Category Archives: Op-eds

Richard Morris

Opinion: A Mayoral candidate in waiting?‏

By Richard Morris | Sat 23rd October 2010 - 9:23 am

With the launch of the shortlist of candidates for the London Assembly top up list, every good (London) Lib Dem’s thoughts should be turning to the Mayoral election – and who can we get to stand.

While there are probably excellent reasons why we’ve postponed the process for up to a year (leaving any approved candidates feeling – well, bruised at best), our two main rivals have their candidates in place and are already slugging it out. So I’m feeling a little left in the cold. And with the party polling 4% (!!!) in the latest Mayoral polling we probably need to name a candidate sooner rather than later.

The criteria seem clear:

  1. Someone who can actually win (wouldn’t that be nice?)
  2. A name that’s as well known as his/her rivals
  3. Someone who already represents Londoners and understands their issues
  4. A candidate who gets the City of London – but isn’t in their pockets.
  5. Perhaps someone who isn’t 100% happy in their current post – maybe someone who finds himself having to present policies he doesn’t 100% believe in and work with colleagues he doesn’t 100% trust? And is probably getting a little fed up with all the mudslinging going on at the moment, with much of it aimed at them.

It’s Vince isn’t it?

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Also posted in London | Tagged and | 29 Comments
Tom King

Opinion: cuts in welfare are the hallmark of a selfish society

By Tom King | Fri 22nd October 2010 - 10:45 am

During the Conservative Party Conference, George Osborne announced a simple change to child benefit. He took a difficult and historic decision to remove payments to households with at least one higher rate taxpayer, saving an estimated £1 billion of public money from going directly to the highest paid 12% in our society.

In what turned out to be my last blog post, I railed – somewhat hysterically – against the reaction to this modest cut. It was clear that the right wing press would oppose such a move. But what was less clear, and more galling, was the way the …

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Tagged , , , , and | 44 Comments
Alex Marsh

Opinion: self-denying … and self-defeating?

By Alex Marsh | Thu 21st October 2010 - 5:45 pm

It may have been a “miserable little compromise” back in April but AV would now appear to be the big prize. The coalition has to hold together, whatever the cost, at least long enough to allow a vote on electoral reform. But will the way we get from here to there impact significantly upon what happens when we get there?

Only those on the inside know what’s actually happening, but there are many competing readings of how things are playing out coalition-wise.

The most challenging reading for many Lib Dems is that the displays of unity between the coalition partners are …

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Tagged and | 25 Comments
Antony Hook

Opinion: why we need a European Public Prosecutor

By Antony Hook | Thu 21st October 2010 - 4:21 pm

There are serious cross-border criminals at large in Europe damaging the lives of innocent people. A certain numbers of them are more likely to be dealt with when a European Public Prosecutor is created. The British Government needs to escape the defensive dug-out epitomised by Blair’s “red lines” and fight for the good that co-operation in Europe can bring for all our people. This is a time for leadership.

A federal public prosecutor is provided for in the Treaty of Lisbon with a distinct emphasis on financial crime. I use the f-word, federal, because while it has …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged | 4 Comments
Jonathan Featonby

Opinion: Chris Bryant is right, though he doesn’t know why

By Jonathan Featonby | Thu 21st October 2010 - 2:43 pm

As I write, Chris Bryant is arguing during the Whole House committee for the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that a method for drawing up constituency boundaries that is severely confined by a mathematical formula is misguided.

I completely agree, although possibly for a different reason to the one he uses to support his argument.

Mr Bryant has been arguing that a strict mathematical formula will have to ignore natural geographical and physical boundaries.

It’s true: to bring in the Bill as it stands will create constituencies that are almost constantly shifting and where previously combined communities may very well find themselves …

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Tagged , and | 1 Comment
John Fraser

Opinion: deficit reduction or political dogma?

