He’s Deputy Prime Minister now, but it’s good to see that Nick Clegg plans to continue his practice of holding meetings where members of the public can come and ask him questions directly.
Nick’s starting off with a public meeting in his constituency of Sheffield Hallam. From www.nickclegg.com:
So. Like everyone (except I think Tory MPs) I read the Coalition agreement and quite liked it: some really important unexpected wins on the environment and constitutionally. Remarkably little that was truly offensive.
Of course, the knack is to use coalition negotiations as an opportunity to lose those bits of your own manifesto you don’t like by offering them up as sacrifices on the altar of co-operation.
There is of course nothing in the agreement about culture, media or sport. So I thought I would have a go: look at both manifestos, ditch the whacky bits and insert some bits that were …
I have a reputation for being a bureaucrat. Gradualism is my watchword, and has been for most of the twenty-five years that I’ve been a Liberal and then Liberal Democrat. However, suddenly, I have become an old man in a hurry. Alright, old relative to most of you at least, but still in a hurry. So, imagine I’ve sprouted an Old Testament beard, donned a white flowing robe and found a nice stout staff and harken to my words. I have a few jobs for you to do…
First, do you want to be a candidate at the next General Election? …
Today Nick Clegg made a speech setting out the Government’s plans for political reform, at the City & Islington College Centre for Business, Arts and Technology.
As Iain wrote this morning, the media are viewing Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats as revolutionaries, and drawing parallels with the Reform Act 1832.
Nick’s speech expands on three more R’s: repealing infringements on freedom, reforming politics and redistributing power.
Here it is in full:
Talking to people around the country in the last few days, there is a common pattern with party membership: around double the number of people have been joining the party as were leaving the party, and the typical age of those joining is (close to) half that of those leaving.
There are probably two factors behind this striking age difference. First, Nick Clegg and the party more generally did particularly well at appealing to younger voters during the election. Second, amongst those leaving perhaps the most common explanation is that, regardless of circumstance or detail of the deal, simply doing a …
A follow up as requested in the comments on my earlier post, this time showing what proportion of the electorate each of the main parties won in previous general elections and also the proportion who did not vote for any party:
Like many Lib Dems my initial response to the prospect of a Lib/Con coalition was “no, please, not that!” However, following a few days’ reflection I’m now utterly convinced that my initial response, although entirely understandable, was misguided.
I urge Liberal Democrats everywhere to wake up to the very real possibility of the change we have longed for taking place, albeit in an unexpected way.
Imagine that the Westminster Fairy had granted your wish and introduced PR. How would politics work after that? Well apart from anything else, you can be pretty sure we would have a series of coalition governments, so …
Twenty largest swings from Conservatives to Liberal Democrats:
Redcar 14.5
Westmorland and Lonsdale 11.1
Ashfield 10.8
Dunfermline and Fife West 9.2
Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney 9.2
Maidstone and The Weald 8.5
Brent Central 7.5
Ceredigion 7.2
Sheffield Hallam 6.9
Orkney and Shetland 6.6
Spelthorne 6.1
Bosworth 5.9
Bromsgrove 5.9
Bath 5.8
Hull North 5.7
Leeds North West 5.4
Canterbury 5.4
Wycombe 4.8
Newport East 4.5
Lewisham East 4.5
Twenty largest swings from Liberal Democrats to Conservatives:
Hartlepool -15.0
Montgomeryshire -13.1
Orpington -12.2
St Ives -10.4
Cardiff Central -10.3
Meon Valley -9.4
Cornwall South East -9.1
Harrogate and Knaresborough -9.1
Winchester -9.1
Esher and Walton -9.0
Edinburgh West -8.7
Surrey South West -8.6
Berwick-upon-Tweed -8.3
Chesterfield -8.3
Crewe and Nantwich -8.3
Blaydon -8.2
Garston and Halewood -8.1
Windsor -8.1
Ludlow -7.8
Maidenhead -7.8
Here are the facts and figures from Sunday’s Special Conference:
…
The media is getting excited about the coalition government’s plans to reform our politics and laws, and they’re mostly seeing it as Nick Clegg’s plan. Nick’s making a speech on the subject later today – here’s how its being trailed.
Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg will pledge the “biggest shake-up of our democracy” in 178 years later as he expands on plans for political reform.
The Independent headline is “Clegg makes his bid for a place in history” and say that Nick will go for a big bang, rather than a piecemeal approach:
* scrapping the identity card scheme and
…
19th May has often been a day for momentous political events. On this day in 1536, Ann Boleyn met her fate and the executioner’s axe. In 1649, England became a commonwealth on this day and stayed that way for eleven years.
