Category Archives: Op-eds

Stephen Tall

Where next for Lembit?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 30th July 2009 - 6:30 pm

There’s a slightly plaintive piece in today’s Independent’s Pandora column under the self-explanatory heading, ‘Opik’s plea to Clegg: use me’. The paper quotes the Lib Dem MP for Montgomeryshire saying:

I’m certainly available to the party in any way they want me, and that’s a matter for them.

This all follows Lembit’s latest appearance in the spotlight since he joined forces with model Katie Green to front the ‘Give a big zero to size zero’ campaign. The trouble is, as so often with Lembit, that the celebrity gossip prompted by his friendship/relationship/whatever with Katie has overshadowed the worthy cause he is supposed …

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Stephen Tall

Peston’s posers: where next for our mixed economy?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 30th July 2009 - 9:30 am

The BBC’s business guru Robert Peston poses the question over at his blog, If markets don’t work, what will? He identifies three recent examples of public authorities – the treasury, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and Ofcom – alleging that the markets they are being paid to regulate just aren’t working, and that consumers are being overcharged.

Market failure is not a new phenomenon by any means. Even in my A-level Economics I was taught that the ‘perfect market’ quite simply didn’t exist: consumers do not have omniscient knowledge and don’t always behave rationally, barriers to entry for companies do exist, there is rarely complete freedom of decision, etc. Inevitably, therefore, we have been left with a mixed market economy, in which privately-owned and state-run companies co-exist, each bound to some extent by government regulation aiming to protect the public interest in the absence of that ‘perfect market’.

From 1979 until 2008, the pendulum swung in favour of the private sector, what Peston describes as ‘the Anglo-American political consensus of the past 20 years that the markets are normally right’. And then came the collapse of Northern Rock and Lehmans. Since when, says Peston, a ‘new ideology’ has sprung up:

… participants in markets who accumulate the biggest personal fortunes are merely those most adept at predicting the irrational behaviour of the herd. Which probably shouldn’t be seen as any more noble or as a more socially useful form of wealth creation than betting on the 3.30 at Kempton Park.

Where does all this leave us? Peston’s article poses the questions, doesn’t supply the answers (why should he?):

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Matthew Sowemimo

Opinion: The high social price of A Fresh Start‘s ‘prudent’ decisions

By Matthew Sowemimo | Wed 29th July 2009 - 4:01 pm

The party’s pre-election manifesto – A Fresh Start for Britain – is based around strong themes and ones that have the potential to give Liberal Democrats the distinctive profile we need in 2010. The outline democracy, green economy and fair taxation agenda is something that will be welcomed across the party.

However the impression is being given that many of the spending commitments debated, and scrutinized within the party over a period of years are being indefinitely effectively set aside as ‘aspirational’. The language that has been reported in the media about key commitments, like widening access to university by abolishing tuition fees and expanding social housing, is also derogatory. If we appear to be dismissive of our own policies, how much easier will it be for our opponents to attack them as irresponsible?

There are two points at issue here for the party. If we present the pre-manifesto as a minimalist platform we will be misrepresenting what are actually a redistributive and radical set of proposals. The size of the green tax switch is greater than ever before.

Equally, the green economy investments contained in the document are also more ambitious than we have previously indicating. So why should we use ‘sound bites’ about the document that downplay policies that would help give us a real cutting edge at the election. At best we risk giving out mixed messages in key constituencies.

The wider question is whether relegating policies on fees and housing in the name of ‘austerity’ will actually help economic and social recovery in the medium term. So whilst we highlight the need to overcome inherited disadvantage through the pupil premium, are we going to put on ice our commitment to shut out people from working class communities from university by keeping tuition fees in place.

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Simon Titley

Opinion: You say you want a revolution …?

By Simon Titley | Mon 27th July 2009 - 2:30 pm

Jeremy Hargreaves recently launched Engage, the Liberal Democrats’ “new policy network”. Its goal is to give party members “the chance to talk about ideas, about policy and politics.” A welcome objective – but is this the right way to go about it?

The trouble with this initiative is that it emphasises process rather than politics. The ‘instant policy discussion kit’, in particular, reminds me of the sketch in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life in which a couple of middle-aged American tourists enters a restaurant and is offered conversational topics instead of food. Whenever did we lose our spontaneity?

Jeremy rightly highlights the lack of debate in the party but this problem goes beyond the narrow question of involvement in policy-making. Healthy political debate should be the lifeblood of the party. It supplies vitality and a sense of purpose to inspire and motivate our members and supporters. It supplies rigour and vigour to our ideas and policies.

But debate is also the lifeblood of democracy because politics is ultimately about making moral choices. You can’t revive politics without having real debate about those choices, which means argument about competing ideas, not a heavily managed process.

Advocates of ‘consensus politics’ stigmatise debate as ‘yah-boo politics’ but it is a myth that people dislike political argument. Substantial argument is what differentiates parties and politicians, and provides people with a real choice. It is the absence of argument and thus choice that has driven down participation and voter turnout, because it makes politicians sound the same and politics seem irrelevant. And when the mainstream parties (of which the Liberal Democrats are now one) can’t be differentiated, it is the parties on the fringe that stand out and benefit from our reticence.

