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Category Archives: Party policy and internal matters

Anything to do with Lib Dem internal business, including policy development, consultations, rules and constitutions.

Chris White writes: Spare a thought for the Federal Conference Committee

By Chris White | Thu 15th September 2011 - 8:53 am

I really never thought I would say that.

They can appear somewhat cliquey – the only Federal Committee to publish its mugshots in the conference agenda (apparently conference representatives aren’t interested in who looks after their interests on the Federal Executive or the Federal Policy Committee).

They can be a bit insensitive: not the cleverest idea to select a business motion which would increase their powers over emergency motions at a time when representatives are feeling restless. And a tad cynical to have it at 0900 on Tuesday morning when many will still be at breakfast. (Yes: I know you will have …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged federal conference committee | 26 Comments

Opinion: Time to face reality on conference security

By Simon McGrath | Sat 10th September 2011 - 2:28 pm

Lib Dem Voice has carried a number of articles in recent weeks, reflecting wider discussions among Lib Dems, about the security arrangement for the Birmingham Conference. The tone of many of these discussions has reached a quite extraordinary pitch of self-righteousness and vituperation, in many cases based on hearsay and rumour.

Perhaps it would be worth looking at some of the facts about the security arrangements.

Firstly the idea that this is a decision which Lib Dems can take on our own is simply wrong. Many others attend our conference, the media, exhibitors and the workers in the venue, who in …

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Also posted in Conference and Op-eds | Tagged andrew wiseman, chris fox and tim farron | 51 Comments

Update on Lib Dem conference accreditation: 5,617 approved, 138 in progress, 150 pending. One person refused.

By Stephen Tall | Sat 10th September 2011 - 12:31 pm

Jon Ball has just updated live from the Lib Dems’ Federal Conference Committee with the latest on the party’s conference accreditation which has provoked such internal controversy in recent weeks:

Lib Dem conference accreditation update from FCC. 5,617 people have been approved. 138 applications are in progress. There are issues with 150 applications in various categories including photos missing or unsuitable and some people (almost all non-members) being asked to provide passports at conference. These are technical issues that are very unlikely to lead to refusal. However, one person has been refused accreditation by the Chair of FCC, the President

…

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Also posted in Conference | Tagged birmingham 2011 conference | 14 Comments

Chris Fox to step down as Liberal Democrats’ Chief Executive

By Helen Duffett | Mon 5th September 2011 - 2:54 pm

Following Chris Fox’s decision, announced today, to stand down as Chief Executive at the end of November, Nick Clegg and Tim Farron have praised the transformation he has brought to the party organisation.

Chris Fox took over the role of Chief Executive in July 2009. During his time in the role he has led on strategy and the air war and headed up the executive team during the General Election. Since then he has focused on modernising the party which culminated in a move to new high tech headquarters in the heart of Whitehall a week ago.

Chris Fox said:

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Also posted in News | Tagged chris fox, featured, nick clegg and tim farron | 20 Comments

The countdown to Connect has begun

By The Voice | Tue 30th August 2011 - 4:13 pm

News from Lib Dem HQ of the Liberal Democrats’ new campaign software:

Campaigning across the party is set to get a major boost when Connect comes online later this year. Connect is the UK version of the world’s leading campaign software that’s being built for the party by Voter Activation Network (VAN).

It is based on the tried and tested technology successfully used by Barack Obama and the Democrats in the US and in several other countries around the world. Connect combines high level security and stability, powerful campaigning tools …

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Tagged barack obama, connect, ed davey, jake holland and VAN | 18 Comments

Liberal Democrats moving HQ : the future’s bright

By Helen Duffett | Fri 26th August 2011 - 4:21 pm

As the sun sets on Cowley Street, Lib Dem Chief Exec Chris Fox emails party members with the HQ’s change of address and a brief look back, before taking “another big step for the party and our ambitious modernisation programme”. (He also includes a handy list of contact details for other parts of the party.)

