Category Archives: Op-eds

Might 18 Doughty Street end up poisoning the well of British Politics?

By the founding editor | Tue 20th February 2007 - 11:24 pm

Recently the people of Peckham chose their Conservative candidate to fight the next general election in an open primary and hustings. The man the Conservative party chose to preside over the evening was the flamboyant Stephan Shakespeare – former educationalist, campaign manager for Lord Archer’s London mayoral bid, co-founder of Yougov, and now Internet television pioneer.

As he did with YouGov, Stephan Shakespeare is harnessing the power of the Internet to break new ground – this time as the financial backer …

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Opinion: The Guardian poll – should we be worried?

By the founding editor | Tue 20th February 2007 - 11:00 am

Yes and no. The last six months have admirably demonstrated why I don’t “do” polls. We’ve been down four here, down three there, up seven here, down two there – a veritable roller coaster ride, all on the back of… very little. It’s been a remarkably stable six months in the life of the party.  Our seven-point rise (which is an extraordinary movement) on January 31st came on the back of… nothing much. No major positive press, no triumphs, no… nothing. That’s one of the many reasons I didn’t trumpet it on the day it happened.

So we shouldn’t be worried,

…

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Also posted in Polls | 4 Comments
Colin Ross

Opinion: Conference delegates should vote for ‘No new Trident’

By Colin Ross | Thu 15th February 2007 - 8:15 am

Colin and Sean ring the peace bellTo me the answer is simple – the answer is no. No to Trident, No to son of Trident and No to any so called Independent Nuclear Deterrent.

Last year I went on behalf of the party to Pakistan and tried to engage with politicians there as to why it was wrong for Iran or any other nation to develop nuclear weapons and why Pakistan should pull back from developing more nuclear weapons. What message does our policy send to them – that it is okay for the UK to have nuclear weapons but you can’t?

Last year I also went to Hiroshima. I challenge anyone who is in favour of the UK, or anywhere, having nuclear weapons to go there for a day. See what destruction they caused and come back and tell me it is a good idea. The Mayor of Hiroshima – Tadatoshi Akiba has written to Ming Campbell, he said “In the name of Hiroshima, in the name of the human race, I call on the British government to immediately terminate all new development of nuclear weapons and begin destroying all existing nuclear weapons. I ask that the United Kingdom adhere conscientiously to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice declaring that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is illegal under international law, and live up to the promise clearly stated in the NPT of an unequivocal undertaking to eliminate its nuclear arsenal. I fervently hope that Great Britain will take the lead in making the 21st a genuinely peaceful century free from nuclear weapons.” The full text of the letter is at http://www.colin-ross.org.uk/news/001093.html

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How not to get impaled on Trident

By John Thomson | Mon 12th February 2007 - 7:57 am

Trident missile launchA trident has three prongs. In political terms there are three ‘prongs’ on offer now in the Trident nuclear debate.

One prong says do away with Trident altogether, and with it Britain’s allegedly ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent. Another says keep it, but offer a 20% reduction in the number of missiles (this is the option favoured by the Blair/Brown/Cameron ‘BBC’ consensus). The third prong also says keep Trident, but suggests a 50% reduction in the system’s capability.

All three options have their problems. The straightforward elimination of Trident has the advantage of being in a principled unilateralist tradition, but is not really practical politics. It is unlikely to be adopted by any of the three major parties. It would, if adopted as Government policy, leave Britain without any cards to play in subsequent nuclear disarmament talks.

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The danger of a return to heavy drinking in Westminster

By the founding editor | Sat 10th February 2007 - 5:44 pm

Shaun Ley has written a good piece in the latest BBC World at One newsletter, which I think deserves wider circulation:

The image has stayed with me ever since the evening when I sat in the Strangers Bar in the House of Commons. It’s small and undistinguished, with a narrow bar and pretty unimaginative décor. The grander spaces are saved for Members of Parliament, not least the terrace, overlooking the Thames, which is just next door to this bar. Strangers is one of the few places where non-MPs can go for a drink, provided of course that an MP is buying.

On this particular evening, whilst MPs hung around waiting to vote, I’d squeezed in to the crowded bar to share a pint with a minister, the sort of routine exchange between journalist and politician which is the currency of Westminster life (and incidentally the source of many of the stories you’ll read in your newspaper the following morning).