On 19th May 1921, the U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act. It limited the number of immigrants who could enter the US from any one European country to 3% of the total number already in the US, in an atmosphere of post-war isolationism and worries about high immigration. That it didn’t apply to Latin American countries may have set the foundations for a radical change in the ethnic make-up of the USA.
All change in the chamber
MPs took their seats in the House of Commons for the first time since the General Election, with Lib Dems and Tories mingling on the Government benches and Labour sharing the opposition benches with the smaller parties.
The Guardian had a minute-by-minute account, including reports of tweets:
From Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson:
rather disorientating sitting on the other side of the house – where @tomharrismp used to sit
From Labour MP Tom Watson:
In the house of commons, looking at these new MPs and feeling like a gnarled up old veteran at the age of 43.
From Paul Waugh:
The story of the opening day? The strange silence of the Lib Dem benches. Speeches from Tories, Labour, even SNP, but no LDs
This quote from Jon Cruddas beautifully sums up much of what went wrong with the Labour government – and the dilemma Labour faces working out what to do next:
I’ve known for David Miliband for twenty years, I’ve known Ed Balls for twenty years, but I don’t know what they stand for.
Every vote, member, volunteer and supporter that the Lib Dems have lost as a result of entering into a coalition with the Conservatives will be missed. For most, I assume that this will not be a decision that they take lightly. Instead, it will arise as a conviction, from a small seed of doubt. Doubt about whether or not they believe they can be complicit in a Tory Government. I wish them well, and hope that they will be as open to returning as they have been to leaving.
However, to those still wavering on the brink, perhaps you might …
Last week David Miliband announced his intention to stand for the Labour leadership, and there are already websites promoting and discussing potential contenders.
However, one of them is not what it seems:
It looks exactly like David Miliband’s personal website, http://www.davidmiliband.info, right down to the photo slideshow, and work has clearly gone into making it come out well in Google search results (known as Search Engine Optimisation).
If you Google “Miliband for Leader” the seventh result on the first page is http://www.milibandforleader.co.uk.
The …
It seems coalitions are in the air. The Lib Dem and Conservative groups on Oldham Council in Greater Manchester yesterday announced a framework agreement which will see current Lib Dem Council leader Howard Sykes retain the top job, the Conservatives support the Lib Dem budget for this coming year and a Conservative councillor coming onto the executive.
The local elections saw the Lib Dems lose overall control in Oldham, with the new numbers being Labour 27, Liberal Democrat 27, Conservatives 5, Independent 1.
The Oldham Council press release reads:
The Liberal Democrat and Conservative groups on Oldham Council are pleased to announce
…
So. Farewell
Then
Labservative.com
Spoof Lib Dem website
Which introduced the
World to
Gorvid Camerown.Yes. You are
The first victim of
The coalition cuts.65 years of
Two-party rule
Was your catchphrase.You just
Never said
Which two parties.Now gone from the web
Twitter and YouTube.But we shall
Always have
The memories.Rest in
Taking the piss.
I keep hearing all these concerns about having voted for one thing (e.g. LibDems) getting another (e.g. Tory). It seems to be the only thing disaffected party members can think of saying (at least those the media has been lining up for us, tearing up membership cards in front of the NEC).
I wish the people spouting all of this would take a step back and realise just how silly they sound. I’ve voted LibDem since I could vote; three different governments, one Conservative, two Labour were the result. I voted LibDem and I got Tory, then I got Labour, …
This is the first in a series of posts pulling out some of the constituency results which we’ll be running this week. The data is taken from Pippa Norris’s data set (for which thanks).
Twenty highest Liberal Democrat vote shares:
Good morning and welcome to today’s Daily View on International Museum Day.
On this day in 1991, Britain’s first astronaut, 27-year-old Helen Sharman, blasted into orbit on the Soviet Soyuz TM-12 space capsule. I wonder if I should mention that Ms Sharman is from Sheffield?
Sixty years ago, twelve nations agreed the aims and objectives for the permanent organisation of NATO. The founder members at the launch at Lancaster House in London were: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United States. Later that year, Dwight D Eisenhower was appointed Nato’s first supreme commander.
Both the Lib Dems and Conservatives proposed a reduction in the number of MPs in their manifestos. The Lib Dems proposed cutting the number of MPs to around 500 as part of a move to PR, whilst the Conservatives want to keep the current voting system, reduce the number of MPs to around 600 and radically redraw constituency boundaries to equalise the number of voters in each.
So over the next five years we are likely to be fighting:
…
The mood emerging from Sunday’s special conference – which overwhelmingly endorsed the Lib Dem leadership’s decision to enter into a coalition agreement with the Conservatives – appears to have been almost universally positive, with even doubters rallying at the prospect of the historic opportunity open to the party.
