OurKingdom is running the chapter in Why Vote Liberal Democrat by Ken Macdonalrd (former Director of Public Prosecutions) on liberty and terrorism:
Britain is a country with a long and proud history of promoting civil liberties. This is a tradition we should be determined to defend. But in recent years the state’s regard for these long-held values has diminished. Tony Blair once memorably described them as ‘belonging to another age’. They do not. They belong to each and every one of us, right now.
a) Gordon Brown wants to be seen as a team player (hence massed ranks of Cabinet behind him for election announcement)
b) David Cameron wants to be seen as Barack Obama (hence shirt, rolled up sleeves and people behind him when he speaks!)
c) Nick Clegg wants to be seen with Vince Cable (hence Vince becomes the first non-leader to ever have his picture emblazoned on a party leader’s battlebus)
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 163rd weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (28th March – 3rd April, 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:
Today marked the official start of the general election campaign. And today’s the day you could help ensure the Lib Dems get the best possible result – by making a donation to support the Lib Dem Voice election appeal.
Thanks to the support of LDV readers, we have just crossed the £1,000 threshold – a terrific response. But the candidates in our five battleground seats will need more than that to help get their campaigns off to a flying start.
Here are some examples of what your gift could do to help the party get its message across:
* £10 will pay for a Focus newsletter for 500 houses
* £25 will buy 2,000 tabloid-style newspapers
* £50 pays for a dozen super-size election garden posters
* £100 will cover a Focus leaflet for a whole ward
* £250 will pay for 10,000 addressed letters to be delivered by volunteers
The concept of “wash up” has become subject of greater attention just before the last few general elections, but it’s not nearly as special as descriptions make it sound. What happens is that just before Parliament is dissolved for a general election various pieces of legislation are rushed through rather than be lost and have to start again from scratch after the election. There are no special Parliamentary rules to allow this speedy legislation. Instead, Parliament just has to vote for speedy processes as it can at any other time in the Parliamentary cycle. If you have the votes, you …
It’s one of the most famous party election broadcasts of all time – John Cleese’s classic 1987 appeal to the British public to reject the extremism of left and right as represented by ‘Loony Labour’ councils and Mrs Thatcher’s Tories, and opt for the reasonable party of the centre, the SDP/Liberal Alliance.
For those who’ve never had the chance to enjoy it, please scroll to the bottom of this post, and re-live it in all its glory. (And wonder at the fact that party election broadcasts used to be 10 minutes long – yes, that’s right, 20 years ago political parties were foolish enough to believe the public actually had an attention span).
What’s most striking about the Cleese message is the deliberate emphasis on the Alliance as a moderating force in British politics. An honest broker in whom the British people could place their trust to ensure neither Labour nor Tory narrow-mindedness could wreak wilful destruction. Cleese commits the Alliance to breaking up the cosy rules of British politics that have so well suited the Labour/Tory duopoly for so many years.
Breaking the cosy rules of two-party politics
It’s two decades since this broadcast, but the themes are starkly familiar.
For example, there’s the Alliance pledge to halt petty partisan tribalism by agreeing to work with the other parties where we agree with them.
Well, Vince Cable early on called for a ‘government of national unity’ to help the nation through its worst recession in 60 years. More recently, Nick Clegg urged the formation of a cross-party Council of Financial Stability to agree the timetable and scale of deficit reduction.
Example two from the Cleese broadcast: the Lib Dems are the only party not beholden to special interests.
Spool forward two decades, and Labour still is in hock to the unions, desperately reliant on Unite, Unison and the GMB to finance its general election campaign. And does anyone really believe the Tories – the party of non-dom peers and candidates like Lord Ashcroft and Zac Goldsmith – will stand up to their “pinstriped Scargill” friends in the City?
Yet Nick Clegg has pledged to take tough action on those banks which break promises to lend money to businesses and householders, while Vince Cable has made it plain how the Lib Dems would intervene to make unions and businesses sit down and talk. It’s a lot easier to arrive at the correct solution if you’re not worried whether it will affect your party’s cash flow.
Not everything has stayed the same in the last quarter of a century, of course. Both Labour and the Tories have tacked further to the centre (not least because of the desire to pick up those voters who were attracted to the Alliance).
But the fundamental point remains: Labour and the Tories are complacently content for politics to stay the same, to see-saw between red and blue. It’s an argument the Lib Dems have freshened up in the past week, with the launch of the party’s subversive Labservatives campaign, a Web 2.0 successor to the Cleese broadcast.
