As I type, there are just 9 hours and 22 minutes left in which you can make your nominations for the 2007 Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year awards, this year run in conjunction with Lib Dem Voice.
Full details of the categories, judges and rules are available on the party website here. The results will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Lib Dem conference on Sunday, 16th September.
According at any rate to the Norfolk Eastern Daily Press:
dismissed suggestions he was ready to throw in the towel and insisted he had no plans to walk away from British politics or his city seat.
“I don’t know where the idea that I am not running in the next election comes from,” Mr Clarke said. “I am absolutely looking forward to being the Labour candidate and hopefully being elected. I am hoping the electors in Norwich South will look at all the candidates and not vote in some kind of tactical way.” …
Simon Wright, Lib Dem candidate for
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Top Lib Dem campaigner Shaun Roberts has been appointed National Campaigns Officer, working under department chief Hilary Stephenson in Cowley Street.
Anthony Hook and the Anonymous Barcharter have already posted congratulatory tributes. Lib Dem Voice wishes him the best of success too!
Chris Huhne wrote about the party’s new climate change proposals on Lib Dem Voice earlier in the week. He has written at greater length about his Zero-Carbon Britain proposals at Comment Is Free.
Amongst other things, he declares:
“we in the Liberal Democrats have done with the first comprehensive plans ever set out by a British political party to decarbonise every part of the economy: transport, energy, housing, offices and factories. Our objective is as ambitious as that set out by Sweden, Norway and New Zealand. We want no less than a zero-carbon Britain by 2050.”
The Electoral Commission has today published figures showing how much each of the political parties spent contesting May 2007’s Welsh Assembly elections.
In total the Lib Dems spent £407,407 – £239,799 was spent by the party, with a further £167,608 incurred by candidates. This was £33,791 less than the Tories’ total (£441,198) and £10,211 less than Paid Cymru (£417,618).
(Labour figures are not yet available, as the party’s total spending exceeded £250,000, which means they have until 2nd November to file their expenses.)
In 2003, the Welsh Lib Dems spent £372,695, attracting a total of 228,353 votes (combining the …
Earlier in the week, Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems’ shadow home secretary, set out in The Observer his thinking on what a liberal immigration policy should look like. In particular, he tackled head-on the issue of what to do about the estimated 600,000 immigrants living illegally in the UK:
… a route of earned legalisation should be made available to those who have lived here unauthorised for many years. We would set stringent criteria – this is not a blanket amnesty – namely that the applicant should have lived in the UK for many years; should have a clean criminal record; and should show a long-term commitment to the UK. The applicant would be subject to a public interest test and an English language and civics test, and would be required to pay a charge. This would be of economic benefit too, with the exchequer estimated to be losing out on as much as £3.3bn in unpaid tax each year.
Here’s what this week’s Economist has to say about Nick’s proposals:
Author, journalist, and occasional politician Boris Johnson has devoted his column in today’s Telegraph to hailing a new hero: Lib Dem peer, Lord Phillips of Sudbury.
Here’s why:
… last week he struck such a blow for freedom and common sense that, if there were any justice, the people of Sudbury would now be organising a subscription to erect his statue in the market place. Because it was in that very market place that Lord Phillips of Sudbury faced a moral dilemma, of a kind that many of us face – without acknowledging it – every day.
In an instant, he decided to defy modern correct thinking. He set an example for us all. He did the right thing.
The New Statesman blog devotes a column to the Norman Lamb Facebook saga:
In an unprecedented turn of events, the blogosphere was focused on East Anglia for much of this week. Recent reports of identity thieves finding a rich resource on Facebook were highlighted in the ongoing saga involving the profile on the social networking site of Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb. A brief history of which is covered at Lib Dem Voice.
The same IP address was shown to be responsible for tampering with Lamb’s Wikipedia entry and also uploading an anti-Lib Dem video on YouTube. Various
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Yesterday the Liberal Democrats launched radical proposals to create a zero-carbon Britain by 2050. Our paper ‘Zero Carbon Britain – Taking a Global Lead’ is the most far-reaching set of proposals on climate change ever championed by a British political party.
This is the first time any party has set out a plan to tackle carbon emissions from every part of the economy: transport, energy, housing, offices and factories.
