Category Archives: Op-eds

Stephen Tall

How the Westminster Village media is still struggling with concept of coalition

By Stephen Tall | Wed 21st July 2010 - 6:40 pm

It can be surprisingly easy to excite some journalists. Today is a case in point. Nick Clegg stood in for David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions. During his exchanges with Jack Straw (who was standing in for Labour’s Harriet Harman), the Deputy Prime Minister referred to the invasion of Iraq as “illegal”.

To most people watching this is not a surprise. The Lib Dems’ opposition to the Iraq war, which was supported by both Labour and the Tories, is pretty well-documented, I think it’s fair to say. The fact that the Lib Dems and Conservatives have reached a coalition agreement does not alter the past, nor does it alter politicians’ individual views. Why should it?

And yet the response from some journalists has been to label this a “gaffe” – a term otherwise known as a politician saying something he believes which a journalist hopes to be able to spin into a story.

Indeed, it’s interesting to see how a story like this can develop.

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Also posted in PMQs | Tagged , , , , , and | 56 Comments
George Gosling

Opinion: Ending the ban of gay men giving blood – a liberal cause in waiting

By George Gosling | Wed 21st July 2010 - 11:20 am

A new group of Facebook is picking up numbers and making itself known. It is called ‘We Want the Gay Blood Ban Debate’ and its speedy growth is impressive for a specifically Lib Dem campaign. It’s a campaign to try and force a debate at conference about the restrictions on who is fit to give blood.

Many people are not aware of the fact gay men can’t give blood. I am from personal experience. The week after the local nurse talked to my sixth form, a group of a dozen or more of us went to give blood together. For …

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Iain Roberts

Sloganizing the Liberal Democrats

By Iain Roberts | Wed 21st July 2010 - 10:20 am

Each of the two major parties enjoys the support of a substantial core of voters who are undisturbed by issues, candidates, meetings and literature…The typical voter is loyal to an “image” which his party has built up by annexing a limited range of sloganized issues.

Mark Abrams, 1951, reported by David Kynaston

The Lib Dem core vote has always been a lot lower than that of the other main parties, and has for some time stood at around 12%. Labour and the Conservatives have a core vote of around 30% of the population.

That gives those parties a huge advantage. …

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20 Comments
Baroness Joan Walmsley

Opinion: Get your facts right Polly

By Baroness Joan Walmsley | Wed 21st July 2010 - 9:20 am

In yesterday’s Guardian Polly Toynbee criticises “casual law-making by arbitrary diktat” in relation to the unseemly haste with which the Academies Bill is being shunted through the Commons. She claims the bill was “catapulted” through the Lords (where, by the way, we debated it for a full 31 hours!) and that there is now “no revising chamber: a redundant House of Lords whipped this Bill through with as little scrutiny as it will get in the Commons”. Wrong!

Far from being redundant, the House of Lords obtained five important amendments and numerous significant statements on the record, one of them …

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Also posted in Parliament | Tagged and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Where next for Lib-Lab cooperation?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 20th July 2010 - 12:35 pm

Two former Labour leadership possibles-never-contenders have talked in the past week about the future prospects for the Lib Dems and the Labour party forming a coalition at some point in the future. Their differing stances say a lot about the current state of British politics. But what they say about the future?

First up, John Denham, the shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary, who made plain his anger at the Lib Dems last week, according to a report in The Independent:

Labour would demand the resignation of Nick Clegg before doing a deal with the Liberal Democrats in a future hung

…

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Colin Challen

The Independent View: The government must go further on climate change

By Colin Challen | Tue 20th July 2010 - 11:50 am

Colin Challen was Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell 2001-2010 and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group:

I am living in hope that Chris Huhne has not been handed a poisoned chalice. From my time in parliament I know Chris to be a dedicated environmentalist who understands the issues as well as being open minded. Of course, as a former Labour MP I had differences of opinion, but on the substantive issues like the need for a proper global framework on climate change or the uselessness of nuclear power we were agreed. It is also true that on legislation …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Why suddenly telling the truth is damaging politics

By Mark Pack | Mon 19th July 2010 - 8:50 pm

It’s better that Labour figures are starting to tell the truth in public about the Brown-Blair infighting years than if they were continuing to claim they’d always got along fine, government had never been hindered and Blair loved the idea of Brown becoming Prime Minister.