A moderate square for the radical circle
It’s an interesting campaigning dilemma for the Lib Dems. In many ways, we’re party which has the most radical manifesto: a Lib Dem government would re-cast the taxation system, and re-mould the political system. Yet our natural voter base, and the party’s general disposition, is moderate, incremental, pragmatic.
Is this such a bad thing? Not really. The only way in which you can attract support for a radical manifesto is to win trust that your programme will work and is better. It’s at least in part why the party adopted community politics: prove to people you can fix the drains, repair the roads, run the council … and they might just trust you to run the country, too.
Well, it’s just the same at national level. At this election, the Lib Dems have the opportunity to position ourselves squarely in the centre of the key debate which will determine most people’s votes: the economy.
Don’t trust Labour to target government waste? Don’t trust the Tories to cut public spending wisely? Well, the Lib Dems are the party you can trust – and Vince Cable is the guy you can trust – to act as a moderating influence on the extremist tribal dogma of the other two parties. And by doing so, we can make the argument that only the Lib Dems have the vision to transform politics for the better.
After three years of ifs, buts and maybes since the “election that never was” debacle in 2007, we’re going to be put out of our misery this week.
The phoney war that has been fought out by the political class, to the bemusement of the electorate, is one of the least appealing aspects of our elitist political culture.
With this in mind, I must admit to being pleasantly surprised by responses from candidates to the general election policy comparison web initiative DEMREF 2010, which, for my sins, I have hurriedly got together in recent months.
Good morning and welcome to Daily View on this, the first day of the General Election.
As if we hadn’t all been at war footing for weeks anyway.
In history on April 6th, in 1869 celluloid was first patented, paving the way for commercial photography and cinematography. Every Youtube video you watch during the campaign will be thanks to the technology and techniques first pioneered on celluloid over 100 years ago.
On this day in 1895, Oscar Wilde was arrested for attempting to book into Chris Grayling’s B&B; in 1896, the first modern Olympic Games is held. It’s the day in 1917 when the United States declared war on Germany and the day in 1930 when Ghandi began the Salt Satyagraha which ultimately led to independence for India.
Today Rory Bremner turns 49 and Mylene Klaas turns 32 – my age.
2 Big Stories
Gordon Brown triggers general election
Most helpfully, the fact that Gordon Brown was planning to head off to see her Maj today to dissolve Parliament and trigger a general election was leaked to all the papers far enough in advance that they could run stories today, and not have to play catchup tomorrow.
Here’s the Guardian, who have also been leaked enough snippets of manifesto to get their clothespeg ready:
A draft of the manifesto seen by the Guardian pledges that an unprecedented fourth-term Labour government would be “bolder about the role of state intervention in markets” and deliver sweeping constitutional change. Failing police forces could be taken over by their neighbours under one radical proposal.
You’d have thought they wouldn’t want to mention the fact that there are any failing police forces after 13 years of glorious Labour rule. Or that any further constitutional change was necessary.
Somehow I can’t quite imagine a Prime Minister’s election calling soundbite including the phrase “the provisions of the Representation of the People Act” any more. Nor indeed the response of the major parties to an election been called to be having special meetings of senior party figures. None of this modern flying start stuff.
During the general election campaign we will be running a series of diary pieces from party president Ros Scott. To kick off here’s her campaign diary of this month so far:
1 April
I’m fed up with waiting for Gordon Brown to call the election, so I’ve started without him.
Maundy Thursday saw me up bright and early to catch the 8.35 train to Sheffield for my first official visit of the campaign. I met up with Paul Scriven, leader of the City Council, and our Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) in Sheffield Central. Paul is both a highly effective council leader and …
Welcome to this latest LDVideo instalment, and today as a special holiday treat we’re highlighting four political video clips showing the Tory leadership team at their most embarrassingly gaffe-prone.
First up is this one from Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne, committing a diplomatic faux pas by referring to “the Sarkozy box” used by the diminutive French president when speaking from behind lecterns. (Yes, it’s sort of funny. But when you’re hoping to be this country’s chief finance minister, it really is better to avoid needlessly antagonising world leaders – as David Cameron might also learn) …
A great new website has just been setup by Rob Fenwick (the founder of Lib Dem Voice and my colleague back in 2005 on the Liberal Democrat internet campaign): Campaign Digest.
It looks like it will become an essential source of information, particularly with its daily snapshots of the front pages of the main party websites – tracking how they change during the campaign – and its archiving of email content from the different campaigns.
A relatively inexpensive (£1.1 million) project kicked off in 2007. The idea was for local authorities on each side of the English Channel to work together for mutual benefit in some specific and limited areas.