The green tax switch is a vital part of our programme. We want to reverse the decline in green taxation under Labour. We will use the revenue from higher taxes on gas-guzzling cars …
As you’d expect, really… lauded by the left-liberal press; ignored by the right-wing…
The Liberal Democrats detailed proposals to make Britain a carbon-neutral state by 2050, underlining a long-standing commitment to the environment. … Yesterday’s proposals by the Liberal Democrats highlight how much more there is to do. They have proposed taxes on pollution not people and the introduction of green mortgages. They suggest a vastly improved new North-South high-speed rail line, paid for by road tolls, and a massive boost to Britain’s flood defences.
The Liberal Democrat leadership yesterday outlined a vision
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There’s speculation in today’s Telegraph that the Lib Dems might back calls from the Tories, and from some 120 Labour rebels, for a referendum on the European Union reform treaty:
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dem leader, refused yesterday to rule out backing a referendum before a Commons scrutiny of the treaty proposals. Even though he said his personal view was that it was not necessary this time, he added: “I don’t think you can make a final decision on that until we see what the final document looks like.”
A senior party source later disclosed that younger Lib Dem MPs
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The results of our latest poll are in, and it seems almost 70% of Lib Dem Voice readers reckon there will be a general election within the next year or so.
We asked: “When do you think the next general election will be?”
You said:
* 2007: 19% (40)
* 2008: 50% (103)
* 2009: 27% (56)
* 2010: 4% (9)
Total Votes: 208
In which case, go back to your constituencies and prepare to campaign.
‘Tis the season for lists… Below are the top 100 posts by Lib Dem bloggers, in descending order of popularity, for the last year – August 2006 to July 2007, inclusive – according to click-throughs from the Aggregator.
(Profuse thanks to techno-wizard and stat-monkey Ryan Cullen, who runs the Aggregator, for compiling this table.)
Five blogs are responsible for almost half the postings: Lib Dem Voice accounts for 16 of the top 100 postings (we thank you); James Graham’s Quaequam Blog! for 10; Nich Starling’s Norfolk Blogger for 9; Paul Walter’s Liberal Burblings for 7; and Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England for 6.
It’s interesting, too, to note how many of the most popular postings are from recent months – especially to do with the Ealing and Sedgefield by-elections – suggesting that the audience for Lib Dem blogs is growing significantly.
Anyway, enough of the pre-match analysis:
The exchange of letters between Ming Campbell and Gordon Brown over the Labour government’s disastrous Middle East foreign policy has been dominating the headlines all day:
BBC Online;
The Telegraph;
The Independent;
Politics.co.uk.
Ming has responded to the Prime Minister’s reply over at his website – here – witheringly noting that it “simply rehearses the Government line and could have been written by his predecessor”.
That’s the ambitious plan proposal launched by Ming Campbell today and set to be debated at the party’s autumn conference next month.
Full details of the plan, along with the document to be debated at conference, are over on the Liberal Democrat website.
Lembit Öpik, Lib Dem shadow secretary of state for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, has used an interview in the Financial Times to lay out his thinking on his new portfolio – and to confirm he will stand for the presidency of the party when current incumbent Simon Hughes’s term ends next year.
Full story here; here’s the fillet:
Lembit on Lib Dem business policy:
“I think our policies have been reasonably good, and certainly have improved a lot in the last five years.” But he admitted the Lib Dems had a long way to go. “We have a perception problem in
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Lord Ashcroft, the controverisal former Conservative Treasurer and now Deputy Chairman, is back in the news again. Over the weekend, the Daily Mail ran a piece about internal Conservative disagrements over his role and there’s been plenty of criticism of him on Conservative Home, some of which made The Guardian.
Defenders of Ashcroft essentially say: he knows what it takes to win elections so having Ashcroft in charge and the serial losers being given the push is a good thing.
But how good is Ashcroft?
Well, here’s his own account of his record supporting target seats at the 2005 general election:
The
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… you see worldwide financial and economic problems triggered by a poorly regulated sector of the US economy?
a) Propose to scrap all the regulations in the same sector of the UK economy?
b) Do something else?
If your answer was (a), congratulations – you too are John Redwood.
Yes, I’ve been reading once more the Conservative Party policy proposals he and his group came up with.