The mere fact that ‘Engage’ is deemed necessary tells us that something has gone horribly wrong. Political debate has declined because, since the 1980s, our political life has been hollowed out and drained of ideological content. If ‘Engage’ plans to address this state of affairs, it must first understand how and why de-politicisation happened. There are several reasons, many of which are common to British politics and not specific to the Liberal Democrats:

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Bill le Breton

Opinion: A Fresh Start is the most vacuous suicide note in history

By Bill le Breton | Mon 27th July 2009 - 10:05 am

A Fresh Start for Britain is the most vacuous suicide note in history with its testosterone laden rallying cries of:

cuts will be necessary to deliver any priorities”
“any new spending will be paid for by a specific cut made elsewhere”
“This means we will not increase public spending overall”

and

We will only include policies in our programme for government once we are certain the necessary resources are available.”

Our leadership is drunk on a cocktail of self flagellation (the hair shirted economics of the balanced budget) and political marketing. Both intoxicating ingredients are as much a product of the Westminster micro-climate as the abuse of allowances.

It was this macho economics which had the leadership advocating tax cuts at Bournemouth while those in the world outside Westminster were experiencing the first blasts of an economic blizzard. The leadership appears to have climbed back onto the Keynesian bandwagon but with little conviction or credibility which is why A Fresh Start schizophrenically advocates (frequently in the same paragraph) large scale public works, cuts in public borrowing, safeguarding employment and being uncertain about ‘what Britain can afford’.

The slump continues. Borrowing is not a problem. Borrowing and other means of creating money by governments is still necessary at this time to counter the destruction of money that occurs when other sectors save more than they borrow and when the velocity of money falls. Demand remains the problem. Expansionary monetary and fiscal policy remain the answer.

But we are assured it is alright because these ‘hard choices made by Liberal Democrats will be firmly guided by our values’ – using market speak these are defined, confined and trivialised as: Fairer, Greener, Safer, Stronger .

But are your values summed up by these sanitised slogans?

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Stephen Tall

Norwich North: what to make of all that, then? #nnbe

By Stephen Tall | Sat 25th July 2009 - 10:30 am

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: if you fight a by-election in which both your total number of votes, and your percentage of votes cast, declines since the previous general election then the result is disappointing. There, I’ve said it, disappointing.

Now let’s look a bit harder, and try and work out what’s going on, addressing directly the three questions:
1) should we have done better,
2) is our campaigning stuck in a rut, and
3) is the leadership to blame?

1) Should we have done better?

The verdict that we should have done better – at least come second – was encapsulated by the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson in his blog-post, How to unspin Norwich:

Lib Dems: “This is a truly shocking result for Labour.”
Translation: “Oh no. Why don’t we win by-elections any more?”

Except, of course, it’s not that simple. There seems to be a fantasy among some Lib Dem supporters, shared by journalists like Nick, that the Lib Dems have talismanic by-elections skills – that the party need only show up in any constituency in the UK, and the electorate will be hypnotically seduced into voting Lib Dem. This isn’t true now, and nor has it ever been true, a fact statistically proved by Lib Dem blogger ‘Costigan Quist’ HERE.

There was, perhaps, one exception: the last Parliament, when we won two of the six by-elections contested – Brent East and Leicester South – and also recorded hefty swings in two others, Birmingham Hodge Hill and Hartlepool. (The South Wales result in Ogmore, when the Lib Dem vote fell 4%, is usually happily ignored: it spoils the story).

But to judge this Parliament by last Parliament’s standards is silly, in any case, for it witnessed a perfect storm that is very unlikely to be repeated: a wildly unpopular policy – Iraq – on which the Lib Dems had a distinct, well-known, poular position; and a main opposition party, the Tories when led by Iain Duncan Smith, which was an utter campaigning shambles. The Lib Dems’ Iraq USP has now receded, while the Tories are, once again, a professional outfit. To expect the Lib Dems to conjure up by-election magic dust in vastly changed circumstances is utterly fanciful.

And the idea that, even if the Lib Dems won’t actually win, our vote must always, automatically increase is also profoundly un-historical. To me, the current Parliament most closely resembles the 1992-97 Parliament: a tired, imploding governing party, seemingly at the mercy of events, and a main opposition party on the up. So let’s compare the by-election results of now with then:

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Also posted in Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged , and | 77 Comments
Danny Alexander MP

Danny Alexander MP writes… “We have a different, radical message about the change our country needs”

By Danny Alexander MP | Thu 23rd July 2009 - 1:45 pm

Yesterday Nick launched ‘A Fresh Start for Britain’ – a document which outlines the values upon which our manifesto for the next General Election will be based. You may have seen some of the media coverage; I hope you have also visited Nick’s new site on it – www.freshstart.nickclegg.com.

This document is the first part of a two-part paper which we will be taking to Autumn conference. It promotes a vision that was agreed by both the Federal Policy Committee and the parliamentary party; which shows how our party would do things differently from Labour and Tories. The second explains in more detail our existing policy portfolio.

The next election is our opportunity to show the British people we have a different, radical message about the change our country needs. The two old parties don’t really want to change a political system that keeps them in power or challenge the bankers who got the economy into such a terrible mess.