Simon Cooper’s sneak-preview photos show that for LDHQ, the future’s bright:

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Also posted in News | Tagged chris fox, cowley street, featured, ian wrigglesworth, ldhq and simon cooper | 12 Comments

Chris White writes: Approving Police Commissioner candidates

By Chris White | Sat 16th July 2011 - 8:55 am

Readers of LDV will have noticed that there is an announcement about Police Commissioner candidates – presumably placed by the English Party.

Of course, none of us want these elections (and most councillors in other parties don’t either) but it’s in the Coalition agreement and so we are to an extent stuck with a particularly silly bit of the Tory manifesto. Such, I guess, is the nature of Coalitions.

What is troubling, however, is the fact that the English Party has decided to play the centralist card: candidates need in essence to be approved like parliamentary candidates.

One of the main …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged elected police commissioners, english party, mark valladares and policing | 14 Comments

Police and Crime Commissioners: Lib Dem candidates start here

By Helen Duffett | Fri 15th July 2011 - 9:26 am

The Liberal Democrats are inviting potential candidates for the new Police and Crime Commissioner posts, which, if the legislation is passed, are expected to be elected in May 2012.

The party wants to encourage the widest possible range of applicants so the membership can select from the best possible choice of candidates.

So if you’re interested in applying, you need to be an approved Parliamentary candidate:

The Bill to create directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners is currently before Parliament. The first elections of Police and Crime Commissioners are expected in May 2012.

The English Regional Parties will be inviting applications to be candidates

…

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Also posted in Selection news | Tagged elected police commissioners, featured and policing | 19 Comments

Opinion: Liberal Bureaucracy – Killing Your Party With Its Song?…

By Mark Valladares | Tue 12th July 2011 - 3:13 pm

This is quite a hard post to write. After all, I’ve been a party bureaucrat for more than a quarter of a century, from my embryonic days as Secretary General of the Young Liberals, via incarnations as a Returning Officer, a member of the English Candidates Committee and stints as Regional Secretary in both London and now the East of England.

Once upon a time, I took the view that, if I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, campaign, what I could do was do the boring, yet necessary stuff that enabled the Party to fulfil its organisational obligations, thus freeing up people …

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Also posted in Op-eds | 15 Comments

A sideways look at a Liberal Democrat institution

By Mark Pack | Wed 6th July 2011 - 10:25 am

Chances are, if you’ve been to a Liberal Democrat event, you’ve bought a raffle ticket or two. Now don’t get me wrong. I like raffles. Some of my best friends run raffles. I’ve even won two raffle prizes in the last year. But for such a popular Liberal Democrat activity, we are often surprisingly poor at running them.

In perhaps three raffles out of five, by the time you get to the final few prizes, just about everyone in the room (if they are still paying attention) is impatient for the raffle to end, with too many prizes then exacerbated by …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged bermondsey & old southwark liberal democrats, camden liberal democrats, featured and putney liberal democrats | 8 Comments

Ten ways to make your local party AGM better

By Mark Pack | Mon 27th June 2011 - 8:20 am

At the weekend Mark Valladares rightly pointed out that now is a good time for local parties to start thinking about their autumn AGMs. AGMs are important not only for their role in party democracy and accountability but also for the role in having a lively, healthy local party that does politics, campaigning and socialising.

Here are my ten top tips to make an AGM (or indeed pretty much any local party meeting or event) a success. Individually, each of them are pretty straight-forward but the collective impact can make a huge difference to how well a local party does …

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Tagged agms and mark valladares | 5 Comments

Local parties should start early when it comes to AGMs

By Mark Valladares | Sat 25th June 2011 - 1:15 pm

Yes, I know that it’s only June, but have you given any thought to your Local Party’s AGM?

The Party’s Constitution specifies that it should take place between 1 October and 30 November, so it isn’t as far away as you might think. And there are things that can be done now that will help to make it more successful than might otherwise be the case.

