Housing is Londoners’ top priority according to the polls. Not surprising – with problems ranging from the cost, to shortage and too often to the quality too.
Yet the Conservatives’ lead housing policy – to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants – will solve none of these London housing problems: we should make attacking it a Lib Dem campaign priority for next year’s GLA elections.
Nominations have closed in the Labour leadership contest, and for £3 (probably in breach of our rules and theirs) you might even have a vote. The options are, Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist from another era, Andy Burnham, a good looking Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper, an experienced minister of 11 years, and Liz Kendall, the Blairite.
I’m writing this post to give space for a debate on who we Liberal Democrats should be cheering on in this contest. Who, for £3 paid to the enemy, might it even be worth supporting? (No, I haven’t read the rules; this does not constitute advice of any kind.)
It is now clearly public knowledge that I have left my position as CEO of CentreForum, a job that I have undertaken these past three years with a great sense of privilege, pride and I hope some sense of humility.
We had planned before the general election for a downturn in our fortunes, planning that itself necessitated hard decisions, decisions that impacted on my staff, decisions that I did not take lightly. Like others, I did not foresee the magnitude of the Lib Dem reversal on May 7th. Its impact was both immediate and potentially transformational for CentreForum.
Last week Tom Papworth and I interviewed the two leadership candidates, Tim Farron, and Norman Lamb on behalf of Liberal Reform supporters who submitted questions.
To give you a flavour, here are the wordles. Can you tell which is which?
When is a Migrant an Expatriate? When he or she is a Brit abroad, obviously.
Inspired by the twin concepts of emigration and immigration, Prof Caroline Knowles posed this question at the launch of her research and report last week, supported by the Runnymede Trust and Goldsmiths College and hosted by Baroness Hussein-Ece at the House of Lords.
There’s been a lot of focus on the Labour Party’s new Leader being given a 2017 ‘break clause’, to ensure the freshness and efficacy of the Leader come 2020. Meanwhile, I saw a comment from a Lib Dem the other day to the effect of “we must give Farron or Lamb a good ten years, it’ll be a slow climb, etc.” I began thinking about the issue, and I have a proposal: why not give the new Leader of the Liberal Democrats a two-year contract, with rigidly-defined goals to meet, and either applaud them for meeting them, or get rid of them for not, on those criteria?
For too long, leadership challenges have been bloody, opportunistic, or subjectively triggered. Or, worse still, they haven’t happened, when they almost certainly should have done. We have recently seen the unreliability of opinion polls in measuring future performance. Will it be enough if, in 2017, we are polling back at, say, 20%? No. It will be success sculpted in the air, and prone to disassembly at a moment’s notice. What matters are solid, progressive results.
Here’s my proposal. We present the new Lib Dem Leader with a five-point contract, to cover the term August 2015 to July 2017. If they fulfil four or five criteria, astounding! If they fulfil three, that’s still a majority, they could carry on and improve. If they only manage two, one, or even none, they’re gone. We would have an automatic Leadership election.
Amidst the slew of bad results for the Labour party on election night was the loss of Derby North by just 41 votes. Crunch the numbers and the incumbent, Chris Williamson, missed out on re-election by a margin of just 0.09 per cent of the vote – that’s just under one vote for every 1,000 cast. A bitter pill for him to swallow, I’m sure, but could it have been different?
I lodged a Freedom of Information Act request with Derby City Council asking how many postal votes they had received after 10pm on polling day. After that time, of course, votes can no longer be accepted and don’t count. We can’t know how many people turned back en route to the polling station once they realised it had gone 10 o’clock and they were too late to play their part, but we can find out how many unwittingly sent their vote back too late.
Leading animal welfare charities dismissed legislation introduced by Lib Dems in coalition as being not fit for purpose.
The new ban, coming into force in October 2015, will prohibit the testing on animals for finished household products in the UK – but not all their ingredients. The ban will only apply to ingredients where more than half of their usage is expected to be within household products. This is seen as a considerable u-turn by then Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone, who announced in 2011 that the ban would ‘apply to both finished household products and their ingredients, although in …
Council Officers have a strong public service ethos and some are excellent managers. But does their experience give them enough insight to negotiate outsourcing contracts? They have, after all, chosen a career pathway other than that of private sector business. They inevitably lack a deep understanding of the very different attitudes, styles and pressures of work and management in the private sector.
