Category Archives: Op-eds

Charlie Garnett

Opinion: A vote for the Lib Dems is a vote for the Lib Dems

By Charlie Garnett | Thu 22nd April 2010 - 3:30 pm

A vote for the Lib Dems is a vote for the Lib Dems. It is not a vote for the Conservative or Labour Parties. It is not a way of ‘Letting Gordon in through the backdoor’, or of tacitly consenting to a Cameroonian ‘DIY’ society. It is a vote for the Lib Dems.

Since the debates, the other two main parties have woken up to the idea that people may genuinely want a change in British Politics but, whether because they are deliberately obtuse or have simply been too well conditioned by their duopoly on power, neither seems able to grasp …

Continue reading »
Tagged | 5 Comments

Opinon: Osborne should not belittle public sector workers

By Golden Sarah | Thu 22nd April 2010 - 2:44 pm

As a public sector worker I was extremely disheartened and have to question George Osborne’s analysis of the public sector which he dismissed in an arrogant and superficial manner. This is the organisation that will have to implement the policies of any incoming government and George, for all his political ambition, does not appreciate the sector’s commitment to duty and society.

The ‘low morale‘ that he refers to among 40% of public sector staff is directly as a result of the uncertainty that we are all living under as to whether we will have jobs still in the …

Continue reading »
Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Malcolm Wood

Opinion: A weapon we could use?

By Malcolm Wood | Thu 22nd April 2010 - 11:36 am

When Nick Clegg made the case for scrapping Trident in Thursday’s debate, his case was that it was too expensive, and designed for a threat that no longer exists. And the predictable response was to accuse Nick of being soft on defence. But there are more fundamental problems with the type of defence offered by Trident.

Trident provides “defence” only in a very limited sense. It’s actually just a “deterrent”. It can’t shoot down incoming missiles or turn back advancing enemy armies. Its point is to dissuade an enemy from attacking us in the first …

Continue reading »
Tagged | 49 Comments
Stephen Tall

Torygraph smears Clegg: is this the best the rightwing press can do?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 21st April 2010 - 11:35 pm

Tomorrow’s Daily Torygraph has the absolutely D-E-V-A-S-T-A-T-I-N-G story that before Nick Clegg became Lib Dem leader he received donations from donors which he declared in the MPs’ register of interests in order to pay a researcher on his staff. Shock, horror etc.

The story is here. It shows that three Lib Dem donors, Ian Wright, Neil Sherlock and Michael Young – all of them registered Lib Dem donors – paid £250 each per month directly into Nick’s personal bank account. The figures were contained in personal bank statements submitted by Nick to the House of Commons. It was officially declared …

Continue reading »
Also posted in General Election | Tagged , and | 46 Comments
Christopher Lomax

Opinion: The opposite of a heated debate

By Christopher Lomax | Wed 21st April 2010 - 5:45 pm

For four years now I’ve steered clear of blogs and online forums. If you look at the kind of people who seem to spend their time posting at the bottom of the BBC websites, you’ll perhaps share my sense that those are the places where the freaks hang out.

I only started looking at this site a few days ago, but I haven’t see any of that sort of thing here yet. I’ve always thought that this party is where the calm and sensible debate is had. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that Nick Clegg did well in that style of …

Continue reading »
5 Comments

Opinion: The perils of candidateitis

By Tony Woods | Wed 21st April 2010 - 2:20 pm

In the last few days the tectonic plates of British politics appear to have shifted. The slow growth of the Liberal Democrats over nearly half a century is finally exerting massive pressure on the old duopoly. A sprinkling of Nick Clegg’s fairy dust may just have been enough to trigger a political earthquake.

The arguments are well known. Britain has one of the largest Liberal votes in Europe but our electoral system ensures one of the lowest Liberal representations. It actively preserves the old duopoly. But the unfairness goes much further. If the current …

Continue reading »
Also posted in General Election | 8 Comments

Can we keep things Clegg-tastic for 2 more weeks?

By David Lawson | Wed 21st April 2010 - 9:50 am

We have basked in a warm glow of new glory for a few days now. Or at least if you get your news from TV and radio we have. The newspaper review has been a bit less enthusiastic – or downright hostile and biased, depending on your point of view.

