The Voice

Michael Moore appointed as EU Business Adviser to Nick Clegg

By The Voice | Wed 15th January 2014 - 9:03 am

Nick Clegg has asked former Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore to be his Adviser on European business affairs. The unpaid role will see Michael working with businesses across the UK to understand the key trade, investment and regulatory issue affecting their dealings in the European Union.

He will carry out a review of the issues and report to Nick Clegg by the Summer.

Michael Moore said:

Britain’s engagement with the rest of Europe is fundamental to our future economic well-being. At this crucial moment in the development of the UK’s relationship with the EU, I am delighted to take on this

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Stephen Tall

Hollande’s affair – do you care? *Gallic shrug*

By Stephen Tall | Tue 14th January 2014 - 8:10 pm

The President of France, Francois Hollande, held a a long-planned news conference today to launch policies to help France’s struggling economy. Along with cuts to government spending, he plans a ‘responsibility pact’ to incentivise firms to hire workers, and… oh, I’m sorry, am I boring you? You’re only interested in his liaisons dangereuses, the reported affair he’s having with the actress who is not his First Lady? If so, then you’ve a lot in common with UK journalists…

…

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Helen Flynn

Opinion: UKIP – let’s have a debate about low skills

By Helen Flynn | Tue 14th January 2014 - 5:04 pm

strawberriesThere has been an inconsistency between two highly prominent policy areas that has been niggling away at the back of my mind for quite some time now.  UKIP needs to take note.

So, take two policy areas and also take into account the temperature (at least according to the Daily Mail, etc) of the voters.

The first area is education.  Schools that do not match up to the floor levels at Key Stage 2 and at GCSE are pounced upon by Ofsted.  They require improvement or are put into special measures.  All children must get 5 good GCSEs.  They must progress and they must aspire.  Think of the slogans that populate the UK and US education policy discourse: “no child must be left behind; “every child matters”; and social mobility is regarded and upheld as a kind of rebalancing panacea to address all social ills and help narrow the gap.

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Mary Reid

Lib Dems appoint Pastoral Care Officer

By Mary Reid | Tue 14th January 2014 - 3:34 pm

jeannetarrantLib Dem HQ has announced that Jeanne Tarrant has been appointed as Pastoral Care Officer. This post was created following the Helena Morrissey Report into process and culture within the party.

In August Party President Tim Farron explained what the party would be doing in response to that report. One of the commitments was to create the new post.

Jeanne introduces herself:

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Mary Reid

Stephen Williams says ‘Ask Me Anything’

By Mary Reid | Tue 14th January 2014 - 2:01 pm

Stephen Williams MPStephen Williams used reddit yesterday to answer questions put by his constituents in Bristol West.  He answered questions about web filters, homelessness, foreign policy, CCTV, voting reform, fracking, Bristol’s Mayor, HS2 and academies.

And this:

What is your favourite type of cheese?

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Mark Pack

Opinion: Leaderless parties don’t make for good partners in hung Parliaments

By Mark Pack | Tue 14th January 2014 - 12:30 pm

Ed-Balls-and-Ed-Miliband-006The recent Twitter-flirtation between Nick Clegg and Ed Balls was in itself not hugely significant, even if it was a welcome burst of public banter taking the place of off-the-record briefings.

Politicians, after all, manage to be polite to each other far more often than Prime Minister’s Questions might suggest, and the ability to behave (occasionally) like a well-mannered, polite adult is part of what makes them politicians who get insulted in the comments on blogs rather than commenters who insult politicians  in the comments on blogs.

However it is symptomatic also …

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Stephen Tall

Latest ICM poll shows Lib Dems at 14%. I’d call that “mildly encouraging”

By Stephen Tall | Tue 14th January 2014 - 10:20 am

guarian icm - jan 2014The latest ICM poll for The Guardian is published today. Its topline figures show Labour on 35% (-2%), the Tories on 32% (n/c), with the Lib Dems on 14% (+2%) and Ukip on 10% (+1%).