‘A Fresh Start for Britain’ explains how our values – the basis upon which we will reach our choices on what should be in our manifesto – are fundamentally different from those of the Conservative and Labour parties. In the unprecedented economic situation that the country faces, only the Liberal Democrats are clear that the choices we make will be driven by a clear set of values and principles.

This policy paper does not prejudge what those choices might be, but it does emphasise the uncertain and difficult economic context against which these choices will be made and the real constraints that will place on our own manifesto when it is drawn up next year. It makes clear that we will treat the British people like grown ups; we will be honest about the tough choices ahead – both for the country and for ourselves.

This policy paper, which is going to conference in the place of a more traditional pre-manifesto, highlights three key priorities – a sustainable economy, a fair society, clean politics – that will drive the choices that we will make when we come to draw up our manifesto. Each of these is illustrated by two policy examples that form a key part of our current narrative.

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Nick Clegg MP

Nick Clegg writes… The Labour party are worn out and irrelevant

By Nick Clegg MP | Tue 21st July 2009 - 9:00 am

28% at the last set of local elections. 5% points clear of Labour and our highest ever share of the vote. In 23 out of the 25 county councils we are now the main opposition to the Conservatives. And in many counties there are no Labour county councillors at all. In both the South East and the South West Labour were pushed to fifth in the European elections. In vast swathes of Southern Britain they’re as irrelevant as the Tories are in many Northern cities.

In the battle of ideas as well as increasingly in the electoral battle the Labour …

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14 Comments
Geoffrey Payne

Opinion: Britain should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan – and soon

By Geoffrey Payne | Mon 20th July 2009 - 3:30 pm

Public opinion polls show that a big majority want British troops to leave Afghanistan. According to a recent opinion poll by ComRes, 64% think that British troops should leave. Yet their opinions barely register amongst our elected representatives.

It is not hard to guess why the public think this. What are our troops doing there? What are they hoping to acheive? How much longer will all this go on?

It is nearly eight years since our troops entered Afghanistan. Many times we have been told how well they are doing. Yet instead of leaving, we are sending in more troops. Some say that our troops will have to stay there for 30 years! Well, you cannot plan a war that will last that long. Whenever someone sets out that kind of time-frame, what it shows is that they have no idea how to end the war.

There are of course many good reasons why our troops should stay.

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged and | 15 Comments
Baroness Ros Scott

Ros Scott’s Federal Executive report (July ’09)

By Baroness Ros Scott | Mon 20th July 2009 - 9:40 am

The Federal Executive met on 13 July in an atmosphere somewhat less frenetic than at its previous meeting (18 May). Since then, Chris Rennard has resigned as Chief Executive, and I updated FE on how the process of appointing an interim Chief Executive had been determined and applied.

The successful candidate, Chris Fox, was in attendance and I can announce that he took up his new duties with immediate effect. In October, the FE will discuss the process by which a permanent replacement will be appointed. In carrying out this process, my confidence in our senior management team has been reinforced.

It was decided that the FE should write to Chris Rennard to thank him for the work he had done, and for the commitment he had displayed in his role, a point highlighted by Nick Clegg as part of his report.

In that report, Nick commented on the expenses crisis and its impact, on his stance on Afghanistan, before highlighting the work done by Meral Ece on the launch of the New Generation Initiative, part of efforts to support and develop members from under represented communities. He emphasised the importance of the Norwich North campaign, noting that our Autumn Conference holds great potential, as Conservatives begin to doubt whether Cameron can lead them to a Parliamentary majority and Labour continue to falter.

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters and Party Presidency | Tagged | 17 Comments
Lester Holloway

Opinion: The Defection Spiral

By Lester Holloway | Sun 19th July 2009 - 2:30 pm

It’s a case of déjà-vu all over again. The defections of Chamali and Chandila Fernando seem to have produced carbon copy internal debates to the ones that greeted Norsheen Bhatti and Sajjad Karim’s walkouts.

As a party we really need to start learning some lessons from these regular blows because I, for one, am tired and frankly quite bored of witnessing the same depressing spiral of losing bright young BAME talent followed by a debate more notable for its heat than light, as the membership lob brickbats at the defectors.

All too often there is precious little by way of actual solutions to improve racial diversity in the party, but no shortage of insults. Arrogant, selfish and over-ambitious individuals who saw advancement in the party as their entitlement… good riddance to these jumped-up scumbags, I hear you say. Over and over again.

The trouble is, once we’ve stopped furiously kicking up sand there is virtually no energy left to tackle perhaps the biggest elephant in the room – our failure to look like a diverse party. Having made significant in-road in the inner cities, the lack of visible diversity is one crucial blockage we must clear in order to surge into Labour’s ‘territory’, where they have taken black and Asian votes for granted for so long.

Given the virtual collapse of Labour, I suspect if we had got serious about diversity earlier, then by now the whole party would be feeling the benefits of BAME communities supporting us in greater numbers. Let’s not forget a borough-by-borough breakdown of the European Elections in the capital seemed to indicate that neighbourhoods with the highest BAME populations continued to be wedded to Labour, despite everything.

