Stephen Tall

Vince on Labour’s 10p tax-con U-turn

By Stephen Tall | Tue 13th May 2008 - 7:02 pm

Once again, it was Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable who asked the hard questions of Alastair Darling today, as Labour’s Chancellor attempted to put right his boss’s blunder in penalising 5.3 million of the nation’s poorest by doubling their tax rate.

Vince’s Commons’ response is reprinted from the Hansard transcript below. Particularly telling, however, was Mr Darling’s answer to Vince’s first question, asking exactly how many of the 5.3m victims of the Prime Minister’s decision will be compensated:

I said in my statement that 4.2 million households will receive as much as, or more than, they originally lost. The remaining 1.1 million householders will have their loss at least halved. In addition, those people might be benefiting from tax credits and other measures. I set out to try to offset the average loss; I think that that is what the majority of people in the House wanted us to do.

Labour MPs appear relieved that this ‘prudent’ Prime Minister is borrowing £2.7 billion to get the Government out of a tight hole. But how they can be pleased with a measure which leaves over one million of the poorest worse off is beyond me. If these had been Lib Dem or Tory proposals you can guarantee Labour supporters would have been roundly condemning them – and quite right, too. The gullibility of Labour MPs is almost as bad as their leader’s profiligate incompetence.

Anyway, here are Vince’s words of wisdom:

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Posted in News and Parliament | 3 Comments
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Stephen Tall

How you can back Lib Dem David Howarth’s campaign for Fixed Term Parliaments

By Stephen Tall | Tue 13th May 2008 - 6:44 pm

Cast your minds back to last September…

Gordon Brown was riding high in the polls, the Tories were in disarray and the Lib Dems were polling at 13%. Gordon toyed with exploiting his momentary advantage by calling a snap election. He dithered and dithered and dithered until the polls turned and the choice was taken away from him.

Since when nothing has gone right… Labour slumped to third place in the local elections, the Tories won London, and the Lib Dems scored 24% of the vote.

So perhaps Gordon got his just desserts for trying to manipulate the electoral process …

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Posted in Parliament | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

And the winner is…

By Stephen Tall | Tue 13th May 2008 - 5:57 pm

Thanks to those Lib Dem Voice readers who submitted entries for yesterday’s competition to win a copy Susan George’s book, Hijacking America – by providing a suitable epitaph for George W. Bush’s presidency.

The standard was extremely high – I heartily commend the comments thread to those who missed it – which has made judging the winner extremely difficult. (Not helped by the LDV editorial collective all choosing different favourites: typical bloody liberals.)

Among the best of the runners-up were:

GWB, we are forever in his national debt (Andy Mayer)

Daddy made me do it (Paul Walter)

2001-2009: (interregnum) (Bibliophylax)

We apologise for the

…

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Posted in Books | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

London Elects admits: we failed to add up all the votes

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th May 2008 - 5:24 pm

A letter has gone out today from Anthony Meyer, the Greater London Returning Officer, providing further details of the London election results. In it he admits that the Mayor result as declared at the time was inaccurate, as not all the valid votes were included in it:

The Mayoral 1st and 2nd preference figures for two ballot boxes from Merton and Wandsworth did not transmit successfully to City Hall for aggregation into the London-wide Mayoral declaration. Only the data on rejected ballot papers were received.

In total, 746 votes for Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson were therefore missed out from the final …

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Posted in London | Tagged | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Conservative MP uses Parliamentary expenses to promote by-election candidate

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th May 2008 - 4:12 pm

UPDATE September 2008: the story below accurately reported that Stephen O’Brien’s website stated it was paid for by Parliamentary funds. It’s since been pointed out that at the time the website was in fact no longer being paid for by Parliamentary funds and the statement to the contrary has been removed from his site.

Trouble brewing for Conservative MP Stephen O’Brien, who has been promoting Edward Timpson – Conservative candidate in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election – on his website. The problem? The website is paid for by the Parliamentary funds. And that’d be funds for which the rules expressly forbid such campaigning. Tsk tsk.