By John Fraser | Thu 21st October 2010 - 1:14 pm

The effect of the ‘savage’ cuts as Nick Clegg called them last September are gradually becoming apparent over the course of the week. What both parts of the coalition insist is that these cuts are about deficit reduction and not a deliberate effort to roll back the state. There is a major aspect to these cuts however which are making this very difficult to believe.

If cuts were purely to balance the books, and the economic forecasts of the coalition were correct, there would come a time possibly during a hypothetical second parliament when some of the cuts could …

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Tagged | 73 Comments
Andrew Stunell MP

Andrew Stunell writes… Myth-busting: what the Coalition’s plans for houses really mean

By Andrew Stunell MP | Thu 21st October 2010 - 12:32 pm

There has been a lot of talk over the last few months about the Coalition’s plans for social housing. Much has been written, and most of it has been wrong, as illustrated by Dominic Curran’s piece on Lib Dem Voice yesterday. This piece is intended to explain what we are actually doing, rather than what the Labour party, and their friends in the media want you to think we’re doing.

Firstly, we will be increasing social housing supply by more each year than Labour achieved in thirteen years added together.  That’s because Labour sold off almost as many houses as …

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Tagged and | 41 Comments
David Thorpe

Opinion: Quantitative Easing would be a grave mistake

By David Thorpe | Thu 21st October 2010 - 11:03 am

The recent comments from Bank Of England Governor Mevyn King , regarding the possibility of quantitative easing make little sense in the context of the Coalition’s current economic strategy and are contrary to broad Lib Dem principals.

The pre-election debate on the economy centred on whether the recovery was strong enough at present to sustain cuts, it is the opinion of Lib Dems, and a view I agree with, that the economy is strong enough to sustain such an action.

This view can be boiled down to believing that the level of aggregate demand in the economy has reached a point …

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Tagged | 29 Comments
David Thorpe

Opinion: 108 Not Out – why do we need so many Ministers?

By David Thorpe | Wed 20th October 2010 - 4:25 pm

In the heated pre election days when a Lib Dem and Tory Coalition seemed a remote possibility, there appeared to be few areas of ideological common ground between the parties.

But one area where the parties seemed to agree, and not just the leadership of the parties, but all apparent wings contained within both the future coalition parties, was that there was a need to shrink the size of government.

The recession has given this ideological standpoint a root in pragmatism, and as the Comprehensive Spending review announces cuts to everything from quangos to benefits and prisons, the question must surely be …

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Also posted in News | 17 Comments
George Kendall

Opinion: we shouldn’t blame the banks

By George Kendall | Wed 20th October 2010 - 3:17 pm

Conventional wisdom says that the deficit is all the fault of dodgy lending by the banks. But is it? If there had been no financial crisis, just a correction at the end of a credit bubble, would the deficit have disappeared?

The recession has certainly caused a temporary deficit. We’ve seen a reduction in GDP of about six per cent, and unemployment up to two and a half million. The temporary effects of the recession, a higher spending on benefits and reduced tax revenue, account for around £50bn of the deficit. But this will disappear as the economy recovers.

In response …

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Tagged and | 117 Comments
Dominic Curran

Opinion: Council Housing – our role in its downfall

By Dominic Curran | Wed 20th October 2010 - 12:17 pm

Housing is not an issue of Conservatism or Socialism. It is an issue of Humanity

The Conservative Minister for Housing said that. In the 1950s. His name was Harold Macmillan, and he oversaw more than 300,000 homes built every year of that decade, two thirds of which were council homes.

Those words were spoken in a time when there was a consensus that the state should step in where there had been a market failure, and to ensure that everybody who wanted a decent home could afford one. Fast forward fifty years and what has happened that concrete and brick foundation …

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Tagged , and | 54 Comments
Stuart Wilks-Heeg

The Independent View: Party funding: yes, another review really is necessary

By Stuart Wilks-Heeg | Wed 20th October 2010 - 11:20 am

The next 12 months will be crucial to the coalition’s promise to reform party funding and ‘take big money out of politics’. An inquiry, to be conducted under the auspices of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, is already underway and will report in spring 2011, to be followed by inter-party talks.