Proportionally, BAME communities appear to be the last section of the electorate still prepared to vote Labour in any numbers, even though most indicators of race inequality have hardly improved over the past 13 years.

The sad fact is that we Lib Dems are still failing to convince enough black and Asian people that we are a diverse party which understands the multicultural society they are part of. This is especially true in the large chunks of London where we do not have a major local presence.

Polling by Operation Black Vote has shown just how highly BAME voters rate the issue of ‘Black political representation’ as a reason to support one party over another. If we are to properly respond to this we need to challenge gut instincts that reject ‘putting people in boxes’ or fret about a ‘silo’ approach, because the desire of people from ethnic minorities to be treated equally, and not to be pigeon-holed, is just one side of the coin.

Most of the same ethnic minorities also agree that institutional racism and unequal racial outcomes need to be challenged and, like it or not, this process requires us to see colour and analyse why discrimination happens on different levels. Quite often that means targeting BAME communities, where they are under-represented, or altering structures when attitudes of officials (or party members) are not changing fast enough.

After Bhatti’s defection I wrote on the Lib Dem Voice Members’ Forum that we cannot afford to sit back and wait for the next defection. Action not recrimination was the order of the day. This is exactly what Nick Clegg and Chris Fox, working with Ethnic Minority Lib Dems (EMLD), led by Meral Eçe, have been doing. The New Generation, launched earlier this month, aims to provide personal development and media training for BAME candidates. We also have a good diversity officer in Issan Ghazni.

After years of token moves and good intentions that don’t deliver, finally under the current leadership we have something approaching a solid programme. I am excited that this initiative is heading in the right direction, but even this is only half the battle. The other half is the party at large demonstrating a passion to provide BAME members with the same support and encouragement that is available to white young members born into Liberal households, for example.

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Caroline Pidgeon

London Underground: should lines be completely shut to speed up engineering work?

By Caroline Pidgeon | Sat 18th July 2009 - 4:47 pm

The London Underground is used by as many people each week as the total number of people who use the nation’s railway network. Caroline Pidgeon sets out why modernising the underground is so important and why new ways of undertaking the upgrades might now be necessary.

At London’s City Hall I’m leading an Assembly investigation into overcrowding on the Tube and what Mayor Boris Johnson can do about it. For many years now Tube passengers have been used to cramming themselves into crowded trains wedged against someone’s armpits. More recently stations like Victoria, King’s Cross, London Bridge and Holborn have had …

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Also posted in London | Tagged , , and | 8 Comments
Tom Brake

Tom Brake MP writes… Google Streetview and British citizens’ privacy

By Tom Brake | Sat 18th July 2009 - 4:15 pm

The traditional privacies and anonymities enjoyed by people in this country come under greater pressure every day. Google Streetview is the latest point at which private interests come into conflict with technological advance. I remain concerned that this service, which places comprehensive, zoomable and rotatable photographs of Britain’s streets freely on the internet, has not come under enough scrutiny from those who are supposed to safeguard our individual liberties.

The Liberal Democrats have been absolutely unequivocal in their criticisms of the expansion of state surveillance, arguing that having CCTV on every corner is invasive and unnecessary. I simply don’t think that …

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Sarah McCulloch

Opinion: Calling all #libdem supporters – it’s time to tweet

By Sarah McCulloch | Fri 17th July 2009 - 4:00 pm

Twitter, for those who don’t know, is an online social network where people can post 140 character messages known as “tweets”. Tweets can be a cool link you found, a question to your followers, or just an idle comment about what you’re doing. Although small at 5 million users (Facebook has 60m), its annual growth stands at over 1000% (200% for Facebook). It’s pretty hot stuff.

Now, I don’t know whether any of the Twitter users who read Lib Dem Voice have checked recently, but a tweet search for “libdem” makes pretty depressing reading (Non-Twitter users can check it …

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Also posted in Online politics | Tagged | 11 Comments
Antony Hook

Opinion: Gender is no cure to mistrust

By Antony Hook | Thu 16th July 2009 - 7:29 pm

The Press Association reports a claim in the Interim Report of the Speaker’s Conference that more women MPs would “boost trust”.

This is an irrational assertion. For every male mortage-flipper or questionable expense-claimer – like Geoge Osborne, Elliot Morley or David Chaytor – there are plenty of female examples – Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears, or Margaret Moran.

It seems to me that trust depends more on how MPs behave than what gender they happen to be.

Liberals should argue for people to be appraised as individuals not simply reduced to groups in which we happen to …

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7 Comments
Costigan Quist

Opinion: Time to drag our treatment of parties out of the 18th century

By Costigan Quist | Thu 16th July 2009 - 4:15 pm

Should councillors, MPs or MEPs elected under a party banner be able to defect to another party without facing re-election?

Is it acceptable to demand councillors pay a proportion of their allowance to their party – so-called tithing?

Can MPs’ £10,000 communications allowance really be used to leaflet constituents as long as it doesn’t promote a party?

Three questions, one common source of confusion: the role of parties in our political system.

