Many thanks to the 15,700 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here’s our 7 most-read posts…
On making LDV more inclusive (100 comments) by Caron Lindsay
Paddy Ashdown on Bosnia and Herzegovina (7 comments) by The Voice
Botswana elections: Liberal Democrats help sister party and “calm revolutionary of our time” (99 comments) by Caron Lindsay
Here’s a few stories that have grabbed my eye from today’s press. What do you think and what stories have interested you? Let us know in the comments.
First of all, we’re just 48 hours away from the US Midterms, a set of elections in which the Republicans are expected to do well. In reality, it’s a set of elections a bit like the Euros were for us, that are not the Democrats’ strongest sets, even on a good day. The Observer follows Obama for 24 hours on the campaign trail and majors on his weaknesses. There’s an argument he’s done pretty well given the wrecking mischief-making of the Republicans during his entire term. There is evidence of the Obama we know:
Yet hints of the old Obama remain. During his gubernatorial rally in Maine, Mike Michaud – a former mill-worker who would become America’s first openly gay elected governor, if successful on Tuesday – the president’s speechwriters drift toward the catchphrases of his own election campaign: hope, change, progress.
“Hope is a better choice,” Obama tells the audience. “Hope is what gives those soldiers in world war two the courage to storm a beach. Hope is what allows young people to march on behalf of women’s rights, and workers’ rights, and civil rights, and voting rights, and gay rights, and immigration rights.”
Last night, emails from all 3 candidates for party president were sent to party members. Ballot papers have started arriving on the doorsteps of the party’s 44,000 members. Members have the choice of either sending their ballot paper back in the reply paid envelope provided or voting online. You can’t do both, obviously. Checks are in place to ensure that people only vote once.
Here are the emails in full with links to the candidates’ websites:
It’s a busy week for Lynne Featherstone. Last Tuesday, she won Pink News’s Ally of the Year award as the Minister responsible for setting the same sex marriage process in motion. She’s responsible for a great deal of happiness. She said of her win:
I’d like to thank Pink News for giving me this award, and everyone who was at the event for the reception they gave me – it’s so heart-warming.
Bringing about this positive social change is one of the greatest achievements of our generation, and I’m so thankful to all the organisations, politicians, civil servants and people who supported the successful campaign for Equal Marriage law from start to finish.
GOTV, that final part of an election campaign where you make sure that all your supporters actually get themselves to the polls, is vital. Elections can be won or lost by the effectiveness of your GOTV operation. It’s all about giving them a reason to get down the polling station. It could be out of a genuine desire to see your fantastic candidate elected. It could be because you really don’t want to let the other one in.
Everyone will be familiar with the “It’s a two horse race, every vote will count” and the breathless “it’s too close to call, vote before 10pm or the Daleks will win” messages. Ok, I made the last one up. But nobody would ever dream of suggesting a direct consequence for the voters themselves. Until now.
Brooklyn musician Jonathan Coulton tweeted a picture of a letter he got purporting to be from the New York State Democrats today:
I think the Democrats just threatened me: pic.twitter.com/wGvYInosk5
— Jonathan Coulton (@jonathancoulton) October 30, 2014
LibDemVoice has two parallel sites. The first is our public blog, the thing you’re reading now. The second is our private members’ forum, which only current Lib Dem members can access.
If you’re a member and want to chat with fellow party members about any issue that’s on your mind, then why not sign up? In addition, you’ll be included in our regular surveys’ of party members’ views.
Here’s some of the most active discussions this past 7 days:
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Just a gentle reminder about Helena Morrissey’s call for feedback on progress since her report was published in June last year. She wants your comments by this coming Friday, 7th November. Here’s what she wrote on 13th October:
I meant to write something about this months ago, but it got buried in the “Blog Posts that Time Forgot” pile.
The Scottish Police Federation’s stand was by far the best at Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference in Aberdeen in March. It looked impressive and very high tech. They gave you headphones and played a series of videos. If you watched them at the same time as others, you all jumped at the same moment. They showed a series of dangerous situations that Police can encounter in the course of their duties. You have to think of what they would do in that situation. The SPF staff said that you could have a whole roomful of experienced police officers and they would offer up different solutions to each terrifying and potentially life=threatening dilemma.
