Liberal Democrat Voice | Page 660

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LibLink: Jeremy Browne – The Lib Dems must define themselves more clearly

By NewsHound | Sun 8th June 2014 - 8:16 am

Former Lib Dem minister, Jeremy Browne, fresh from publishing a book calling for the party to return to ‘authentic liberalism’, has issued a further plea in The Spectator for Lib Dems to get distinctive ahead of the 2015 election. Here’s an excerpt:

The Liberal Democrats will struggle to command support in this marketplace without having a sharp definition. The appeal of cautious centrism is limited. …

Where is the demand for a tepid Milibandism or a watered-down Cameronism? Why buy the low calorie version when the full-flavour

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged jeremy browne and the spectator | 72 Comments

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In the next month 8 seats will short-list their wannabe Lib Dem MPs

By The Voice | Sat 7th June 2014 - 5:40 pm

Here’s the full list of selection contests in the coming month available for Lib Dems on the approved parliamentary candidates’ list, together with the closing date for applications.

The following seats have selections in progress and are currently advertising for candidates:

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Posted in Selection news | Tagged general election 2015 | 10 Comments

What’s being debated in our members’ forum this week?

By The Voice | Sat 7th June 2014 - 4:35 pm

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:

Tory Facing Seats: the structure of

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Eddie Clein on ‘Falling off the Fence’, his memoir of six decades in Liverpool politics

By The Voice | Sat 7th June 2014 - 2:30 pm

Eddie Clein, a long-standing former Lib Dem councillor and former Lord Mayor of Liverpool, has recently published his memoirs of his six decades’ involvement in the city’s politics – from his first win in 1969 through to his final defeat in 2012, aged 77. Here Eddie tells LDV a little more about his life and what the book covers…

As a key player in Liverpool’s Liberal Democrat administration (1998-2010), I thought it was important to place on record some of the party’s achievements and some of the

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Posted in Books | Tagged eddie clein and liverpool | 8 Comments

LibLink: Lord Paul Tyler: Quality v Quantity

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 7th June 2014 - 1:11 pm

Our Paul Tyler has been writing about the Queen’s Speech over at the Lords of the Blog. He tackles the accusation that the Government has run out of steam because it’s only produced one piece of legislation per month and suggests that the Labour habit of expecting Parliament to consider 30 bills in a session did not do much for scrutiny.

Goldilocks looked at Tony Blair’s Queen’s Speeches, with 30+ bills announced each time, and pronounced, ‘that’s far too much legislation’. Then Goldilocks looked at the Coalition’s

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Posted in News | 7 Comments

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What were we talking about…in June 2007?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 7th June 2014 - 10:59 am

I thought it might be interesting to take a wee look at what we were talking about at various points in the history of Liberal Democrat Voice. Today the spotlight shines on the first couple of weeks of June in 2007. Here are half a dozen posts from Tony Blair’s last few weeks in office. It’s interesting to note that in the first 15 days of the month, not one single woman wrote for the site.

First up, Jeremy Hargreaves assesses the Blair years:

A more equal society? Well

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged nostalgia | 5 Comments

82% of Lib Dems back giving terminally ill adults the option of assisted dying

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th June 2014 - 9:00 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Over 830 party members responded – thank you – and we’re publishing the full results.

Caron Lindsay wrote an excellent, balanced piece about the current assisted dying legislation here yesterday. Here are the results of our recent members’ survey on the subject.

82% back Assisted Dying Bill

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Tagged assisted dying bill and caron lindsay | 55 Comments

Newark by-election: what I told BBC’s Daily Politics

By Stephen Tall | Fri 6th June 2014 - 10:00 pm

I got a call from the BBC’s Daily Politics this morning asking if I’d be willing to pitch up this lunchtime to discuss the Lib Dem performance, as the party wasn’t willing to put up anyone official. (Labour didn’t either.) I duly did so and you can see what I said below. If you want to skip Grant Shapps and Roger Helmer, I pop up briefly at the 12 minute mark. As ever, you only really get to string together a couple of sentences: I blogged my fuller views on Newark …

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Posted in Parliamentary by-elections and YouTube | Tagged bbc daily politics, newark by-election and stephen tall | 106 Comments

Assisted dying in the news both north and south of the border – last day for action in Scotland

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 6th June 2014 - 2:50 pm

The issue of assisted dying is in the news on both sides of the border this week. Yesterday, Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill received its first reading in the House of Lords. This is a formality and the date for a full debate on the issue has not yet been set.