It must be around ten years ago now, but the memory is still vivid. A cry erupted from the bar, where an MP was sitting drinking with her colleagues. She rose unsteadily to her feet, shouted for her handbag,  then,  spotting it at the other end of the room, proceeded to stagger towards it via a route which was a long way from being a straight line. Indeed, she was unable to stand upright, instead veering in crab-like movements towards her goal.

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Opinion: Do we need Special Prosecutors in the UK?

By Hywel Morgan | Wed 24th January 2007 - 10:55 pm

The fuss that has been generated following the arrest and questioning of Ruth Turner does pose some questions about how there can be investigations into political figures.

There may well be legitimate questions about why it was necessary to mount a dawn raid. A Prime Ministerial aide is hardly likely to be a serious flight risk, but to see Ministers questioning police operational decisions regarding investigations into their own government creates conflicts of interest left, right and centre.

The “cash for honours” inquiry is of course the most prominent police inquiry into the activity of politicians but it isn’t the only one. There have of course been a number of investigations into ballot fraud involving elected councillors. Sometimes those can be people with direct involvement in the democratic accountability of the Police, for example Colin Inglis was the Chair of the Humberside Police Authority when investigated (and subsequently acquitted) of child abuse charges.

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Opinion: Don’t panic, Ming, don’t panic (updated)

By the founding editor | Wed 3rd January 2007 - 12:42 pm

I was surprised this morning to find the lead story on BBC News online politics to be Sir Menzies warns off his critics.

The leader appeared on the Today programme this morning to defend himself against a silly quote from a single, anonymous, “Lib Dem MP” quoted in a paper whose readers probably don’t vote, and also against the defection of three Lib Dem PPCs to the Conservatives – a story that didn’t rise higher than about page 10 in the papers, and hasn’t ruffled any feathers in the party. A bit soon to go on the airwaves and …

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Adrian Sanders

Adrian Sanders MP calls for new focus on Community Politics

By Adrian Sanders | Tue 2nd January 2007 - 9:50 pm

Adrian SandersIf 2006 was the year of the renaissance of 007, 2007 could be the renaissance of the Lib Dems.

Despite taking a seat from Labour in a great Parliamentary by-election victory, launching the most radical green tax switch policy to reward work and punish pollution, and remaining the only force in Parliament around which opponents of the war in Iraq could unite, it was something of an Annus Horribilis.

The New Year offers us new opportunities to carve out distinctive positions on foreign affairs, domestic reform and where we stand in relation to the Government and Conservative opposition.

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Opinion: The Separation of Powers

By Gavin Whenman | Mon 1st January 2007 - 5:00 pm

The French writer Montesquieu came to Britain in the 18th century and studied our political system. His observations became the basis of his seminal work, The Spirit of the Laws, and, misunderstanding the British system of the time, he formed the theory of the “separation of powers”, between the legislative (Parliament), executive (the king) and the judiciary. He wrote of the necessity to separate these branches of the government as:

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.”

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Richard Huzzey

Calling time on Nazi laws

By Richard Huzzey | Sat 23rd December 2006 - 10:45 am

It’s interesting to see that David Irving, the holocaust-denying Briton, has now been released by the Austrian authorities. It raises some challenging questions about other European countries’ attitude to freedom of speech, and the use of Nazi symbols and texts.

Irving describes himself as a historian, which he’s free to do, but he of course has no credentials in academia or peer respect. It’s a bit like me saying I’m a literary critic because I’ve written a review of a book. And his ideas are, of course, foolish, and would be laughable if they weren’t so offensive.

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Opinion: Federal election rules could be in danger of making a mockery of our party’s democratic processes

By the founding editor | Fri 22nd December 2006 - 11:56 pm

Ballot paperNick Clegg, speaking on Internet TV station 18 Doughty Street recently described our party as “painfully democratic” – he meant no malice or mischief by the claim, but it was a pithy, and accurate, summary of a key point about Liberal Democrat decision making. Every so often we keep the party’s democracy alive by distributing ballot papers to an electoral college of thousands of voting representatives (who are in turn elected by their local parties) at great expense. When it comes to being democratic, despite the cost, we practice what we preach.

