We previously blogged Nick Clegg’s message asking people to help in Crewe (polling day a fortnight today). Now here’s a message about Henley, which is also gearing up for a by-election campaign, on the assumption that Boris Johnson keeps to his promise to quit as an MP:
And in more LDV news from Wales… Mike German has announced he will stand down as leader of the Welsh Lib Dems after the party’s autumn conference in October. BBC.co.uk has more here.
Whatever you might say about the Welsh Liberal Democrats we are tenacious. From standstill in last May’s Assembly elections; to summer chaos, as we attempted to forge a coalition with the wrong parties only to see Plaid Cymru walk away to join up with Labour; to a set of local election results in which we not only held our own but actually advanced on our 2004 high.
Of the 33 net gains by the Liberal Democrats on 1 May, 21 of them were in Wales. In three of the four Councils we lead we increased our representation and consolidated our position, …
If the Prime Minister was looking for some respite in the Commons today – after last week’s drubbing by the electorate – his hopes were dashed. It’s just one damned thing after another for poor Gordon: the 10p tax fiasco (of which more later), post office closures, 42-day detention without trial, and the Scottish Labour leader going off-piste about a Scottish independence referendum.
The Tory leader David Cameron chose to range widely, attempting to give a sense of Labour’s paralysis. It would have been effective,too – but Dave has a tiresome habit of taking it too far, and tarnishing his rhetoric. Take today’s cheap closing jibe:
This is the Prime Minister who went on “American Idol” with more make-up on than Barbara Cartland; this is the Prime Minister who sits in No. 10 Downing street … waiting for Shakira to call and waiting for George Clooney to come to tea. I have got a bit of advice for him: why does he not give up the PR and start being a PM?
Caustic stuff, and good for rallying the troops. But it’s not exactly Prime Ministerial. The Tory leader is keen to give the impression that he’s not complacent after last Thursday’s results. He’d be well-advised to drop some of the smart-arse quips, and start behaving like a PM-to-be.
Another good PMQs’ performance from Nick Clegg, focusing on the continuing rumblings of discontent of the Labour party’s perverse decision to tax the low-paid more, by doubling the 10p tax rate. The Lib Dems were the first party to identify the issue, back in March 2007, and Nick is right to keep campaigning on it. As he told the Prime Minister today,
This is a matter of principles. Remember those?
You can watch today’s PMQs encounter over at BBC.co.uk; or you can read the Hansard transcript below:
The results of the Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina look certain to end Senator Hillary Clinton’s 2008 bid for the White House: Senator Barack Obama is now the presumptive nominee of his party.
Though Clinton won ‘blue-collar’ Indiana, the wafer-thin 51%-49% margin severely undermines her claim that only she can appeal to the voters who will likely decide this November’s general election match-up with the Republican’s Senator John McCain. That Obama cruised to victory in North Carolina by a larger-than-expected 14% will serve to pile further pressure on Clinton to withdraw her candidacy imminently and gracefully to allow …
The Liberal Democrat-led administration has just had the piece of good news that it:
has become the first English council to achieve top marks from the local authority watchdog.
Audit Commission inspectors praised the council’s responsiveness and the strong leadership of its councillors and officers, who it said have displayed “excellent” understanding of the social, economic and environmental challenges facing the borough’s communities.
The Audit Commission’s assesment rules are not without their problems and controversies (particularly over the relative importance given to financial issues) but in this case it seems a fair representation of the many good things the administration has been doing.
I went to see Billy Bragg in August. Not canvassing, mind you. He’s one of a very few celebrities who doesn’t seem to have a house in my constituency. It was a gig at the Greenbelt Festival. He tried to play his entire first album in just nine minutes, but broke a string and had to talk instead (in the early days, I think he would have performed the next night as well without replacing the string).
What he talked about was why he was backing religion in general (Greenbelt is a Christian arts festival), because it was a bulwark against the single most destructive thing in society: cynicism and apathy. Which is really two things. But they’re obviously linked.
(From a party email)
Former Liberal Democrat Leaders Paddy Ashdown and Menzies Campbell have paid tribute to Liberal Democrat peer Richard Holme, who has died at the age of 71. Lord Holme, who was the party’s Northern Ireland spokesman during the 1990s, and a member of the joint consultative committee with the Government on constitutional issues, died at home in West Sussex after a long battle with cancer. Lord Ashdown described him as a “man of outstanding talent”. Sir Menzies said the late peer was “one of the most perceptive analysts of politics in this country”. Current leader Nick Clegg said
…
Michael Thrasher has an interesting piece on the Sky News website, particularly explaining the difference in the seat change figures between those published by Sky and the BBC. As has become a consistent pattern over several years now, his national vote share projections put the Liberal Democrats two per cent lower than the BBC’s figures.
Several people (including myself) have commented on how well the Liberal Democrats did against the Conservatives in those Parliamentary seats that are key to the next general election. Martin Tod reports from Winchester than in fact the Liberal Democrat vote there hit a 10-year high …
As the dust begins to settle, some of us holding our collective breath in anticipation of a Boris-run London – and Gordon licks his wounds and wonders if this was all to do with the abolishing of the 10p rate – I thought it may be a good time to start thinking about notions of equality. I wanted to start by looking at the commitment all the main parties have made to ending child poverty.