The changes from last month are all within the margin of error, so nothing too dramatic can be read into it. The ratings are mildly encouraging for the Lib Dems. The ICM poll at the equivalent point in the parliamentary cycle – January 2009 – had the party at 16%. ICM’s poll is the one most eagerly awaited by poll-watchers, as the company has the best historic track record. It also tends to give the Lib Dems better ratings (than, say, YouGov) because of its methodology – but it’s a methodology which has yet to be tested under Coalition conditions.

Input the figures into Electoral Calculus’s online prediction software and you’ll see they’d give Labour a majority of 24, with the Lib Dems reduced to 35 seats. In reality, I think the Lib Dems would do a little better than that on 14%, owing to the incumbency boost of our MPs’ (and local activists’) hard work – which would also likely eat into Labour’s seat tally, as it’s the Lib Dem-Labour battlegrounds where we’re most vulnerable.

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Alexandra Runswick

The Independent View: Transparency in Government

By Alexandra Runswick | Tue 14th January 2014 - 9:00 am

This week the Liberal Democrats face a test of their commitment to transparency in government when the House of Lords considers Part 1 of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. Bizarrely for a Bill with transparency in the title, it will provide the public with less information than we already have under the discredited system of self-regulation.

Last week the BMJ published details of the way the drinks industry had lobbied government to drop the commitment to minimum alcohol pricing including 130 meetings, few of which were in the public domain. This is not about …

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Caron Lindsay

LDVideo: Danny Alexander explains decision to guarantee all UK debt up until Independence

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 13th January 2014 - 7:59 pm

It’s slightly annoying that the announcement by the Treasury pledging to honour all UK debt up till the date of Independence was made on the same day as Alistair Carmichael’s first keynote speech of the New Year, but there was little choice given ill-advised threats last week that an independent Scotland would default on its debts if it didn’t get its way on using the pound as part of a currency union. The markets were spooked. The Treasury had to act.

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Caron Lindsay

The three dimensions to Alistair Carmichael’s speech: positive vision of UK, incoherent nationalist ideas and future powers

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 13th January 2014 - 4:54 pm

Alistair Carmichael speech Jan 2014Alistair Carmichael’s keynote speech and subsequent question and answer session in Stirling today touched three different dimensions of the constitutional debate, the last of which should cheer any Liberal Democrat heart. Up until now, roughly, the nationalist campaign has been all about painting a pretty picture of how all our problems would disappear if we controlled our own destiny, and in dismissing all searching for detail and questioning as scaremongering. The pro UK campaign has been about robust analysis of the SNP positions, but it hasn’t even made my heart sing and I’m voting for them. It’s been all head and fact and evidence based and worthy,  but it’s not appealed to the emotions.  The parts of Carmichael’s speech trailed overnight heavily emphasised what Scotland gains as being part of the UK, though. Were we about to see a change of emphasis?

The positive vision for the UK

It’s not just about money, said Alistair. It’s about what the 4 nations of the UK have built together. He said Scotland gets more out than it puts in which will no doubt have the nationalists in a tailspin of indignation – but the same is the case for all the countries which make up the UK, greater than the sum of their parts.

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Joe Otten

Liblink: The lobbying bill is no ‘gagging law’

By Joe Otten | Mon 13th January 2014 - 2:35 pm

At the outset, ministers believed the bill would be a fairly non-controversial measure, limiting the political influence of maverick millionaires in elections. It was construed very differently by people we Liberal Democrats most strongly identify with: our natural, liberal allies in the voluntary and charitable sector saw the bill as a broad assault on their freedom of speech.

So write Paul Tyler and Shirley Williams in the Guardian.