To mark the occasion, the Dignity in Dying campaign has released a very powerful video which highlights the choices we are free to make in life, but we can’t choose the manner of our death.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged assisted dying bill, assisted suicide bill, dignity in dying, lord falconer, margo macdonald, my life my death my choice and patrick harvie | 14 Comments

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #377

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 6th June 2014 - 1:20 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our very belated 377th 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 (25-31May, 2014), 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:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment

Liberal Democrats criticise Home Office over deportation flight report which said people were treated like commodities.

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 6th June 2014 - 11:49 am

A report in Sunday’s Observer highlighted concerns raised by the Inspector of Prisons over the treatment of people on a deportation flight to Afghanistan.

The Inspector’s full report can be read here and it makes sobering reading for anyone who cares about treating vulnerable people with respect:

Despite impressive care and concern shown by individual escort staff, detainees were not treated with enough decency in the removal process. Generally efficient procedures did not amount to respect for detainees who, it seemed to us, were seen as commodities

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Posted in News | Tagged immigration, liberal democrat seekers of sanctuary, sarah teather, suzanne fletcher and the observer | 5 Comments

Newark by-election: Tories win well, Ukip falls short, Labour dips, Lib Dems collapse

By Stephen Tall | Fri 6th June 2014 - 9:05 am

A lot of politics is about momentum. At the moment it’s the Tories who have it. Not quite the Big Mo, but a Moderate Mo that’s growing.

Here are the results of last night’s Newark by-election:

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Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged david watts, featured and newark by-election | 217 Comments

The Independent View: Lib Dems must defend UK climate targets

By Andy Atkins | Fri 6th June 2014 - 8:59 am

The past months have seen an upsurge of environmental concern. Following the wettest winter ever, and the starkest warnings yet from scientists about the perils of climate change, 23% of the public named ‘the environment’ as the most important issue facing Britain – higher than at any time since the late 1980s.

But, rather astonishingly, despite mounting evidence of the urgency for acting on global warming, there are moves within Government to weaken UK climate targets.

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged climate change | 14 Comments

In praise of 5-year fixed-term parliaments

By Stephen Tall | Thu 5th June 2014 - 4:00 pm

Conventional wisdom is that one area where the Lib Dem influence in Coalition has been weakest is political reform. The party’s “four step” manifesto plan to “hardwire fairness into British society” included the pledge “to clean up politics”. Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister famously promised the “biggest shake-up of our democracy” since 1832. That claim has come to seem hollow since first electoral reform, then later an elected House of Lords and the constituency boundary review, all went down in flames.

Yet one …

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Posted in Op-eds | 32 Comments

LibLink: Edward McMillan-Scott: Proud to have served our region in Europe

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 5th June 2014 - 2:21 pm

In a valedictory article for the Yorkshire Post, outgoing Liberal Democrat MEP talked about his time in the Parliament, reviewed the election results and looked forward to the challenges this Parliament will face. Although people across Europe might have thought they had a free hit in the elections to punish their governments, their choices could affect their daily lives.

He started by looking back at his 30 years of service:

It has been a great privilege to serve this region for 30 years, to have played a role in encouraging

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged edward mcmillan-scott, eu and yorkshire post | 4 Comments

The Independent View: We need to talk about peace building

By Shaughan Dolan | Thu 5th June 2014 - 1:20 pm

Prevention is better than cure has been the guiding principle of modern medicine. This simple mantra has for some become a philosophy of how to live better – we deal with problems before they develop, avoid potential issues through careful management and plan cautiously for an uncertain future.

Government policy has never been a big fan of prevention – there aren’t always votes in solving a problem before it escalates. A bigger problem is how you measure prevention – if the problem happens anyway you will be blamed for wasting money. If you avert the problem entirely you will blamed for wasting money. In the prevention game it can often be a no-win scenario.

Conflict prevention has proven itself to have real value time and time again.