Firstly, have you decided upon a date yet? Apart from the limitations on timing noted above, you don’t want to clash with your Regional Conference, so you might want to rule that out. Is a weekend …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged agms | 4 Comments

Baroness Brinton writes: Towards a more diverse Parliamentary Party

By Sal Brinton | Wed 15th June 2011 - 12:21 pm

Last year, Ros Scott, Nick Clegg and the Federal Executive (FE) asked me to conduct a review of issues relating to the role of Parliamentary candidates. Key to this review was how the Party will increase the diversity of its candidates standing in the 2015 General Election, and getting them elected.

The first point to make is that we made some real steps forward in selecting more women and BAME candidates in the last electoral cycle despite the disappointing results – the number of our seats went backwards, so making any progress in terms of representation was very difficult. The intense work by many in the party over the last few years has meant that there was significant progress in the lead up to the 2010 election: 50% of new candidates in held seats were women, and only just slightly lower in priority seats. Some excellent BAME candidates were selected (the highest number over the three main parties), but again, without electoral success. Although the fact that there no ‘safe’ seats in the Liberal Democrats (unlike Labour and the Conservatives) means that we cannot use some of the mechanisms used by the other Parties, we should absolutely not be complacent – we will have to work even harder, and invest more time, energy and resources than we have in recent years to make sure that our parliamentary parties reflect Britain in the future.

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Tagged diversity, diversity engagement group, equalities, nick clegg and ros scott | Leave a comment

Liberal Democrats confirm new central campaigns teams

By Helen Duffett | Mon 13th June 2011 - 11:40 am

A further announcement as part of the reorganisation of the Liberal Democrats’ central campaigns staff.

From HQ Chief of Staff, Tim Snowball:

I am very pleased to announce that as of 17 June 2011 the full make up of the new central Campaigns Teams, working under Director of Elections and Skills, Hilary Stephenson, will be as follows:

Campaign Development Team

Key Objectives: to research, test and deliver cutting edge campaign techniques and to maximise uptake through a well planned and coordinated training and support system.

Jake Holland (Head of Unit)

Austin Rathe

Tim Pollard

Ground Communications Team

Key Objectives: to develop effective messages, visualisation and artwork for

…

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Tagged austin rathe, dan purchese, dave mccobb, hilary stephenson, jake holland, john aylwin, katy riddle, rhiannon wadeson, shaun roberts, tim pollard, tim snowball and victoria marsom | 2 Comments

Outstanding service to the Lib Dems 2011: your nominations, please

By Helen Duffett | Thu 9th June 2011 - 6:55 pm

The Liberal Democrats are seeking nominations for their three party awards, to be presented at September’s Autumn Conference.

One award will be given to a party member who has been elected to public office; one to a member who has never been elected; one to a political assistant working for a Liberal Democrat Council Group.

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4 Comments

Lib Dems outperform Labour on private donations, notes the FT

By The Voice | Mon 6th June 2011 - 5:55 pm

Good to see a bit of media recognition today which overtly acknowledges our now consistent out-performing of Labour on private fundraising efforts. The Financial Times reports:

Private and company donations to Labour have plummeted to a 10th of their pre-election average in the first six months of Ed Miliband’s leadership, according to research by the Financial Times.

Many former donors have turned their backs on the opposition party, leaving it increasingly reliant on unions, which provide the bulk of its private income.

Labour’s corporate and individual donations of £248,577 for the half-year to March were dwarfed even by those to the Liberal

…

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Also posted in News | Tagged donations (Lib Dem), electoral commission, financial times and party funding | 11 Comments

Liberal Youth elects new Executive Committee

By Helen Duffett | Sat 4th June 2011 - 3:53 pm

This week Liberal Youth elected its Executive Committee for 2011-2012.