The so-called ‘gagging law’ is keeping the definition of ‘non-party campaigning’ in the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000 – as that which “can be reasonably …

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Guy Verhofstadt

Guy Verhofstadt writes… 2014 European elections and the challenge for Liberals

By Guy Verhofstadt | Mon 13th January 2014 - 12:38 pm

This year’s European elections are bound to be a tough fight. Eurosceptics such as UKIP and the French National Front are determined to turn back the clock and tear down the internal market, stoking xenophobia and putting millions of jobs at risk. In the UK context, the Conservatives appear to want to throw in the towel and leave the EU, whilst Labour are still sitting uncomfortably on the fence. Only Lib Dems are clear where they stand as the party of In.

Being the main pro-European party, across the EU, though does not mean defending the status quo. As Liberals we …

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Geoff Crocker

Book Review: Money for Everyone

By Geoff Crocker | Mon 13th January 2014 - 10:55 am

A Citizen’s Income Convincingly Argued

In ‘Money for Everyone’, Malcolm Torry delivers a blockbuster argument in favour of a Citizen’s Income to wholly or partially replace current benefits. His book is well-researched, well-informed, well-written, and is articulate and readable. His main argument is that, given widespread acceptance of a benefits scheme of some sort, then a Citizen’s Income is by far the best option. Specifically it avoids the disincentives of very high marginal deduction rates of current benefits which create the familiar unemployment and poverty traps. According to Torry, a Citizen’s Income would incentivise employment, training, new business formation, women’s …

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David Boyle

Opinion: Why I backed the lobbying bill

By David Boyle | Mon 13th January 2014 - 9:12 am

Sarah Teather’s interview in the Guardian over the Christmas period talked about the way the political system tends to invent simple issues, in order to give the impression of solving them.

She is clearly right. Because governments are beset by global issues, by phenomenally complex systems, and they fear upsetting their key compromises – then it must sometimes seem easier to stick to the purely symbolic.

What Sarah didn’t say is that oppositions and campaign groups are almost as guilty. They create symbolic issues over proposed legislation which they can campaign on. They win, nothing changes, and everyone stays …

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Caron Lindsay

Alistair Carmichael to outline the benefits of the UK in keynote speech

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 13th January 2014 - 8:48 am

I am about to head off to Stirling to see Alistair Carmichael deliver his first keynote speech of the year in which he will set out the benefits of Scotland remaining in the UK. The pro-UK arguments have mainly been quite dry and technical and he wants to do more to relate them directly to people’s practical concerns and to celebrate what the UK has achieved by building such institutions as the NHS and the BBC.

He will say

That partnership has a remarkable history. And we’re not just talking about the past – right now Scotland sees the benefit of this long

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Stephen Tall

Have you voted in our Liberal Voice of the Year poll yet? Today’s your last chance!

By Stephen Tall | Mon 13th January 2014 - 7:55 am

liberal-voiceIt’s one week and six days since we launched our seventh annual search for the Liberal Voice of the Year, as voted for by you, our readers. That means you have only a day left if you haven’t yet made your choice.

You can read more about the short-list – as chosen by party members via our latest survey – here. And you can cast your votes in order of preference using the electronic ballot paper below. Many thanks to the hundreds of readers who’ve already done so.

The poll closes tomorrow, 14th January, with results to follow…

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Caron Lindsay

10 reasons why Mary from Sherlock should stick with the Liberal Democrats

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 12th January 2014 - 8:14 pm

As this post appears, we’ll be getting ready for the season finale of Sherlock. If my Twitter feed is anything to go by, we includes many of this site’s regular readers.

We’ve waited two years for the third season and it’s all over in a week and a half. I loved the nods to the fandom, the tube line geekery and the usual ingenuity of the first episode. I also liked the fact that the eccentric guy with the beard was right.

