Stephen Tall

Another Tory defection to Labour

By Stephen Tall | Tue 25th September 2007 - 6:13 pm

Calm down, nothing too exciting – one of Dave’s A-listers, Judith Symes, has crawled inside Gordon’s big tent. She stood for the Tories in Brighton Kemptown in 2005, coming within 2,373 votes of unseating the sitting Labour MP. The Brighton Argus has more. (Hat-tip to Guido.)

Posted in News | 3 Comments
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Alex Foster

Tory webhost problems

By Alex Foster | Tue 25th September 2007 - 1:52 pm

Here’s a tip to would-be webbers – if you find a photo on the internet that you want to use on your website, first check to see whether it’s copyright or not, and then download it, and upload it to your own site.

If you “remote link” the image, which means pointing to the link on someone else’s website, this can cost them money.  And it also gives them power over what appears on your website, as this funny story  (which is ever so slightly unsafe for work) demonstrates.

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Stephen Tall

Liam Byrne: a minister who should make Labour members ashamed of their own government

By Stephen Tall | Tue 25th September 2007 - 9:37 am

Last week, the Lib Dem conference overwhelmingly approved plans drawn up by Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes to tackle the issue of the estimated 600,000 immigrants currently living in the UK illegally – they would be able to earn British citizenship if they could prove they had no criminal record and could show a long-term commitment to the country.

The proposal earned praise from The Economist, which said “the plan looks more credible than the government’s commitment to deport all illegal immigrants, something which at the current rate would take at least 25 years.”

The response …

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Posted in News | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

On your way to the Forum?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 24th September 2007 - 7:40 pm

If you’re a party member you can register to use the members’ forum – our place to say whatever’s on your mind without the danger of it being misquoted (or quoted out of context or quoted all too bloody accurately) on opposition leaflets.

Topics currently being discussed include:

  • Will there be a snap election?
  • Sharia law
  • That referendum
  • Why join the lib dems
  • Decommisioning laws
  • Brighton feedback
  • Candidate selection
  • Taking on the BNP

    Remember, it’s good to talk.

    • Posted in Site news | 2 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    Is Iain Dale being fair?

    By Stephen Tall | Mon 24th September 2007 - 2:36 pm

    As Mark Pack notes below, Tory uber-blogger Iain Dale has taken a bit of a swipe at Lib Dem Voice in his run-down of the top 100 Lib Dem blogs. Here’s what he says:

    One of the sadder developments in the LibDem blogosphere this year has been the decline of LibDem Voice. At one stage it looked as if it might disappear altogether when its creator, Rob Fenwick, decided he had had enough. In the end a collective of libdems bloggers including Mark Pack, Stephen Tall and Ryan Cullen came to the rescue. It does seem, however, to have

    …

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    Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 27 Comments
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    Mark Pack

    Iain Dale gets it wrong, yawn yawn

    By Mark Pack | Mon 24th September 2007 - 1:30 pm

    Says Iain Dale of Liberal Democrat Voice: “Mark Pack, a senior LibDem employee writing the majority of the posts”.

    So at a guess, what proportion of, let’s say, the last hundred posts have I written?

    Oh, that would be 10%. Not even the most enthusiastic bar chart drawer could claim 10% is a majority 🙂

    UPDATE: Iain has corrected his piece; thanks Iain!

    Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 3 Comments

    Reinventing the State reviewed

    By David Rundle | Mon 24th September 2007 - 11:20 am

    So, here it is. The volume which will be written up as the liberal riposte to The Orange Book.

    It’s going to tell us how we can regain the fervour and the achievement of our New Liberal forefathers – how, in the new millennium, we can protect the inheritance of the welfare state which our party and our thinkers created, and how we can best continue to strive for the fairer society all liberals want. Trouble is, Reinventing the State can’t live up to that billing.

    It’s a heavy-weight contender, nearing 400 pages, and with 22 chapters from 21 contributors. It has some excellent chapters: pick it up, turn to the back and read the impressive, clear-headed conclusions by Steve Webb and Jo Holland. If you like your prose persuasively measured, be warmed by Chris Huhne’s liberal narrative, ‘The Case for Localism’. Or, if you prefer a text which is angry and splendidly strident, be converted by Paul Holmes on ‘The Limits of the Market.’ But, as a whole, Reinventing the State is both too sprawling and, paradoxically, too limited to hit the mark.

