio of stage rallies, hill climbs and sprints in the UK is estimated to be ‘at least’ £23m per year. However, the report also found that up to £40m of economic benefit could be delivered to local communities over the next five years by allowing 20 motor sport events on public roads in Britain, at no cost to …

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Mark Pack

Will technology kill bureaucracy?

By Mark Pack | Sat 18th September 2010 - 5:28 pm

Earlier today the Liberal Democrats kicked off the process to revise the party’s policy on information technology and intellectual property with a consultation session at the party’s Liverpool conference. Technology is also a theme explored in the Litmus newspaper jointly produced by Lib Dem Voice, Left Foot Forward and Conservative Home, with pieces from Tom Watson, Stephan Shakespeare and Richard Allan on this topic. We’ve reproduced Richard’s piece below and you can read the full newspaper either via the hard copies in conference registration packs or online at www.litmustest.org.

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Jonathan Hunt

Opinion: Lib Dems must ignore the coalition, and work towards victory in 2015

By Jonathan Hunt | Sat 18th September 2010 - 2:28 pm

Over the next few days, Lib Dem loyalists will discover for themselves the frustration and futility of supporting the coalition. They may stand on the sidelines, shouting “Well played!” “Foul!” or “Offside!”. It will make little or no difference. There is no role for party activists.

For according to Vince Cable, the coalition is “just business”. And the business of coalition government is to do unpopular and illiberal things. Nothing here for activists to sell on the doorsteps to voters sympathetic to our usual menu of fairness, redistribution and liberty.

So what are dedicated Lib Dems to do – wait for a …

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NewsHound

LibLink: Chris Rennard – The point of goverment

By NewsHound | Sat 18th September 2010 - 11:35 am

CommentIsFree has published a piece from Liberal Democrat peer Chris Rennard about the coalition, its future and what the party’s priorities should be. The Guardian has published an abbreviated version of the piece, the full version of which we publish here:

Liberals and Liberal Democrats became accustomed over many decades to attending our party conferences amidst media reports of the party’s imminent demise.  At one of the first that I attended, I remember the then Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe describing how the “Fleet Street hearse” regularly turned up to the Liberal Assembly but went away empty. The Lib Dem Conference …

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Mark Pack

Government as glorified semaphore team? No thanks

By Mark Pack | Sat 18th September 2010 - 8:57 am

I’ve decided which political cliché I most hate. It’s “it would send a strong signal…” along with its sibling “it would send the wrong signal” and its cousin “it would send the wrong message”.

Government is not just about money and regulation decisions; inspiring, questioning, warning and all manner of rhetoric have their role.

But don’t call for money or regulations just to signal something.

If the substance is right, justify the money or regulations on those grounds. And if you only want to send a signal, don’t summon up the law makers or accountants – summon up a good speech writer. If …

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Antony Hook

Opinion: a real chance to stop murder, torture and organised sexual violence in Burma

By Antony Hook | Fri 17th September 2010 - 6:39 pm

On 29 November 2003, a woman’s body was discovered near a farm by her husband and other people from her village. She was 20 years of age and her name was Naang Sa. She and her husband Zaai Leng had been approached, three days before, by 40 soldiers from the Burmese Army. Zaai Leng was tied up and Naang Sa was gang raped. The soldiers took her back to their base and her dead body was left at an unknown time during those three days, completely unconcealed, to be found by those who loved her.

Events such …

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