But we wouldn’t be liberals unless we found something to critique – and on this occasion it’s been the Lib Dem media office which has got it in the neck from some supporters. The Bracknell Blog puts it reasonably (many on Twitter have been a little more splenetic):
Why was this meeeting a
…
Over at The Independent, Daisy Cross gives a first-hand account of the Lib Dem special conference in Birmingham, and captures some of the sense of the unreality felt by many who were there:
The ambience was similar to that of a very successful village fete; many had brought their own sandwiches, some had brought their babies, but everyone was focused centre-stage, the odd gleeful glance sideways or incredulous nudge asking: “Are we really here?” Apart from one councillor, who declared the party had “made a pact with the devil” to awkward applause, there was hardly a word uttered against the new
…
So: it’s settled. We may not have planned the route together, but if this train crashes we got on it together. Some people asked about the route and some people wondered about the destination but no one suggested that we may as well stay where we were.
By my reckoning well over 1,500 people attended Sunday’s Special Conference. Some dozen or more voted against the motion adopting the coalition agreement. So that’s a 99% vote in favour.
(In fact the coalition agreement seemed to be as popular as proportional representation. A few lost souls voted …
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 169th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (9th – 15th 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:
David Laws, the Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury, and the guy tasked with finding the public spending cuts in the years ahead, has just emailed Lib Dem supporters to outline his apporach to the task which awaits the new coalition government:
Dear Friend,
My Labour predecessor, Liam Byrne, left me a note saying ‘Dear Chief Secretary, There’s no money left.’ He may claim this is joke, but sadly it is all too true.
Labour have left the nation’s finances in an utterly ruinous state and we face a colossal task ahead of us. That is why today the Chancellor and I
…
Recently, the Electoral Reform Society has released a study claiming to show how the recent election would have gone under the Alternative Vote (and the Single Transferable Vote). This study has been picked up by The Guardian, The Telegraph and the BBC, who all seem to be presenting the results as scientific fact. However, there are massive flaws in this study, which apart from making it plain bad “science”, very possibly end up sabotaging the Electoral Reform Society’s efforts to campaign for Proportional Representation.
The first problem with the study is its assumption that how people voted under …
At Comment is Free, Mark Pack shares his impressions of the Liberal Democrat Special (not-so-secret) Conference held yesterday in Birmingham.
In an atmosphere I described yesterday as “more wedding than wake” more than a thousand party members met to debate the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition agreement.
Mark captures the mood of a party who now have their hands on the levers of power:
Travelling by train to the Liberal Democrat conference yesterday, I did what I usually do on my way to party conferences – read through the agenda and background policy information.
Except this time there was one key difference. I
…
In the first Treasury press conference this morning of the coalition government, Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury David Laws revealed he’d received a letter from his Labour predecessor, Liam Byrne:
“When I arrived at my desk on the very first day as Chief Secretary, I found a letter from the previous chief secretary to give me some advice, I assumed, on how I conduct myself over the months ahead.
“Unfortunately, when I opened it, it was a one-sentence letter which simply said ’Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left’, which was honest but slightly
…
Since the start of the year, The Voice has been tracking how newspapers do at reporting the political opinion polls they commission. Each time a newspaper reports on such an opinion poll, the report gets scored out of 30 against a set of basic criteria. The scoring system has generally worked well, though it doesn’t catch the nuance of newspapers commissioning poll questions about political matters and then not reporting certain ones which happen to contradict their editorial line (such as on this, this and this occasion).
How then do the different newspapers come out of this all? Here are the …
The Times reports today that one of the first moves of the new Lib Dem / Conservative coalition government will be to create up to 172 new peers in the House of Lords to create political balance and “ensure that controversial legislation gets through Parliament”.
The current composition of the Lords is as follows:
In total, then, the coalition government comprises just over one-third of peers, and could be blocked on its legislative agenda – including of course the replacement of the Lords itself with an wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation, as stated in the coalition agreement:
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Where have we heard this one before? Labour and electoral reform (Jack Meredith)
A national care service – questions for Burnham (and us) (Ruth Bright)
Opportunity at the heart of our vision in local government (Callum Robertson)
Vince Cable writes: Drill, baby, drill…or not (Vince Cable)
123 days in power: putting our new strategy for urban Britain into practice (Victor Chamberlain)
So many questions over Burnham's agenda
The disturbing folklore behind Alan Garner's stories
The Burnhamites will not hurt them for they are tough as leather
The geography of Liberal Democrat potential (LDN#214)
The sun still shines on PM Burnham
The Joy of Six 1584
Vampire Weekend: Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
Farage fails the cool, calm leadership test
Mick Taylor 
Gary Glove r 
David Craddock 
Matt (Bristol) Matt (Bristol) 