That’s the glowing verdict of the Birmingham Post’s Jonathan Walker on the city’s Yardley Lib Dem MP, John Hemming:
Let’s give credit where it’s due and celebrate one of the mavericks of the House of Commons. He’s a little eccentric and if he’s blessed with a brain the size of a planet he might just have an ego to match. But he’s frequently championed unfashionable causes – and eventually been proved right.
The trigger for this bout of praise was his role as chairman of a campaign group called Parents Want a …
To me it had been clear that Fiona Woolf should step down as Chair of the Inquiry into historic sex abuse ever since it became clear that she had been on dinner party terms with Sir Leon Brittain. It’s not that she had done anything wrong, but it was clear at that point that it would be very difficult for everyone to have confidence in her impartiality. Once the victims had said that they didn’t support her continuing in the role, it was only a matter of time before she resigned, as she did this evening.
Back in July, Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child. Tonight, she discussed Fiona Woolf’s resignation and what should happen next on Radio 4’s PM programme.
You can listen to discussion on the whole issue here from the start of the broadcast, or go straight to Tessa at 36:50.
Sad it’s come to this, but it might have been anticipated. She supported a lot of things that the previous interviewee, representing the victims, had said.
She was asked where she thought we should go next.
Tessa suggested that the pubic should have a role in choosing the next Chair. She suggested using social media to get potential names and then allowing people to express concerns which could then be investigated before any appointments were made. She said that we shouldn’t entertain the idea of people’s reputations being trashed on Twitter, but if people had serious concerns, they could be looked into. There needed to be a lot more transparency in the process.
Five principal council by-elections were contested yesterday in England, Scotland and Wales. In Telford & Wrekin (UA), by-elections were held in Ironbridge Gorge and Newport West. The former contest resulted in a Labour hold although they saw a decrease of 8.9% in their vote from the ward’s 2011 election, after UKIP had polled 18.5% despite not fielding a candidate in 2011. In Newport West an Independent candidate gained a seat from the Conservatives to become the second Independent representative on Telford & Wrekin council. The Conservatives saw a 37% decrease in their vote finishing 85 votes adrift in second place.
Congratulations to Jon Featonby, who continues to lead the LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League after Week 9, having amassed 525 points so far – an average of 58 points each week. His nearest rival, just 7 points behind, continues to be George Murray. In third place, on 513 points, is a very familiar Lib Dem name: Andrew Wiseman, current chair of the Federal Conference Committee. With just 42 points separating the top 10, there is of course all still to play for.
There are 152 players in total and you can …
Labour have retained the post of Police and Crime Commissioner, following the resignation of Shaun Wright, with 50.02% of first preferences ahead of UKIP on 31.66% with a turnout of 14%. The Liberal Democrats did not stand a candidate.
The campaign was dominated by the issue of the child sexual exploitation scandal in Rotherham, with UKIP accused of crassly exploiting the issue for their own political ends, and Labour accused of being responsible for the authorities that failed those children. Both accusations have merit, though in my book failing to protect 1600 children is worse than crass politicking. I’m not suggesting that Labour’s policy was to fail these children, but any virtual one-party state is likely to fail its people and needs to be voted out.
We’ve always had great fun at Hallowe’en in our house. We love the guisers (none of this new fangled Trick or Treat stuff, if you please). My husband loves carving the pumpkin even if he isn’t as elaborate as some. My Facebook timeline has been full of everything from Pumpkin Daleks to the delicious irony of an actual Cinderella carriage. I have some very creative friends.
The Teenager is spending Hallowe’en with her friends and will be headed out in vampire dress leaving us to greet the scores of little devils, ghouls, zombies, fairies, princesses, ghosts and animals who will come …
I had a visitor the other day – a resident who was her husband’s carer. Neither was elderly and she was coping remarkably well. I am honestly not sure I could perform her role. I suspect many of us couldn’t.
She had no complaint to make but instead wanted me to understand – for the purposes of local and national policy – what caring looked like in terms of costs. The simple point is that the care she provides comes cheap. She does most of the work so the local authority delivers only respite care at some thousands a year. But were she older, frailer or even simply smaller in stature this would not be possible. And then the cost of care would escalate as it fell to the state to provide it. Ultimately it would reach a six figure sum. Per annum.