It could be asked whether we need yet another review. Between 2005 and 2007, three separate reviews highlighted the need for reform, with the inter-party talks which followed the Hayden Phillips review in late 2007 coming close to securing agreement. Some, including Phillips himself, have argued …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Iain Roberts

Cutting spending back to 2006 levels will be tough, but it has to be done

By Iain Roberts | Wed 20th October 2010 - 11:12 am

The cuts that will be proposed today by the Coalition Government will not reduce the national debt.  Over the next four years, the debt will continue to grow.  After four years, if all goes according to plan, it will stop growing.  By that time it will already be a lot higher than it is today.

We, as a country, are currently adding £400 million a day to that national debt.  That’s £400 million that we, and our children, will need to cover the interest payments on until  it’s paid off.  For every three pounds the Government raises in tax, it currently …

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Tagged | 38 Comments
Dawn Barnes

Opinion: Browne review is a perfect opportunity

By Dawn Barnes | Tue 19th October 2010 - 5:04 pm

At conference I spoke about the importance of retaining our character in coalition and the importance of having distinctive policies to ensure that, come the next election, people remain clear about the Liberal Democrats and what we stand for.

The Browne review on university funding and tuition fees gives us the perfect opportunity to differentiate ourselves from the other parties.

We have campaigned against tuition fees for years, while Labour introduced them and raised them and the Conservatives seek to create a free market model for our universities.

Part of the coalition agreement included allowing the Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain from …

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Tagged , , and | 28 Comments
Simon de Deney

Opinion: can the Pupil Premium only ever score 23%?

By Simon de Deney | Tue 19th October 2010 - 4:15 pm

This may come as a shock if you’re a dedicated school governor. You see, I have a confession. I was in a governors’ conference last year and my attention wandered. During the keynote speech, no less. In fact, it didn’t just wander; I found the speaker so baffling that I resorted to doing maths.

I’ve been fascinated – obsessed even – with how you help children from disadvantaged, sometimes chaotic, homes make the progress they should at primary school (I’m Chair of Governors at a Hackney primary school with a culturally rich, but, on the whole, economically challenged intake). Now, obviously, …

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Tagged | 13 Comments
Merlene Emerson

Opinion: Let’s put the C back in the FCO (in celebration of Black History Month)

By Merlene Emerson | Tue 19th October 2010 - 2:10 pm

The Commonwealth Games ended last week. This probably means that the Commonwealth will not be mentioned in the media for another 4 years. But surely there should be more to the vestiges of the British empire than mere staging of the Commonwealth Games? What does the Commonwealth actually do in this day and age and is it still relevant?

Representing a quarter of the world’s governments, a third of its population and a fifth of global trade, this network of 54 countries is a diverse community. Yet we share many common traits, not least the use of …

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Tagged , and | 12 Comments
Phil Willis

Phil Willis writes: fighting the right battles over Higher Education

By Phil Willis | Tue 19th October 2010 - 1:15 pm

That Lord Browne’s conveniently delayed report ‘SECURING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION’ recommends a significant shift for the funding of university teaching from the state to the student or graduate is hardly surprising. Indeed in January 2004 when the introduction of ‘variable fees’ was pushed through the House by Alan Johnson I stated ‘the reality is that by 2009 it will not be possible to go back to a system of state funding our universities with flat-rate fees’.

I genuinely believed that to be the case then and despite the most noble of efforts by the Liberal Democrats to …

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Chris White

Chris White reports: a radical approach to localism

By Chris White | Tue 19th October 2010 - 12:27 pm

I have long thought that Party policy making has tended to be elitist and untransparent. In my own little universe – FPC’s Localism working group – I am keen to change this.

So the papers of the group are now being shared with anyone who put a card in for the Localism debate in Liverpool.

And I will update party members and activists in places like Lib Dem Voice.

