Haggis, Neeps and Liberalism #11: Lessons from Glasgow North East

Labour’s crushing victory in the Glasgow North East By-election was hailed by the victor Willie Bain as a resounding endorsement of Gordon Brown and a “a resounding ‘No’ to David Cameron.” Well, maybe in Glasgow North East, but I suspect extrapolating the Labour victory in this constituency as having huge implications across the UK political scene would be foolish.

The SNP said throughout the Glasgow North East campaign that the by-election was a two horse race and, after the nationalist victory in Glasgow East last year, victory for them was possible. A case of all too predictable SNP hope over reality. Over the years, the SNP has had a bit of a habit of sensing victory where none exists. Remember the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, so comprehensively won by Willie Rennie? If you’d have believed Alex Salmond a day or so before polling day, SNP victory was certain. In fact, they came a poor third.

Posted in Op-eds, Parliamentary by-elections and Scotland | Tagged , and | 12 Comments
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“Electoral watchdog under fire as Lord Ashcroft inquiry threatens to run into election”

From today’s Observer:

Controversy over Lord Ashcroft’s donations to the Conservative party deepened last night after Labour MPs demanded an urgent meeting with Britain’s elections watchdog.

Placing more pressure on the Tories, Labour MPs want to know why the Electoral Commission’s official inquiry into an Ashcroft-controlled company, which has given £3m to the party, has dragged on for 10 months and threatens to run into the general election campaign.

You can read the full story here.

Posted in Election law and News | Tagged , and | Leave a comment

Daily View 2×2: 15 November 2009

It’s Sunday. It’s 7am. And by popular demand, it’s time for another peanut butter gem from YouTube. But first, the news.

2 Big Stories

MoD probes new Iraq abuse claims

The Ministry of Defence has said it is investigating new allegations of abuse by the UK military in Iraq.

Lawyers acting for former Iraqi detainees are calling for a full public inquiry into 33 abuse claims made during UK military involvement there.

One allegation is that two soldiers raped a 16-year-old boy in 2003.

Armed forces minister Bill Rammell said such claims were taken seriously but formal inquiries must be held “without judgements being made prematurely”. (BBC)

Posted in Daily View | Tagged , and | 2 Comments

Labour council leader admits stealing £1,300

Bill Thomas, Labour leader of Sandwell Council until his arrest in October, has admitted stealing £1,300 from Nat West bank in a cheque fraud:

The court heard how a close friend, Gareth Hall, had cashed three of Thomas’s cheques totalling £1,300 – which was then reimbursed by the bank after Thomas claimed he did not know Hall.

As a result,

Bill Thomas has been ordered to repay £1,300 and given a 12-month conditional discharge after pleading guilty to theft. (Local Government Chronicle)

Posted in News | Tagged and | 2 Comments

Improving election counts: good moves from the Electoral Commission

Earlier this week I went to meet with the Electoral Commission to discuss their plans for encouraging better practice at election counts. Having spotted my views, they invited me thinking I might be interested in their plans – and kudos to the Electoral Commission for willing to talk in this way.

The plans are still in draft and subject to consultation, so I won’t go in to details about them now, but the overall move is towards having a recommended set of count procedures and accompanying forms which are (a) a big improvement on the current situation, (b) produce more …

Posted in Election law and News | Tagged | 2 Comments
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Context is king – link for victory

Welcome to part six of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Alex Foster.

When writing for a blog, perhaps the default view I have of my reader is someone who is familiar with my entire body of work, someone who started at the first thing I wrote, and read it through in …

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LDVideo: American politics videos

Here’s a handful of videos doing the rounds from American politics.

First up “There’s a rep for that!” – riffing on the iPhone’s ad showing how there’s an application to do the most ridiculous things, here’s a video with a light-hearted but deadly serious look at some of the disgraceful campaigns American Republicans have run:

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The LDV Friday Five (ish): 13/11/09

What could be simpler: five categories, each with five links. And it’s Friday.

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

1. Opinion: No to All-Men Shortlists (54) by Jo Swinson MP
2. Cambridge MP David Howarth to stand down (14) by The Voice
3. Lib Dem peer admits exploiting expenses loophole (33) by The Voice
4. The weirdest criticism of Gordon Brown, ever – FACT (5) by Mark Pack
5. John Pugh MP writes … Twitter ye Not – why Frankie Howerd was right (14) by John Pugh MP

5 recent Lib Dem tweets

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Interning for MPs: exploitation or experience?