This time, please turn to page 60:
Mortgage Regulation. We see no need to continue to regulate the provision of mortgage finance, as it is the lending institutions rather than the client taking the risk.
10 …
In a major new pamphlet, published in full here on Lib Dem Voice, Peter Black, Welsh Assembly member for South Wales West, sets out the challenges and opportunities for the Liberal Democrats in Wales.
The challenge
The outcome of the 2007 Assembly elections was both frustrating and disappointing for the Welsh Liberal Democrats. Despite increasing our vote share in the constituencies, despite fighting a very professional all-Wales campaign, we failed for the second time to increase the size of our Assembly Group past six.
I have no desire to re-open the debate that the party entered into following the election. The outcome of those discussions was that we voted to go into a rainbow coalition with Plaid Cymru and the Tories only to see the Nationalists walk away and sign up to a deal with Labour. There are a few things that need to happen now, firstly the party needs to learn the lessons of the past few months and we need to regroup and then rebuild with the one clear aim of getting our message to the people of Wales.
Our problem last May was our failure to connect with voters. We failed to make it clear to them what it means to be a Welsh Liberal Democrat. We went into the election with a detailed manifesto containing hundreds of radical policies, many of which we shared with the other parties. Although we pulled out three particular policy areas to major on in the election, these issues were not presented clearly or effectively and they turned out to be the same issues that the other parties were promoting as well. We failed to make them relevant or unique to us because we did not relate our positions to the day-to-day experience of ordinary voters. In other words we did not use our manifesto as a campaigning tool.
One reason for that omission is that we have spent too long mistaking our activity in the hallowed corridors of the Assembly for campaigning. Whilst the work we do in the Assembly is important, for a political party it can never be a substitute for honest groundwork and visible local community involvement. In many cases we did not get out into communities to deliver our message to voters. That has not been universal, because in those areas where we did work and where we did have a localised message that resonated with people, our vote not only held up but in some cases dramatically increased. It was the rest of Wales, the vast majority of communities where that did not happen.
In this respect we could learn a lot from Plaid Cymru. Our elected Parliamentarians and Assembly Members should be taking a lead, getting out onto the streets with other activists to talk and listen to people about their concerns and ideas. We should be using the real experience of our constituents and framing our policies in a way that they can identify with. In other words we need to put into practice on a national level what is at the heart of Welsh Liberal Democrat philosophy, devolution, localisation, community empowerment, real, genuine interaction with communities.
At a UK level we have a distinctive agenda based on civil liberties, freedom and the environment. Although we have tried to carry that agenda over into a Welsh context as yet we have failed to make an impact.
Ah, it’s started up again 🙂
By which I mean comments appearing on this site which have all the following in common:
So I’ve had a bit of a clear out. If by mistake I’ve zapped a comment from you by mistake apologies – just get in touch to let me know. Oh, and if you are …
The South Wales Evening Post has highlighted Lib Dem Welsh Assembly Member (and top Lib Dem blogger) Peter Black’s generosity to party funds in the last four years – totalling an impressive £27,000, which Peter has used to fund his election campaigns:
… the Cwmbwrla ward member on Swansea Council laughed off any suggestions that he was in the millionaire bracket.
‘I only wish I was,’ Peter said. ‘I have made two donations – to fund my election campaigns in 2003 and 2007. The donations were funded by my council allowances. I paid the money into the party. It is for
…
‘Ashcroft’s hold on party raises fears of Tory rift’ shouts the Telegraph headline, re-reporting the (month-old) news that top Tory peer, Michael Ashcroft, is directing and funding the party’s key seats strategy:
Tory concerns at the growing influence of Lord Ashcroft have been heightened by a memo to candidates from the billionaire peer instructing them on how to run their election campaigns. … Lord Ashcroft has moved into a large office in Conservative Campaign Headquarters in London’s Millbank from where he will run the party’s strategy for target seats.
Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes had an article in Liberator magazine recently outlining the policy proposals they will be putting to the party’s autumn conference. That article is online, and there is also a flavour of the plans in today’s Independent:
Up to 600,000 illegal immigrants should be given the right to “earn” full citizenship, the Liberal Democrats said yesterday. It is the first major party to lean towards advocating an amnesty for such migrants.