Identification of the challenges in the Channel area and publication of a document defining the strategic orientations for the horizon 2007 – 2013;
Deployment of tangible initiatives structured around five themes:
* Tourism: creation of a common database on target tourist populations.
* Fishing and fish resources: constitution of a consultative regional council for fishing in the Channel area.
* Integrated coastal
A ComRes survey of 101 Parliamentary candidates “who are likely to win or retain their seats” has found very heavy use of social media.
Around half the Parliamentary seats in the UK have not changed hands even once between different political parties in the last forty years, which helps explain why overall levels of take-up amongst MPs and candidates is usually on the range modest to quite good (though in fact often compare very well, for example, with large UK firms).
However, as this survey indicates, there are much higher than average levels of take-up amongst those were the election result is …
As the Conservatives look set to help Labour push the flawed Digital Economy Bill into law before the election, Mike Simpson, Lib Dem candidate for SW Surrey, questions his opponent in the election – the Conservative media spokesman.
Dear Mr Hunt
Digital Economy Bill: another Parliamentary scandal?
Happy Easter Monday, everyone, on the day in history when (in 1621) the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, Massachusetts on a return trip to England – as Eddie Izzard once remarked of the Pilgrims, “They set sail from Plymouth and landed in Plymouth – how lucky is that?”
Just 55 years ago, Winston Churchill quit as Prime Minister, handing over the reins to Anthony Eden. Meanwhile the sports fans among you might like to know that 1904 witnessed the first international rugby league match, played between England and the fantastically named ‘Other Nationalities’ team of Welsh and Scots.
But without further tarrying, let’s come right up to the present day … and as a Bank Holiday bonus, there’s a special musical video to rally the Liberal Democrats at the end.
2 Must-Read Chris Grayling-inspired Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
“No blacks, no Irish, no gays?” – Jock Coats, a gay, Lib Dem, Christian, argues in favour of the rights of B&B owners to discriminate: “We can’t end discrimination simply by state fiat, by making it unlawful, and I find it dangerous to try.”
Inside the mind of Chris Grayling – Alix Mortimer urges readers to stop taking their intellectual cues from Mr Grayling: “I’m all in favour of restoring our civil liberties, and I’m also in favour of easing regulation on small businesses, but my impression is that there are one or two slightly more pertinent places to start those processes? You know, just possibly?”
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
2 Offbeat LibDem Stories
Financial Times under misapprehension that Lib Dems only fighting 50 seats at general election
The Liberal Democrats have set out plans to reopen thousands of miles of railway tracks and stations.
The scheme would be funded by cutting capital spending on roads by £3bn.
Its new Rail Expansion Fund would lead to the biggest expansion of the rail network since the Victorian era, the party claims.
Motorists’ group the RAC Foundation said it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money when only 7% of UK journeys were made by train, compared to 90% by car.
However, Lib Dem transport spokesman Norman Baker said the plan would “make our railway great again”…
A lot has been written about the growing gulf between the voting public and their representatives, voter apathy and low turnout. Candidates and the media do their best to engage voters but it’s an uphill slog. At this election in particular a low turnout is a real risk because people have been put off voting at all by a succession of scandals.
A lot has also been written about how the internet may help candidates connect with voters. Who knows whether this will be seen as the first ‘e-election’. But it has struck me for a while that candidates’ online campaigns …
It’s not been a great month for newspapers reporting their own polls. Despite the concept of newspapers accurately reporting their own polls – i.e. a story that they’ve paid for and been given the full details of – being a fairly basic standard to aim for, we’ve had such low lights as the skewed graph in the Mirror along with its over-hyped language and the Sunday Times so twisting the findings of its own poll you’d have thought there must have been two. Not to forget the attack in The Telegraph attack on that dodgy process of …
I’ve previously covered the question of the secret owners behind TonyBlair4Labour.org, not to mention its unfortunate terms and conditions. Meanwhile the Telegraph has reported that the Conservatives have called for an inquiry into whether charity and political data is being mixed up and that the site’s data protection information has been changed since launched.
But there’s another issue I’ve spotted: the site looks to be storing in the US private data given by site visitors. However, the necessary legal steps to allow such data exports have not been taken.
To be more specific: the site’s IP address traces to a server in …
With campaigning going into overdrive this week, take a moment to check that you’ve got all the information you need:
The Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors have pulled together a handy set of election campaign essentials over at the ALDC website (including gratuitous chocolate pic 🙂 ).
From essential forms and artwork templates to official and party guidance, it’s worth going through the list and seeing if there’s anything you’ve missed for your campaign.
Some of the items require a login to view them; you can of course join ALDC here.