During the procurement process, these rather sheltered public servants are faced with slick teams of well-resourced professionals adept at putting on a good show and armed with as much carefully selected evidence as they need to demonstrate their company’s capability and good standing.
In its quarterly journal Juncture, IPPR has published an article by David Hall-Matthews entitled “Liberalism in anxious times: Constructing a clear, positive liberal vision for society“.
David’s starting point is Nick Clegg’s resignation speech in which he said that liberalism was under threat, and not just in the UK. Is that true?
Globally, Putin’s neo-dictatorship and ISIS terror are fundamentally illiberal – but they are no more significant than recent liberal turns in international relations, such as the increasing economic strength and political integration of the BRICs.
In the UK context, is the astonishing success of the Scottish Nationalist party (SNP), with its broadly social-democratic approach, really a threat to liberal values? For Clegg, having fought a centrist, makeweight campaign, all radicals are a threat. He went as far as to cite ‘unity’ in his speech as a fundamental liberal value, though it could be argued to be the opposite of liberal respect for difference. Ed Miliband, too, found himself forced to decry the SNP as a nationalist danger, primarily for tactical reasons. Both ultimately found it difficult to convince floating voters that their differences from the SNP were greater than their common values.
After the general election debacle, and with a Lib Dem leadership campaign underway, there is an opportunity, as well as a necessity, to set out a clear, positive liberal vision for society.
Caron recently talked about the forthcoming conference and nudged me into writing about being a conference steward. I have dabbled in being a conference steward over the years. There are far, far more experienced hands than me. But hopefully my limited experience will encourage more members to volunteer for this honourable and enjoyable role in the party’s smooth conference operation.
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 419th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (7 – 13 June, 2015), together with a hand-picked quintet, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
Miriam Gonzalez Durantez spoke about the double standards around parenting and work at a Marie Claire event this week. People refer to mothers who work as working mums, but the other parent is never referred to as a “working dad”:
We also do a project called Inspiring Primaries where we put in front of the younger children a panel of men and women, and we ask them ‘what job do you think these people do?’ And if it’s a blonde woman the answer is always, ‘a secretary, a party organiser or a hairdresser.’
The sexism has been so drip drip that we don’t even always notice it.’
I find people say of me, ‘she wears the trousers’ and as you can see, it is true, I have very nice trousers. Or if my husband and I share the school run, it’s me who has forced him, dragged him away from his work. But when people, or in my case the media, are using that label on you, they are not saying you are strong, they are saying you should get back in your box. You should make the dinner and have his slippers ready with a gin and tonic.
You can read the whole report on Marie Claire’s blog here.
As the leadership contest gets underway, Tim Farron and Norman Lamb will clock up thousands of miles travelling up and down the country meeting members. The party has organised a series of hustings meetings, the most recent being in Cambridge yesterday. The Cambridge News has a neutral account of what went on.
Unsurprisingly it was a bit of a Julian Huppert love-in. Tim Farron said:
Everybody knows we’re competitive in Cambridge, everybody knows that if you want a strong, liberal, progressive voice in Cambridge, then it needs to be the Liberal Democrat,” Mr Farron said.
I very much hope it will be Julian Huppert, but it’s up to him to make his own choice for his own future if he wishes to stand here again.
But David Howarth, who represented the city so well beforehand, proves there is a lot of talent here and we know this will be a close-run fight in local elections and in the general election in five years’ time.
I am absolutely determined that this is top of the list to bring back into the Liberal Democrat fold.
These sentiments were echoed by Norman Lamb:
Many thanks to the 17,600 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here’s our 7 most-read posts…
Former MP and Councillor David Bellotti dies at 72 (21 comments) by Caron Lindsay
Daily Mail on how Charles Kennedy was “hounded” by the SNP in the run-up to the election (86 comments) by Caron Lindsay
Alistair Carmichael responds to the election petition against him (30 comments) by The Voice
Last week Elizabeth Needham recorded some video footage of leadership candidate Tim Farron talking about asylum and immigration.