During the latest round of elections to national party committees such as the Federal Policy Committee and the Federal Conference Committee, Liberal Democrat Voice received helpful assistance from election officials Lord Rennard and David Allworthy – their help enabled us to publish a full list of candidates as soon as it became available. This was, so far as I know, the first time a full list of federal election candidates was published online, free to access, allowing non-voting representatives (who do not receive copies of ballot papers and manifestos) to see who was standing for positions of influence in the Liberal Democrats. Alas, having seen that information, they then had no place to comment – in fact, the election rules forbade it.

All being well there are now two years until the next set of elections, and while the last lot is still fresh in our memories we should have a rational debate about the conditions under which the next is fought.

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Steve Cooke

Opinion: Immigration brings more than economic benefits

By Steve Cooke | Mon 18th December 2006 - 7:11 pm

Earth

A report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has provided an interesting slant on population movements in Britain. The report’s full of interesting stats, which, if I could be bothered to quote them, would probably bury the point of this post in numbers. The thing that really struck me was there are 5.5 million Brits living abroad. That’s 9.2% of the population and means there are more Britains living abroad than foreigners living in the UK.

Related to those figures is the finding that: “a small but significant minority are finding the settlement experience much more challenging. Often these Britons come up against linguistic and cultural barriers that they have not prepared for, and have, in response, clustered together away from the host society.”

Could it be that many Britains fail to integrate with their host communities? Surely not!

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Opinion: Press picture hides same old nasty Tories

By Serena Hennesy | Tue 12th December 2006 - 1:01 pm

We keep reading in the Westminster-centric press about the “resurgent” Tory party but what’s really going on?  Like lots of you I’ve been riveted by the conservativehome website and what appears to be meltdown in the conservative associations out there in the sticks.  OK only four associations have come seriously unstuck, but is this the tip of the iceberg?

I always thought Dave was going to run into trouble with his grassroots.  Think about that solid 30% of the electorate who stuck with the Tories through all the wilderness years.  They really hate Europe.  They truly believe in low taxes, small government and the welfare state as a simple safety net for the indigent.  They think being green means support for foxhunters because they “look after the countryside” (you bet they do, how else are there still going to be foxes to hunt?).

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Tim Gordon

Opinion: State funding of political parties would lead to creeping centralisation

By Tim Gordon | Fri 8th December 2006 - 2:28 pm

MoneyRunning local parties must be one of the least lauded jobs in Britain.

Its hard work. There are (rightly) increasing numbers of checks (especially on the money), some with potential legal implications. Its not as glamorous as being a Councillor, and there is no allowance attached. And if you’re a Tory, there’s a high chance that CCHQ will come down on you if you misbehave and do something terrible like select a popular local candidate.

I was reminded of this when I attended the London New Local Party Officer training. I was impressed by both the calibre of the trainers – in the case of Treasurers the estimable David Allworthy – and the enthusiasm of the various participants (its still early days!).

Ultimately getting good local party Execs is critical to both the ability of a party to campaign -but also to the political health of the UK as a whole. They are the ones who sweat to make things happen, who ensure that the right candidates get selected to (ultimately) run the country and whose day-to-day activity keeps the whole democracy show on the road. And these are often the same community-minded people who might also run a local charity or the village fete.

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Why I’m glad Nick Griffin was acquitted

By Charles Anglin | Sat 11th November 2006 - 11:40 am

Nick Griffin, the Leader of the BNP, was acquitted yesterday of charges of inciting racial hatred. In 2004 Griffin made a speech to BNP activists in which he described Islam as a “wicked, vicious faith” and said that Muslims were turning Britain into a “multi-racial hell hole”.

Griffin is a racist, he espouses an ugly creed based on fear and ignorance, almost every word he says is offensive. But being offensive shouldn’t be enough to land you in jail.

Yesterday, Mizanur Rahman, a young radical Islamist was jailed for his part in the protest earlier this year over the Danish newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Rahman waved banners and chanted into a megaphone shouting “Annihilate those who insult Islam” and “Behead those who insult Islam.”

Although he apologises now, Rahman’s remarks were full of hate, they were grotesque, offensive and shocking. But being shocking shouldn’t be enough to get you convicted.