A formal complaint has now been lodged with the Director of Finance and Administration of the House of Commons by Gwyn Griffiths, one of the local Liberal Democrat councillors. The key part of his complaint says:

On his website Conservative MP Stephen O’Brien promotes Edward Timpson, the Conservative candidate for Crewe and Nantwich, Stephen Mosley, Conservative candidate for Chester and Graham Evans, Conservative candidate for Weaver Vale.

He also uses the site to promote the policies and advance the cause of the Conservative Party in breach of the explicit rules laid down by the House.

Paragraph Seven of the ‘Rules and guidance on Members’ Websites funded from the Communications Allowance’ clearly states that it must not be used to fund party political activity or campaigning.

7. You must not use your website:
to campaign on behalf of or against any person seeking election
to advance perspectives or arguments with the intention of promoting the interests of any person, political party or organisation you support, or damaging the interests of any other such person, party or organisation.

On his website, Mr O’Brien states that it is paid for out of his parliamentary allowances.

Please launch an investigation into Mr O’Brien’s use of his Incidental Expenses Provision and Communications Allowance to promote the Conservative Party and their candidates.

Meanwhile, happy news from Tim Farron MP, who has been out meeting farmers and getting a very warm response for Elizabeth Shenton:

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Posted in Lib Dem TV and Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged | 6 Comments
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Mark Pack

Labour Party splits into two in Doncaster

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th May 2008 - 10:00 am

It looks as if the impending self-imposed term limit for the Labour Mayor of Doncaster has helped trigger a split in the Labour Group. The current Labour Mayor, Martin Winter, has twice been elected as Mayor but Labour’s internal rules don’t allow someone to run for a third time. However,

Doncaster’s mayor, Martin Winter, has been given an ultimatum by party officials after it emerged he and two other leading Labour councillors in the borough had set up their own independent group in the wake of the local elections earlier this month.

Furious regional party officials have told Mayor Winter and cabinet

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 10 Comments
Tim Leunig

“A New Deal for the City: Liberal Democrat Proposals” reviewed

By Tim Leunig | Tue 13th May 2008 - 8:36 am

Nick Clegg’s speech to the LibDem City Forum was sufficiently interesting to make the BBC news homepage. Nick acknowledged that Vince wrote it – a deserved tribute to Vince’s credibility. Nick highlighted David Laws, Chris Huhne, and Susan Kramer as evidence that we have “the strongest team of economic expertise in British politics today”. True, but why are none in economic portfolios?!

Here are some of the proposals.

The good

1. The depositor protection system doesn’t work – as the Northern Rock queues show. It needs reforming – although Nick didn’t say how.

2. Bank charges should be transparent. Yes! But …

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Posted in Op-eds | 15 Comments
Mark Pack

Labour election leaflet unveils anti-foreigner shift in ID cards policy

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th May 2008 - 12:07 am

As I blogged about a few days ago, the Labour Party in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is attacking the Conservative candidate for opposing “making foreign nationals carry an ID card”. As I said then,

The use of the word “foreign” there seems to come with some rather unpleasant overtones in this context, the implication being that ‘ooh, foreigners – they’re terribly nasty aren’t they – so surely you can’t be against keeping tabs on them now, can you?’

But – as Alex has reminded me – there’s more to this than that. Because, you see, making foreign nationals carry an …

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Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged and | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #64

By Stephen Tall | Mon 12th May 2008 - 7:29 pm

Welcome to the 64th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (4th-10th May), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

Let’s get straight down to it, in descending order of popularity:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

The Derek Conway saga rides again

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th May 2008 - 5:02 pm

This time, it’s Conservative MEPs. Duncan Borrowman has more over on his blog.

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Stephen Tall

Do Lib Dems ask too much of our candidates?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 12th May 2008 - 2:20 pm

Brian Paddick’s campaign diary was published in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday (if you haven’t yet had chance to read it, you can do so here). It’s a fascinating, wry, self-deprecating, candid account of the highs and lows of running for the London mayoralty on the Lib Dem ticket.

Brian’s conclusion, though, is pretty downbeat:

… on the whole it has been very, very disappointing. All that effort and time, nine months of my life, unpaid and for what? I feel bruised and bewildered by the lack of support as a result of not being able to raise enough money –

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 25 Comments
The Voice

Compose Dubya’s epitaph, and win a book!