Go back a couple of hundred years and the situation was clearer. Voters elected a gentleman to represent their interests in parliament with no party machine to speak of and little …

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15 Comments
George Turner

Opinion: Berlusconi is no joke

By George Turner | Wed 15th July 2009 - 2:45 pm

Silvio Berlusconi, with his outlandish behaviour and flamboyant lifestyle, may be hard to take seriously – but he is certainly no joke. Behind his carefree playboy public image is a man who is damaging democracy in the heart of Europe.

Berlusconi is a man who clearly likes to enjoy himself, and I am sure that his parties are a lot of fun to attend. Perhaps justifiably, some have asked whether this in itelf is really at all relevant, whether we should take Berlusconi at his word when he says, “Italians like me as I am, I won’t change”, and leave it …

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Also posted in Europe / International | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

To tithe, or not to tithe?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 13th July 2009 - 7:00 pm

There’s been a hue and cry today sparked by research done for a BBC Radio 4 programme, The Political Club, showing the number of elected representatives and their advisers on the UK public payroll now tops 29,000 at a cost to the taxpayer of £499 million. And there’s been particular focus on the practise of ‘tithing’, the contributions political parties expect their representatives to make to party funds out of their salaries.

Debate on the topic often generates more heat than light. Let’s first of all deal with the ethical question: is it right that taxpayers’ money should fund political …

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28 Comments
Merlene Emerson

Opinion: Tories’ housing plot uncovered?

By Merlene Emerson | Mon 13th July 2009 - 3:45 pm

The Evening Standard published a bold article last Thursday suggesting that Hammersmith & Fulham Council and the Tory leadership were in a plot reminiscent of the days of Dame Shirley Porter (‘Plot to rid council estates of Poor’, 9 July 2009)

Hammersmith & Fulham Council is currently consulting on their Local Development Framework (LDF) Core Strategy Options which repeatedly refers to a need for ‘decent neighbourhoods’. Neighbourhoods that are currently not ‘decent’ have been identified throughout the borough.

It seems to me that if these neighbourhoods contained homes which do not meet national ‘decent homes standards’ then the Council and Hammersmith & Fulham Homes should be working to bring them up to standard. Where the neighbourhoods have residents who are jobless and on benefits, then the Council has a duty to provide training and improved skills. The solution should not be to demolish and decant whole estates.

The Council has, however, shown a preference for the easy fix by proposing the rebuilding of properties primarily for sale. The only assurance they provide existing residents is that the equivalent number of ‘habitable rooms’ (not number of units) for social renting will be preserved, and this over the next 20 years!

There are two conclusions that we can draw from this. First, many local residents will be without a home in Hammersmith & Fulham in years to come and will be likely to have to seek housing outside of the borough. Second, the Tory Council seems to be focussed on changing the demographics of their voters in this marginal constituency.

The present Labour MP Andrew Slaughter has felt suitably threatened and has raised the alarm claiming to have uncovered a trail of evidence showing possible complicity amongst the leadership of Hammersmith & Fulham Council – the Tory leadership as well as the right wing think tank, Localis – on this subject.

So what can we do about this?

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Also posted in Local government and London | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Jeremy Hargreaves

Launch: Engage, the new Lib Dem Policy Network

By Jeremy Hargreaves | Sun 12th July 2009 - 2:30 pm

The chances are that when you join the Liberal Democrats, just about the first thing that will happen to you is that a friendly local member will welcome you to the party, and ask you if you’d be willing to help out by delivering a round of leaflets in your area. Or would you perhaps be willing to come out and knock on some doors one evening? It’s certainly what happened to me when I joined the party nineteen years ago in a ‘black hole’ seat.

This overwhelming focus on campaigning has served the party well: it’s been the engine …

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | 9 Comments
Gareth Aubrey

Y Barcud Oren #9

By Gareth Aubrey | Sun 12th July 2009 - 11:45 am

June, it turned out, was a pretty good month to take off blogging to move house. Between the blogosphere and the twitterati putting their oar in, the European election results were pored over more thoroughly than any before (from a Welsh perspective I’d recommend Dominic Hannigan’s review on Freedom Central) and gallons of un-ink were spilt over expenses and the speakership.

I Said We’ll Consider The Results Of The Consultation And I Mean No

Still, the Assembly Government had to do something with its time and their continuing quest to look like they’re trying to get more powers while not actually getting them was happy to oblige. The last public event of the All Wales Convention was always going to fuel the speculation about the referendum that is essentially Plaid’s excuse for getting into bed with Labour, particularly when the chair of the convention, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, sounded a rather downbeat note on the level of public interest.

Mind you, the starting gun had already been fired by the once and future Secretary of State. No sooner had Peter Hain got his feet back under his desk in Gwydyr House than he was confidently telling The Western Mail that, not only would there not be a referendum before 2011, but that senior Plaid members understood that was the case.

The usual suspects (The Next Leader Of Plaid Cymru™, the Secretary General of the People’s Democratic Republic Of Treherbert and the Head of the Church of I Hate Sian Caiach) went unsurprisingly ape, but from those “senior Plaid members” whose understanding might be thought important, comment came there none. That silence may be down to Hain’s increasing irrelevance, however; his contribution so far has largely been to rage against the dying of the light in an ever more hilarious parody of every anti-Tory cliché Labour have in their arsenal.