However, telling the truth is, I fear, coming at a considerable cost to the reputation of politics. Because we’ve now got a succession of people saying, in effect, ‘Don’t bother with what I told the public at the time. Of course that was nonsense. The truth actually was the opposite’. That fits right with the very …

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Caron Lindsay

Florence and Precious Mhango – a campaign to prevent a mother and daughter being deported

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 19th July 2010 - 8:45 pm

By the time you read this, I’ll have been in a rainy Glasgow attending a humanitarian vigil in support of Florence and Precious Mhango.

This mother and her 10 year-old daughter have lived in the city for seven years since Florence left her husband because of his violence towards her. In that time they have become a much loved part of their local community. They currently face imminent deportation to Malawi after being refused asylum in this country.

If they are deported, Precious, who speaks only English, faces …

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10 Comments
Tim Farron MP

Graduate tax is the fairest way of abolishing tuition fees

By Tim Farron MP | Mon 19th July 2010 - 5:25 pm

I was one of the lucky ones. When I went to university in the late 1980s and early 1990s I didn’t have to pay tuition fees. I left for the world of work without thousands of pounds of student debt hanging over my head.

I would like nothing more than to be able to abolish fees for good and make universities free for all. But to suggest that it is possible to do so now wilfully ignores reality.

The fact is the higher education sector has changed beyond all recognition in just a few short years. Universities face a funding …

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George Kendall

Opinion: Genuine progressives should suggest cuts

By George Kendall | Mon 19th July 2010 - 12:50 pm

When I think of the coming spending review, I’m reminded of a migraine I had last year, which continued, not for days, but months. These cuts will hurt, and they’ll last for years. But it’s one thing to acknowledge that the cuts will be excruciatingly painful, it’s quite another to treat any cut as right-wing and regressive.

Continuing to borrow more and more isn’t progressive, it’s deeply selfish. Every year we delay cutting, compound interest racks up our debt, and we leave a bigger deficit and deeper cuts to the future.

Some economists argue that, to help the recovery,

…

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124 Comments
Lorely Burt

Opinion: Have you ever felt ripped off by your bank?

By Lorely Burt | Mon 19th July 2010 - 11:20 am

Have you ever felt ripped off by your bank? I’m not talking about the scandal of banker irresponsibility which has helped land us into the deepest recession in living memory. I’m talking about the sense of injustice you feel when you get your statement to discover you’ve been charged outrageous fees for having stepped over an agreed overdraft limit.

If this has happened to you, you’re in good company. Which? estimated that we paid over £4bn in unauthorised bank charges last year, averaging £120 from each one of us. If you go over your limit, even by a few pence, you’ll …

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Chris Nicholson

Opinion: The importance of ideas and policy

By Chris Nicholson | Sun 18th July 2010 - 4:50 pm

It is only a few months ago that my whole life, as Lib Dem PPC for Streatham, revolved around knocking on doors, meeting with community and tenant groups, delivering leaflets and doing casework. Nothing could seem more distant from the world I now inhabit, as Director and Chief Executive of CentreForum, of think tanks and discussions on reforming welfare or what the Big Society means.

But one thing which was clear from the election result on May 6th was that knocking on doors and putting hundreds of thousands of leaflets through letterboxes is not enough to win. Yes, ‘where we …

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David Thorpe

Opinion: Why a graduate tax is progressive

By David Thorpe | Sat 17th July 2010 - 6:20 pm

There has been at best, a muted response among Lib Dem members to the graduate tax proposals announced by Vince Cable on Thursday.

There appears to be a general agreement that these proposals are better than the status quo but not really ‘progressive’ and that the only really Liberal outcome is so-called free education.

It could however be argued that this phrase is a misnomer. Nothing is free. It may be free at the point of use, but it still has to be paid for. The suggestion of its advocates is that it be funded through general taxation, and specifically through a …

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Ben Johnson

Opinion: The Lib Dems need a better communications strategy

By Ben Johnson | Sat 17th July 2010 - 11:15 am

An opposition party can only be truly effective via the media. Government has its own spin and PR, but the opposition must cultivate this through good press stories for them and bad ones for the government.

Blair understood this better than anyone and used it to great advantage in the dying days of the Major administration, mostly through the fanaticism of Alastair Campbell.

Fast forward to today and a small party perpetually in opposition is now in government. When in opposition, projecting a clear party line was a key goal. For the Lib Dems in government, …

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Mark Pack

The Saturday debate: are public elections the only ones political parties should fight?

By Mark Pack | Sat 17th July 2010 - 9:20 am

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

Why should a political party restrict itself to fighting public elections? Why not also take part in the myriad of other elections that exist, including those for directors of companies?

