The new edition of Liberator magazine includes a questionnaire of all three candidates for the Liberal Democrat presidency.
We asked the following six questions:
Q.1 – What relevant experience will you bring to the presidency?
Q.2 – The presidency has three functions that do not necessarily sit well together – representing the party to the leadership, acting as a figurehead at functions, and chairing the Federal Executive. Which of these will you be best at, and which worst?
Q.3 – Will COG (the Chief Officers Group proposed by the Bones Commission) make the party run more smoothly or will it create a democratic deficit?
Q.4 – The party is in a poor financial state and its fund-raising activities have been neither transparent nor scandal-free. What will you do to improve the situation?
Q.5 – The next major election campaign will be the 2009 European election but the party is divided over strategy. Some argue that the party should campaign like it did in 2004 (i.e. focus on local target wards and not mention European issues). Others argue that the party should fight on a pro-European platform to avoid coming fourth behind UKIP again. They cannot both be right. Which strategy do you prefer?
Q.6 – “We can win everywhere.” Really?
You can read the candidates’ answers here.
* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who helps write and produce Liberator magazine.
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20 Comments
On 4, Chandila answers, “It is absurd that the parliamentary party, Cowley Street and – to some extent – the leader’s office are running discrete budgets” and proposes merging them.
Is not the reason for seperate budgets that the Parly Party and Leader’s Office get Short money so can’t be under direct control of a political party?
Hywel is of course right. And while Chandila support the Bones Commission move to centralise funding he also supports his own proposals to decentralise it.
My local party relies on contributions from councillors so neither approach is actually meaningful!
His campaign has been a disapointment – his last email – don’t vote for the party hack -was particularly off putting.
I see Chandila is such a moderniser that he wants to modernize our spelling !
On the budget thing, there is no reason why the party’s Short Funds and federal party budget coudl not come udner a single umbrella. Any board of trustees overseeing such a budget woudl need to eb conscious of restrictions on how the money coudl be dispersed, but that’s not rocket science.
On the “s” v “z” point, I tend to use “s” always. But I gatehr this is an Americanism and that the “proper” English is actually “z”
I found all of the replies depressing. It’s difficult to choose between the functionally illiterate and the politically illiterate.
I’m sticking with Lembit as whilst I understand the argument about his wasted potential, at least he has some.
I can’t see any point to Chandila’s candidacy and Ros Scott seems to be the candidate of those who got us in the state we’re in, in the first place.
on -ise and -ize. -ise is more commonly the British spelling, and -ize the American. Though they come from Greek and Latin roots. There is an interesting article at http://www.translationdirectory.com/article142.htm and this has a very fitting opening line for Mark “Freedom of choice can be a terrible responsibility”.
The biggest issue as far as I can see is that Short Money has to be independently audited, and if no certifcate of of the audit is presented it is frozen. This would no doubt be complicated by being under one budget – though of course the issue is a bit of a red herring because POLD money and Cowley Street money are all looked after by the same financial controller, so it is not rocket science to look at two sheets of paper, why he thinks rollign them into one woudl gain anything I do not know – it is not liek you can move what you do with the Short Money.
I was also disappointed/alarmed at the lack of reference, from any of the candidates, to all the interesting ways that political organisation is changing and evolving in the US.
… and so I’ve just emailed them all the same question(s) …
“What, if anything, should our party learn from Barack Obama’s campaign? What have you learned from observing his campaign that you would seek to reapply as party president?”
How about the 7th question, is this contest really worth spending £50,000 on ?
Mouse. Answer: £50,000 is cheap if it truly provides the opportunity for an intelligent, frank and open debate on the direction of the party in areas such as membership recruitment and retention.
It’s very expensive if it’s just an exercise in ego building. It’s your call; I know what I think!
“What, if anything, should our party learn from Barack Obama’s campaign? What have you learned from observing his campaign that you would seek to reapply as party president?”
Waiting till he wins? 🙂
Not entirely flippant (though I think he will – do you think we would be quoting Karl Rove as an illustration of good practice in our campaign manual had 500 votes flipped* in Florida in 2000?
(Or the Supreme Court not made a curious decision, racial gerry-mandering not taken place in the months before, the Palm Beach ballot not been designed by a complete muppet, etc, etc)
I love Martin’s question. Bang on.
I’m not sure the Obama campaign is qualitatively different from some other recent US campaigns, but it does raise some serious questions for us in Britain, surely.
It seems Obama has taken on his own party’s establishment and seems set fair to outspend and roundly defeat the Republicans. From the little I know, he has also built up a huge war chest constructed on (mainly) small donations.