Donal MacIntyre and Hannah Barnes have reported on MPs’ interns for BBC Radio 5 live:

MPs could be breaking the law by not paying their parliamentary interns. Hundreds of young graduates are putting in thousands of hours of unpaid work at Westminster. This practice is excluding many young people without independent financial support from a route that many see as the first step on the ladder to a political career. But, this is not just a question of pushing the bounds of fairness. Minimum wage regulations require that some of these interns should be paid.”

You can listen to the podcast of last Sunday’s show “Parliament’s unpaid workers” here.

Among Liberal Democrat MPs, practices vary: Phil Willis and Alistair Carmichael pay their interns the national minimum wage while others pay only travel and lunch expenses.

I spoke to Alistair Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland, who puts his interns on a contract as part-time researchers:

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , and | 22 Comments

Two Lib Dem by-election victories

Two Lib Dem victories in South West by-elections yesterday.

Voters in Newquay South were electing a new town councillor – a straight fight between  Sandy Carter for the Lib Dems and Rose Knowlson for the Tories.

The result was a decisive Lib Dem victory, with Sandy Carter securing 444 votes.  Thirty short of the party’s tally in Glasgow North East, but enough to win 56% of the vote with an 8.7% swing from the Conservatives to the Lib Dems since June of this year.

St Austell and Newquay is a new parliamentary seat, notionally held by the Lib Dems based on 2005 figures …

Posted in Council by-elections | 7 Comments

How do the messages on the main political party websites compare?

Comparing the popularity of different words in the latest stories from the the Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Labour Party websites reveals striking differences in the messages being put out by each party online.

Reproduced below are three word clouds, where the bigger a word is the more often it appeared on that party’s latest website stories. The word clouds were generated yesterday (Thursday) based on the then state of each of the three websites.

First, let’s look at the Conservative Party:

Posted in Online politics | Tagged , and | 13 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 13 November 2009

The obvious big news this morning is the Glasgow North East Parliamentary by-election – and discussion is already underway here at Iain’s post.

2 Big Stories

My own two stories this morning have a transport/travel/systems-related bent:
East Coast Mainline back under government control

National Express will hand back East Coast Mainline services between London and Edinburgh and the rest of the East Coast franchise just before midnight.

Falling revenue and rising costs left it unable to meet a commitment to pay £1.4bn for the franchise until 2015.

A government company, Directly Operated Railways, will run the franchise for at least 18 months. Ministers say staff and services will be unaffected.

Posted in Daily View | Tagged , and | 1 Comment

A Labour gain, but no revival

Yesterday’s by-election in Glasgow North East saw a rare gain for the Labour Party.  The seat was held by the former Speaker, Michael Martin, in 2005 when, by recent tradition, the main parties did not oppose him.

Labour will be relieved to see their parliamentary majority increased. Although losing the seat was never a serious prospect, and the win certainly doesn’t indicate any sort of revival or endorsement for Gordon Brown, new MP Willie Bain secured nearly 60% of vote – a higher percentage that Michael Martin secured in 2005.

Does anyone else have cause to be pleased?

Turnout was a low 33% …

Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | 26 Comments

Four Bradford Conservative supporters go on trial for postal vote fraud

The Bradford Telegraph & Argus reports:

Four Conservative party supporters from Bradford tried to rig the voting system in the run-up to a General Election in a plot to “harvest” postal votes, a court heard today.

Mohammed Sultan, Mohammed Rafiq, Reis Khan and Jamshed Khan sent off for postal voting applications under false names or had legitimate applications re-directed to them, Leeds Crown Court heard.

Their aim was to get “their man” Haroon Rashid, 39, elected to the Bradford West seat in the 2005 General Election, said prosecutor Mark Ainsworth.

Posted in News | Tagged | 3 Comments

Nick Clegg meets Oxford – the live-tweet

Nick Clegg’s latest ‘Meets You’ public meeting – in which he gets out of Westminster and meets real people across the UK – comes to Oxford tonight. I’m going to be live-tweeting the event over @libdemvoice – just click here to keep up with what Nick’s asked and what he says.

at Wesley Methodist Church, Oxford, waiting for Nick to speak. Couple of hundred people here.

a rather bedraggled-looking – well, it is raining – Evan Harris (MP for Oxford West) has just arrived.

Steve Goddard (candidate for Oxford East) introducing Nick, looking forward to overturning Labour’s 963 majority.

Nick takes to

…

Posted in News | Tagged and | 5 Comments

Opinion: Pull out our troops

It’s time that Liberal Democrats called for British troops to be pulled off the front line in Afghanistan. The justifications for their continuing presence vary with the day of the week and the desperation of the advocate.  I am not convinced by any of them.  I don’t know how we would recognise ‘success’ if it were to be claimed, and I don’t believe that our involvement is making the streets of Britain any safer.