Not that there weren’t reminders that the devolution debate is about more than Mandelson-waving. The publication of the Calman Commission report in Scotland only served to underline both how far Wales lags behind their current settlement, let alone the settlement we and they need. The Holtham Commission then put numbers to the scale of the problem, estimating that Wales would receive £300m more if it were funded according to the formula used for the English regions instead of the Barnett Formula.

Less Of The Solicitor, More Of The Country

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Giles Wilkes

Opinion: Property and consumption taxes need to rise to fix the fiscal mess

By Giles Wilkes | Sat 11th July 2009 - 2:00 pm

Politicians everywhere are being urged to get real about the fiscal mess. For the last month, this has meant a bitter dispute about the government’s spending figures. Who will cut the most? For any numerate observer, the debate is trivial: a rising bill for interest payments and the social security budget make it inevitable, no matter what contortions Brown attempts in disguising the figures, and no matter who is in power.

CentreForum has just published a new report about Britain’s fiscal mess, called A balancing act: fair solutions to a modern debt crisis. …

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Alex Foster

Opinion: Cameron’s vision for local government is bleak

By Alex Foster | Thu 9th July 2009 - 10:25 am

Last week’s Local Government Association conference was addressed on its final day by three representatives from Westminster who’d made the journey northwards to Harrogate to face the serried ranks of senior local government councillors and officers.

The Lib Dems were represented by Vince Cable MP, given an early morning slot that not everyone got to. He was warmly received by all those who were there, in any case, which may represent that it was just the Lib Dem LGA group present. His speech covered his history as a councillor himself in the early 1970s when local government …

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Millennium Elephant

Millennium’s Credit Crunch Diary … June: Back to Business as Usual

By Millennium Elephant | Wed 8th July 2009 - 1:00 pm

After last month’s political MELTDOWN over MPs’ Expensives, and the resulting RADIOACTIVE DEBACLE of two British Nasty Party members being elected to represent us in the Euro Parliament, we were promised “a new politics”.

What we GOT was a row about spending cuts that’s SO “old politics” it is practically carbon-dated! Both Conservatories and Hard Labour were reduced to calling each other lying liars while coverage of the Liberal Democrats went from “grudging” to “invisible” faster than Mr Nick Robinson can read out a Conservatory Party Press release on the Ten O’clock News.

Welcome to the Brave New World, folks!

There’s two things going on here.

Firstly, the first, URGENT phase of the recession is PROBABLY OVER. That is a long, LONG way from saying that the RECESSION is over, or even nearly over, but the part where the news can draw exciting, sexy graphs of the economy driving off a cliff is over, and we are into the long, messy, boring tail of rising unemployment, bankruptcies, repossessions and general hardship-induced misery.

The month may have started with news of the final death of the very last remnants of British Leyland, as bankruptcy claimed the van makers LDV (or Leyland Daff Vans), but in spite of this people were actually talking about that most toxic of economic phrases: “green shoots”. This is the financial equivalent of “It’ll all be over by Christmas!” And indeed, several of the commentators have not caught themselves short of saying almost that: the implication that the British economy might be back into growth, if not already then by the fourth quarter this year, has had many thinking that that about wraps it up for the recession.

This seems like good news for Hard Labour, as it allows them to say “ah ha! we Saved the Country from recession! We DO know what we’re doing!” But it also plays well for Mr Balloon, because it puts a stop to Mr Frown’s “no time for a novice” soundbite, and allows his Conservatories to run with their “fresh start” agenda.

But HOLD ON! Both sides are now thinking about the post-recession but we’re NOT OUT OF THE HOLE YET!

The CBI have warned people not to get all premature on these signs of recovery, and do not expect unemployment to peak until well into NEXT year.

Meanwhile, the Office of National Statistics have released figures showing that the recession started EARLIER and decline had been DEEPER than previously believed. Basically, we’ve been in recession for a whole year, and in that time we have lost a TWENTIETH of the British economy.

Obviously now is NOT the time to take our eyes off the economic ball… and yet that is EXACTLY what we have done.

Never mind the boring old economy, someone famous has died and anyway the sun is shining and Wimbledon is on… what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Well, under cover of the MPs’ Expensives scandal, the wunch of bankers in the City have quietly slipped back to their old ways: the catchphrase of the year is “bonuses are back” (like they ever went away, apparently), while the newly appointed boss of the Royal Bank-that-WE-own of Scotland is to be paid a nine-point-six MILLION pound salary. Nice work, as they say, if you can get it.

This is, frankly, the sort of behaviour that leaves people fuming and thinking that maybe we SHOULD have let a major bank FAIL. Cuddly Cthulhu knows what damage THAT would have done to the economy…

…though it does present us with a PARADOX: if we let the banks fall we’d all be bombed back to a Green-Party-economy trying to barter beads for chickens, but by saving the banks we have encouraged them to do MORE OF THE SAME. Doing the right thing seems to have made matters WORSE!

Hilariously, Chancellor Sooty prefigured his annual jolly at the Mansion House with an announcement that banking regulation was “not to blame” for the near-belly-upping of the banking sector.

