Liberal Democrat Voice

Phil Willis MP to stand down at next election

By the founding editor | Thu 17th May 2007 - 3:38 pm

Phil Willis, MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, has today announced that he will not stand at the next General Election.
In a letter to members and supporters Phil thanked them for all their hard work and dedication, culminating in his election in 1997, 2001 and 2005.

He said:

“I believe that together we have made Harrogate and Knaresborough a better place to live and work and literally thousands of individuals have benefited from having a dedicated parliamentary service at their disposal. There have been few causes, large or small, that have not been championed and …

Posted in News | Tagged Ming Campbell | 7 Comments

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Once again, Justin “complete idiot” Hinchcliffe locates mouth, inserts foot.

By the founding editor | Wed 16th May 2007 - 9:38 am

Harlow party ‘a joke’, laughs Tory blogger

PARLIAMENTARY hopeful Robert Halfon has reacted furiously after Harlow Conservatives were labelled “a joke” – by a senior Tory.

Mr Halfon branded Tottenham Conservatives chairman Justin Hinchcliffe a “complete idiot” for publishing the jibes on his Hunter and Shooter internet blog.

And that’s the Harlow Star calling him a senior Tory this time, not us…

Posted in News | 12 Comments

That Ming poll in the Times

By the founding editor | Wed 16th May 2007 - 9:36 am

Stop e-mailing me it – I don’t do polls. Not even today.

Posted in News | 2 Comments

Steve Webb MP says Lib Dems will stay ‘at the centre of the political field of battle’

By the founding editor | Tue 15th May 2007 - 10:49 pm

Last week, Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins wrote “This lamentable party” (that’s us he’s talking about there) “cannot even master the electoral system to which it has hitched its wagon. Surely it’s time to disband.”

Today Steve Webb MP penned a reply, which you can find here. “Decision-making needs to come out of Westminster and closer to the people”, is how the Guardian sums up his piece.

Steve is, as ever, keen to get member feedback – you can respond on his blog here.

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Slight change in comments policy

By the founding editor | Tue 15th May 2007 - 12:35 pm

Commentors from other parties who want to participate in a meaningful / vaguely intelligent discussion are welcome. Commentors from other parties who couldn’t find their arse with a map will have their comments removed at the first available opportunity. Sorry folks, I gave you a really really long leash, but some of you got to the end of it.

(Lib Dems who can’t find their arse with a map are extremely rare, have many other positive qualities to compensate, and remain welcome).

Posted in News | Comments Off

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Selection news: Lib Dem PPC in Folkestone & Hythe resigns

By the founding editor | Mon 14th May 2007 - 10:18 pm

Toby Philpott resigned as the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the Folkestone & Hythe Constituency on Sunday.

Shepway Local Party Chair, Tim Prater, commented:

“Toby made a real contribution to our campaigning over the last few months. Just 10 days ago, the Liberal Democrats took control of Folkestone Town Council, and also form the largest opposition group on Shepway District Council.

“We accept his decision and understand how hard a choice it must have been to make. We wish him and his family all the best in the future.”

Shepway Liberal Democrats are expecting to wait at least

…

Posted in News | 8 Comments

Bessie Griffin joins the Liberal Democrats

By Mark Pack | Mon 14th May 2007 - 5:57 pm

No, not the dead African American gospel singer, but a Labour councillor in St Helens. As Jonathan Wallace points out, this means Labour is no longer the largest party on the council.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Clegg calls for Lib Dem “narrative”

By the founding editor | Mon 14th May 2007 - 1:45 pm

Speaking at a North London fundraising event, Nick Clegg has called for the party to develop a “narrative” to accompany its policies.

Duncan Borrowman and Jonathan Fryer have more.

One would presume the two logical places to start are Ming Campbell’s first major conference speech, in which he called for the Liberal Democrats to create a country that is “free, fair, and green” and the preamble to the constitution.

How you turn that in to a narrative though, I can’t say. How does one recognise a narrative when you see it?

Posted in News | 33 Comments

Top of the Blogs: the Golden Dozen #12

By Stephen Tall | Mon 14th May 2007 - 10:44 am

Welcome to the twelfth of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (6th-12th May), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

Let’s get this party started…

1. ‘Iain Dale, Wales, and why blogs should never be trusted’ on Duncan Borrowman’s blog.
A trenchant refutation of Duncan’s role in the Lib Dems’ Welsh campaign.

2. ‘Oxford: Tory-free for much longer?’ on (ahem) Stephen Tall’s A Liberal Goes A Long Way blog.
Are the Tories about to land some hand-me-down representation in Oxford?

