Stephen Tall

Why Liberal? Time to give the public a proper answer after 80 years

By Stephen Tall | Wed 26th May 2010 - 3:30 pm

In an effort to cure my election campaign withdrawal symptoms I’ve been reading a book published in 1964, Why Liberal?, a Penguin special which was one of a pre-election series covering the three major parties’ policies. This publishing tradition was revived most recently by imprint Biteback, with Why Vote Liberal Democrat?, edited by Danny Alexander, proving a surprise hit.

The 1964 version was written by Harry Cowie, then director of the Liberal party’s research department – probably in something of a hurry, as big topics such as the health service are apologetically omitted (“as they have in any case been …

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The Voice

Nick Clegg on the Queen’s Speech: “Giving power back to the people”

By The Voice | Wed 26th May 2010 - 1:45 pm

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has just emailed all Lib Dem supporters to offer his take on yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, and the many ways in which it includes Liberal Democrat priorities at its heart:

Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech was unlike any we have seen for years. It was not simply another list of bills from a government determined to rule from the centre. It was not simply a speech from another one-party Government able to push through measures without the support of a majority of the country.

Instead, the speech marked the beginning of a radical move to rebalance the relationship between people

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 20 Comments
Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: culture, Olympics, media and sport

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th May 2010 - 12:20 pm

Welcome to the fifth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

It’s rather a mouthful of a title for this section, but it reflects the diverse remit of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Almost inevitably it is made up of a disparate shopping list of policies without any clear thread running through them.

The list includes the not exactly controversial (Make a success of the Olympics! Make a success of other sports events! Try to get more sports events!) through supporting the status quo …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Richard Heinrich and Phil Jarvest

Opinion: Liberal Youth and the thorny question of higher education funding policy

By Richard Heinrich and Phil Jarvest | Wed 26th May 2010 - 11:13 am

The following article is by Richard Heinrich and Phil Jarvest, who are joint candidates for co-chair of Liberal Youth.

Lib Dem Voice welcomes articles from any candidates in the Liberal Youth elections.

The issue of higher education (HE) funding will very likely become a serious and highly contentious subject during the present Parliament.

We believe that for Liberal Youth – and indeed the Liberal Democrats – to play an active and useful role in this debate a full and wide-ranging internal discussion on the notion of a student contribution is needed. In our opinion Liberal Democrat policy has failed to adequately address …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 31 Comments
Stephen Tall

1,831 Thank Yous to all LDV readers who supported our election appeal

By Stephen Tall | Wed 26th May 2010 - 10:20 am

A couple of months ago, Lib Dem Voice identified five candidates standing for the party in this general election in winnable seats whose campaigns needed a helping hand from readers willing to make a donation.

Thank you to all LDV readers who responded – collectively you helped raise some £1,831, a terrific response. Two of the five candidates, Lorely Burt and Stephen Lloyd, are now MPs thanks to the campaigns they ran. Our commiserations and best wishes for their future campaigns go to the three – Willie Rennie, Sal Brinton and Carol Woods – who didn’t make it this time.

All general donations to the LDV election appeal have been shared equally between the five, and cheques will be winging their way to their local parties this week.

Here’s the final tally for the LDV election appeal:

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Mark Pack

Lib Dem peer to table libel reform bill

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th May 2010 - 9:20 am

The Times Higher Education Supplement reports the promising news:

A Liberal Democrat peer is to launch a libel reform bill in the House of Lords that would offer greater protection for scientific debate against defamation claims.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill said he was introducing the private member’s bill in order to encourage the government to act quickly on libel reform. He said his aim was to trigger the formation of a committee to take detailed evidence on the topic. He added that he hoped the government would adopt the final version of the bill.

Both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems made

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Michael Beckett

Last push: Thursday 27th May Thirsk and Malton residents go to the Polls

By Michael Beckett | Wed 26th May 2010 - 8:53 am

Howard Keal’s campaign is gathering momentum, so please help us with the final push before close of polls on Thursday.

With a Labour candidate who was working in London till recently and so is not well known, the election is between the Tory candidate so unpopular in her own party they tried to deselect her at the end of last year, and Howard Keal who has a local profile leading the Liberal Democrat group on Ryedale District Council.