By The Voice | Mon 12th May 2008 - 1:58 pm

Lib Dem Voice has an advance copy of a new book, Hijacking America, to give away to one lucky reader (courtesy of its publishers, Polity Press).

Written by Susan George, a well-known political scientist who used to work for Greenpeace, Hijacking America is billed as “fascinating, thorough and often chilling account of the decades-long transformation of American society and political culture.”

It’s available to buy from this Friday – but you can be sent one before then by entering our competition.

But, hurry, you have just one day – entries must be received by 1pm tomorrow, Tuesday, 13th May.

To win a copy, we want you to come up with a one-line epitaph for George W. Bush’s presidency. It can be funny, it can be sage, it can be harsh – entirely up to you. The Lib Dem Voice collective will choose their favourite: it’s entirely subjective, I’m afraid, and our decision is of course final.

Please do ensure you leave a correct contact email in the thread with your entry, otherwise we have no way of contacting you to ask for your address so you can receive your victor’s spoils.

Here’s the full book blurb for you to find out more.

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Posted in LDVUSA | 18 Comments
Mark Pack

Clegg outlines Liberal Democrat approach to City tax loopholes

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th May 2008 - 9:42 am

Via the FT:

Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, will today use a speech in the City to call for the scrapping of tax loopholes that make London the accountancy equivalent of “a Swiss cheese” and to propose using the proceeds to cut corporation tax.

Mr Clegg will accuse the Treasury of devising a complex tax system for the City that encourages behaviour which “by any other name is tax avoidance”, claiming there is no evidence the loopholes are vital for London’s success as a financial centre. “If we create greater stability and transparency in the tax regime we can deliver cuts

…

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Posted in News | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Conservatives troubles in Crewe & Nantwich

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th May 2008 - 7:55 am

It’s gone largely unremarked so far, but Mark Walklate, who is standing as an independent candidate in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, is a former Conservative activist.

He stood for the Conservatives in both the 2006 and 2007 local elections. Moreover, his nomination papers look to have been signed by two prominent local Conservative activists. All in all, that doesn’t seem like a happy ship.

P.S. It’s always unfortunate if you get your own phone number wrong in your leaflets. It’s doubly so when the wrong phone number turns out to be for the member of another party. But it’s quite nice …

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Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Why did Kirklees Council pay for this letter promoting a Labour candidate?

By Mark Pack | Sun 11th May 2008 - 5:45 pm

Consider a letter which starts:

Dear Fellow Residents

Working for you all year round

The communities that make up Greenhead Ward deserve a team of experienced, hard working and effective Councillors, who will represent you and always put your interests first. As your Labour team in Greenhead Ward, we endeavour to work all year round on the issues that affect you and are a priority for the local communities.

A fairly standard piece of election direct mail you might think. Substitute a word or two here or there and it could easily be a letter from pretty much any party in any …

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Posted in News | 15 Comments
Mark Pack

Labour axe five councillors in female candidates row

By Mark Pack | Sun 11th May 2008 - 2:23 pm

From the BBC:

Five Labour councillors, including the former leader of Durham County Council, have been suspended from the party.

Former miner Albert Nugent was one of those caught up in the dispute over failing to have enough women candidates.

Read the full story here.

Posted in News | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

How is Boris Johnson doing as London Mayor?

By Mark Pack | Sun 11th May 2008 - 2:10 pm

It’s early days, but there have been some interesting write-ups already, including in today’s Sunday Times which, amongst other things, points out that,

At least two ideas mooted by Johnson during his campaign have been squashed by his rigorous new policymen.

Dropping a couple of election promises so quickly is the sort of act which often gets lost in the initial media coverage of “new person in post”, but it is also the sort of act that can come back to haunt you. If Boris Johnson hits bad times and struggles on policy, the early dropping of two promises could become highly …

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Posted in London | Tagged | 15 Comments
Mark Pack

Joan Ryan’s website

By Mark Pack | Sat 10th May 2008 - 9:23 pm

Matt Wardman and Helen previously commented on this site about  the website for Joan Ryan, Labour MP for Enfield North.