She’s happy for it to be shared, so, enjoy!
Whilst the lack of women in prominent positions in the House of Commons has already drawn comment elsewhere on the site, in the Lords, the story is rather different, especially from a Liberal Democrat perspective. With nominations now confirmed for all but the sub-committees of the European Union Select Committee, our Leader in the Lords, Jim Wallace, and Chief Whip, Dick Newby, have drawn upon the array of talent within our Parliamentary Party – now 35% female – to reflect its new position as the legislative engine for scrutiny within the Party. So, who should we be watching out for over the next session? We’ll start with the four new Ad Hoc Committees, set up to look at particular topics.
The Equality Act 2010 and Disability Committee has been set up to consider the impact of the Act on people with disabilities, and Party President and wheelchair user, Sal Brinton, and Celia Thomas, a Vice President of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, will be representing us there.
The Built Environment Committee will look at the development and implementation of national policy for the built environment – think planning and infrastructure. Matthew Taylor, who led the 2012 review of government planning practice guidance, and Kate Parminter, a former Chief Executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, will be authoritative voices.
For someone who was effectively forced to leave the Liberal Democrats in 1996 I found the behaviour of the Party during the coalition heartbreaking at times.
Hearing Nick Clegg embracing social mobility and seeming to somehow equate it with liberty, equality and justice rang alarm bells in that first summer in 2010 but things then rapidly went downhill as far as this lifelong Liberal was concerned.
In 42 years of being regularly re-elected as a Councillor the one lesson I really have learnt is never, ever to make promises that you either cannot, or do not intend, to keep. Indeed it was the vociferous objections of my late husband Mike when Hereford and Worcester CC Lib Dem Group betrayed an election pledge not to privatise OAP Homes in 1995 that led to our leaving the Party in the first place so to see the totally unnecessary car crash over tuition fees was like a horrendous case of déjà vu.
When this was compounded by support for the “bedroom tax” I seriously began to wonder if there was anyone with “streetwise” experience offering advice. Although sitting as a Liberal Party Councillor I have been in a joint Group on Worcestershire CC with Liberal Democrat Cllrs. (most of whom were “twin hatted” since 2007 and I was frankly amazed when I found that none of them had been asked for their detailed advice as to the likely impact of the Bedroom Tax on Social Housing tenants and their landlords! Any experienced Cllr could tell you that:
The advent of a Conservative government might once have meant no reform at all to our political system. However, David Cameron is almost accidentally opening the door to a review of party funding regime, the electoral system and the procedures of the House of Commons. During the Queen’s Speech debates, the Lib Dem team in the Lords has been tackling all three issues.
The Government wants to dry up some of the money available to Labour by placing restrictions on trade union funding. The principle that trade union members should consent to their subscriptions funding a political party is quite right. Yet it will be totally unbalanced to introduce that reform without something on the other side of the ledger, namely a cap on the large individual donations which fund the party arms race in spending.
News reaches the Voice from CentreForum, the liberal think tank:
CentreForum are pleased to announce that David Laws, former Minister of State for the Cabinet Office as well as Minister of State for Schools, is joining the liberal think tank as Executive Chairman, overseeing a new body of work on education policy. This is part of a move by CentreForum to refocus on the core work of the think tank, which will be education and children’s mental health going forward, although projects will continue to be undertaken in other policy areas in which liberal solutions are called for.
Tim Farron gave a major interview to Pink News a few weeks ago and now it’s the turn of Norman Lamb to lay out his views on LGBT issues.
He wrote for the site this week, starting off by reminding us that when he came into parliament, it was legal to discriminate against LGBT adoptive parents, section 28 was still in force, homophobic bullying was rife in school and LGBT couples were not allowed to get married (or even have a civil partnership).
It has been a privilege throughout that time to have had the chance to be part of the movement to change these profoundly homophobic laws that institutionalised bigotry, created misery and held back people’s freedom to love and thrive.