Meanwhile on Lib Dem Voice, Mark’s keeping us on track …
Under our First Past the Post voting system, the squeeze message is a legitimate one, used by all parties when it’s to their benefit.
Voting for the third (or lower) placed party in the seat is, they all argue, a wasted vote. Those lower placed parties will say otherwise, but it’s a fair tactic. Lib Dems would say that under a better voting system, tactical voting wouldn’t be needed.
But in this election we’re seeing a new twist on the theme from the Labservatives, and it’s a bit of a stretch to see how it could be honest or …
Richard Osley as an entertaining piece on his blog titled, “The You Tube War: Hornsey and Wood Green”.
I’m not quite sure what Lynne Featherstone will make of the description of her as an “old aunt” 🙂 Not very gallant of you Richard, but the full description is friendly:
One of the reasons, Featherstone has been a hit locally, it seems, is her obvious knowledge of the area and her apparent interest in even the smallest of issues. She is the interfering old aunt that the fragile Labour council in Haringey must be sick to the back teeth of. Featherstone has after
That’s the headline on this interesting piece over on the Our Kingdom site:
In the aftermath of the G20 protests many predicted that no sort of justice could be expected from either the Independent Police Complaints commission (IPCC), the courts or the Met when it comes to holding the police force to account. The recent ruling that Sergeat Delroy Smellie is not guilty of assault for his attack on Nicola Fisher is yet another indication that there is no accountability within British policing.
Stuart Agnew, a UKIP MEP, and Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the party’s leader, have told undercover reporters how a real donor’s name could be kept secret by passing tens of thousands of pounds through intermediaries. If carried out, one or more of the suggested methods could have been illegal.
Our disclosures will embarrass UKIP and Pearson, who also told the undercover reporter that some UKIP members were “neanderthals” and described Agnew, 60, as “one of our only really sane MEPs”.
The report goes on to detail how UKIP explored a range of ways for a donor to hide their …
‘You’ll be found dead on the streets.’ That was the message I received a few weeks ago from an identifiable BNP supporter. Why? Because I was taking a stand against Nick Griffin. When someone writes this to you because you’re fighting as a Lib Dem in a parliamentary campaign against Griffin and the BNP, it makes you think very hard about your political opponent and the campaign they intend to fight. It also makes you think about how you should respond.
I reported the threat immediately to the police. They came to my house and have since referred the matter to …
If you should ever, in your spare moments, happen to invent a time machine and travel back to Victorian England, you might want to think twice about eating the bread.
This report to the Government from 1862 recommended bringing bakehouses under a regulatory regime, as slaughterhouses already were at the time.
…in many cases almost total covering of cobwebs, weighed down with the flour dust that had accumulated upon them, and hanging in strips just above your head.
A heavy tread or a blow upon the floor above, brought down large fragments of them, as I witnessed on more than
A senior UK Independence Party member has posted a racist comment on Community Care.
In response to a post by Community Care‘s Outside Left blogger on asylum, Paul Wiffen – who is chair of UKIP London and a parliamentary candidate, said:
“You left-wing scum are all the same, wanting to hand our birthright to Romanian gypsies who beat their wives and children into begging and stealing money they can gamble with, Muslim nutters who want to kill us and put us all under medieval Sharia law, the same Africans who sold their Afro-Caribbean brothers into a slavery that Britain was the first to
Only the day after David Cameron admitted he does not expect the Conservatives to do well in Scotland, one of his leading candidates has quit the Conservative Party.
In today’s Sunday Herald Heather MacLeod, who has resigned after a “bitter and bloody” feud with fellow Conservatives, said she felt “complete and utter disgust” with a section of the Scottish Conservatives:
She also accused the Scottish party of failing to match leader David Cameron’s progress and said she had concerns about an allegedly inappropriate relationship between two senior Tories.
expats I'm confused by this article and some of the comments..
If, as has been stated, our pension should increase by up to £6,000 to the current level of Europe j...
Peter Wrigley Surely if this ratchet effect helps us o get up to the European average for pensions more quickly, that's all to the good....
Ruth Bright Thanks Michael. Apropos your point about private equity firms. At the other end of scale, smaller operators in the sector (with a turnover of under 10.2 million...
Hywel "Let’s meet the constituency link full on. Most people now don’t have an MP of their political persuasion, so effectively there’s no link anyway. "
Ind...
Mark Inskip Chris Berry seems to have either misunderstood or not properly listened to what Andy Burnham said.
He said the State Pension "will hold its value relative to...
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expats
Peter Wrigley
Ruth Bright
Hywel
Mark Inskip