I’m a black gay man and much of the anti-hatred legislation that Griffin and Rahman were prosecuted under was designed to protect people like me. But freedom is a delicate thing, and I believe that our current raft of hate crime laws in danger of undermining the very freedom they aim to protect.

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“The party certainly owes Charles Kennedy a great debt, and it is £2.4 million.”

By the founding editor | Wed 1st November 2006 - 5:16 pm

In the event that the Electoral Commission, more than a year and a half after Michael Brown’s £2.4m donations were received, DO decide they must be repaid, then it seems likely following Menzies Campbell’s performance on Sunday A.M. this week that the party will appeal the accompanying court order.

The Times reports that the party is making arrangements to create a fund to help fight any such appeal.

One interesting line from the story: “The Lib Dem leader is privately furious with his predecessor for leaving the party with the damaging saga.” Clearly not that privately, as it’s …

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Richard Huzzey

Local Government reform

By Richard Huzzey | Thu 26th October 2006 - 10:04 am

The Government’s new proposals for local government sound like decentralisation. Councils will get the power to create their own by-laws, and public services will get more scrutiny from the public.

But on closer inspection, it’s the sort of decentralisation one would expect from Labour. Without a reform of local government finance, Westminster still plays the tune as it pays the piper. The by-laws are spun as a new way to fine people for anti-social behaviour, as if Labour haven’t realised that enacting more and more laws is not as effective a way to curb crime as better policing of the laws we have.

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Richard Huzzey

‘Troops out’ – but we still have responsibilities

By Richard Huzzey | Fri 13th October 2006 - 10:10 am

Lib Dems Say NoSir Richard Dannatt’s comments about British presence in Iraq are welcome and overdue in public debate.

On the issue itself, Sir Richard is doubtless right that ‘coalition’ (Anglo-American) forces in Iraq are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Seen as a hostile occupying force, our troops are increasingly counter-productive to the stated goal of founding a united, peaceful, liberal democracy.

However, the problem is, who will replace them? The Iraqi civil war is clearly so advanced that peacekeeping forces will be necessary long into the future. Withdrawal of British and American forces is now vital, but we need international support to do so. No matter how much the invasion of Iraq was a grave error, only the most irresponsible detractor would support an action that made its future even worse. The attrocity of invasion is a national sin, and the long-standing opposition of millions of Britons cannot erase our communal responsibility for the future of Iraq; that means that we should be unfaltering in our genuine committment to rebuilding Iraq, but our troops no longer contribute to that goal.

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Can you spare £30, gov? Lib Dems biggest donor was “entirely fraudulent and had never traded”

By the founding editor | Thu 12th October 2006 - 11:28 am

Times OnlineThe Times reports today:

“THE business that gave the largest financial gift to the Liberal Democrats was entirely fraudulent and had never traded, a High Court judge ruled yesterday.”

and:

“The Electoral Commission, which polices political donations, said last night that it will study the judgment in detail. It has the power to ask the courts to force parties to surrender gifts. Under election law, corporate donations may be accepted only from companies “carrying on business” in Britain.”

Rather hilariously, Iain Dale interprets this as “LibDems Stare Bankruptcy in the face.” Two things on that.

1) If we were forced to repay all of the donations, that would require each Lib Dem member to fork out about £30 to get the party out of a hole. I’d open my chequebook now. The major party donors would do the same, I’m sure.

2) Our party is the only one of the big three that ended its last reporting period solvent. Unlike Labour and the Conservatives, we don’t have eye-watering debts beyond our wildest dreams. We can find £2.5m in extreme circumstances.

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A lack of ambition for the BBC?

By Martin Hoscik | Wed 11th October 2006 - 1:46 pm

BBC NewsWhy does it so often feel as if the party has a lack of ambition for the future of the BBC? It seems that the only time we comment on it is when we’re attacking the Government or their proposals. It’s hard to recall when we last put forward imaginative plans to “secure the BBC’s status as the envy of the world”.

Actually I should probably quote that statement in full: “We can only secure the BBC’s status as the envy of the world by introducing a single, independent regulator for all public service broadcasters.” – Don Foster, 15 March 2006

The problem is the statement makes no sense. It starts from an assumption that the BBC already HAS status as “the envy of the world” under the decades old model of internal regulation but goes on to suggest that such status can only be secured and developed by handing regulatory responsibility to an outside body.