The new Executive Committee is as follows:

Chair: Tom Wood
Vice Chair: Charlotte Henry
Financial Officer: Chris Jenkinson
Campaigns Officer: Cath Smith and Chris Ward
Communications Officer: Bobby Dean
Events Officer: Thomas Hemsley
International Officer: Sam Fisk and Harriet Ainscough
Policy Officer: Sarah Harding
Non-Portfolio Officers: Robson Brown and Aidan Flood
England Convenor: Harry Matthews

The following have been elected for the Regions:

Regional Chairs:

North East: Hannah Claytor
North West: Neil Darby
East Midlands: Keiran Harley
West Midlands: Rory Roberson
South East: Jon Bates
South West: Dave Cope
Scottish

…

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Tagged liberal youth | 8 Comments

Response: Chair of Federal Conference Committee on increased security measures

By Andrew Wiseman | Fri 3rd June 2011 - 12:53 pm

We have just announced arrangements for registering for our autumn conference, including some new security arrangements which will apply for the first time this year. Some concerns have been raised about them so I wanted to set out what exactly the new arrangements are, and why the Federal Conference Committee has decided that it is necessary this year to increase security – something that we have been very reluctant to do.

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Also posted in Conference and Op-eds | 153 Comments

Nearly three years on, how does the Bones Report look?

By Mark Pack | Wed 1st June 2011 - 8:21 am

Back in 2008 the Report of the Party Reform Commission to the Federal Executive was published, more commonly known as the Bones Report after its Chair, Chris Bones. Both the process for drawing up the report and the report itself was not without its critics at the time (e.g. see here and here) but since then it has been a topic only rarely talked about, even amongst party administration insiders.

So how does it looking, approaching its third anniversary, and does it set the right or wrong course for the party organisationally – or has it become an irrelevance?

In one respect, …

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Tagged chris bones, chris rennard and party reform commission | 15 Comments

Liberal Youth: appealing to Lib Dems everywhere

By Thomas Hemsley | Mon 30th May 2011 - 5:23 pm

Conferences are a foundation stone of being a Liberal Democrat. There have been some really huge and important ones – Brighton, 2002, where we laid out a principled position on Iraq; Llandudno, 1981, where Shirley Williams and David Steel spoke passionately in favour of an alliance; Sheffield, 2011, when we opposed the NHS reforms. Conference is the best way for the membership to exert their influence over the leadership. Past leaders, from Steel to Ashdown, from Kennedy to Clegg, have often feared Conference for the skill and passion with which it has put its arguments. And so the tradition of …

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Also posted in Conference | Tagged bonnie greer, charles kennedy, david steel, liberal youth, nick clegg, paddy ashdown, shirley williams and tessa munt | Leave a comment

You! Yes, you! Ever thought about being a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate?

By Mark Valladares | Sun 29th May 2011 - 1:57 pm

At March’s Federal Conference, a motion was passed setting up the new Candidate Leadership Programme, designed specifically to identify and develop candidates from currently under-represented groups (i.e. everyone other than white men).

Candidates will be given structured support, development and training all the way through to the General Election, and it is particularly aimed at those wanting to take part in competitive seat selections. Further information and application packs will be available from late June.

So, what’s the hurry, I hear you ask? The catch is, you’ve got to be an approved candidate to get a place, and if you aren’t …

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Also posted in Selection news | Tagged diversity and equalities | 26 Comments

Lib Dems appoint three senior Campaigns heads

By Helen Duffett | Sat 28th May 2011 - 5:51 pm

The party’s reorganisation of its Federal campaign team continues, with the appointment of three senior campaigns posts.

Jake Holland, Shaun Roberts and Victoria Marsom are to head the three new central teams, reporting to Hilary Stephenson as Director of Elections and Skills.

From a Cowley Street memo:

Head of Campaign Development – Jake Holland
Key Objectives: to research, test and deliver cutting edge campaign techniques and to maximise uptake through a well planned and coordinated training and support system.

Head of Ground Communications – Shaun Roberts
Key Objectives: to develop effective messages, visualisation and artwork for ground communications, to fully participate in the party’s

…

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Tagged hilary stephenson, jake holland, shaun roberts and victoria marsom | 15 Comments

Collette Dunkley appointed as Liberal Democrats’ Marketing Director

By Helen Duffett | Thu 26th May 2011 - 1:49 pm

Collette Dunkley is to join the Liberal Democrats next week as Director of Marketing, reporting to Chief Executive Chris Fox.

Collette, who was born in Liverpool, has led marketing and communications in global organisations including General Motors and Vodafone. She has also lectured on these subjects in various universities, advised many large organisations and is an expert and commentator on increasing engagement with women.