Well, TECHNICALLY this is TRUE. Just as, for example, if you see a Porsche wrapped around a lamppost at ninety miles an hour it is fault of the driver for speeding and not the police… though it might have helped a BIT if they had pulled him over rather than waving him on by.

But surely you would have to be a TOTAL LUNATIC to suggest that: “everything was fine, we had a week or so of Armageddon but everything’s fine again, now.”

And yet the Government’s approach seems to be one of “we did nothing wrong, so we’ll carry on just the same”; while the bankers’ approach seems to be “we got our conkers pulled out of the fire once, and wahey more money! so we’ll carry on just the same!”

Because it seems to me that we’ve bought the driver a brand new Porsche, and are ignoring the innocent pedestrians left dead on the pavement by his passage towards that lamppost.

Does no one else see anything WRONG with this scenario?

Certainly not the Government. And certainly not the Loyal Opposition.

Because the SECOND thing that is going on is that, in the absence of a GENERAL ELECTION, both sides have decided that they are going to have one anyway.

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Antony Hook

Opinion: Ebay – Europe is the Politics that Counts

By Antony Hook | Mon 6th July 2009 - 6:26 pm

Internet firm Ebay are sending out an email, which I reproduce below, to its registered users, calling on people to sign a petition to support liberal trade and prevent luxury brand manufacturers restricting free trade in their product.

ebay petition

It is an obvious example of the importance of European Union law. It also reminds us how EU jurisdiction in trade law is logical. It is far better for consumers and companies in the 27 states to know that a common set of (economically liberal) laws apply across Europe than …

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Stephen Tall

A look back at the polls: June ’09

By Stephen Tall | Sat 4th July 2009 - 11:30 am

We tend not to be too poll-obsessed here at LDV – of course we look at them, as do all other politico-geeks, but viewed in isolation no one poll will tell you very much beyond what you want to read into it. Looked at over a reasonable time-span and, if there are enough polls, you can see some trends.
Here, in chronological order, are the results of the twelve polls published in June:

Tories 37%, Labour 21%, Lib Dems 19% – YouGov/Telegraph (4th June 2009)
Tories 38%, Labour 22%, Lib Dems 20% – ComRes/Independent (9th June)
Tories 36%, Labour 24%, Lib Dems 19% –

…

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Terry Gilbert

Opinion: Fear was the key in Iraq (and Norwich)

By Terry Gilbert | Thu 2nd July 2009 - 8:15 pm

The Washington Post reports that Saddam Hussein’s interrogations by the FBI have been released, under US Freedom of Information laws, to the ‘National Security Archive’, an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University. The NSA’s website has
“Twenty Interviews and Five Conversations with “High Value Detainee # 1”, should anyone still be interested.

Fortunately, the Post has done the hard work for us. There is of course the usual, now unsurprising, confirmation that Saddam had no link to, nor even any sympathy with, Al Qaeda:

Piro raised bin Laden in his last conversation

…

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Rob Hart

Opinion: The Wisdom of Clare Short

By Rob Hart | Thu 2nd July 2009 - 12:00 pm

Clare Short, in her book, An Honourable Deception?, talks about religious fanaticism. She makes the point that the Iraqi body count website calculates that between the 9/11 bombings and February 2004, there were roughly 3,500 deaths resulting from Islamic extremist attacks on Western targets. In comparison she points out that over 13,000 non-combatant civilians died as a result of the Iraq war, as well as another 3,000 in Afghanistan, and 3,000 Palestinian civilians.

Looking at these figures – and acknowledging that many more Muslims have died in violence in the Balkans, Pakistan, Chechnya – it is easy to see why young Muslims living in these countries have a view of the world that includes a sense that the world values their lives much less than those of, say, me, a typical western male…

Obviously any member of a western government would shout me down were I to make such a claim to their face. Any Western liberal democracy places the utmost value on human life, regardless of race, religion or gender. At least, so any Bill of Rights you care to read would tell you.

But that’s just the point. It’s easy to legislate for a concept, but to live up to that all the time is not easy.

We shouldn’t shy away from the fact that any democratically elected government that values its prospects for re-election jealously protects the lives and interests of its citizens. Couple this very understandable bias with the fact that none of the most powerful and influential governments in the world are Islamic nations and you get the situation that, in any multinational forum – be it the G8 or the UN – it is the interests of the richer, western liberal democracies that are put to the fore not those of the Islamic world.

Look at the Darfur genocide. Were that happening in the UK there would be an overwhelming response, not only to protect those being oppressed, but to bring the oppressors to justice. It is not outside our power to take such actions when these events occur -even in the Sudan, but our governments choose to take less action because there is no reason to take any action other than a moral obligation.

It is this narrow self-interest that is the major driving force behind every country’s foreign policy. However, it is arguably at the root of most of the problems in the world. The fact is that the ‘war on terror’ has killed far more Muslims than it has anyone else. I say that we should forgive the Muslims of the world for thinking that the world doesn’t care about them. Fair point, really. This view is borne out of a dispassionate examination of the facts over the last couple of hundred years.

It is this feeling of impotence in the face of an unjust world that is at least partly driving young Muslims into the arms of extremist recruiters. If we are to overcome these problems, we could do worse than learn lessons from the UK’s attempts over the years to resolve the sectarian problems in Northern Ireland.