Amazing.
What can we learn?
Hmmm…god knows. It’s a much, much better question than I have adequate answers for.
A few tentative ideas:
(a) the internet can be used to build a massive and cash-rich campaign if you use it right?
(b) 50-1 shots can actually take on the established “powers that” be and win?
(c ) building a campaign around the “change” personality of a single man can work?
(d) being brilliant on television is vital?
Ed Davey and Chris Rennard actually went to the convention in Colorado. They also got some media coverage for it too. For my own part, I had the privilege of hearing Chris’s private thoughts and analysis over a drink a couple of weeks back.
Not sure if these really amount to answers, but it sure is a great question. I really hope Martin will post (and comment on) the replies he gets from the three LD Presidential candidates.
I ask this” if two of our chaps went to OBAMA LAND” then what did they learn ? and how are they going to implement it?
i am frustrated that we are in denial and are so unwilling to learn from the success of others. Automated calling was a disaster and it would seem that what we did learn we could not implement properly !!
Duncan,
Thanks for the “ize” v “ise” analysis.
I can’t decide if I’m an atlanticist or not now!
On the merging of budgets, I think there could be a number of measurable benefits.
You’re right, of course, that Short funds require specific auditing criteria. But, in theory, this could be true of a private donor too (here’s my £1m per annum, but I need you to prove X, Y and Z to continue to receive it).
A single board of trustees should easily be able to deal with this.
Other tricky matters could also become less tricky. For example, federal staff tend to be paid less than POLD staff and POLD staff tend to be paid less than leader’s office staff. Myabe this is merited, but there’s certainly not a consistent overview or approach or system.
It’s also difficult in the present structure to give clear instructions in some areas. For example, it was not obvious to me who in the press office should be defending or supporting the reputation of the federal party. All of us drew our salary from POLD. So, if a councillor in little Blogsworth hits the front pages, who deals with it? Of course, we’d all try and muck in. But it was a bit confusing.
This was particularly true for the regional media operation – an area where I think we could make massive progress, but at the level of a senior press officer in charge of “regional media” is enormously confused. In this crucial segment of the press office’s work, those operating on it are really acting as consultants, with no line management above them who can intervene.
That’s not a reason for giving the press office more power. But it is a reason to end the silo structure.
It is genuinely interesting to read what Martin has written about the American Contest but the commentary on the blogs about anything Atlantic in our Presidential Campaign is HOWEVER, considered, THE LANGUAGE OF THE DEVIL !!!
Yellow belly,
Is that true?
There’s an expenditure limit of 7.5 grand (although god knows how this is enforced…the advice I’ve been told exists is in such obvious and total breach of ECHR it’s truly laughable).
The oddity for me is that Chandila couldn’t choose to blow 2/3 of his capped budget on LibDem news adverts, if this is true http://www.order-order.com/2008/10/other-presidential-campaign.html
He does seem to be able to buy up webspace on LibDem Voice, however.
All very strange, all a bit unserious and all a bit studenty politics, frankly.
Yes, we as a party say ” we have the intellectual capability” yet on the other we are child like in our campaigns.
If Chandila could not spend money in Lib Dem News that shows how backward we are but also how stupid we are in not accepting the money of an activist.
Student politics or double standards ?
Well, it might be both student politics AND double standards.
virtually everytime I go on any political website now, I see a Chandila advert.
So, I guess his advertising budget has been spent on MessageSpace rather than on LibDem News.
How absurd. And how indefensible.
Someone raised earlier the point of the election costing £50,000.
I have no idea if it costs more or less than that.
But a candidate being turned away as he seeks to write a cheque to HQ for £5,000 has certainly raised the net costs. By exactly £5,000 in fact.
So, that’s about 200 or 300 members that we now need to recruit to make up the difference.
Ho hum.
One issue with advertising in LDN is that if one candidate takes out a full page advert then effectively all the others have to follow suit.
That said it’s not a bad fundraising approach – in the 1999 leadership election I sold adverts to all the candidates in ALDC’s members magazine knowing damn well that that’d all have to be seen to take one out 🙂 Given LDN made a net loss in the most recent set of accounts it’s strange that they turn down advertising.
ML – “For example, it was not obvious to me who in the press office should be defending or supporting the reputation of the federal party.”
Wasn’t it the Head of Media’s job to ensure that such thing’s were clear? A lot of the points you make refer to the party’s press operation. If they are as easy to resolve as you claim, then why didn’t you do so in your 2 1/2 years in charge?
I’ve just asked all the FE candidates as well (at least all the ones I could find a valid email address for)…