The new Marketing Department at Cowley St will bring together internal and external communications. These will include development of our messages and the ways we deliver them, as well as collecting vital feedback. Collette will undertake an …

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Also posted in News | Tagged chris fox and collette dunkley | 11 Comments

Revealed: The Liberal Democrats’ new HQ

By Helen Duffett | Sat 21st May 2011 - 9:35 pm

The Liberal Democrats plan to relocate this summer to a new headquarters in Westminster, close to Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament.

The party has chosen newly-refurbished offices on the second floor at 8-10 Great George Street, opposite the Treasury.

Party staff can look forward to a modern, open-plan office on one floor, in contrast to the current Cowley Street offices – which are arranged over five floors, in an array of dolls’-house type compartments.

At around 7000 square feet, the floor area is …

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Also posted in News | Tagged chris fox, cowley street, featured, great george street and SDP | 29 Comments

Chris Fox writes: Changing the way we support campaigning

By Chris Fox | Fri 13th May 2011 - 7:46 pm

After three days of consultations with staff and discussions with people such as Regional Chairs I am now able to update you regarding the way we hope to take our campaigning forward.

Some of you will have seen or heard rumours about major changes in the way we support campaigning – some accurate and a lot less so.

It is my responsibility as Chief Executive to ensure that our professional organisation remains as effective as possible and makes best use of the resources available to us. The changes we have made at Cowley Street since the last General Election are already well known, …

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Tagged chris fox and hilary stephenson | 18 Comments

Major restructuring in the Campaigns Department

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th May 2011 - 10:40 pm

Big changes are afoot in the Liberal Democrat Campaigns Department.

Firstly, the network of Campaigns Officers around the country, currently mostly funded by a mix of central and regional monies, is being moved over to a purely regionally-funded system. That will save the federal party money, but will also cede control over the network to regional (and Welsh/Scottish) parties. The previous joint funding arrangements often took up huge amounts of time to negotiate and also resulted in many tensions over what the people in post should be prioritising in their work (e.g. should a regional campaigns officer be sent to work …

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21 Comments

“Thursday is decision day” – Charles Kennedy’s eve of poll message to members and supporters

By Helen Duffett | Wed 4th May 2011 - 5:53 pm

Charles Kennedy MP has emailed Liberal Democrat members and supporters with a “get out and vote” (and “get out the vote”) message, ahead of tomorrow’s elections and referendum:

Tomorrow you have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have your say on how we elect our MPs to Westminster. Important elections are also taking place across the country for the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament & local councils. Thursday is Decision Day.

When I was first elected in 1983, the idea of changing our voting system for Westminster elections seemed important, but the chance seemed remote. When the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly were established, neither

…

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Tagged av referendum, charles kennedy, dan snow, local elections, scottish parliament and welsh assembly | Leave a comment

We’re talking digital policy today

By Mark Pack | Thu 21st April 2011 - 9:23 am

We’re trying something a little different today – three much longer posts than usual, all on the same policy theme. As the party currently has an Information Technology and Intellectual Policy Working Group at work, we’ve picked the same topic for today’s theme.

Today’s trio of posts are going to be:

For more about the Policy Working Group’s work, see the original consultation paper and …

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Also posted in Site news | 1 Comment

Federal Executive recommends changes to allow more campaigning in party election contests

By Mark Pack | Sun 3rd April 2011 - 6:27 pm

During the week the Federal Executive agreed to support a series of proposals from the party’s Acting Returning Officer, David Allworthy, to relax the restrictions on campaign in party internal elections. To quote the paper put to the FE:

These can be summed up in the following five areas:

– the introduction of Acting Returning Officer (ARO) electronic communications as per Leadership and Presidential elections

– the introduction of an ARO published e-mail and telephone contact for each candidate to encourage voter candidate contact

– the removal of the no endorsements rule for the Interim Peers Election and bringing into line with the Committee,

…

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Tagged david allworthy and federal executive | 8 Comments

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