    This is a problem of all books which are somewhere between political thought and political policy: they have to be a snapshot, a work of the moment with in-built obsolescence. They necessarily lack a longer perspective. This does not mean that they do not mention history – the liberal tradition, as defined in its fully-developed form of New Liberalism, effuses this book and, in particular, David Howarth’s knowledgeable chapter.

    But what they find harder to do it is to appreciate their own place in that historical context. This matters because, in the case of Reinventing the State, it means what is being said is being undersold.

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    Posted in Books | 5 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    Public split on EU reform treaty

    By Stephen Tall | Mon 24th September 2007 - 9:39 am

    Well, here’s a turn-up for the books. According to an Ipsos-Mori poll in today’s Sun, the country is split about whether they would vote to back or reject the EU reform treaty:

    The result of a referendum would be a nail-biter with 46 per cent saying they would reject the Treaty and 44 per cent backing it.

    The poll also asked how people would vote if there were a referendum on whether Britain should stay in the EU. It showed 56 per cent wanting to stay in and 44 per cent wanting to get out.

    Given the fevered anti-EU press the treaty …

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    Posted in News and Polls | 1 Comment
    Neil Fawcett

    Neil Fawcett: my first conference memories

    By Neil Fawcett | Mon 24th September 2007 - 7:55 am

    I joined the Liberal Party during the 1987 general election having been signed up by local Lib Dem councillor Stan Wilson. This led to my first canvassing experience on behalf of Glyn Nightingale in the ward held by Lib Dem blogger Chris Abbot and, after the election, much encouragement that I should go to conference.

    So, 20 years ago this week, I was given a lift to Harrogate not having the first clue what to expect and pitched my tent in a small campsite just outside town (yes, really!). Luckily I found myself pitched next to a family of Lib …

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    Posted in Conference and News | 3 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #31

    By Stephen Tall | Sun 23rd September 2007 - 8:06 pm

    Welcome to the 31st of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (16th-22nd September), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

    And it’s all a little less conference-dominated than I expected. Here you go, in descending order of popularity:

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    Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment
    Mary Reid

    Opinion: Bring back the suppressed blogs

    By Mary Reid | Sun 23rd September 2007 - 12:42 pm

    I was pretty shocked to learn, via Colin Ross’s blog this morning, that a councillor’s blog has been taken down. In fact, his webhost has been shut down as a result of an international legal action which had nothing at all to do with him.

    Bob Piper is a Labour councillor in Sandwell and I have dipped into his feisty blog from time to time. It’s just the kind of campaigning local blog that councillors should be doing; it keeps democracy alive and lively, and I value that even when I disagree with what he writes.

    The story revolves around …

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    Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    Telegraph: Tories in marginals tell unpopular Cameron to stay away

    By Stephen Tall | Sun 23rd September 2007 - 10:53 am

    The Daily Telegraph today details some of the internal unhappiness in the Tory party with their leader, David Cameron – the least popular national party leader according to recent opinion polls.

    The article is headlined ‘Tory pressure as David Cameron effect fades’, and claims:

    Mr Cameron’s standing in some marginal seats is so bad that some Tory candidates have requested that their leader does not visit them during an election campaign. It is an extraordinary turnaround for a man once hailed as the saviour of the party.

    The paper also reports on the latest activities of Lord Ashcroft, Tory deputy chairman, who …

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    Posted in News | Tagged and | Leave a comment
    Rob Blackie

    Opinion: Calling time on Labour for their nasty campaigning

    By Rob Blackie | Sun 23rd September 2007 - 8:47 am

    I occasionally get very angry when Labour’s sympathisers in the media talk about Labour’s liberalising of Britain.

    Quite apart from the fact that it will soon be illegal to go to the shops without an ID card in your pocket, the Labour party is deeply illiberal in its campaigns. I’m sure many of you will have experienced campaigning at local level that demonises asylum seekers, gays or gypsies. We should be more willing to attack Labour for their disgusting campaigns – and make an issue of the character of the people who run them.

    Anyone who has read The Political Brain (a study of the neuroscience of politics – the best political book of this year in my opinion) will remember that smears work because they are semi-conscious. Drew Western, the book’s author, makes the point that if you want to beat a smear (assuming it’s worth mentioning) then you have to take it head on and make an issue of the person doing the smear.

    We successfully did this in the Cheadle by election when the Conservatives used some outrageous smears against our candidate, now MP, Mark Hunter. We should do it more.