The second episode dragged in places but had the best Best Man’s Speech since Four Weddings and a Funeral 20 …

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Caron Lindsay

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #361

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 12th January 2014 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 361st 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 (5-11 January, 2014), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, 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 | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Andrew Rawnsley on the Lib-Lab flirtation that could yet get serious

By Stephen Tall | Sun 12th January 2014 - 5:00 pm

Well worth reading Andrew Rawnsley’s column in today’s Observer – Labour is blowing kisses at the Lib Dems. But don’t buy a hat yet – taking a look at Lib-Lab relations in the light of Ed Balls’ much commented on chumminess with Nick Clegg.

He rehearses two points familiar to readers here. First, that almost all Labour’s policy announcements in the past year (it’s not a long list) are in tune with existing Lib Dem policy: reducing taxes for the low-paid, a mansion tax and ending wealthy pensioners’ benefits are just three of the ideas that started with …

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Mark Valladares

Opinion: as Labour and the Conservatives play “Find the Lady” on immigration, what are we to do?

By Mark Valladares | Sun 12th January 2014 - 11:45 am

I must admit that the whole immigration debate bemuses me. As Labour and the Conservatives compete for the prize of being ‘not quite as tough on migrants as UKIP want to be’, some of my fellow Liberal Democrats respond by only talking of the benefits of migration, making the mistake of assuming that there is a rational debate to be had there.

The problem is that there isn’t – not now, at least. Instead, I suggest a different approach – holding the other three parties to account over their proposals. You see, I have concluded that most of the proposals will …

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The Voice

LDV’s Sunday Best: our 7 most-read articles this week

By The Voice | Sun 12th January 2014 - 10:45 am

Many thanks to the 14,800  visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here’s our 7 most-read posts…

What’s with the Nick Clegg/Ed Balls love in? (18 comments) by Caron Lindsay

Opinion: Foodbanks: Are there more hungry people than a decade ago? (25 comments) by Iain Roberts

Don Foster MP to stand down in 2015 (12 comments) by Caron Lindsay

Opinion: The Immigration Trap (76 comments) by David Allen

Should MPs be allowed to take their babies into the voting lobby? (26 comments) by Caron Lindsay

Lorely Burt to stand for Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader (19 comments) by The …

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Caron Lindsay

Cowdenbeath by-election gets underway as Willie Rennie and Jade Holden visit nursery

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 12th January 2014 - 9:11 am

The Cowdenbeath by-election caused by the death of Labour MSP Helen Eadie takes place on 23 January. This week all the parties have launched their campaigns. One of these is very different from all the others.

Liberal Democrat candidate Jade Holden visited a local nursery with Scottish leader Willie Rennie on Thursday. This was particularly appropriate given that childcare is such an important issue. As we reported on Tuesday, Willie had to hastily re-write a speech after the Scottish Government went some way to doing what he had been pressing them for for months – to match Nick Clegg’s extension …

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Caron Lindsay

Farron calls for better sex education to protect children from inappropriate material

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 11th January 2014 - 6:46 pm

It’s not often these days that the comments underneath a newspaper’s online article are supportive of the Liberal Democrats. However, virtually every commenter in this Independent article backed the party’s stand on filters which are aimed at restricting access to content deemed in appropriate for children but in reality block a great deal more. Since they were activated, we’ve reported that they’ve blocked access to the LGBT+ Lib  Dems’ section of the Liberal Democrats’ website and the site of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow.

Tim Farron’s and Julian Huppert’s motion to Spring Conference on a Digital Bill of …

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NewsHound

LibLink: Stephen Tall: Hold tight, get lucky

By NewsHound | Sat 11th January 2014 - 1:51 pm

Stephen Tall has been writing for Total Politics, painting a worrying scenario of what might happen electorally if the Liberal Democrats were to go into coalition with Labour after the next General Election. That ominous phrase “Be careful what you wish for” is the theme…

He points out that the Coalition has caused problems for the party:

In the circumstances, we might be forgiven for turning round to the voters and saying, “You know what, guys? Next time you can’t make up your minds, don’t look to us to break the deadlock. You can suffer Conservative/Labour minority rule instead. That’s right. See

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Newsmoggie

Farron: Tories are “nimby” over garden cities

By Newsmoggie | Sat 11th January 2014 - 12:08 pm

From today’s Telegraph:

A secret Whitehall report recommending that two new cities are built in southern England to combat the housing shortage is being suppressed by David Cameron, The Telegraph can disclose.