Now I’ve had a time to take a proper look, and talk to one of her constituents, it raises some interesting questions.

What caught everyone’s eye is that most of the content on http://www.joanryan.net/ is only accessible if you register – and in order to register you have to be a constituent of hers. All MPs face some issues with getting casework from people who are not constituents of theirs, and it’s not uncommon to see various messages or even restrictions on contact …

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Posted in Online politics | 5 Comments
Hilary Stephenson

A quick report on how it’s going in Crewe and Nantwich

By Hilary Stephenson | Sat 10th May 2008 - 12:58 pm

An excellent day yesterday with Nick Clegg and a lot of press interest. We’ve got a big operation going and had a very good number of helpers in today already.

This is a really important weekend – the team proved yesterday that we are well set up to deal with large numbers. We just need lots of people every day!

The news from the doorsteps is encouraging. It’s been a pleasure to be out and about. The big Elizabeth Shenton posters are going down a storm – as is Elizabeth herself with both the team and the public.

I’ve seldom come across …

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Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged | 24 Comments
Mark Pack

Does Labour think it is losing the debate on ID cards? (UPDATED)

By Mark Pack | Sat 10th May 2008 - 11:30 am

An interesting snippet from some of the Labour material in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election: they are attacking the Conservative candidate for the (current, known to have changed a few times) Conservative policy of opposing ID cards.

However, from what I’ve seen of it, they’ve mostly given up on most of the arguments previously used and instead retreated into the following very narrow approach:

Do you oppose making foreign nationals carry an ID card?

The use of the word “foreign” there seems to come with some rather unpleasant overtones in this context, the implication being that ‘ooh, foreigners – they’re terribly nasty aren’t …

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Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Stephen Tall

Hillary’s ‘What Ifs’

By Stephen Tall | Sat 10th May 2008 - 11:22 am

There’s a fascinating article in the New York Magazine, Ten ‘What Ifs’ About Hillary Clinton’s Campaign – you can read it here. Here’s No. 9 on the list:

9. What if Clinton had gone magnanimous on Obama and the Reverend Wright?
The GOP strategist Alex Castellanos offers an intriguing theory about how Hillary might have reacted differently, and more effectively, to the issue that threatened to swallow Obama. “After the Reverend Wright controversy, Obama was suffering the worst press month of his campaign,” he says. “Hillary had a choice. She could have gotten bigger, more presidential, less political; she could have

…

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Posted in LDVUSA | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Crewe neck-and-neck sweater?*

By Stephen Tall | Fri 9th May 2008 - 7:52 pm

The usually very reliable Times political correspondent Sam Coates’ Red Box blog carried a rather bizarre posting yesterday, alleging the Lib Dems had more or less given up on Crewe. Party chief exec and by-election genius Lord Rennard soon put him right:

Just come to our HQ in Crewe and see us there for proof of our very serious intent! The Labour vote is very weak (as evidenced by our gains in Crewe South in the local elections) – so Lib Dems will aim to repeat earlier by-election successes.

And today the Lib Dems’ director of campaigns, Hilay Stephenson, issued this …

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Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Today’s Conservative councillor in trouble story, and it’s odder than most

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th May 2008 - 6:42 pm

The headline summarises the full story quite neatly:

Tory councillor forced to resign after he made up claims he suffered from testicular cancer

UPDATE: The story has been widely covered in other media outlets, including the BBC, though only this local newspaper report really adds anything to the orginal report linked above.

Posted in News | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

Hip hip hooray, it’s the return of my favourite Conservative election fairytale

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th May 2008 - 3:21 pm

Back last year when we had two Parliamentary by-elections going on at the same time, in Ealing Southall and Sedgefield, there was a concerted online campaign by Conservatives making comments around the web to claim that the Liberal Democrats were struggling in Ealing, had given up on winning and were instead concentrating on Sedgefield. My favourite was the supposed eye-witness account from someone in Ealing who claimed they saw people in the Liberal Democrat HQ there preparing lots of letters for Sedgefield.