3. ‘Lies, damn lies, …

Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment

Worth a read: The Liberal Democrats’ mark of Cain

By the founding editor | Sun 13th May 2007 - 11:37 pm

James Graham has written a post tackling the people (me included) who have been having a pop at Menzies Campbell:

I can’t however help but see some parallels between the tone of some of these anti-Ming pieces and a bunch of pre-adolescent boys running rampant on a desert island. It doesn’t get much more intellectual than ‘king must die because sun not shine’.

It’s worth a read.

Posted in News | Tagged Ming Campbell | 3 Comments

Opinion: We’re all liberals now?

By Richard Huzzey | Sun 13th May 2007 - 12:10 pm

Over at PoliticalBetting.com, the regular Lib Dem contributor “Tabman” made this thoughtful comment (no.76 on the page):

“an article today by Will Hutton illustrates the importance of Liberalism in British Politics. Hutton is trying to argue that Blair’s major success is transforming Old Labour into Liberal Labour, and that Cameron is trying (without any particular policy commitments to back it up, admittedly) to do the same with his Liberal Conservatives.

Yet it is obvious that neither Labour or the Conservatives really understand what Liberalism is about, and their attempts to borrow Liberal clothes to dress up their own sectional interests and instincts for authoritarianism into something more electorally palatable give us the bastardised failures in policy we see so regularly.

Posted in News | 10 Comments

Will Gordon say No2ID?

By Richard Huzzey | Sat 12th May 2007 - 11:21 pm

The BBC noted last month that a third of Britons do not intend to carry an ID card. Given that bad news on the costly and illiberal ID cards had to be hid on the day of Tony Blair’s departure, this must be one of the many nasty legacies he leaves for Gordon. So there’s a glimmer of hope for opponents in our party and elsewhere that his campaign manager has hinted at scrapping them.

You can sign the Lib Dems’ petition against ID cards here.

Posted in News | 3 Comments

Opinion: Why did the SNP outperform the Lib Dems?

By Geoffrey Payne | Sat 12th May 2007 - 11:20 pm

We are assured by the Scottish Lib Dems that there is NOT an upswell of Scottish Nationalism taking hold at the moment. And indeed it is true, many SNP voters do not actually support independence. They do not mind a referendum, they will simply vote no.

Yet if you strip away the nationalism of the SNP, you are left with a party that is very similar the Liberal Democrats, only more forthright for example in not wanting to replace Trident.

That being the case, why is it that in the space of a couple of years, the SNP has suddenly done so …

Posted in Op-eds | 27 Comments

Southport: Conservative Parliamentary candidate quits

By Mark Pack | Sat 12th May 2007 - 5:27 pm

Mark Bigley has resigned as the Tory candidate in John Pugh MP’s constituency. There’s more on the story on the Southport Forums website.

Posted in News | Tagged john pugh and southport conservatives | Leave a comment

Lib Dems form a coalition with the SNP in Edinburgh after all

By the founding editor | Sat 12th May 2007 - 2:46 pm

For the first time ever, Edinburgh council has a Liberal Democrat leader.

The Liberal Democrats and the SNP have formed a coalition to seize control of Edinburgh City Council, despite being at loggerheads over the return of trams. The move has stunned Labour, which has run Edinburgh for the last 23 years.

The red roses may be in full bloom at the City Chambers, but Labour’s relationship with the Lib Dems has officially withered. Today the Liberal Democrat group leader sat down with her counterpart from the SNP and signed a coalition agreement.

More, including a video report, here.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Opinion: Ming keeps his head down and his mouth shut

By The Voice | Sat 12th May 2007 - 2:43 pm

Carl Quilliam writes…

Dimbleby On Thursday night Ming Campbell made what can only be described as his most recent appearance on Question Time. For large portions of the show he gave a reasonable performance, no more than I would expect from a party leader. However, there were a few glaring omissions as well as some quite strange statements that make me personally to further doubt his leadership. When he was asked about how he became party leader, he firstly seemed to delight in the insinuation that he knifed Charles Kennedy take the leadership and then, …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged charles kennedy and peter mandelson | 8 Comments

Opinion: Ming must stay

By Richard Huzzey | Fri 11th May 2007 - 11:05 pm

Ming must stay Dropping the pilot is precisely the wrong reaction to our local election results. Last week’s results were not fantastic, although Mark Pack has rightly pointed how well we held up in our key seats. That old saying remains true, though: while success has many parents, failure is an orphan. This seems to be the case with our “mixed bag”.