Having secured an additional £9.5million in funding for flood defences in this area, Howard Keal has a consistent track record as a local …

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Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged and | 20 Comments
Norman Lamb MP

Norman Lamb: “A Queen’s Speech of which Liberal Democrats can be proud”

By Norman Lamb MP | Tue 25th May 2010 - 8:40 pm

It is worth spending a moment reflecting on just how remarkable today’s Queen’s Speech is from a Liberal Democrat perspective.

We have become conditioned to believe that the policies we develop will never be implemented. A good intellectual exercise but nothing more. Yet here we have a programme for government of which we can be proud. It contains an extraordinary list of Liberal Democrat commitments on which we fought the general election.

Right from the start the speech grabs attention:

My Government’s legislative programme will be based upon the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility.

Who would have dreamt of those words introducing the Queen’s speech just a few weeks ago?

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Stephen Tall

New LDV members’ survey now live: coalition, Labour leadership, & Lib Dem election assessment

By Stephen Tall | Tue 25th May 2010 - 6:56 pm

The new LDV members’ survey is now live. So if you are one of the 1,000+ registered members of the Liberal Democrat Voice forum – and any paid-up party member is welcome to join – then you now have the opportunity to make your views known. Questions we are asking your opinion on include:

– your views on the full Lib Dem / Conservative coalition agreement;
– how long you expect the coalition government to last;
– what you think of the Labour leadership contest; and
– your assessment of the Lib Dems’ general election performance.

It should take no longer than 5-10 minutes …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | 3 Comments
Ian Butler

The General Election campaign in Mid-Ulster

By Ian Butler | Tue 25th May 2010 - 4:47 pm

To be honest I love going on the stump, all of it! Even though you know it is going to be a very hard campaign. There are none harder than campaigning for a liberal party in the deeply polarised area West of the Bann. The hardest bit is getting started – Knowing that whatever you do, however hard you fight, however good your arguments or your candidates, you are going to lose and lose very big.

The street pounding, the leafleting, the phone calls, the “grip and grin”, the talking, talking, talking, persuasion, persuasion, persuasion, cajoling, joling, joling, joling.

The campaign begins so long before the date that the election is called and yet, yet, yet…

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Posted in General Election and Op-eds | Tagged , , , , and | 26 Comments
Helen Duffett

Nick Clegg to get his own Deputy Prime Minister’s Question Time

By Helen Duffett | Tue 25th May 2010 - 4:08 pm

The Times reports that Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is to get his own Question Time:

The event, which has the broad agreement of the Speaker but is yet to be signed off by the new government, is likely to take place on Thursdays and be “bolted on” to Business Questions, where the agenda for the Commons is outlined. This will be seen as a sop to the Lib Dems who now sit on the government benches and lose the rights of opposition parties to cross-question the Prime Minister.

Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions will take place once a month rather than …

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: consumers and crime

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th May 2010 - 3:31 pm

Welcome to the fourth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

A brief section on consumer protection offers a handful of positive policies – such as strong consumer protection, more pressure on credit card companies to keep their customers fully informed and clearer food labelling – which could have featured in any party’s manifesto. There is also the well meaning but fantastically vague promise to “take forward measures to enhance customer service in the private and public sectors”. Make of that what you will…

The crime …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 9 Comments
John Pugh

Opinion: Should liberals fear a review of Human Rights legislation?

By John Pugh | Tue 25th May 2010 - 2:30 pm

There is a strand in Liberalism stemming from the Utilitarians that is totally dismissive of the concept of human rights. Bentham called such rights ‘nonsense on stilts’. John Stuart Mill, often considered the founder of modern liberalism, viewed such rights as individuals were conceded to have as depending on what led to the greatest happiness of the greatest number at any one time. Rights could change as circumstances and individuals did.

Given that, it is perhaps surprising that Liberal Democrats seem to fear, almost as a knee-jerk reaction, any call for a review of Human Rights legislation. After all Schedule 1 …

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Posted in Op-eds | 19 Comments
The Voice

The 23 Lib Dem policies included in this year’s Queen’s Speech

By The Voice | Tue 25th May 2010 - 1:30 pm

Is that a headline you expected to read even a month ago? Yet today HM The Queen announced a large number of Lib Dem policies as part of the coming year’s legislative programme, including the party’s major priorities: fair taxes, a fair start for children, a green and sustainable economy, and a comprehensive clean up of politics.