The weekend papers showed the problem we face in the next two-and-a-bit weeks. The Mail on Sunday gave us a double spread. Headlines included “Is there ANYTHING British about Lib Dem leader?”. “Most would vote Orange … but they will get Brown” and “Billionaire convicted of fraud …

Continue reading »
Also posted in General Election | 10 Comments
Antony Hook

Opinion: Volcano! Will Europe erupt as an election issue?

By Antony Hook | Tue 20th April 2010 - 8:45 pm

Part of our shared European heritage is Ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, where Hephaestus (called Vulcan in Rome) was the god of fire and controller of volcanoes. He was born after his mother was impregnated by a spark from a fire.

Thousands of years later, in last Thursday’s debate, Nick Clegg provided a spark to our national imagination that was more potent than any of us dared to dream.

Now we read that our opponents will try to make Europe the issue of the general election. The same strategy failed badly …

Continue reading »
7 Comments
Ed Randall

Opinion: Baleful – keeping our heads despite the ‘debate tsunami’

By Ed Randall | Tue 20th April 2010 - 4:50 pm

The fact that Tim Bale, an academic from Sussex University and author of The Conservative Party; From Thatcher to Cameron, is represented in the FT as attempting to answer a silly question about the Liberal Democrats illustrates the extraordinary nature of the ‘debate tsunami’ that has struck British politics. It also serves to underline the need to resist any temptation (limited I know so far as most Liberal Democrats are concerned) to build castles in the air, on the basis of a few days of post ‘debate’ polling.

Bale’s piece is entitled: ‘Lib Dem Revival not yet a Revolution’. There is, of course, a slight problem with the …

Continue reading »
Tagged | 5 Comments
The Voice

Can the surge last? Lib Dem bloggers give their views …

By The Voice | Tue 20th April 2010 - 2:35 pm

Lib Dems leading the election race, and polling above 30% – that’s not a line (m)any of us expected to be able to type with a straight face. But it’s the present reality. The questions is: can the Lib Dem surge last? Here’s what a handful of Lib Dem bloggers think …

James Graham

Anyone who claims to know what will happen electorally next month simply doesn’t know what they are talking about. But there are a number of reasons to suggest that the Liberal Democrats’ poll leap over the weekend might last.

Firstly, polls tend to be mutually reinforcing. This is why some countries ban them during election time. The same factor which has reinforced the Lib Dems’ image as no-hopers in the past might well work in our favour now, especially since it is such a dramatic development.

Continue reading »
Tagged , , and | 49 Comments
Stephen Tall

The Lib Dem poll surge: temporary blip, or political earthquake?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 20th April 2010 - 12:00 pm

Cross-posted from the International Business Times:

Forget a week being a long time in politics. In this hyped-up, ultra-connected world 90 minutes on television can see your electoral fortunes transformed. And so it is that, as I write, the Lib Dems have just been placed in the lead in the opinion polls for the first in the party’s modern history, with 33% of the vote, leading the Tories on 32% and Labour slipping back to just 26%.

This is heady stuff for a party accustomed to being sidelined by the national media as a distracting irrelevance from two-party politics. …

Continue reading »
Also posted in General Election | 3 Comments
Eleanor Black

The Independent View: Tory plan for marriage tax allowance flies in face of what Lib Dems stand for

By Eleanor Black | Tue 20th April 2010 - 10:40 am

David Cameron’s policy to give £3 a week in marriage tax allowance to a third of married couples is to ‘send a signal’ that marriage is better than any other type of relationship. Today, a new campaign launched to ‘send a signal’ back: don’t judge my family.

Inspired by JK Rowlings’ attack on the policy last week, The Don’t Judge My Family campaign (www.dontjudgemyfamily.com) is seeing people sign up in droves. The issue has clearly touched a nerve: in just a few days 1,500 people had signed up to the Facebook page, before the website had even …

Continue reading »
Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Ed Randall

Opinion: Fair taxes – radical and challenging Liberal Democrat plans

By Ed Randall | Mon 19th April 2010 - 1:50 pm

Stuart Adam and Mike Brewer of the Institute of Fiscal Studies argue, in their April ‘observations’ piece on Liberal Democrat tax cutting policies, that it is meaningless to make the claim that the poor pay more of their income in tax than the rich.