So far, my contribution to that change was as Health Minister in the Coalition government. I made the cause of equality for those suffering mental ill health a true NHS priority for the first time.
I recognise the impact of mental ill health on the LGBT community. I introduced the first maximum waiting times for mental health treatment.
I also worked to tackle the evil of gay ‘conversion therapy’, that treat people’s sexuality as a sickness rather than something to celebrate.
I proposed and secured the first ever memorandum of understanding with all the key bodies to commit clearly that this so called therapy has no place in a modern country.
There is, he argues, so much more to do:
Next Wednesday, MPs will choose who chairs their influential select committees. These are important, high profile positions as the Committees are there to carefully scrutinise the Government’s work. The more effectively they do their work, the better it is for our democracy. An effective chair will be able to work well with all their committee members from all parties and will be able to show capacity for tenacity and forensic attention to detail. Sadly, though, it looks as though the committees will not reflect diversity either in the Commons or society as a whole. You can find the whole list of people nominated here.
There are a few reasons to feel pretty gloomy at the selection on offer. The lack of any Liberal Democrat in the running anywhere is a predictable reflection of our decline in status. The calibre of some of the nominees and the fact that fewer than half of the Committees have had a woman even nominated for Chair shows that the Commons has not yet caught up with the modern world.
Three sets of principal council by-elections were held this week. In Sutton (LB), the Lib Dems successfully held one of their three seats in Wallington South ward in Tom Brake’s Carshalton and Wallington constituency. In a closely fought contest, the party fended off the Conservative challenge by taking victory with 44.1%, alongside majority of 315 votes. LD candidate Steve Cook also recorded an increased vote share from 2014 of 6.9%.
Elsewhere, the Stepney Green council by-election in Tower Hamlets (LB) resulted in a Labour gain from Tower Hamlets First. The Labour candidate polled 42.1% to secure a narrow majority of 171 ahead of an independent candidate. Will Dyer won 4.7% of the vote for the Lib Dems, securing a vote share increase of 1.7% from the ward’s previous contest last year. The result brings Labour’s representation up to 23 councillors, meaning they now hold a majority on the 45 member council.
As you’ll be aware from various posts on Liberal Democrat Voice over the past few weeks, Elaine Bagshaw has been fighting the Tower Hamlets Mayoral Election caused by the disqualification of the previous Mayor, Lutfur Rahman.
Elaine has fought a busy and energetic campaign, helped by new members taking part in their first election. She made progress in number of votes, percentage of the vote and went up a place from 6th to 5th. That ‘s a result that she can be pleased with. The result, from the Tower Hamlets website, was as follows:
Many congratulations to the Liberal Democrats honoured into today’s birthday honours list.
We’ve already mentioned Simon Hughes, who is knighted.
Duwayne Brooks (pictured) receives an OBE for public and political service. Duwayne was our very prominent and energetic candidate for Mayor of Lewisham in 2014. He has been a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham, serving as the lead member for the Liberal Democrats on the Safer Communities Board at the Local Government group, where he has also been Community Cohesion and PREVENT Champion. He has run a charity supporting victims of crime. Duwayne is a great example of a Liberal Democrat rolling their sleeves up to make their community better.
Simon Hughes is one of a thousand people recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list today, receiving a knighthood. Many congratulations to Simon on an award which is very well deserved after a lifetime of skilful and devoted public service.
The sun was shining today in Caol, making for some wonderful photos of the gathered throng around St John’s church with Ben Nevis looming majestically in the background. A film director couldn’t have wished for a more photogenic scene.
Here’s a second chance to see a selection of photos which we posted shortly after the news of Charles’ death came through.
Scroll down to view. Hover your mouse over the image to see the caption and click on it to see similar pictures on Getty Images.
Scroll down to view. Hover your mouse, or run your finger, over the image to see the caption and click on it to see similar pictures on Getty Images.
This video hasn’t previously been available on the internet. Many thanks indeed to Conn O’Neill, Charles’ organizer, for providing it and allowing us to post it here and on YouTube.
Many photos of Charles Kennedy show him making someone laugh. Here he makes Willie Rennie laugh with a gentle remark in an out-take from a campaign video.
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