It all seemed to dry up rather after the Grant Shapps 1234 incident but it looks as if …

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Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

How close is Labour to going bankrupt?

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th May 2008 - 12:10 pm

Tribune thinks it’s pretty close:

Labour chiefs have until the end of this month to plug a £4 million hole in the party’s finances and avert the possibility of a formal declaration of bankruptcy.

The financial crisis in the wake of the party’s drubbing at the local and London polls comes as Gordon Brown faces another humiliation with a possible defeat by the Tories in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

Auditors are due to sign off the party’s accounts soon after the end of May, but there are fears that they will refuse to do so and instead declare the party insolvent.

Arrangements have

…

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Posted in News | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

NEW POLL: what will be the result of the next general election?

By Stephen Tall | Fri 9th May 2008 - 8:56 am

Gordon Brown’s Labour Party took a pounding in last week’s local elections, and a new YouGov poll sees them trailing the Tories by 26% – so calling a general election is probably the last thing on the Prime Minister’s mind this morning. He can, after all, delay going to the country for another two years.

But the question LDV is asking is this: what do you think is the most likely outcome of the next general election? Here are your choices:

> a Labour victory with a Commons majority
> Labour largest single party but no overall majority
> Conservative largest single party but …

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Posted in News | 20 Comments
Stephen Tall

BBC Question Time: open thread

By Stephen Tall | Thu 8th May 2008 - 9:49 pm

After Paddy last week, it’s the turn of another former Liberal Democrat leader, Ming Campbell, to represent the party on the panel on tonight’s Question Time (broadcast on BBC1 and online from 10.35 pm GMT).

The panel will also include the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (and future Labour leadership contender?) James Purnell, senior Conservative politician Lord Heseltine, “well-known television personality” (aka the smuggest man in the world) Piers Morgan and novelist and journalist Rachel Johnson.

If you’re watching, and want to sound-off, please feel free to use the comments thread.

Posted in Lib Dem TV | Tagged and | 24 Comments
Stephen Tall

Chris Huhne on the politics of public behaviour

By Stephen Tall | Thu 8th May 2008 - 7:12 pm

Word reaches LDV from think-tank Demos that Chris Huhne, the Lib Dems’ shadow home secretary, has contributed an essay to a new publication out today, The Politics of Public Behaviour: how governments should respond to the public consequences of private decisions.

Pamphlet editor Duncan O’Leary explains more:

the social effects of personal decisions on marriage, parenting, diet, exercise, smoking, flying, pensions savings etc). Nanny state vs ‘Pontius Pilot state’ as John Reid once put it.

Huhne’s basic argument is that community approaches and peer pressure should be the tools to address social policy goals without coercive intrusion into people’s personal lives. The

…

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The Voice

Tributes to Ray Michie

By The Voice | Thu 8th May 2008 - 6:35 pm

Here’s a round-up of some of the tributes paid to Ray Michie (Baroness Michie of Gallanach), the Lib Dem peer, and former Argyll & Bute MP, who died yesterday. Please use the comments thread to let us know of any we’ve missed or to pay your own respects.

> Obituary – The Herald;
> Obituary – The Daily Telegraph;
> Tributes as peer loses battle with cancer – The Scotsman;
> ‘Tireless’ Lib Dem stalwart dies – BBC.co.uk;
> Liberal Baroness Michie dies, 74 – The Times;
> Sad news – Fraser Macpherson’s blog.

Posted in News | 6 Comments
Darrell Goodliffe

Opinion: Breaking the cycle

By Darrell Goodliffe | Thu 8th May 2008 - 6:03 pm

Figures carried on the Liberal Democrat’s national website reveal some quite shocking statistics. Over 70,000 young people have been admitted to hospital for self-harm related injuries in the last four years, an increase of 35%; 4,000 have been admitted for eating disorders, which represents an increase of 10%.

Defining self-harm can be problematic. I have seen websites which define it broadly enough to include smoking and the use of narcotics. A broad definition is not helpful because there are clear differences.

For example, a smoker or a drug addict will become chemically addicted to their particular vice (although they …

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