However, no sooner do they make this observation than they go on to confirm that official statistics show this is the case. No one, they explain, disputes the ONS data which shows that the poorest fifth of households paid 38.7% of their income in tax. Neither is there any dispute that this compares with a tax take of £25,926 or 34.9% from …

Continue reading »
Tagged | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

According to the Daily Mail, I’m a foreigner

By Mark Pack | Mon 19th April 2010 - 11:20 am

Given the Mail on Sunday’s story casting aspertions on Nick Clegg for not being properly British in their eyes (“His wife is Spanish, his mother Dutch, his father half-Russian and his spin doctor German. Is there ANYTHING British about Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg?”) now seems a good time to revive a post I wrote on a previous occasion when the Mail took to defining British:

As Sunder Katwala has pointed out, the Daily Mail has said it thinks it is a mistake for people who were born here but whose parents where born overseas to be counted as

…

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 17 Comments
Mark Pack

How do people really think?

By Mark Pack | Mon 19th April 2010 - 10:20 am

The last edition of ALDC’s Campaigner before the start of the election contained this piece from me:

Knowing why people vote the way they do is tough. It’s not just because people may be reluctant to be honest to others about their motivations, but people are also often bad at understanding themselves.

In fact, one of the findings increasingly coming out from research into how we make decisions is that often we make a decision using our subconscious and only afterwards come up with a justification for it. Our subconscious decides, our conscious rationalises.

It is an intriguing – and in some ways, scary – finding that is best illustrated by a clever experiment where people were shown two photographs of similar, but different, people. They were asked to pick which one they thought was the most attractive. They were then given that photograph and asked to explain the reason for their decision.

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Ed Randall

Opinion: It’s all very well agreeing now Gordon, but after 13 years how can your party be the change we need?

By Ed Randall | Sun 18th April 2010 - 6:10 pm

I think Nick is right – we need change”
Gordon Brown to Andrew Marr (18th April 2010)

Gordon Brown keeps agreeing with Nick Clegg but he doesn’t seem to understand where this agreement is leading. It leads directly to the following question, for the man who now admits he has had one damascene experience after another: “How can you or your party be the change we need?”

Gordon Brown has long had trouble reading the runes (and much else besides). He says he has been appalled by dishonest dealing in the City. He admits that he personally should have done better in …

Continue reading »
6 Comments
The Voice

The Cut-Out Debate Question … How would you change a broken light bulb?

By The Voice | Sun 18th April 2010 - 4:40 pm

The Voice is grateful to Saoirse Cathal Kavan – a member of the Facebook group We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office! which is growing at a quite astonishing rate (over 80,000 members) – for allowing us to publish this alternative take on the leaders’ debate …

Tim from Bristol: If you were to come into power, how would your party change a broken light bulb?

Nick: We’d ensure that the people have the power to replace light bulbs when they break and also see to it that replacement light bulbs are

…

Continue reading »
Also posted in Humour | 1 Comment
Fred Carver

Opinion: Making the case for liberal interventionism

By Fred Carver | Sun 18th April 2010 - 11:00 am

I’ve just had the following article published in the “Rhode Island Provident” of all places:

You would be forgiven for having been taken by surprise by the revolution in Kyrgyzstan. A few Scrabble enthusiasts may have been rubbing their hands at the news that (now that Mattel are allowing the use of proper nouns) the tiny mountainous nation in Central Asia will earn you 80 points for just one vowel – more if you can snag a triple word score tile. However, for the most part Kyrgyzstan has been unnoticed by the rest of the world.

It is now the site of

…

Continue reading »
Tagged | 9 Comments
Dom Newton

A new party in Defence of the Realm?

By Dom Newton | Sat 17th April 2010 - 5:20 pm

I was really pleased to hear Nick Clegg raise the issue of Trident and the treatment of our troops during the first TV debate. For too long, the defence debate has been dominated by the Tories, claiming to be the only party who understands defence, and Labour who are happy to use troops but aren’t interested in where they live, how much they’re paid or what happens to them when they get home.

Successive defence reviews in the 1990s tore the heart out of the military without really addressing the key issue of what armed forces are used for …

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 2 Comments

Opinion: Yes, we can – let’s go for gold!

By Stephen Chidgey | Sat 17th April 2010 - 10:30 am

How many times are we reminded and told the Liberal Democrats can’t and won’t win, or that a Liberal Democrat vote is a wasted vote? Too many times, I suggest.

It’s a message that was suggested glibly by none other than John Humphreys on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme earlier this week, in a blatantly unfair remark. Too often the BBC, which is supposed to be impartial, allows commentators to deride and discount the Lib Dems as somehow irrelevant compared to the other two major parties.