Instead of complaining from the sidelines about how a council behaves, we fight elections to change its decisions and methods. The same logic could apply to companies, hospital trusts, housing bodies and may more, all of which – like the bodies we fight elections for – have significant power over communities and individuals.

Trying to …

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Opinion: Burqa ban splits the liberal minded

By LW | Fri 16th July 2010 - 1:50 pm

As a long time liberal, I was shocked, but perhaps not surprised, when I listened to the Today programme on my iPlayer earlier this week (I’m spending the summer in the US), and heard that the French parliament had voted to support legislation that would outlaw the wearing of the burqa and niqab in public places, including on the street, in France. Yet, many of my liberally-minded friends (well Liberal Democrat and Labour members) on Facebook were celebrating this action.

I know why people would argue that this is a positive action. As a young graduate, I started my first …

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Iain Roberts

Vince’s Graduate Tax is no easy win

By Iain Roberts | Fri 16th July 2010 - 11:20 am

Vince Cable yesterday floated the idea of a graduate tax to pay for university funding, as an alternative to top-up fees.

In the early 1960s, around 4% of young people went to university.  Today that’s nearly 50%.   Undergraduate education has changed beyond recognition over those fifty years and, with money tight, another government is having another attempt to sort out funding.  As Vince has made clear, a graduate tax is one option he wants considered.

Encouraging those with the ability

The UK has never quite cracked the problem of getting people from poorer backgrounds into higher education.   If you’re in the poorest …

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Ed Randall

Opinion: With Liverpool in my mind

By Ed Randall | Thu 15th July 2010 - 2:45 pm

A mistaken diagnosis that leads to mistaken and damaging policies: an invitation to Liberal Democrats to reflect on coalition policy before they meet in Liverpool in September.

The coalition government is committed to urgent fiscal retrenchment. Measures agreed between the coalition partners mean that the coalition has adopted £6 billion of ‘early’/Conservative public sector spending cuts, cuts that Liberal Democrats previously opposed.

The coalition’s emergency budget announced an increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20%, to be introduced at the beginning of 2011. The VAT rise was presented as an essential part of a plan to accelerate the elimination of a …

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26 Comments
Stephen Tall

What a difference three months makes #nickcleggsfault

By Stephen Tall | Thu 15th July 2010 - 11:20 am

Three months ago, Thursday, 15th April, witnessed the UK’s first televised debate between the main party leaders.

Here’s a reminder of the close of the first debate, which sparked ‘Cleggmania’ as well as the catchphrase “I agree with Nick”, and the subsequent Twitter hashtag craze #nickcleggsfault …

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Mark Pack

Campaigning isn’t just about leaflets: Talacre Gardens

By Mark Pack | Wed 14th July 2010 - 12:20 pm

At the weekend I popped over to Camden, to film Cllr Matt Sanders talking about campaigning in Talacre Gardens. It’s a great example of what local campaigning can achieve – working with residents to protect a green space – and how leaflets are a means to that end rather than an end in themselves. That’s a theme I’ll be returning to quite often over the summer as I co-write a new edition of the ‘how to win your ward’ book for ALDC, but in the meantime here’s the film:

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Mark Pack

What can success in other fields tell us about politics?

By Mark Pack | Wed 14th July 2010 - 10:20 am

First published in 2008, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers is a rebuttal of the traditional American emphasis on people’s success coming from the individual merit and triumph of exceptional humans as epitomised in the quote from Robert Winthorp who urged people at the unveiling of a statute of Benjamin Franklin to, “look at the image of a man who rose from nothing, who owned nothing to parentage or patronage, who enjoyed no advantages of early education which are not open – a hundredfold open – to yourselves”. Instead, Gladwell argues that although individual ability matters, it also requires three other crucial elements …

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Also posted in Books | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Prateek Buch

Opinion: Nanny no more – a real test of the Coalition

By Prateek Buch | Tue 13th July 2010 - 1:40 pm

It was inevitable, it had to happen at some point, the honeymoon couldn’t last forever (insert any other clichés you’d like to add); the Coalition government, drenched in soft summery praise in its opening weeks – enough to spark a nauseating case of cognitive dissonance in the case of Martin Kettle’s latest offering – had to face a stern test of its unity sooner or later, and now we have it. But I’m not talking about the referendum on electoral reform, nor about cuts to public services or even the VAT rise. No, I’m talking about Turkey Twizzlers, fizzy …

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Mark Pack

Being good ministers is not enough

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th July 2010 - 10:20 am

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve heard several Liberal Democrat ministers talk to groups of party members about how they are finding it in government. Although the personalities and the departmental challenges vary in many ways, several common themes have come out.