The document was drawn up after the Prime Minister gave a speech supporting the idea nearly two years ago. It was described this week by Nick Clegg, his deputy, as a “prospectus” for future developments.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Tavish Scott: Cuts plan is Osborne masterstroke

By NewsHound | Sat 11th January 2014 - 10:35 am

Well, we almost choked on our tea here in LDV Towers when we read that headline. Then we remembered that Tavish is hardly best buddies with the Tories, nor with the idea of the Coalition.  What was his latest article in the Scotsman all about? Well, possibly getting his wooden spoon out and stirring it a bit. This article was even quoted in Thursday’s First Minister’s Questions by Labour MSP Malcolm Chisholm.

Tavish looks at Osborne’s assertion that there must be £25 billion further spending cuts:

Fast forward to this week and Chancellor Osborne is positioning his party against both Labour

…

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The Voice

Liberal Democrat Voice Roll of Honour 2013 – Part 6

By The Voice | Sat 11th January 2014 - 8:55 am

We wanted to honour those Liberal Democrats that our readers felt were true stars of 2013. Over the past few days, we have sought out  nominations and now have a rather impressive list, of which this is the final part, that we’ve been publishing in instalments over the past week. Here is the final  part. Their names come with the comments made about the contribution they have made. Some are parliamentarians, some are councillors, most are grassroots activists. Let’s celebrate them and the many others who are fighting for Liberal Democrat values and victory. These are our Liberal Democrat stars of 2013.

You can read part 1 here, part 2 here part 3 here,  part 4 here and part 5 here.

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Danny Alexander MP

Danny Alexander MP writes: We shouldn’t fritter away our EU influence when we can lead drive for jobs and growth

By Danny Alexander MP | Fri 10th January 2014 - 7:57 pm

As the House of Lords debates the EU Referendum Bill, you may be forgiven for thinking that the Coalition Government has already legislated for a referendum. In fact we did – in 2011 Parliament passed the EU Act which holds that there will be a referendum if there is a transfer of powers from the UK to the EU. This is a sensible approach which means that the British people will get their say in a referendum when our terms of membership change.

At the time, Conservative Ministers strongly supported the EU Act and rejected attempts by their own backbenchers to …

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NewsHound

LibLink: Christine Jardine: Campbell-Bannerman, School Meals Pioneer

By NewsHound | Fri 10th January 2014 - 5:19 pm

There has been some controversy about Nick Clegg’s sudden announcement last September that schoolchildren would get a hot meal every day at school for the first 3 years. Some within the Party feel that resources could be better spent. Others argue that it does make a difference, having a direct effect on children’s learning ability.

Clegg though, is not the first liberal to be associated with such a policy, as former Special Adviser Christine Jardine wrote in the Scotsman this week:

Exactly a century ago, the last Liberal government to win a majority at Westminster made their policy compulsory to ensure councils

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Sally Hamwee

“Annoying” behaviour – Baroness Sally Hamwee responds

By Sally Hamwee | Fri 10th January 2014 - 3:46 pm

On Wednesday the House of Lords debated the first part of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill. As has been reported , the main issue discussed concerned the definition that will be used in the new ‘Injunction to prevent anti-social behaviour’ of IPNAs that will replace ASBOs. The Government was proposing the IPNAs can be issued against behaviour that can reasonably be expected to cause ‘nuisance or annoyance’.

However, an amendment by Lord Dear proposed changing this test (except when it comes to social housing) likely to cause ‘harassment, alarm and distress’.

I know many Lib Dem Voice readers feel a …

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