For the generation of UK military and civilians that served in Afghanistan over the past 13 years, watching the extensive coverage of the final withdrawal from Helmand province comes with mixed feelings.
As the Foreign Office’s “man in” Helmand during 2010, even then it was obvious to me that the UK media had already made up its mind: the conclusion was we had failed. So, when I read the reports earlier this week that “a third” of Helmand’s schools were still …
Well, not the last chance ever, but certainly the last chance to make a submission to the Smith Commission, which is looking into delivering more powers for Scotland in the wake of the independence referendum.
My view is that it was very clear that people wanted significantly more powers. I don’t think that was predominantly why they voted No, but it was clearly indicated during the debate.
The difficulty that the Commission has now is that the Labour Party, which has been dragging its feet on more powers anyway, now has no leader and no direction. Like the other parties, it has submitted its own recommendations, which are by far the most timid, but how is it going to get its act together enough to agree anything more substantial. It will have to, because the most basic instincts of self preservation tell you that “The Vow” made must be kept.
Conservative home office minister James Brokenshire defended the Government’s decision to withdraw support – along with all other EU member states – for future search-and-rescue operations for migrants in the Mediterranean. The BBC reports:
James Brokenshire told MPs the change would “save lives rather than putting them in peril.” About 3,000 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean so far this year. That is out of an estimated total of 150,000 to have made the trip by boat across to Europe. Mr Brokenshire said operations to rescue migrants encouraged more people to make the “perilous journey” across the Mediterranean in the hope of being granted asylum. He said the “despicable work” of human traffickers had made the problem much worse, and must be tackled. On the new approach, he added it was “inconceivable to suggest that if a boat were in peril, that support would not be provided”.
Italian officials have made clear they intend to scale down their government’s current operation, known as Mare Nostrum, as the EU introduces a new operation known as Triton. Triton will focus more on border control – tasks such as vetting asylum seekers once they are ashore, and coastal patrols – rather than search and rescue in international waters. Mr Brokenshire said that 28 EU member states had “unanimously agreed” to the new proposals, and criticised those attacking the policy for seeking to “politicise” the issue.
Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather was not impressed by the minister’s defence:
Six months ago, Scotland had an actual farmer as an MEP. George Lyon’s knowledge of farming and rural issues was a massive asset to Scotland’s representation in Europe.
Not that I’m bitter, well, maybe a bit, but his replacement, UKIP’s David Coburn, who lives in London, has been telling the Huffington Post hat equal marriage supporters are ‘Equality Nazis”:
Highly regarded Scottish Liberal Democrats Justice Spokesperson Alison McInnes stood in for Willie Rennie, who’s recovering well from routine surgery, at today’s First Minister’s Questions. You can watch her here from 23 minutes in.
There may be not much desire on either side for an electoral pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Greens but we are working together on drugs policy, as both parties see the futility of continuing with the current approach.
They firstly counted the cost of prohibition’s failures:
Because the scale of our failures can’t be ignored any longer. There are around 2,000 drug-related deaths every year, and it is estimated that 400,000 people in the UK have a serious drug misuse problem. Consider then that for every one of these cases, there are many more whose lives are thrown into chaos because their loved ones suffer from a vicious cycle of dependency. The failure of current policy is quite literally failing millions of people.
The financial costs are massive too. Every single year in the UK alone, we spend over £3billion of taxpayers’ money tackling drug use, roughly half of which is spent on drug law enforcement. That total – over £3billion – would buy six state-of-the-art hospitals.
We may have had a peaceful summer at home but overseas the situation was anything but relaxed, not least in Gaza where the tension between Israel and Palestine spilled over into violence and bloodshed. Whatever your interpretation of events there, nothing can excuse the fact that the resultant anger and hurt felt by many was channelled by a few into violence against British Jews, leading to a 400% increase in recorded antisemitic incidents in the last quarter. That was a pattern repeated across Europe, which is why as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism I joined a delegation of MPs to Berlin and Paris in order to learn the lessons of the summer. Our findings will help to inform a new parliamentary report into antisemitism now being drawn up.
Clacton-on-Sea is going nowhere… This is Britain on crutches. This is tracksuit-and-trainers Britain, tattoo-parlour Britain, all-our-yesterdays Britain- Matthew Parris, The Times
Matthew Parris’s dismissal of poor, coastal Essex adorned thousands of UKIP leaflets in Clacton. It served only to justify UKIP’s rout of the Tory party.