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged conscience and peace building | 8 Comments

Opinion: Queen’s Speech – the success and failures of coalition in a nutshell

By Mark Pack | Thu 5th June 2014 - 11:59 am

One part of the Queen’s Speech – or rather one absence from it – neatly encapsulates the Liberal Democrat experience in coalition government, both good and bad. It is the absence from it of an immigration (dislike thereof) bill.

A solo Tory government would have introduced one and – thanks to Labour’s attitudes towards immigration – even a minority Tory government might well have got an anti-immigration bill through Parliament. It’s the Liberal Democrat presence in government which has stopped it.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged campaigning, immigration and queen's speech | 23 Comments

Opinion: Back to basic principles on welfare reform

By Joe Bourke | Thu 5th June 2014 - 10:24 am

The basic principles of the Beveridge Report were:

The right of every citizen to a minimum level of subsistence;
The need to preserve incentive, opportunity and responsibility.

The post-war National Insurance system was based on the assumption that there would be full employment, and that wages for men would be sufficient to maintain a wife at home raising children.

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Posted in News | Tagged welfare reform and william beveridge | 56 Comments

Ryland’s story – and why it’s important

By The Voice | Wed 4th June 2014 - 9:43 pm

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Posted in News | Tagged LGBT, rylands story and twitter | 53 Comments

Lord Mike Storey writes… It’s time to protect children from emotional abuse

By Mike Storey | Wed 4th June 2014 - 7:59 pm

Earlier today, in a Speech from the Throne, the Queen announced that the Government will take forward measures to tackle child neglect. Quite simply, this is a momentous achievement.

I am proud to have supported Action for Children’s campaign to update the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, alongside other Liberal Democrat colleagues including Mark Williams MP and Annette Brooke MP.

The criminal law should be able to protect children from all forms of abuse. For too long we have viewed non-physical harm of children as …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged child neglect, featured and queen's speech 2014 | 12 Comments

LibLink: Sam Ghibaldan: Clegg needs to be assertive

By NewsHound | Wed 4th June 2014 - 5:51 pm

I’m not going to lie, I bet a lot of you are thinking Sam who? Chances are if you live in Scotland, you’ll be less curious because you will know that he was a Senior Special Adviser to Scottish Liberal Democrat Deputy First Ministers Jim Wallace and Nicol Stephen. As such, his perspective on who the Liberal Democrats should proceed in the run up to the General Election is highly relevant. In a recent Scotsman column, he said that Nick Clegg needs to get out there and shout about our core beliefs.

Some of the headlines faced by Nick Clegg were also seen in Scotland:

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged coalition government, jim wallace, liberal democrats, nick clegg, sam ghibaldan and scotsman | 28 Comments

Baroness Kate Parminter writes….5p charge on “icons of throwaway society is a victory for the environment”

By Kate Parminter | Wed 4th June 2014 - 4:28 pm

It’s great to see the Queens Speech include a commitment to reduce the use of plastic bag carriers to help protect the environment. It’s an issue I’ve campaigned on since I came to the Lords in 2010.

We used 7 billion single use carrier bags in UK supermarkets in 2012. Plastic bags are highly visible litter on our streets and in our countryside; pose a threat to wildlife and their disposal contributes to our green house gas (GHG) emissions, taking 500 to 1,000 years to degrade.

Following the introduction of a …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged climate change, environment and queen's speech 2014 | 35 Comments

Opinion: It’s time to concentrate on the “Fairer Society”

By David Pollard | Wed 4th June 2014 - 3:30 pm

The main criticism of the party leadership after the terrible European election results has come from those who see themselves on the ‘Fairer Society’ wing of the party. Over the last 4 years the Conservatives in the Coalition have swung more and more to the right on the NHS, welfare and immigration, making the decision to enter the coalition more and more untenable. Liberal Democrats in Government have continued to feel themselves constrained by ‘cabinet collective responsibility’ (CCR) even as the rightward shift has undermined the Liberal Democrat position on a ‘Fairer Society’

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged bedroom tax, fairness and future strategy | 23 Comments

Paddy: I know what it’s like to hide in a canoe for 5 days

By Newsmoggie | Wed 4th June 2014 - 2:53 pm

Paddy Ashdown’s ubiquitous presence on the media these days is not entirely an accident. I suspect, though, he wanted to spend more time talking about his new book, out tomorrow, than about Liberal Democrat plots and leadership crises. The Cruel Victory: The French Resistance, D-Day and the Battle for Vercors is currently making its way to my Kindle and I’m looking forward to reading it, harrowing though it will be. Paddy knows how to tell a story with intelligence and emotional punch.