Here’s the full list:

    1. Making the tax and benefits system fairer and simpler, including a significant increase in the personal allowance and an ambition to increase it to £10,000
    2. Restoring the earnings link to pensions
    3. Greater freedoms for teachers over the curriculum
    4. Measures to improve energy efficiency in

…

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Posted in News | 15 Comments
Iain Roberts

All our parties have more in common than we’d like to admit

By Iain Roberts | Tue 25th May 2010 - 11:19 am

Our politics emphasises the differences between parties.

Much as voters say they want parties to work together, to agree more, to be more constructive, those that do it are often punished in the polls and at the ballot box. If you want someone to vote for you and not the other guy, it’s more effective to say how you differ than how you’re alike.

“I agree with Nick” didn’t turn out to be the winning strategy for Gordon Brown – Labour did better when they were shouting about where they disagreed with Nick – and with Dave.

The result is …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: communities and local government

By Mark Pack | Tue 25th May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the third in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

Traditionally Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have far from seen eye to eye over local government with devolving liberals and centralising conservatives taking fundamentally different approaches. However, this policy area offers a classic example of Cameron’s move to take his party towards a liberal centre-ground creating some genuine overlap in outlook where very little existed before. Large parts of the Conservative Party’s general election manifesto on devolving power could have been taken from previous Liberal …

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Posted in Local government and News | Tagged | 8 Comments
Sara Bedford

Daily View 2×2: 25 May 2010

By Sara Bedford | Tue 25th May 2010 - 9:21 am

Don’t panic! Today is Towel Day.

Seventy years ago today, the Battle of Dunkirk began. On this day in 1967, Celtic FC became the first British team to win the European Cup, beating Inter Milan 2–1 in Lisbon.

Perfect Housewife Anthea Turner is 50 today, joining birthday boys Julian Clary (51) and Paul Weller (52) in a sixth decade.

2 big news stories

Poll shows broad support for coalition
The Guardian reports its ICM poll,  which shows broad support for the coalition government.

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Iain Roberts

Frugal times ahead for local authorities

By Iain Roberts | Mon 24th May 2010 - 5:53 pm

It hasn’t come as a surprise: local authorities up and down the land have been preparing for budget cuts for some time.  Worst case scenarios have been considered, proposals for cuts drawn up and heads scratched over how the numbers can all be made to add up.

We already knew that council tax would be frozen next year.  We now know that the money local authorities get from central government will fall too.

As the HM Treasury press release says

In addition, £1.165 bn of savings will be made in Local Government by reducing grants to Local Authorites to reflect their contribution to

…

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Posted in Local government | 10 Comments
Iain Roberts

Cuts: Labour need to decide why they oppose them

By Iain Roberts | Mon 24th May 2010 - 4:50 pm

During the election campaign, all three parties were united in their agreement that big public sector cuts were needed to tackling our record deficit.  Figures of around £70 billion were spoken of, and commentators criticised the parties for only identfying a fraction of those.

There was one area of disagreement.  The Conservatives wanted to make £6 billion of cuts immediately, whilst the Lib Dems and Labour argued that would risk pushing the country back into a double-dip recession.

I’ll be honest – I’ve not got the faintest idea who’s right on that one.  I genuinely don’t have a clue whether a 1% …

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Posted in Op-eds | 38 Comments
Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: civil liberties

By Mark Pack | Mon 24th May 2010 - 2:20 pm

Welcome to the second in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

The section on civil liberties is, with one exception, a straight forward listing of many policies the Liberal Democrats have long argued for. Whether by principle or pragmatism, David Cameron has taken the chance of a hung Parliament to firmly put the Conservatives on the liberal side of the liberal versus authoritarian divide. There certainly are some in his party who would rather be on the other side, but they have been sidelined …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 13 Comments
Stephen Tall

The coalition cuts begin: £6.2bn savings identified

By Stephen Tall | Mon 24th May 2010 - 1:35 pm

The new coalition government – in the joint personage of Conservative Chancellor George Osborne and Lib Dem Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws – took its first steps today to begin bringing down the huge national deficit, announcing £6.2 billion public spending cuts for 2010-11.

The BBC has a brief summary of the proposals here:

    • £1.15bn in “discretionary” areas such as consultancy and travel costs

    • £95m through savings in IT spending

    • £1.7bn will be saved in delaying or stopping government contracts and projects

    • Reductions in property costs will save £170m

    • More than £120m expected to be found through a freeze

…

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Posted in News | 38 Comments
George Kendall

Opinion: Enter the storm with our eyes wide open

By George Kendall | Mon 24th May 2010 - 12:20 pm

I’m excited about the coalition. I think it’s necessary, and I think it’s what the voters want. But it’s going to hurt.