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Adam Bell

Opinion: To STV, and beyond …

By Adam Bell | Tue 30th June 2009 - 5:09 pm

Like many Lib Dems, the prospect of bringing in a fairer voting system makes me all a-flutter. We know that first-past-the-post is unrepresentative, and the recent impetus towards reform (if I may put it so tacitly) has opened the door to the overhaul of our electoral system.

However, it appears as though the door has been partially blocked by the baby gate of Alternative Vote Plus, the brainchild of the Jenkins Commission. Akin to a less proportional version of the Additional Member System used in Scotland, Wales and in London Assembly elections, AV+ would make our voting system slightly more representative – but not to the point where it would frighten Labour and Conservative MPs raised on a diet* of safe seats.

Since this appears to be the best offer on the table, our Take Back Power campaign has endorsed it, with the disclaimer that we’d really rather have STV.

However, what we’re not doing at present – and I would claim we need to do – is directly challenging the findings of the Jenkins Commission that led to them rejecting STV as a possibility in the first place.

The Commission considered STV as it works in Ireland, with large multi-member constituencies aimed at ensuring that there is at least one Teachta Dála for every 25,512 people. Given the comparative population of Britain and Ireland , the Commission claims that the expansion in parliamentary numbers required to facilitate this would be unacceptable to the public, and instead considers STV in the context of constituencies containing on average 350,000 people. This is one MP per 87,500 people, assuming a similar number of parliamentarians to at present. The Commission claims the length of the ballot paper needed to serve such large constituencies to provide ‘a degree of choice which might be deemed oppressive rather than liberating’ – which anyone who voted in the recent European elections will, of course, know to be true, and in no way an unproven assertion by a parliamentary commission. I myself found my 3-foot ballot paper so oppressive that I voluntarily surrendered my freedom of speech for the entirety of polling day.

Aside from a few more niggles around complexity and suitability (look out for the part where the Commission comes close to asserting that the views of politicians are more important than the public when it comes to voting reform), the meat of the Commission’s objections to STV came in the form of the political realities into which it will be placed.

The Commission argued that STV constituencies on the Irish model would work well in big cities, but in the countryside would cover huge geographic areas to incorporate the approximately 350,000 people necessary. If 3-member constituencies were reduced in size in the countryside, this would give the Conservatives a massive inbuilt advantage, owing to their rural base. A hybrid STV/AV system, with STV constituencies in the cities and AV in the countryside would disadvantage Labour – the Tories would get seats in the cities, while Labour would be unable to similarly capitalise in the countryside.

This is a serious objection – some of the Highland constituencies are already enormous, and this would lead to a single constituency covering much of Scotland . Attempts to hybridise the system on the lines that Jenkins proposes would reduce the very proportionality that STV is meant to achieve.

So how can we counter this?

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Opinion: Liberal Youth in the headlights

By Rich Wilson | Sat 27th June 2009 - 5:00 pm

Dissension is both an admirable and problematic trait. It’s admirable, as often you find yourself on the side of right, but it’s problematic as you rarely end up being protrayed that way. I consider what I’m doing now dissension, and what it is is to consider what a youth organisation should do and what it’s doing now.

For those who know me in Liberal Youth, I try hard to occupy the neutral ground and to compromise rather than confront, but sometimes a punch in the nose resonates more than a pat on the back. A lot of people believe Liberal Youth to be primarily a campaigning organisation and a recruiting organisation. It is, and it isn’t.

The upcoming Activate training weekend will be the first Liberal Youth weekend specifically organised for training for a long time. The fact is that campaiging tactics and training have been neglected. Equally, with the failure of the current website, and delays in getting a newer version, the campaigning abilities of the organisation have been blunted by the inability to find a medium on which to put it across.

In addition, it has been left without a Vice-Chair (Campaigns) for the past three months, meaning that the lead up to the freshers fairs (traditionally a Liberal Youth forte, where more members are recruited for the party than at any other time) has been led, almost solely by the Chair, Elaine Bagshaw. While I cannot comment on the potential competence (or lack of) in this campaign, running campaigns without the person normally in charge is rarely an effective tactic.

This then impacts on the other thing Liberal Youth is perceived to be – a recruiting organisation. While specific university branches can run very successful campaigns and freshers fairs locally, if the material lets them down then fewer people come to the stand and fewer people sign up. Getting people to look twice is the big battle and this can be easily done without central help – a bit of craft and creativity, combined with creating a welcoming atmosphere, is the reason people who would normally walk past, look in.

We are projecting an image to our target audience – young, generally liberally minded, people – but recognising that they can’t be taken for granted. Presenting ourselves as a university society that is politically active, as opposed to a political society that happens to be at a university, would reach outside our target audience and bring in more people.

The larger problem with Liberal Youth is embedded in problems in how the organisation is run and leads to the spectacular occasions of disunity we all saw at the previous Chair election. This problem is that of organisation and how the organisation sees itself.

Liberal Youth is peculiar in that it is a national organisation campaigning on national issues that is full of people expected to campaign and gain experience on local issues.

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