Inadvertently, Parris came close to the truth: Britain as a political entity almost ceased to exist in September. Despite the eventual result in Scotland, the strength of the yes vote saw victory in Glasgow, quadrupled the membership of the SNP and caused Scottish Labour to implode. The high turnout alone belied the modern complaint of political apathy.
Earlier this year, we featured Communities Minister and MP for Bristol West Stephen Williams’ Reddit questionnaire where he invited constituents to “Ask me anything.” And they did, too.
Here’s a wee snippet:
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Yesterday the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament reminded us thatthere are two EU stories around at the moment. Sadly one is getting far more attention than the other! One is about the Prime Minister “standing up to Europe” and refusing to pay a £1.7bn demand. The other which is ultimately of much greater significance, concerns the EU agreeing an ambitious climate change deal, under British leadership, as described by Catherine Bearder and Ed Davey recently on LDV.
Liberal Democrats can rightly be proud that as the greenest of the main British political parties and as “the party of in” we have shown …
With the Green Party announcing they are targeting 12 seats including a number of our key seats, and the Labour party acknowledging the threat they pose by appointing Sadiq Khan to lead the fightback, Green votes could make the difference between winning and losing – as we sadly saw with Graham Watson MEP. So as our Environment Spokesperson in the House of Lords I’ve been keen to get out and help our candidates promote what we have achieved in Government and champion our 5 Green Bills which we’d introduce in a future Parliament. Over the summer I spent two days visiting the Great Heath Project in Mid Dorset & North Poole with the Wildlife Trust and our parliamentary candidate, Vikki Slade.
“As Ukip is to the Tories, so can the Green party be to the Lib Dems.” That’s a sentence I wrote 7 years ago, November 2007. So I was interested to see this post by YouGov’s Peter Kellner – ‘Ukip, the Greens and the new politics of protest’ – which looks at his firm’s polling data to find out more about the current spike in support for the Greens.
In it, he aggregates three weeks’ polling data to create a sample size large enough to find out who these new Green voters are. One finding probably won’t surprise many of us: half current Green supporters voted Lib Dem in May 2010:
Here’s how Peter Kellner analyses it:
Lib Dem party president Tim Farron has been writing at the Huffington Post about the need for politicians to support the growing number of what he terms the ‘little platoons’ of entrepreneurs and small businesses:
Unlike many politicians, I think this rise in self-employment could be a good thing, at least for those who’ve made the choice. I welcome the fact that entrepreneurial individuals are trusting themselves and their skills and striking out on their own. Especially amongst older workers, an increased willingness to share acquired knowledge and experience is creating successful small business owners and consultants. …
Paddy has been writing in the Mirror about the Afghanistan war? Was it all worth it and could we, should we, have done things differently? What can we learn for the future?
First of all, Paddy writes, we did some good:
So has it all been for nothing?
No. There are children – and especially girls – going to school in Afghanistan who wouldn’t be there if British troops had not risked their lives to give them the chance. Democracy, though frail, has taken root.
There is growing prosperity in some areas, markets in previous ghost towns, new roads that never existed and, perhaps most important of all, a knowledge of how things can be better, planted in people’s minds.
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On making LDV more inclusive
Today has not been a good day. It’s not a good feeling when you discover that someone has left the party over something you did, as Lester Holloway has done. I hope that he reconsiders his decision.
The story begins on Saturday when I published this story about Lib Dem Campaigns supremo Victoria Marsom’s visit to Botswana at the culmination of a year long project to help our sister party in the elections there.
Lester said in the comments that he was unhappy with our interference in this African election. In the ensuing debate, onc eommenter, who as far as we know is not a member or even a supporter of the party, made a racist comment at around 11pm on Monday. I woke up to an email complaining about it at 8am on Tueadsy. I immediately removed the comment and had a fairly lengthy email conversation with a number of people who were copied into the email. I would have been quite happy to bin the comment completely, but I gave an additional option that it should be reinstated but with a very clear statement that comments of that nature are completely unacceptable. It was agreed that this is what we should do and two of the people who were copied into that email thanked me and seemed happy with the outcome.