He has been talking to all sorts of media outlets, but I came across this quick interview with Arabian News which was more book related. He was asked what he got out of writing:

Oh, the joy of creation I suppose, if that’s not too pompous a word. I think you’d call me an author rather than a writer, a writer is probably a somewhat higher level

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Posted in News | Tagged paddy ashdown | 4 Comments

Queen’s Speech 2014: first thoughts

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 4th June 2014 - 1:30 pm

Well, the Imperial State Crown is on its way back to the Tower of London and the Queen is having a well earned rest after her annual trip to Parliament to unveil the Government’s Legislative Programme.

There’s something in me that thinks all the pomp is a bit strange and anachronistic but also weirdly comforting at the same time. I guess it’s like whenever I go to a Church and hear the familiar rites that I knew off by heart as a young child even though religion has no …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured and queen's speech 2014 | 26 Comments

Challenging the narrative: Employment

By Joe Otten | Wed 4th June 2014 - 10:30 am

I was engaged in a twitter argument yesterday with someone who was disputing the progress we have seen in employment, putting the improved figures down to a million people enslaved on zero hours contracts.

The Office for National Statistics have provisionally estimated the number of zero hours contracts to be between 583,000 and 1.4 million. There isn’t an established data series for this that would enable historical comparisons, but there are such statistics for full time and part time workers. According to these the number of part time workers is up 356,000 since May 2010, and the number of full time workers is up 1,114,000.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured and unemployment | 27 Comments

Opinion: Long term gains from short term arguments

By Gordon Lishman | Wed 4th June 2014 - 8:57 am

Most participants in the post-election debate have concentrated on specific changes they want now: the Leader, his advisers, the communications team, the detail of policy issues etc. I firmly believe that the underlying issues are systemic rather than one-off and that we should use the opportunity to establish structures for the future which minimise the likelihood of problems arising and improve our capacity as a democratic Party for dealing with them.

Some key targets:

Agreement by the Party in advance on the elements which underpin construction

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged future strategy and liberal democrats | 28 Comments

Lib Dems need to take every opportunity to get our message out there

By Nick T | Tue 3rd June 2014 - 5:57 pm

I’ve made no secret of my view that a change in leadership is likely to do little to revive Liberal Democrat fortunes at the polls given the rather more structural reasons for the decline in support for the party.

But I also recognise that to continue doing and saying the same things over and over again and expecting a different result is not only the definition of insanity but is unlikely to lead to an electoral revival:

We should not simply keep calm and carry on, but nor should we lose our heads either. The long-term success of the party is best served by

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Posted in News | Tagged andrew grice, economy, featured, isabel hardman, pubs and tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 94 Comments

Liblink: Stephen Williams on zero carbon homes by 2016

By NewsHound | Tue 3rd June 2014 - 4:26 pm

The Queen’s speech tomorrow will include a Lib Dem commitment to make every new home built in England from 2016 zero carbon. As Stephen Williams says:

This was one of Nick’s earliest environmental priorities and it has taken the combined guile and will power of Sir Andrew Stunell, Don Foster and myself as well as Nick’s dogged determination to make it a reality.

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Posted in News | Tagged featured, stephen williams and zero carbon | 15 Comments

Opinion: Lib Dems and the EU. Should we assert our Radical Localist side?

By Colin Green | Tue 3rd June 2014 - 3:45 pm

At the beginning of the year, the European elections were looking touch and go for the Lib Dems. Our poll ratings were on the borderline of losing our MEPs, so we took a risk. We gambled on a strategy that, if it paid off, would win us the few percent of extra votes needed to hold most of our MEPs. The tactic was to highlight that we are the only truly pro-Europe party, which would attract swing voters from more lukewarm parties. So we went all in with ‘The Party of In’. It was a gamble we lost.

Public opinion of the EU is mixed. People acknowledge the benefits of membership but many think the costs are too high. Polls suggest similar numbers of people want to leave the EU as want to stay in. But if the terms of membership are renegotiated, the majority of people support staying in.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged europe and localism | 25 Comments