Last Monday I attended the 4 Children/Barnados conference, addressed by, among others, Nick Clegg (Lib Dem), Michael Gove (Tory) and Stephen Timms (Labour), where a pamphlet, …
A great set of local election results – but to say that we did “well” or “better than expected” is, in my view, an understatement.
On our resources, which do not include the money of (Lord) David Sainsbury (of Turville), or (Lord) Michael Ashcroft (of Tax Haven) or (Lord) Irvine Laidlaw, we’ve done fantastically. Apologies for the brackets, but I think we can say that their ‘titles’ are optional.
Can we do better? You bet!
Here in Cambridge, for example, I doubt that a single leaflet mentioned Nick Clegg’s name. I think they should have. Our local election campaigns should be …
Stanislas Magniant wrote about what happened after he gave a presentation about online politics:
During the Q&A session, one person helped me put things in perspective, in the most humbling manner. That person is a member of the Parliament in Lebanon.
Because of political threats on his life and that of his family, he’s been forced to live in highly secure locations, with bodyguards 24/7. And because he can no longer go out and meet with his constituents, he’s resorted to use Facebook to keep in touch with them, to exchange ideas, and to prepare for next year’s election. I don’t know if
…
Food is something that affects us all. We all have to eat. But very few people know the extent to which oil underpins our food system, how much carbon is used in the production of food, how much water is used, and the impact the food system therefore has on climate change.
The current all-time highs in oil prices – $117 a barrel in April 2008 – is sending convulsive shudders down the food chain because every part of the system requires fossil fuel. Food prices have rocketed all over the world as oil prices have risen. Fertiliser, pumping water, ploughing, transportation, refrigeration – it all uses oil. And that’s being compounded by the current mad dash for biofuels, most of which require more fossil fuel to create than the energy derived from them, and which are taking up land that would otherwise be used for crops.
Camden Council purchases a lot of food directly (canteens, meals on wheels etc) or indirectly (schools, care homes) each year. We therefore have a huge potential for influencing supply chains. Considerable effort has already gone into improving the sustainability criteria associated with food contracts, and the all-party Camden Sustainability Task Force has had some input into this. According to one survey Camden was in the top five public authorities in Europe for sustainable purchasing. But we would like to go a step further.
A rather unfortunate posting over on Iain Dale’s blog this evening about the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. Iain writes:
It seems to me that the Conservatives should be very careful not fight an aggressive campaign here. They don’t need to launch attacks on the Labour Candidate. They need to be the voice of sweet reason and play up their candidate’s local record – but then go for Gordon Brown’s throat on the 10p tax debacle and other issues. And this is exactly what Edward Timpson seems to be doing. He’s just released this rather interesting letter to the press…
Curiously, he then only …
Edward Timpson, the Conservative candidate for the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, is busy calling himself local. So I thought I’d take a look at his official biography on the Conservative Party website. And here’s what I found:
(Click on the thumbnail to see full size version.)
Update: just to provide a little background as I commented below: the reason for picking up on this is that the Conservatives are running the message that their candidate is local whilst
…
With Mr Tall t’internet less and Mr Foster off in Greece, it’s my turn to complete this weeks Golden Dozen.
It’s the 63rd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (27th April – 3rd May), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.
Let’s get straight down to it, in descending order of popularity:
1. Peter Black: Tory compares Boris to Mussolini
2. Jo Anglezarke: Bumper mayoral blog round-up, she does it so I don’t have too.
3. Jennie Rigg: For Pity’s Sake, London Lib …
Here’s the email which Brian Paddick sent out to supporters earlier today:
It feels a bit like waking up with a hangover but without the headache!
Thank you so much for all the hard work and support that was put into our campaign.
It is important to recognise the unique nature of this set of London elections set against the context of the national picture. If the London picture were reflected nationally we would have cause for concern and for being despondent but not a bit of it!
We have had one of the best ever results nationally and this is a major boost for
…
London: you’ve probably seen the results by now I suspect (!), but if you’re after full vote share details for the London Assembly seats they are here whilst the London list results are here. Labour’s hold of Enfield and Haringey and gain of Brent and Harrow Assembly seats are striking results at a time of Labour defeats in so many other places. On the list, the election of a BNP member is the main piece of news. Overall, the Liberal Democrats lost two Assembly seats, with Mike Tuffrey, Dee Doocey and Caroline Pidgeon the three elected.
I think you can sense the relief among Lib Dems today. Despite widespread predictions that the party would end up the loser of the night – both among the media and LDV readers – the Lib Dems have ended up with a net gain of both councils and councillors.
Not only that, but for only the second time in its history the Lib Dems have come second in the national projected share of the vote, with 25%. We couldn’t have hoped for much better; and we certainly feared it might be much worse.