When the coalition was announced, my heart was in my mouth. I was mentally prepared for the defection of hundreds of councillors. So far, we’ve come through remarkably unscathed. But it’s only the first stage.

June will see £6 billion of cuts and an emergency budget. We’ll survive that, but a much bigger test comes this autumn: the announcement of a programme of cuts that’ll make six billion seem like pocket change.

David Laws …

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Posted in Op-eds | 56 Comments
Mark Pack

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Mark Pack | Mon 24th May 2010 - 11:20 am

Five blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: banking and business

By Mark Pack | Mon 24th May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the first in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

For all the importance and controversy associated with banking reform, it is also one of the areas where cross-party agreement is easiest – because once you’ve decided that major reform is necessary, the differences of approach are essentially ones of pragmatic detail rather than principle. Some at the free-market or state control fringes may beg to differ, but it’s a debate about what will or won’t work rather than what political philosophers do or …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Daily View 2×2: 24 May 2010

By Stephen Tall | Mon 24th May 2010 - 9:15 am

Happy Monday morning, everyone, and welcome to the second full week of Lib Dem / Conservative coalition government. Ironically, or not, today marks the 22nd anniversary of the Tories’ homophobic Section 28 being enacted as part of the 1988 Local Government Act … how far we’ve al come since then.

2 Big Stories 1 Big Story

Normally the Daily View features 2 Big Stories from the news – but today we can only afford one. Not even Lib Dem Voice is immune to the age of austerity. This isn’t a U-tun, by the way, we’re just responding to events.

The UK embarks …

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Posted in Daily View | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #170

By Stephen Tall | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 8:30 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 170th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (16th – 22nd May, 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can now sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox – just click here – ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

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Mark Pack

Understanding the election result requires understanding the previous five years

By Mark Pack | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 6:20 pm

The likely explanation emerging for the Liberal Democrat vote share in the general election coming in much lower than even the immediately previous polls suggested is that there was a late swing away from the party, partly due to Lib Dem supporters being less willing to turn out (see, for example, this from ComRes). It’s natural to slide from that into a general story about the party peaking after the first TV debate and then being in decline during the rest of the campaign.

However, there is a risk of missing the wider context – and is show by these …

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Posted in General Election and Polls | Tagged | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

How did uniform national swing do in 2010?

By Mark Pack | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 5:20 pm

The question of whether or not uniform national swing (UNS) calculations are a sensible way of trying to turn national opinion poll vote figures into seat estimates has been much debated in the last few months. So how did UNS do this time round?

Here is how the May 2010 result compares with a UNS projection based on the actual vote changes which occurred between 2005 (notional results) and this time:

Conservatives: 305 seats*. UNS prediction: 291 (-14)
Labour: 258 seats. UNS: 266 (+8)
Liberal Democrats: 57 seats. UNS: 62 (+5)

* Excluding Thirsk & Malton from calculations

In a close election the errors …

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Posted in General Election | Tagged | 8 Comments
Iain Roberts

So you’re a Lib Dem and you want to change the law

By Iain Roberts | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 4:20 pm

The Lib Dems, along with their predecessor parties, have had years of being very democratic: elected reps passing policy at conference, most of which has then sat buried in a dusty policy document in a filing cabinet somewhere in the bowels of Cowley Street.

Occasionally some policy or other gets plucked from obscurity to feature in an election manifesto or – the highest accolade – to be pinched by Labour or the Conservatives, rebranded as their own and even turned into law.

Now the Lib Dems are partners in the coalition government, we’re getting used to seeing big chunks of Lib Dem …

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Posted in Conference and News | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Good luck to John Denham

By Mark Pack | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 3:08 pm

I’ve only heard John Denham speak in person once, but the time I did (earlier this month) it was immediately clear why he’s so often been rated by others as one of the better and more thoughtful Labour MPs.

So it’s good to see that he has become the new chair of Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform saying,

An AV referendum is on the agenda because of the work Labour electoral reformers have done. We have to make sure the Labour Party maintains its commitment to the AV referendum and to success in the referendum if and when it comes.

I much prefer …

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