    I challenged a Labour activist friend on this recently, and he said that while this might have happened in the past he was sure it didn’t happen these days. Well here are some examples from the last couple of years:

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    Posted in Op-eds | 49 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    There’s a few Tory votes Boris has lost

    By Stephen Tall | Sat 22nd September 2007 - 8:54 pm

    An interesting e-mail was sent to Lib Dem Voice a couple of days ago from the managing director of a top city firm. It’s fairly self-explanatory:

    Dear Liberal Democrats

    I am a fully paid up member of the Conservative Party and will NOT be voting for Boris Johnson who is very likely to get the Party’s nomination. He comes across an unkempt, bumbling journalist with just witty soundbites and NOT the Face of London we need to kick The Living Stone into touch. I and many of my Tory friends will be voting for your candidate .

    I thought this would please you

    …

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    Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
    Stephen Tall

    Opinion: Is political journalism broken?

    By Stephen Tall | Sat 22nd September 2007 - 1:51 pm

    The Lib Dem conference felt united this year. I’m not talking about our policies – heaven forfend. No, we were united against the media’s reporting of our conference, which was, almost without exception, drearily inane, pathetically irrelevant and lazily inaccurate.

    Sitting on the train back from Brighton, I overheard one Hampstead-chic journalist talk about why she chose her profession. It was, she said, because she wanted to change the world, and the media is so much more able than politicians to make people sit up and take notice. Noble sentiments, indeed.

    But how far do she and her journalist colleagues live up to this enlightenment standard?

    I’m not going to indulge in a rant, tempting though it is, dissecting each and every injustice inflicted on the Lib Dems by the media in the past week.

    And I’m aware that the conference can sometimes become a self-deluding bubble, with party members snuggling up together in comfort-blanket group-think. Think IDS’s last Tory conference as leader in 2003, his speech interrupted by an absurd 20 standing ovations. Or think CK’s last Lib Dem conference in 2005, when members returned from Blackpool bemused by claims his leadership was being questioned by our MPs.

    However, I’m confident this time was different. Why?

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    Posted in Op-eds | 7 Comments
    Geoffrey Payne

    Opinion: My conference awards

    By Geoffrey Payne | Sat 22nd September 2007 - 12:24 pm

    Best Fringe meeting:

    The Liberator/ Lib Dem peace group “War on Terror”, with Craig Murray, former ambassador to Uzbekistan. There were some terrific fringe meetings this year, but this one was breathtaking.

    Craig Murray was sacked from his position in Uzbekistan because he was determined to speak out against the appalling abuses of human rights in this country.

    Uzbekistan is an “ally” in the war “against” terror and an important strategic country for the mining and transportation of important natural resources. It is also a totalitarian state with an appalling human rights record that easily compares with Iraq under Saddam Hussein or North Korea.

    Craig spoke of how the government there claims that the opposition is part of Al-Qaeda. The government uses torture to force alleged opponents to admit they know a list of people they have never heard of before, and this “intelligence” is used by western intelligence agencies to “prove” that Al Qaeda is operating in Uzbekistan, and hence we support the government there. The “intelligence” services even know this is the case – because Craig told them – but they prefer the narrative to the truth.

    The words “45 minutes” spring to mind.

    I would like to write more, but it is best to read his own words in his book.

    The meeting was at times very funny, and at other time horrific.

    Most Important Fringe meeting:

    Reinventing the State book launch – since the publication of the Orange Book, some Lib Dem members have got over-excited and started proclaiming the Lib Dems as a doctrinaire free market party. David Laws himself has claimed that his controversial chapter was misunderstood, and this fringe meeting proved to be an important correction. The anti-state rhetoric of both the Tories and the Lib Dems may sound similar at times, but the Conservative preference for a small state is very different from the Lib Dem preference for a decentralised state.

    It was good to see such a wide range of speakers including Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg. And now I sense the party is a left-of-centre party again, as Ming said it would be under his leadership.

    This fringe meeting was a book launch so here is the link.

    Best speeches:

    Continue reading »
    Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 1 Comment
    Mark Pack

    How Cameron has collapsed in the polls

    By Mark Pack | Sat 22nd September 2007 - 7:55 am

    Opinion poll graph: Labour lead

    Source: Labour minus Conservative minus Labour monthly average in all published opinion polls with national voting intention questions.

    Posted in Polls | 5 Comments
    Mark Pack

    Daily Telegraph fails to report its own poll accurately – again

    By Mark Pack | Fri 21st September 2007 - 9:44 pm

    Crikey, there must be a curse on reports of YouGov polls.