We met on 6 October and looked at a new draft of the paper. Our previous thinking is now deeply influenced by the change in the political landscape, not least the Localism Bill due …

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Tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Our Christmas presents guide

By Mark Pack | Tue 19th October 2010 - 10:26 am

Wondering what to get people for Christmas presents? Here’s a selection of what various Liberal Democrat bloggers suggest:

Jonathan Calder recommends Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music by Rob Young: “Anyone with an interest in folk music will find this book engrossing. Young traces the rise of the genre from Cecil Sharp and other Edwardian song collectors like Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth, through the post-war radialism of Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker, to its electronic heyday in the hands of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. He finds the visionary spirit living on in unlikely artists such as …

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Stephen Tall

“Loathe this government if you will…” – 4 points following on from Julian Glover’s must-read Guardian article

By Stephen Tall | Mon 18th October 2010 - 7:45 pm

Julian Glover, writing for The Guardian’s Comment Is Free, puts forward a trenchantly pro-Coalition, pro-Clegg line — one that’s guaranteed to attract the ire both of Guardianistas, and of some Voice readers, too. This excerpt offers the substnance of his argument:

Loathe this government if you will, but at least acknowledge that neither side in it got all it wanted at the election and that neither has sold out all of its principles. The strangeness of co-operation exposes its component parts to the easiest of attacks: of promising one thing before an election and doing another after it. But as

…

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Tagged , and | 100 Comments
Mark Thompson

Opinion: our ministers need to communicate better – and fast

By Mark Thompson | Mon 18th October 2010 - 4:02 pm

I have previously been a big supporter of the coalition government.

During the negotiations back in May I wrote that we should take the Tory deal for the good of the country and that it was effectively the only game in town.

I was also supportive of many of the actions taken in the early days of the government including the decision to focus more heavily on reducing the deficit. I broadly accepted the arguments that the government as a whole have used to justify this.

I have not blogged myself since the start of August but have found myself in mid-October …

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Tagged , , , and | 34 Comments
John Roffey

Opinon: the unchallenged global free market

By John Roffey | Mon 18th October 2010 - 1:55 pm

Although the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, which completed the UK’s political union with the EU, is a change which significantly disenfranchised the electorate our surrender to the global free market and all that it entails occurred far less obviously and has had a much greater obvious impact.

The promise of this free market is that the whole of the world’s population can share in the affluence which has been, until now, the prerogative of the West. I pointed out in my article concerning the minimum wage that the seeking out of the cheapest labour by the global corporations …

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Tagged | 33 Comments
Mark Pack

Cyberwarfare: if it’s such a big threat, why…

By Mark Pack | Mon 18th October 2010 - 1:22 pm

Nick Carthew posed the provocative question  on Twitter earlier today:

If cyberwarfare is the biggest threat in the 21st century why do we need to renew our nuclear deterrent? http://bit.ly/bNkBXn

There are of course a range of nuances to that question which can’t be squeezed into one tweet, but at its heart is a spot-on observation.

On the one hand, we’re now often told how internet hacking poses one of the biggest threats to our country’s future security and how illegal activities such as the hijacking of computers via bots are widespread and an extremely profitable form of crime.

On …

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Tagged | 9 Comments
David Allen

Opinion: a real Student Premium – the smart solution to the fees conundrum?

By David Allen | Mon 18th October 2010 - 11:55 am

If we want to change Coalition policy, we have to understand why Tories are so keen on high variable fees. It isn’t about the deficit.  As usual, that is a smokescreen.  It’s about the Tory philosophy of creating a marketplace in education. It is very important to the Tories that they should saddle the student with debt, hung around his or her individual neck. A graduate tax, which feels less threatening, is not good enough for just that reason.  If it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working.
 