While we all take pride in the quality of our local campaigning when he win, we are naturally more inclined to blame the national leadership when we lose. So is it all down to local fighting or national leadership? The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged charles kennedy and chris rennard | 28 Comments

Opinion: Ming must go

By Laurence Boyce | Fri 11th May 2007 - 11:50 am

Menzies Campbell There is a well known political maxim (or at least there ought to be) which states that, “the party faithful are the last people who should be consulted upon their choice of leader” – the point being that it is to crucial swing voters that the leader must appeal, not to committed party members. Of course the membership may attempt this calculation themselves, but the result often comes out a little skewed. So it was that the Conservatives made a whole series of amusing blunders and misjudgements regarding the leadership, largely on account of an internal obsession over Europe, before finally settling on the undeniable charms of the boy Cameron.

And so it was that Sir Menzies Campbell was duly elected last year, polling an initial 45% of the vote on a turnout of 72% (a worryingly low figure incidentally which suggests to me that at least a quarter of the membership might be dead). What followed has been a frankly embarrassing succession of glib and hollow performances, wholly lacking in flair, imagination, or lightness of touch. The unvarying sombre and humourless intonation, perfectly suited no doubt to his former role of commenting upon unfolding catastrophe in the Middle East, now simply fails to inspire. In short, he has become an electoral liability.

Without doubt, the biggest single disappointment has been at Prime Minister’s Questions. Ever since he rose in January 2006 to enquire why one in five schools are without a permanent head teacher, Sir Ming’s performances have been irredeemably lame. He should silence the house when he rises to speak; instead the members typically groan and snigger, and not without reason. While Cameron hits the target on a regular basis, Ming routinely causes the Prime Minister no difficulty whatsoever. Even John Prescott is a more effective performer in his own inimitable way.

Take last week’s effort, on the day before the elections. “The President made the decisions, the Prime Minister argued the case, the Chancellor signed the cheques, and the Tories voted it through.” Was that supposed to be the killer blow intended to deliver the goods last Thursday? Leaving to one side the questionable relevance of Iraq to a nation with rubbish collection uppermost on its mind, the delivery was weak and unconvincing, and it wasn’t even framed as a question – just a regurgitated line from the Harrogate conference speech. Blair swatted him away easily as he does every time.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Ming Campbell | 50 Comments

Gordon Brown’s campaign goes wrong at the first step

By Mark Pack | Fri 11th May 2007 - 11:18 am

Such a shame that Gordon Brown’s face is all but hidden behind the teleprompt screen on the BBC coverage. Someone has got their camera angles horribly wrong.

Posted in News | 5 Comments

Business as usual for Labour – burying bad news

By the founding editor | Thu 10th May 2007 - 1:09 pm

Liberal Democrats
Embargo: Immediate, Thursday 10th May 2007

GOVERNMENT HAS BROKEN LAW TO BURY BAD NEWS ON ID CARDS – CLEGG

The Government was today accused of breaking the law in an attempt to bury bad news after waiting until the day of Tony Blair’s resignation to publish a report on ID cards that reveals the cost of the project has gone up by £640m since October

The Government had previously refused to publish the report despite the fact that it was breaking the law by doing so.

Section 37 of The Identity Cards Act says that a report on the costs of ID Cards …

Posted in News | 2 Comments

Parliamentary Party table motion to trigger General Election

By the founding editor | Thu 10th May 2007 - 1:02 pm

Menzies Campbell:

“Before the last General Election Tony Blair pledged to serve a full third term and the British electorate voted for him on this basis.

“Now the Prime Minister is leaving it is only right that the British public have their say on who will be their next Prime Minister.

“Today my colleagues and I have submitted a motion to trigger a general election.”

Posted in News | Tagged Ming Campbell | 16 Comments

Opinion: The state they’ve put us in – Lib Dems give Blair 4 out of 10

By The Voice | Thu 10th May 2007 - 12:20 pm

Blair goes Since 1997, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have formed the longest unbroken partnership of Prime Minister and Chancellor in modern British political history. Despite their partnership being inharmonious and even bitter at times, their record in Government is a joint achievement; the years 1997-2007 are truly the Blair/Brown years.

In the month, that marks their 10 years in government, and is most likely to signal the end of their partnership, the Liberal Democrats published ‘The State They’ve Put Us In’, a dossier setting out much of what has gone wrong under Labour in specific areas, such as health, education, crime and the environment. It is by no means exhaustive, but it illustrates just how much Blair and Brown have failed to achieve – and in many areas how things have gone backwards.

Against the backdrop of 18 years of Conservative rule from 1979-1997, things have got better, a little better – but nowhere near as much as promised, and nowhere near as much as needed. 4 out of 10 for Blair and Brown would be a fair assessment. First the good news.