    After this week’s Guardian blunder (saying that a YouGov poll showed the Liberal Democrat rating falling when, err…, it hadn’t) the Guardian at least had the excuse that it wasn’t its own poll that it was reporting. Credit though for correcting it the following day.

    So full marks in the irony department to the Daily Telegraph for managing to muck up another YouGov poll report – though this time it is their own poll they’ve got wrong!

    They have a new YouGov poll out tomorrow. It shows the Liberal Democrats up by two …

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    Posted in Polls | 2 Comments
    Mark Pack

    Miranda Grell: the verdict is in

    By Mark Pack | Fri 21st September 2007 - 5:09 pm

    Waltham Forest Labour councillor Miranda Grell has been found guilty of falsely smearing her Liberal Democrat opponent in the 2006 elections as a paedophile. She has been fined £1,000, ordered to pay £3,000 in costs and banned from public office for three years.

    Posted in News | Tagged | 46 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    NEW POLL: Who do you think enjoyed the best conference?

    By Stephen Tall | Fri 21st September 2007 - 2:10 pm

    Time for a new poll, wethinks. After a few days by the seaside the key question is: who had the brightest Brighton?

    Here are the candidates:

    Ming Campbell: swatted away the media-induced leadership speculation with a stirring end-of-conference speech;

    Nick Clegg: cannily steered through a potentially controversial motion proposing a selective amnesty for illegal immigrants, but then allowed the media to whip up yet another fake frenzy by admitting he’d probably stand for the leadership next time.

    Lady Elspeth: the Lib Dems’ very own Cherie – “I don’t know whether you are being helpful or not,” was her rebuke to Nick Clegg. “I’m …

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    Posted in Voice polls | 12 Comments
    The Voice

    LDV – the “establishment candidate”, apparently

    By The Voice | Fri 21st September 2007 - 1:43 pm

    The Guardian Backbencher has been distributing her Lib Dem conference awards, including:

    Best Blog
    Postings have been rather fewer than the Backbencher would have liked – though it may be down to a laudable reluctance to drink’n’blog. So the winner has to be the establishment candidate, Lib Dem Voice, for its interviews with Ming. Special commendations to James Graham of Quauequam Blog! for his firm treatment of mayoral contender Fiyaz Mughal, and Don Liberali for a nice dissection of the Huhne v Clegg saga.

    Always nice to receive a plug (a link would be even nicer), but some mixed …

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    Posted in Conference and News | 2 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    JS Mill voted ‘Greatest Liberal’

    By Stephen Tall | Fri 21st September 2007 - 1:33 pm

    John Stuart Mill has, perhaps inevitably, been acclaimed the ‘greatest British liberal of all time’, according to a poll conducted by the Liberal Democrat History Group. (Hat-tip: Jonathan Calder via Paul Walter).

    Duncan Brack, editor of the Journal of Liberal History, wrote about the contest last week on Lib Dem Voice, including brief profiles of the four short-listed candidates, who also included Gladstone, Keynes and Lloyd George. (Only the deceased were eligible.)

    Posted in News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    What the pundits say

    By Stephen Tall | Thu 20th September 2007 - 8:35 pm

    Ming can breath a sigh of relief. It’s not just the Lib Dem conference delegates and blogosphere which have lauded his speech – even the media, which has delighted in reporting a conference taking place in an alternative parallel universe all week, has been forced to admit his speech was pretty damn good:

    … the moment he stalked onto the stage, dropped the niceties and got stuck in to the state of Britain under Labour, the Lib Dem leader reminded his party why they had chosen him 18 months ago, and why they would be mad to drop him now.

    If the catch-all criticism is that he’s too old, then he was right to declare that he would make a campaigning virtue of his 66 years. That wisdom and experience come with age may be a truism, but the point remains valid. On stage he looked more relaxed and at ease with his party. This time he avoided the awkward change-a-lightbulb waves. The speech was fluid, built of complete sentences, and even if some of passages were hackneyed beyond belief, the overall effect was a powerful answer to the doubters. He remains true to himself, has a plan, a set of liberal beliefs in an illiberal age, and some policies.

    Ben Brogan, Daily Mail

    Sir Menzies is not a natural tub-thumper, but he is evidently decent and has gained in both experience and confidence. This was a better performance than last year. … Ming is a happy warrior and will go home content. It has not been a bad week after all.

    Michael White, The Guardian

    Today reminded his party that they picked him not despite his age, but because of his experience and judgement. … spoke today of his energy and determination, of his anger, and his unwillingness to be silenced. His party responded. … he spelt out detailed policies on the environment and taxation, and his commitment to protect civil liberties.