It really is time to challenge such comments, and, in the aftermath of Nick …

Continue reading »
9 Comments
Stephen Tall

Serious about fairness, serious about power

By Stephen Tall | Sat 17th April 2010 - 8:45 am

I almost had an article published on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website on Wednesday, marking the launch of the Lib Dem manifesto. For convoluted reasons it never saw the light of web – but most of it stands the test of time. Except perhaps the line suggesting the party could never hope for Nick Clegg to be as well liked as his predecessor: that’s the power of television for you.

Quite rightly, many wise (and not necessarily old) heads have been counselling caution following the last 24 hours explosively positive headlines for the Lib Dems. The party has enjoyed polling …

Continue reading »
Tagged | 2 Comments
Alex Foster

What challenges might the future bring?

By Alex Foster | Fri 16th April 2010 - 10:40 pm

Challenge #1 – the electoral system

I nearly wrote this a few weeks ago, at which point it would have looked prophetic – writing it now just looks like I’m crowbarring it on the back of the rather sensational Yougov / Sun poll, news of which is breaking on Twitter.

Any number of people have taken the poll figures, Con: 33 (-4); Lab: 28 (-3); Lib Dem: 30 (+8), plugged them into UK Polling Report’s uniform swing calculator, and reeled, aghast at the revelation that our awful electoral system is so completely bust that it’s conceivable that the party …

Continue reading »
Tagged , , , , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

First election debate: winners and losers

By Mark Pack | Fri 16th April 2010 - 9:35 pm

Now the dust is starting to settle after the first debate, who are the winners and losers – aside from the party leaders?

Winner – liberalism
Loser – hostility to foreigners

Praising some aspects of immigration, talking about no like-for-like replacement of Trident, pledging to scrap tuition fees, promising to cut taxes for most by raising taxes for the very rich – Nick Clegg won the debate not by abandoning policies for some  mushy middle ground, but by sticking to core liberal beliefs. Those beliefs were carefully wrapped in language and arguments designed to be appeal to a wide audience – but …

Continue reading »
Also posted in General Election | Tagged , , , , , and | 2 Comments
Philip Young

Opinion: Cameron’s Gaffe – is China a nuclear threat to the UK?

By Philip Young | Fri 16th April 2010 - 4:30 pm

During the big debate, David Cameron slipped up when pushed by Nick Clegg on the Trident nuclear missile fleet.

I will keep our independent nuclear defence system, said Cameron – forgetting for a moment that Trident is a dual-key with the Americans, it can’t ever be fired without their agreement, and we are totally beholden to them, despite spending the money with them in the first place. But Cameron added:

Are we really happy to say that we’d give up our independent nuclear deterrent when we don’t know what is going to happen with Iran, we can’t be certain of the

…

Continue reading »
Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Stephen Tall

The LDV Leaders’ Debate Verdict: Nick Clegg the winner #GoNick #leadersdebate #GE2010

By Stephen Tall | Thu 15th April 2010 - 11:40 pm

I cannot tell you how good it is to be able to type the words, “Nick Clegg was the clear winner”, and know that not only is it my view, but that it’s the public view, too. We’ve already published the two poll results which matter: those showed Nick was judged to have done best by 51%, with Cameron on 29% and Brown on 19% (YouGov), and Nick 46%, Cameron 26%, Brown 20% (ComRes).

Nick Clegg … it’s true, Nick had a couple of advantages going into the debate. He’s the least known, so merely being given equal status is already a win. True, too, expectations were lower for Nick. But even allowing for that, this was an important night for Nick. Those of us who have watched Nick at his town hall meetings will have been familiar enough with the style: natural, conversational, honest, open, personable. Though all were nervous, at least initially, Nick appeared to shrug off the jitters most quickly. His body language, crucial in a debate like this, was engaging, both with the audience in the studio, and the audience at home. What people saw tonight was the Real Nick Clegg. They seem to like him.

Gordon Brown … the Prime Minister started with low expectations, but for a different reason than Nick: most people have already made up their minds that he’s not up to the job. I was relatively (and I stress the word relatively) impressed with Brown’s performance.

Continue reading »
Tagged , , and | 20 Comments
Stephen Tall

Votes or seats? Why Nick Clegg won’t, can’t and shouldn’t answer that hung Parliament question

By Stephen Tall | Wed 14th April 2010 - 9:30 pm

Ever since Nick Clegg launched his line on a hung Parliament – that he would talk to the party that won the “strongest mandate” and was keeping all options open – the question has been asked (though not by the public): does that mean the party with most votes or the party with most seats?