For their first four years in Government, a much needed new broom began to sweep through the corridors of Whitehall. The Bank of England was made independent bringing stability for the economy. A Foreign Policy with an ethical dimension was announced. A historic modernisation of our political system began with the creation of a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly beginning the much needed process of bringing power in Britain closer to the people it serves and the right of hereditary peers to sit in the upper house mostly abolished. After initially sticking to Tory spending limits, investment in Britain’s dilapidated public services started. The fruits of that investment can now be seen. In the NHS more staff, reduced waiting lists, better care in some areas such a cancer. In Education a schools building programme, better paid teachers, more books, and better equipment. All these were supported by and voted for by the Liberal Democrats, indeed it reflected much of what we set out in our 1997 manifesto ‘Make the Difference’. Crucially we were the first party to campaign for independence for the Bank of England. Brown was utterly silent on this – until his first week in office, when he just went ahead and did it.

So why only 4 out of 10?

Posted in News | Tagged peter mandelson | 1 Comment

Opinion: Two cheers for our foreign policy?

By Kerry Hutchinson | Thu 10th May 2007 - 7:49 am

On a recent visit to Jerusalem I was given a history lesson by a Palestinian shopkeeper that was the more blistering for his quiet humility in delivering it. He did not blame the US or even the Israelis, he said, for the situation his people had been enduring for nearly 40 years.

No, it was all firmly down to you British (pointing at me). To its policy failures and double-dealing in selling out on the Arabs post World war 1 and again in 1948 in abandoning the mandate of Palestine to the UN and doing a runner. What could I say?

Are we doing it again? Last September saw the launch at Conference of a foreign policy document that was informative, not so much by what it said, but by what it didn’t say. Iraq featured highly, as did global corporate responsibility. But were there missing components?

How clear and instantly recitable by us, is, for example, the Party’s position on Lebanon, Iran, and that ‘burning coal’ as Paddy Ashdown recently put it, of the Israel/Palestine problem? Personally, I’d be struggling, if challenged, to come up with the key messages on the Middle East outside of Iraq. So what?

Well, the issues of freedom of speech, freedom of movement and freedom to dissent – bedrock principles of any liberal democracy – matter. Because these core pillars are not just issues relevant to Iraq. They count throughout the whole of the Middle East. And supporting these liberal democratic principles must surely be the guiding direction across the board – an ‘a la carte’ approach might be criticised as failing the peoples of Palestine, the Lebanon and the other Middle East nations, nearly all of whom are sovereign States, if we major solely on Iraq alone.

This is one of the reasons why the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine is being launched at the 2007 Brighton Conference – to highlight the lack of the three basic core liberal democratic principles that many in the Middle East, especially the Palestinian electorate, do not yet have. To add to our Party’s foreign policy debate to help it address that ‘burning coal’ and help it back onto an agenda that oft overlooks the issue in the pursuit of easier political point-scoring ‘wins’.

At the same time and for similar reasons, revitalising the hitherto quiescent Lib Dem Middle East Council (MEC) may go a long way in stimulating policy debate within the Party, by beefing up the foreign policy debate and present a more inclusive and robust approach to all the regional components – not just Iraq.

Posted in News | Tagged paddy ashdown | 1 Comment

Selection process starts for 2009 European Parliamentary Elections

By The Voice | Thu 10th May 2007 - 7:42 am

Now the Scottish, Welsh and local government elections are out of the way, the Party is starting the process of selecting our candidates for the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. At the last Euro elections in 2005, we elected 12 MEPs in every Region of England and in Scotland, with two gains from the previous elections. Members of the European Parliament are elected using a form of proportional representation under which the Party puts forward a list of candidates. The number of candidates on the list is the same as the total number of MEPs to be elected for that region, …

Posted in News | 1 Comment

Pink poll backs Ming

By The Voice | Wed 9th May 2007 - 5:14 pm

From The Independent and Ming Campbell’s website comes the news that Ming wins amongst readers of PinkNews when polled against Brown and Cameron. From Ming’s site:

Given the choice of Prime Minister between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Ming Campbell, 40% of those readers surveyed chose Ming. David Cameron and Gordon Brown trailed on 33% and 27% respectively. In the same poll, only 13% of respondents supported Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership.

Asked how they would vote in a general election, 35% said Labour and 27% said Liberal Democrat, with the Conservatives in third on 26%.