Nick Clegg, the party’s home affairs spokesman, said a route to citizenship was the only way to deal with people who may have been in
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Cecilia Sarkozy, the wife of the French President, has been back in the news over her involvement in the release by Libya of the Bulgarian nurses it was holding. There have been calls for her to testify before a Parliamentary inquiry into the affair.
But the coverage has reminded me of her so-called gaffe at the June G8 summit where she missed the official dinner for spouses because she wanted to fly back early to prepare for her daughter’s birthday party.
There is something very wrong with the worlds of politics and media where putting your daughter’s birthday party ahead of a …
Back to my favourite Conservative Party policy document, the one from John Redwood and co. Having covered its impressive ability to squeeze four different, contradictory proposals on data protection into the same document, not to mention its use of figures that are a decade out of date, it’s on to taxation this time.
Chapter 10, section 6, pages 82-3 is the list of proposals. And what do we find?
Welcome to our weekly round up of the top Lib Dem blog posts of the last seven days (19th – 25th August).
As is our tradition, we’ll review the top seven click-throughs from the Lib Dem Blogs aggregator, together with a quintet of posts hand-picked from the cream of the week. Except, I’ve made it a baker’s dozen this week, to accomodate all my favourites. What can I say? Kobayashi Maru.
Without further ado, the most popular clicks of the week:
There’s still time to vote in the 2007 Lib Dem Blog of the Year contest, to nominate blogs for our expert panel. Find out more here.
But who, you may struggle to recall, is a publicly-elected Lib Dem blogger from amongst the many you’ve read? How many bloggers we read are secretly councillors? How many elected parliamentarians blog? How many blogs are actually eligible for the category?
I asked Mark Pack f he held such a list. He didn’t. I have therefore set out to compile one, despite my better judgement that this will be a boring and thankless task; but such a list probably ought to exist. It combines well with reading aroundly widely for the purposes of composing the Golden Dozen, at least!
This is an unofficial long list of everything which strikes me as eligible for the elected representative category, but not being one of the judges my opinion is clearly not final. They’re listed as ordered on Lib Dem blogs.
Ipsos MORI has recently published a couple of books about Britain after Blair’s ten years. One of them recounts what happened to long-serving Prime Ministers’ previous successors:
Before Tony Blair, only seven men and one woman have previously held office as British Prime Minister for ten years or more (Robert Walpole, Henry Pelham, Lord North, William Pitt the Younger, the Earl of Liverpool, William Gladstone, the Marquess of Salisbury and Margaret Thatcher); they include some of our history’s most distinguished leaders. The worry for Gordon Brown is that their successors have been less conspicuously successful.
John Major’s premiership is a recent
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This recess period is a good chance for Liberal Democrat members, those in other parties and the general public to view the presentations and speeches made recently by all three party leaders, back to back.
BBC Parliament are showing Brown, Cameron and Campbell back-to-back as part of their rolling programme during the recess. This represents a good opportunity for us to take a deep breath and a step back, and to “see it as others do” – or might – not least as it rolls around at different times, on average three times every two days.
The coverage of Ming is not drawn from our finest hour. It was the post early-joining-the-Brown-Government-or-at-least-some-of them-thought-they-were moment ; the frustrated agony following the apparent shock approach to Ashdown; and Brown’s coronation and (actually fairly quiet) unveiling of a fairly astonishing Tory convert (they’re welcome to him.)
In association with LibDemBlogs we’re inviting bloggers to join us for a drink in Brighton.
Place: Evening Star, 55/56 Surrey Street, Brighton, BN1 3PB
Date: Tuesday 18th September, 7pm – late
Everyone is welcome, even those who aren’t at conference. The pub is a short walk from the conference centre and very close to the railway station.
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A plea from a member – more ambition and less equine pacification please… (Nick Baird)
Will the real Green party that cared about people and planet please stand up? (Kobe Bibbon)
We need better conversations on AI and the environment (Josh Matthews)
How to spot a Racist (Ben Rich)
Councils must help music – so music can help their communities flourish (Charlie Clinton & Josh Matthews)
Jana 
Chloe 
Anthony Acton 
Nigel Jones 
Katharine Pindar 
State of Play: the classic BBC drama, part 2
Can Davey survive as leader?
A Week in Politics #9
The Joy of Six 1589