    Nick Robinson, BBC

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    Posted in Conference | Tagged , , , and | 6 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    Ming’s speech: what did you think?

    By Stephen Tall | Thu 20th September 2007 - 1:12 pm

    Ming Campbell has just finished his second speech to the Liberal Democrat conference as party leader.

    My impressions… Ming seemed far more assured than last year. He opened strongly – no attempt to start with a scripted joke – and gave a defiant definition of his liberalism, and how the Lib Dems will translate that into action under his leadership. This year, too, he seemed confident enough to tear his eyes away from the autocue.

    What pleasantly surprised me in particular was his emphasis on liberal values: “the price of freedom is the risk of offence”; “A truly liberal society guarantees the …

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    Posted in Conference | Tagged | 10 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    Ming: a woman will stand for leader when I go

    By Stephen Tall | Thu 20th September 2007 - 8:26 am

    An interesting comment from Ming Campbell, as reported in The Guardian:

    “When the moment comes, it won’t just be Huhne and Clegg, there will be others, including at least one woman. There’s some very bright cookies around.”

    Any similarity between that statement and this article in The Scotsman is surely coincidental:

    ‘Revealed: Lib Dem version of Margaret Thatcher, 29’.

    Posted in News | 18 Comments
    Stephen Tall

    Another desperate Times headline

    By Stephen Tall | Thu 20th September 2007 - 8:20 am

    This is it: ‘Lib Dems accused over donor link to company in offshore tax haven’

    The report continues:

    The Liberal Democrats have been accused of hypocrisy after The Times discovered that the party’s biggest business donor is controlled by a company in an offshore tax haven.

    Alpha Healthcare, a residential homes firm which gave the party £125,000 this year, is ultimately run by Harberry Investments in the British Virgin Islands.

    This week the Lib Dem conference suggested a clampdown on the use of offshore companies as part of action on tax loopholes for the super-rich.

    So, let me get this straight… The …

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    Posted in News | 4 Comments
    Richard Huzzey

    Chris Huhne winning the “Ladies” vote

    By Richard Huzzey | Wed 19th September 2007 - 11:29 pm

    If Nick Clegg felt he was having a bad day, Chris Huhne had his own problems.

    A young female journalist confessed to eagerly pursuing the Environment Spokesman down a corridor. Unfortunately, when she sprinted round a corner after him, she slowly realised she had followed him into The Grand’s gents. Huhne’s reaction is not known.

    Posted in Conference and News | Leave a comment
    Stephen Tall

    Video exclusive: the CK interview

    By Stephen Tall | Wed 19th September 2007 - 6:45 pm

    You know how it is. You’re wandering through Brighton’s Grand hotel, and you bump into former Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy (okay, it was by arrangement, but no matter). What would you ask him?

    Lib Dem Voice put the following four questions to Charles when we met up earlier today:

    * What do you think of the current state of the party? Should we be despairing or hopeful?

    * What do you think the Lib Dems stand for today?

    * Do you support the party’s idea of a referendum on the European Union, in or out?

    * Do you want to come back as leader

    …

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    Posted in Conference and Lib Dem TV | Tagged | 6 Comments
    Richard Huzzey

    Who wants to play ‘follow the leader’?

    By Richard Huzzey | Wed 19th September 2007 - 5:51 pm

    The media are having fun. This morning Sir Michael White quipped that Ming’s ‘toilet bowl’ photo must have been behind the poll surge reported by his august organ and friend of Lib Dem Voice, The Grauniad. But their main sport is speculating on who will be the next Lib Dem leader – even though, as most of the mooted contenders point out, there is no vacancy.

    At the afternoon press briefing, hacks were keen to veer off the topic of Sir Ming’s speech, and onto the question. Ed Davey was asked for the second time in the day whether he’d stand. …

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    Posted in Conference and News | Tagged | 1 Comment
    The Voice

    Environment Action Now

    By The Voice | Wed 19th September 2007 - 5:33 pm

    On the telly this evening you can watch the Liberal Democrats’ party political broadcast for conference week. Liberal Democrat Voice, ahead of the game as always, can give you a sneak preview right now.

    It’s themed on climate change, the thread running through this week’s conference in Brighton.

    If you’d like to watch it in the traditional, old media way, you’ll find it on BBC Two at 5.55pm, and on BBC One and ITV1 at 6.55pm.

    Posted in Conference, Lib Dem TV and News | 4 Comments
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