Posted in News | 7 Comments

Top of the Blogs: the Golden Dozen #11

By Stephen Tall | Mon 7th May 2007 - 10:08 pm

Welcome to the eleventh of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (29th April – 6th May), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

Rather unsurprisingly, this week’s selection is dominated by Thursday’s local elections. So here is our ‘mixed bag’ analysing that ‘mixed bag’:

1. ‘Lessons to be learned for the Lib Dems’ on Nich Starling’s Norfolk Blogger blog.
Three reasons why the Lib Dems failed (at least in those areas where we did fail).

2. ‘Those Local Election Results: Get a Grip’ on …

Posted in Best of the blogs | 6 Comments

>> Lib Dems leave government in Scotland

By the founding editor | Sun 6th May 2007 - 10:30 pm

Having earlier ruled out a coalition with the Labour, the Lib Dems have now also ruled out going in to government with the SNP.

Posted in News | 16 Comments

Media spin, 1966 vintage

By Mark Pack | Sun 6th May 2007 - 8:55 pm

A trivial historic footnote for the bank holiday.

During the 1966 general election campaign, Prime Minister Harold Wilson visited the Birmingham Rag Market for a public meeting (scene of a famous* public meeting in the 1964 campaign when the then Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home got shouted down).

Compare and contrast the media coverage of the time.

Exhibit A: a Labour supporting paper
WILSON GETS THE BETTER OF TORY HECKLERS (The Worker)

Exhibit B: a Conservative supporting paper
HECKLERS GET THE BETTER OF WILSON (Daily Sketch)

However, to be fair, the Tory papers did not present a united reporting front on all issues:

WILSON: 15,000 IN BIG RIOT (Express – …

Posted in News | 4 Comments

Lib Dems say it’s SNP or no-one for coalition partners

By the founding editor | Sun 6th May 2007 - 2:02 pm

The Scottish Lib Dems have ruled out doing a deal with Labour to prop up a Labour executive in Scotland.

Posted in News | 5 Comments

Welsh Lib Dem council leaders oppose LD participation in assembly coalition

By the founding editor | Sun 6th May 2007 - 12:24 am

I was a touch surprised to hear on BBC radio this morning that parties in Scotland were negotiating the future government of their nation… with no mention of Wales, where the same process is going on.

The leaders of the Lib Dem controlled councils in Wales are expressing grave doubts about propping up Labour in Wales:

Welsh Labour leader Rhodri Morgan could ask the Lib Dems to share power after his party fell short of a majority.

But Lib Dem leaders of four Welsh councils say they are all against it, amid doubts raised over the assembly group leadership of Mike German.

More …

Posted in News | Tagged mike german | 2 Comments

Op-eds

Is Ed Davey toast? (Caron Lindsay)
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)

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Vince Cable writes: Drill, baby, drill…or not

Lib Dems must do better on Burnham

Britain should be proud, but never afraid of the stranger

Lib Dem Women: Amplifying women’s voices at Conference

Phil Willis MP to stand down at next election

Once again, Justin “complete idiot” Hinchcliffe locates mouth, inserts foot.

That Ming poll in the Times

Steve Webb MP says Lib Dems will stay ‘at the centre of the political field of battle’

Slight change in comments policy

Selection news: Lib Dem PPC in Folkestone & Hythe resigns

Bessie Griffin joins the Liberal Democrats

Clegg calls for Lib Dem “narrative”

Top of the Blogs: the Golden Dozen #12

Worth a read: The Liberal Democrats’ mark of Cain

Opinion: We’re all liberals now?

Will Gordon say No2ID?

Opinion: Why did the SNP outperform the Lib Dems?

Southport: Conservative Parliamentary candidate quits

Lib Dems form a coalition with the SNP in Edinburgh after all

Opinion: Ming keeps his head down and his mouth shut

Opinion: Ming must stay

Opinion: Ming must go

Gordon Brown’s campaign goes wrong at the first step

Business as usual for Labour – burying bad news

Parliamentary Party table motion to trigger General Election

Opinion: The state they’ve put us in – Lib Dems give Blair 4 out of 10

Opinion: Two cheers for our foreign policy?

Selection process starts for 2009 European Parliamentary Elections

Pink poll backs Ming

Top of the Blogs: the Golden Dozen #11

>> Lib Dems leave government in Scotland

Media spin, 1966 vintage

Lib Dems say it’s SNP or no-one for coalition partners

Welsh Lib Dem council leaders oppose LD participation in assembly coalition

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Vince Cable writes: Drill, baby, drill…or not

Lib Dems must do better on Burnham

Britain should be proud, but never afraid of the stranger

Lib Dem Women: Amplifying women’s voices at Conference

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