Remember, the last time most of these …
Congratulations to Dominic McCavish, now the first Liberal Democrat elected to Barrow-in-Furness Borough Council.
Liberal Democrat team in Crewe seems hopeful that there will be one or more Liberal Democrat gains from Labour in the elections in the Crewe & Nantwich constituency. Update: confirmed.
A cheery half-wave to the BBC: gosh, your round-up on News 24 has suddenly found a lot more good news about the Liberal Democrast to report!
Earth calling BBC, Earth calling BBC: Liberal Democrats have gained control of Burnley and Sheffield, but there’s no mention in your regular rolling news round-up, which is still stuck on using …
Benedict Brogan reports that the new Labour General Secretary has quit and won’t be taking up the job after all.
Wrexham: Liberal Democrats become largest party.
Reading: Liberal Democrats defeated Labour council leader – congratulations to Warren Swaine.
Liberal Democrats making gains in Swansea: up three seats.
Party looks set to be running more councils after these elections than before – gaining Burnley, Sheffield, Hull and St Albans, whilst losing Pendly and West Lindsey.
London Mayor election turnout: BBC says it is looking to be 45%, which would be up 8% on last time. That’s a big increase, but – as mentioned before – not into the league of really high turnouts suggested by some of the more excitable Conservative chatter yesterday.
How to tell …
Here’s some of the benchmarks the media set for the Liberal Democrats:
Financial Times: any gains would be “good performance”
Daily Telegraph: loses of less than 50 would make for a “good night”
Daily Mail: loses of less than 50 would make for a “good day”
… whilst the average prediction from readers of this site was for 34 loses.
And the results? With around two-thirds in, the party is on a net gain of 8.
Er, it’s not exactly good is it? Having a graph that has 25% lower than 23% isn’t the most helpful of graphs. I’m not sure that “American” accent was a great idea either. But really … compared with the results available from numerous places on the internet, was the BBC coverage up to the standards you would expect of an organisation with so many resources to deploy to cover an event?
Although there were some strong BNP results early in the evening, as the results have settled down it’s looking like a mediocre result for them with the BBC reporting that their vote overall is unchanged on last year.
Liberal Democrats defeat Labour leader in Cardiff.
BBC consistently reporting small net gain in seats for the Liberal Democrats now.
Liberal Democrats now largest party in Exeter. Labour have gone from first to third.
And we start with the news of five Liberal Democrat gains from the Conservatives in Stratford, including deputy leader of the council.
Here’s the party’s news release:
Liberal Democrats retain control of Liverpool
An Independent Labour councillor has joined the Liberal Democrats, tonight, meaning the party has retained its control of Liverpool city Council.
The move means that the Liberal Democrats have 46 of the 90 seats in Liverpool.
Nadia Stewart decided it was in the city’s interest to give the Liberal Democrats an overall majority rather than half the council seats.
Liberal Democrat Chief Executive, Lord Rennard said:
“We are delighted to remain in control of Liverpool with an overall majority. If the BBC is right that we have overtaken Labour in national vote share,
…
Interesting pattern to some of the poor Conservative results – failing to gain control of Hastings and Weymouth & Portland, going backwards in Gosport and expected to lose control of Purbeck when that counts tomorrow. There seems to be something of a south coast pattern here.
Winchester: another of the key Liberal Democrat – Conservative fights in Southern England saw one net Liberal Democrat gain, including Whiteley ward where a Conservative was arrested over proxy vote fraud allegations. Conservatives also made one net gain.
Woking: score draw between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives with each gaining two seats from the other.
Liverpool: Liberal Democrats …
Liberal Democrats are seen as the best on climate change, most united and least sleazy.
The poll also asked whether various politicians are an asset or liability for their party. The public’s verdict:
Cameron +44
Clegg +16
Brown -10
On two key personal ratings, Nick Clegg scored best:
Too concerned with public relations and spin?
Cameron 57%
Brown 52%
Clegg 33%
Arrogant?
Brown 52%
Cameron 46%
Clegg 22%
Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown is one of the panellists on tonight’s Question Time (and is broadcast on BBC1 and online from 10.35 pm GMT).
The panel will include the Secretary of State for Defence (but for how much longer?) Des Browne, the shadow foreign secretary William Hague, the “writer and author” (according to the BBC website; not the epithet I’d use) Richard Littlejohn and the journalist Polly Toynbee.
If you’re not at an election count right now, and want to sound-off, please feel free to use the comments thread.
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A plea from a member – more ambition and less equine pacification please… (Nick Baird)
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We need better conversations on AI and the environment (Josh Matthews)
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Beware the pitiless quicksands of Rutland Water
Charlie Maynard resigns from Lib Dem front bench and calls for no confidence vote in Ed Davey
Peter Kellner: Zack Polanski should have won at a canter
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Labour's recovery in by-elections continues.
Vote Tory, get Reform?
Council by-election results scorecard 2026-2027
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Matt Brittin and Manon Dave need a traditional BBC arse-booting
Looking good!
Tristan Ward 
Ellyott Ellyott 
paul barker Tristan Ward 