And ever since Nick has been asked that question, he has studiously refused to answer it. He stonewalled Paxman on Monday, and at the Lib Dem manifesto launch today.

And you know what? He’s absolutely right to refuse to be drawn. Here’s why: the …

Continue reading »
Also posted in General Election | 25 Comments
Mark Pack

Tactical unwind or tactical rewind?

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th April 2010 - 1:49 pm

For a long time after David Cameron’s election to leader of the Conservative Party there was widespread talk of “tactical unwind”, that is how his changes to the Conservative Party may result in much less anti-Tory tactical voting at the next general election. It’s one of the range of reasons that many Tories quote for believing that they will do better in terms of seat numbers than the overall vote numbers suggest.

However, what’s struck me for some time is how the overall political campaigning is playing out in a way that is likely to rewind the unwind.

For example, on cutting …

Continue reading »
Also posted in General Election and Polls | Tagged | 7 Comments
Prateek Buch

Opinion: An open letter to Lord Adonis

By Prateek Buch | Mon 12th April 2010 - 11:18 am

Dear Lord Adonis (may I call you Andrew…?),

I read with interest your views on the similarities between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. It is with grace that Lib Dems accept your praise for Liberal politicians of the past, from Gladstone to Keynes and Beveridge via Lloyd George – many thanks for the history lesson, much appreciated. In return, most Liberal Democrats have no trouble acknowledging that in your 13 years in power, New Labour has introduced some progressive measures, including legislation on civil partnerships, the Freedom of Information Act and some constitutional and Parliamentary reforms (we shall revisit the …

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

Don’t take it out on Vince, guys, just ‘cos you’re stuck with George

By Stephen Tall | Sun 11th April 2010 - 8:30 pm

I’ve been amused to see the rush-to-rubbish Vince Cable today among some right-wing bloggers following his appearance on BBC1’s The Politics Show.

Iain Dale (but of course) was first up to tweet: “Well done Jon Sopel for finally exposing Vince Cable as the overrated flipflopper that he is.” He was soon followed by ConservativeHome’s Tim Montgomerie, and Wall Street Journal’s Iain Martin, who has a pet-obsession with Vince’s popularity.

Having missed the show at lunchtime, I sat down nervously to catch up on iPlayer (Vince’s inteview begins about 3 minutes in) fully expecting him to be eviscerated by Jon Sopel.

In fact, what I watched was a robust interview in which Vince more than held his own, and made the key points that (1) the Labservatives have consistently opposed Lib Dem attempts to clean up our politics, and (2) the Tories need to explain how they’re going to fund their various tax-cuts if not through raising VAT.

Why have the Tories got it in for Vince?

Which left me wondering: what got Iain, Tim and Iain so excited that they dashed into the twitblogosphere to try and swing the media narrative against Vince? (Besides the inevitable election-time partisan point-scoring, that is).

Continue reading »
Also posted in General Election | Tagged , , , , and | 13 Comments

The Independent View: Asking business leaders to think again

By Katy Wells | Sun 11th April 2010 - 5:50 pm

This week, leaders of some of the UK’s biggest businesses came out in support of George Osborne’s plans to reverse Labour’s proposed National Insurance rise. In a letter to the Telegraph, they argue that the reversal, to be funded by an extra £6 billion’s worth of efficiency savings, is needed to protect jobs keep Britain’s economic recovery on track.

38 Degrees has launched a campaign to persuade these business leaders to change their minds. We’re concerned that their outcry might have less to do with concerns about job-losses, and more to do with the effect that the increases in their financial …

Continue reading »
Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Graham Evans
    Whatever the message, we need a leader who can clearly enunciate it, and not simply make party policy on the hoof. Ed Davey's intervention on the issue of local...
  • Peter Davies
    "Wanting to tear down historical statues , monuments , portraits, sanatise books etc ….It’s what the Taliban did in Afghanistan." It's also something Cromwe...
  • PM
    If Brexit is the cause of all our problems in the UK, what is the cause of the similar, or even worse, problems in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy etc? The ...
  • David S
    Even if one's conclusion after examining all the complexities of the Civil War (which is a good deal more than "monarchy vs. democracy") is that Cromwell was a ...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    Much-needed piece. You are right that young people are the audience, but I am not sure Europe is the way in. The polling you quote shows they already agree with...