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Follow the money – cleaning up MPs interests

By Colin Walklin | Tue 10th October 2006 - 1:27 pm

The growing disconnect between the voters & the politicians they elect is one of the seemingly intractable problems facing political parties today, and  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard some hand-wringing politician crying crocodile tears about the “you’re all in it for yourselves mentality” which prevails amongst the general public.

Of course this is unfair, but public perception is unfair, and MPs are nowadays all seen as sleazy & out for themselves.

This is why we as Lib Dems have to mark out a distinctive difference here between our approach & that of the NuLabCon parties.

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Richard Huzzey

Two climate challenges

By Richard Huzzey | Sat 7th October 2006 - 7:44 pm

The struggle for action against climate change is one Lib Dems have played their part in, with a proud environmentalist tradition that has only got stronger in recent years. In arguing that climate change science is compelling, we are happy to make common cause with people from any other political stripe. To demonstrate the problem, that’s quite proper. There are still climate-change deniers (usually funded by Exxon-Mobil) and dismissing their propaganda is vital.

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Richard Huzzey

Thoughts on The Amazing Mrs Pritchard

By Richard Huzzey | Wed 4th October 2006 - 8:31 am

Last night, I watched the first episode of The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard – the BBC’s new comedy drama about a supermarket manager who becomes a non-partisan Prime Minister. I wonder if I’m the only viewer who was disappointed by it?

The basic premise – for those who didn’t see it – was that Mrs. Pritchard, after witnessing Tory and Labour candidates physically fighting outside her store, decides to stand for Parliament. Even though she knows nothing about policy problems, she thought she could do better than the male-dominated political parties, who were all the same. Her idea catches on, and lots of other apolitical women stand for parliament, along with (female) defectors from existing parties. The episode ends with her election and succession to 10 Downing Street, as her ‘Purple Alliance’ sweeps the country.

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A Liberal approach to a free market NHS?

By Grace Goodlad | Tue 3rd October 2006 - 8:53 pm

StethoscopeOliver Letwin has hit the headlines again for his “no limits” approach to privatisation of the NHS.

This isn’t exactly a huge difference from what Labour are currently doing, with “Private Treatment Centres” being given growing volumes of work, PPP putting the NHS in debt to private investor capital, and huge volumes of privatisation of non-frontline services such as finance, logistics, catering, cleaning…

We all know the problems that privatised cleaning services have caused.  There are frequent, and sadly true, horror stories of dirty wards and horrific MRSA and related superbug infection rates – just this week a hospital in Patricia Hewitt’s own constituency has been hit, with tragic results for some of the unlucky patients.

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Compulsory voting: time to think again?

By Gavin Whenman | Tue 12th September 2006 - 7:50 am

Faced with the problem of an historically low turnout, Gavin Whenman asks what we can do about it. Is compulsory voting the answer? And / or an extra bank holiday?

Turnout in the 2005 UK General Election was 61.4% of the electorate, up on the 2001 figure (by 2%) but still historically speaking very low. Such a low turnout undermines the legitimacy of our elected politicians and disconnects them from the concerns of their constituents. If they know that certain demographic groups are more likely to vote, for example the elderly and the middle class, they will listen to that group more than they will listen to the other groups, for example young people and the working class.

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Alex Wilcock

It’s about… money

By Alex Wilcock | Sat 9th September 2006 - 8:29 pm

It’s everything from “monstrously idiotic” and “insultingly tokenistic” to “well-argued and full of practical steps built on clear principle.” Why then, asks former Federal Policy Committee Member Alex Wilcock, is more attention not being paid to the paper produced by the Meeting the Challenge debate?

This September, the Liberal Democrats debate their two most crucial policy papers between the last General Election and the next one. So why is all the debate about a 50p rate of tax? You’d think it was either a holy relic or the last wicked bastion of socialism, depending on which overexcited commentator you read last. Yes, tax is an important battleground, but when our whole political direction is up for grabs, it’s bizarre to focus on one detail in one policy area and to ignore the rest. Besides, while everyone’s arguing about the tax paper being ‘a shift to the right’ – which it isn’t – the other key paper is lurching in a quite different direction.

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