Alone amongst the three party leaders Nick Clegg has voiced concerns not simply about shortages of helicopters (in the Great War the call was always for more …

Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged , , , , and | 8 Comments

A photo-shoot too far for Cameron?

David Cameron has been accused of exploiting Armistice Day for political gain, raising questions of where politicians should draw the line when it comes to photo opportunities, and what behaviour is appropriate when honouring the war dead.

As The Mirror reports:

They … began a carefully-choreographed photo session. The Tory leader had clearly been instructed on how to behave and moved briskly from pose to pose in the 20 minute shoot.

He walked around the garden, often bending down to read the names of the dead etched on crosses and carefully studying the wreaths of poppies.

Photographers normally keep a respectful distance at

…

Posted in News | Tagged and | 8 Comments

Conservative PPC kicked off council for non-attendance

The Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Hallam, Daniel Gage, would face a pretty uphill task to defeat Nick Clegg in any event. But he’s just made that job a whole lot harder, by being kicked off a town council for failing to turn up to meetings.

The Sheffield Telegraph reports:

Daniel Gage, one of five Tories on Dronfield Town Council, has been disqualified after failing to attend a single council meeting in the last six months.

Mr Gage, aged 24, said he is ‘heartbroken’ to have been kicked off the council just days before he was due to launch his campaign to

…

Posted in News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments

Move over James Purnell, there’s a new photoshopping king in town

First, a recap from 2007 for new readers:

You may recall the story of James Purnell and the photoshopping incident – an NHS Trust faked a photo featuring him, the Trust and he then gave differing accounts of how it happened, he then bombed out in a rather funny TV piece trying to defend his line that he didn’t know what was going to happen and wasn’t in any way to blame for the fakery and then Pink Dog got dragged into the whole saga.

Yesterday the Telegraph and today the Mail have unearthed more evidence, and it’s looking pretty bleak for

…

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Daily View 2×2: 12 November 2009

Good morning. Today in 1990, Tim Berners Lee published a formal proposal for the world wide web. Today nearly twenty years later, here we all are. And isn’t it frightening that 1990 is nearly twenty years ago?!

2 Big Stories

Labour’s plan for ‘John Lewis’ public services

The Guardian is reporting that the Labour party are proposing mutualising public bodies – and the Guardian thinks the concept of mutualisation will be so alien to its readers that the only way of explaining it is by analogy to John Lewis.

Hospitals and schools would be transformed into John Lewis-style partnerships under radical plans that could form a central plank of Labour’s general election manifesto.

Public sector bodies, which would also include leisure centres, housing organisations and social care providers, would be allowed to take control of their own affairs if staff and users voted in favour.

Quite an amazing change of fortune from the party that has spent the last dozen years increasing Whitehall control over – well, pretty much everything.

Posted in Daily View | Tagged , , , , , and | 4 Comments

Daniel Hannan back talking about the NHS

Liberal Conspiracy has the story:

Dan Hannan slams NHS in new video for Ron Paul…

The video starts off with talking about the establishment of the NHS with images from the Second World War and that of Hitler.

Anthony says:

Did you enjoy the frames of Hitler when he was talking about the establishment of the NHS? Very stylish and clever. Remember, healthcare reform in the US is Nazi- lots of people say so like these people and these. Nicely done, Campaign for Liberty.

Hannan calls the NHS a remnant of a system from “war time planning”.

You can watch the film and read the …

Posted in News | Tagged and | 4 Comments

Haringey ‘gagged’ council chief with six-figure payoff

The Evening Standard reports:

Haringey council was facing fresh criticism today over a secret six-figure payoff it made to one of its senior officials.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was allegedly given the payment to stop an embarrassing “revelation” about Labour councillor Charles Adje becoming public at an employment tribunal.

The council is facing calls to explain the deal.

Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, Lynne Featherstone, called on chief executive Ita O’Donovan to “clarify” the reasons for it.

She said: “There is a big question mark over how Haringey uses gagging orders and prefers cover-up to openness. There

…

Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments

Former UKIP MEP goes down for two years

Nigel Farage must be hoping the latest crop of UKIP MEPs prove more honest than the 2004 intake, after former MEP Tom Wise was sentenced to two years in prison.

Wise, who until earlier this year was an MEP for the East of England, channelled £39,000 of taxpayers’ money into a secret bank account and spent it on cars and wine.