The market achieves two key Tory goals.  It forces weak universities to improve …

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Tagged , and | 16 Comments
Iain Roberts

Our ministers can’t always follow party policy

By Iain Roberts | Mon 18th October 2010 - 8:10 am

The issue of tuition fees has raised a more general challenge the party needs to get its head round. This one’s been bubbling away quietly since the Lib Dems entered the Coalition and we seem no closer to an answer now than we were then.

Are our Government ministers bound by party policy?

When one of our ministers is formulating what the UK Government should do on a specific issue, or setting out the Lib Dem bargaining position to get the best final deal, how far should that minister be reaching for a party policy document rather than using their own …

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Also posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | 38 Comments
Geoff Crocker

Opinion: revisit economic theory before cutting the real economy

By Geoff Crocker | Sun 17th October 2010 - 4:31 pm

The UK is now in a great rush to reduce GDP in order to reduce the financial deficit. But before we frame economic policy, we need to revisit  economic theory, in particular the theory of money and macroeconomic demand theory.

On the theory of money

Money is an artefact, not a real physical commodity. It does not obey the laws of thermodynamics – it can be created and destroyed. The idea that macroeconomic budgets have to be balanced is a category error. It takes a microeconomic simplicity, that individuals or firms have to balance their budgets, and falsely transfers this to macroeconomics. …

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Tagged and | 43 Comments
Fred Carver

Opinion: What the US midterms do (and don’t) mean for the Liberal Democrats

By Fred Carver | Sun 17th October 2010 - 2:44 pm

I’ve heard a few Liberal Democrats express concern about the mid-term election results. The fear, as it has been expressed to me, is that Cleggmania had a lot of superficial similarities to Obamamania – it was a campaign based on hope, by a progressive liberal who offered something new, and it led to the formation of a government. Seeing Obamamania apparently swept away in a surge of vehemently conservative tea-partyers, several Lib Dems fear that the same fate could befall them at the next election.
I think this is simplistic.

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Also posted in LDVUSA | Tagged | 9 Comments
Ed Randall

Opinion: pots and kettles – names and games and a journey towards political maturity

By Ed Randall | Sun 17th October 2010 - 1:11 pm

Michael Collins, a lecturer in twentieth century British history at UCL, has predicted at Open Democracy–Tuition fees just the beginning of Lib Dem troubles that the “SDP contingent” in the Liberal Democrats faces an existential battle with “coalition Liberals” over the future of the party.

Collins’ fantasy Lib Dem politics isn’t very convincing but there are a growing number of matching accounts, which mirror his portrayal of Liberal Democrat division, include accusations of unprincipled behaviour and go on to predict the party’s demise. It seems reasonable to respond to Collins’ account of ‘Lib Dem troubles’ with a little history and …

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Tagged , , , , and | 17 Comments

Opinion: in favour of the Browne report

By Simon Kaye | Sun 17th October 2010 - 10:43 am

Back in 2004, when New Labour reformed higher education funding, most Liberal Democrats opposed the changes. I favoured them. ‘Top-up fees’ were, and still are, a liberal solution to higher education funding. Lord Browne’s recommendations don’t change that. Liberal Democrats should think twice before opposing whatever package of reforms is presented to us in the coming weeks.

The central principle – retrospective fee-payment – is, to my mind, a small work of genius. Liberals are always poised between the principles of freedom (self-ownership and personal rights), and fairness (universal equality of opportunity as a very minimum). Higher education is thus a …

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Tagged , and | 38 Comments
Matt Gallagher

Opinion: an alternative to cuts? Be careful what you wish for

By Matt Gallagher | Sat 16th October 2010 - 5:03 pm

While canvassing in South Manchester I have met a number of people who do not accept that cuts are necessary on the scale suggested by the government. The common mantra is that the banks who caused the collapse should be made to pay, not the taxpayer, or, by implication, the poor who rely on the taxpayer.

Telling people on the doorstep about the Banking Levy meets with the response that this has not stopped bankers receiving enormous bonuses. Reminding them that 50% of these bonuses end up in the treasury is just as ineffective. The public seem to want more. They …

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