One is a credit to the team behind Yes Minister; it is still the default frame of reference for talking about how the British civil service behaves and everyone says they can recognise parts of the behaviour the TV series satirised several decades ago in the current behaviour of civil servants. Not too much, but still some.

Another theme …

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21 Comments
Chris White

Opinion: a conference of cuts

By Chris White | Mon 12th July 2010 - 4:20 pm

Last week saw Bournemouth hosting the thirteenth Local Government Association annual conference. These conferences started in 1997, shortly after the election of a shiny new Labour Government.

Delegates do a double take: LGA conferences take place in the same places as party conferences but you find that you are standing at the bar with people from other parties. And council officers.

Altogether the LGA version is less intense and, shall we say, less exuberant than the annual outings of the major political parties (although until last year London Councils put on a disco – a bit like the Glee Club but …

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Opinion: the Lib Dem identity crisis

By Ben Maconick | Mon 12th July 2010 - 12:20 pm

Most parties have identity crises after being kicked out of power; we are having one upon gaining it for the first time. This crisis is not an internal one, as most Liberal Democrats seem to be holding firm, but rather a crisis of what the public perceive us to be. Tough decisions of power have meant for our long term electoral success, our basic thinking and ideology needs to be made clearer to the public.

Having voted for the first time this general election, I found many of my first time voter friends simply did not know what the Liberal …

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69 Comments
Iain Roberts

Time to scrap P.E. targets for schools

By Iain Roberts | Mon 12th July 2010 - 10:20 am

The SNP government in Scotland has come under fire – again – for missing its self-imposed target that every child do two hours of formal P.E. a week. Only 35% of primaries and 23% of secondaries have achieved the two hour goal.

But why have the target at all? What’s it actually achieving? Surely it’s sensible to only impose this sort of national target when there’s clear evidence of benefit.

Will two hours of P.E. make our young people more lithe and reduce obesity? Not according to the evidence.

A study published in the BMJ journal Archives for …

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The Voice

Opinion: The Government approach to sex education must be liberal, not conservative

By The Voice | Sun 11th July 2010 - 4:15 pm

A comprehensive program of sex education is desperately needed across the British schooling system. The current efforts to amend the embarrassing lack of effective classes in our schools are simply not good enough, and we are allowing young people to be educated not by qualified teachers in a safe teaching environment, but on the internet, where young people now have unparalleled access to pornographic material.

Those who argue that sex education erodes childhood innocence are clearly blind to the sad reality; if we allow ourselves to ignore this issue because of our own embarrassment, the generations of the future will …

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19 Comments
Daniel Furr

Opinion: John Prescott and the unions, voices of Labour’s rapid decline

By Daniel Furr | Sun 11th July 2010 - 9:20 am

Labour is not taking to opposition very well. Partisan points of orders, revisionist attitudes to the fiscal situation and demanding the coalition praises their formers leaders. And now we see Labour figures demanding voters to see a referendum, on the principle of a fairer voting system, as a “confidence vote on the coalition.”

By asking the public for their ideas and recommendations for public sector cuts, the Coalition Government has intelligently put the Labour party in an uncomfortable place. The unions are threatening general strikes and the average voter recognises the ideological and partisan attitude of the union movement. The “union …

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Jason Mehmet

Opinion: National influence, international irrelevance?

By Jason Mehmet | Sat 10th July 2010 - 5:45 pm

I remember the day I self-identified as a Liberal Democrat. I was a teenager, perhaps 16 or 17, (disclosure: I’m now in my mid 30s) and was actually watching a political debate that was taking place on what was, at the time, ‘yoof’ TV.

The three main parties were represented. I can’t recall who the other two people were, but the stand-out performance was from Simon Hughes.  Everything he said just made sense and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why the Liberal Democrats were not in Government.  This was the point at which I became politically aware.

I can’t …

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Stephen Tall

If Cameron is “potentially the best all-round prime minister of the modern era”, it’s thanks to the Coalition

By Stephen Tall | Sat 10th July 2010 - 10:45 am

That’s the hyperbolic claim of The Guardian’s Martin Kettle:

These are still very early days. The coalition has to get through difficult votes on AV and negotiate the most difficult spending round in a generation. The economy may tank. Yet in these first weeks even opponents should concede that Cameron has played a blinder. He is showing himself as potentially the best all-round prime minister of the modern era. Labour’s hopefuls should learn from him. No doubt about it, Cameron wins this season’s political golden boot.

Wildly OTT? Yes. But it’s not completely without its justification. For example, Mr Kettle points …

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