His trick was to pay his assistant £500 a month, say he was paying her £3,000 a month and pocket the difference.

The scam was reported by the Daily Telegraph in October 2005. A couple of years later, Tom …

Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments

March with Nick and Simon

Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes will be taking to the streets of London on Saturday 5th December to demand the Government got further in tackling climate change.

As an email from Simon Hughes stiringly says:

We are the party that has the courage to tackle climate change in Britain. We will go furthest on cutting carbon emissions. Go furthest in generating renewable energy. And go furthest in insulating homes.

But climate change can only be tackled by global action – and that is why the Copenhagen conference is so important. It could prove to be the most important in our lifetimes.

The march on December 5 is a chance for us to show the Government how strongly people in Britain feel. We can’t let this opportunity pass. And a strong Liberal Democrat presence on the march will send a clear message to the nation that we are the only party with the ambition and policies to reverse climate change.

Posted in News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments

Evan Harris’s blog on #nuttsacking

On Monday, Helen brought you news from the Guardian of the dispute between Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris and Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

Over the last two days, Dr Harris’s blog has been unmissable as he has been posting details of the correspondence on his blog, along with the consequences.

A fisking of Alan Johnson’s speech in Parliament

I was amazed to hear what the Home Secretary said, under privilege, in parliament about a distinguished scientist and sent Alan Johnson the letter below demanding a retraction and apology.

A fisking of Alan Johnson’s reply

The Home Secretary has now responded

…

Posted in Parliament | Tagged , , and | 12 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 11 November 2009

2 Big Stories

Woman loses appeal against noisy sex

You might have thought Gordon and that letter would be the big story, but the BBC website says differently, with this rated higher on the Most Shared and Most Read charts by yesterday evening.

And why not?  It’s got sex, crime and something odd – just the sort of story we, the Great British public, relish.

As a neighbour said:

“The noise sounds like they are both in considerable pain. I cannot describe the noise. I have never ever heard anything like it.”

But, in case you want your big stories to have a serious political edge, there are other issues.

Posted in Daily View | Tagged and | 5 Comments

Liberal Youth: a successful Bootcamp weekend

After our most successful Freshers on record, with nearly 900 new people recruited to the party, Liberal Youth this weekend took a group of our new recruits and branch chairs to Malvern for Bootcamp. The event was designed to make sure that our activists were given the skills they’ll need to get through the General Election. We covered everything from time management to direct mail to the basics of campaigning. It was an intense weekend with delegates from Portsmouth to Glasgow and everywhere in between!

Alex Royden, Chair of Liverpool Liberal Youth and General Executive Member for national Liberal Youth, thought …

Posted in Events | Tagged | 6 Comments

Opinion: Back to the future: why 2009 is really 1832

Not that many people accept the idea of reincarnation. But as a descriptor of what British politics needs, it’s absolutely spot-on: a very old and decrepit man needs to die, and turn into a new-born being.

Even the terms we use to describe political division are ancient. ‘Left’ harks back to mass labour and command economies, while ‘Right’ conjures up pictures of bosses in grimy towns, Mosleyites in England and Falangists in Spain.

In that context, contemporary politicians too often remind me of George III’s doctors wondering why the King is hallucinating and peeing blue: they’re no better than quacks faced …

Posted in Op-eds | 9 Comments

When is it ok to ban a journalist?

Portsmouth FC have banned a local newspaper journalist from their ground after taking  dislike to a piece that he wrote. Although the club has neither suggested the article broke any law nor is libellous, it has decided to ban Neil Allen for an “indefinite period” from home matches, press conferences, speaking to the players and coaching staff or visiting the club’s training ground.

As Hold The Front Page reports,

News sports editor Howard Frost told HTFP: “It seems a bit petty. If (manager) Paul Hart wants to take exception, that’s his prerogative.

“It’s generally normal for managers and journalists to fall out

…

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 2 Comments

Has Ashcroft met his obligations after a decade?

In 1999, Tory leader William Hague proposed billionaire Michael Ashcroft for a life peerage, along with a promise that Ashcroft would take up permanent UK residence.

The millions Ashcroft has pumped into the Conservative Party has prompted political opponents to question his legal status – whether he lives and pays taxes in the UK.

That’s never been clear; but in Sunday’s Andrew Marr Programme on the BBC, William Hague was asked about Lord Ashcroft and some think Hague has settled the issue.

Here’s the exchange:

Marr “You’ve been out and about with Lord Ashcroft. Do you know whether he pays tax in this

…

Posted in News | Tagged and | 4 Comments
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