At the end of February, Dr Mark Pack, who was a part of this site from the very start, stepped down as co-editor. His first post was on 27 August 2006. We miss him but are glad he’s still writing for us.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the weekly Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
I hope you enjoy the varied, eclectic selection of posts which shows off the man’s many talents and interests.
At their AGM in Dundee recently, Liberal Youth Scotland gave me the gift of eternal youth. Seriously. They actually changed their constitution to make me their first honorary life member. I always said they were a lovely bunch of people.
I was also their Returning Officer in their annual elections, which ended yesterday. Their team for the year ahead, taking office next month, are as follows:
President: Jenny Marr and David Green
VP Communications: Daniel O’Malley
VP Campaigns: Joe Setch
Membership Secretary: Eilidh Dickson, she of the famous Puppet Show Incident
Executive Members: Bobbi White …
On Monday, I wrote about the good things Liberal Democrats are doing in Government and also expressed concern that nobody was out there giving the Liberal Democrat perspective in a way that would resonate with and encourage members and activists. I know that some of them felt a bit exposed. They were out there on a day when we were under media pressure, and nobody was giving them any air cover. It’s a balance, of course. There have been times when we’ve complained that our ministers are out there defending things we feel uncomfortable with. These things can be …
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 650 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.
The Lib Dems are committed to levying a new household tax (known as the Mansion Tax) of 1% on the value of properties over £2m. Which of these statements best represents your own view?
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If you wish to submit evidence to Helena Morrissey’s Independent Inquiry into the culture, processes and complaints within the Party, you have just two days left to do so. Do not miss your chance for your voice to be heard. Evidence must be submitted to [email protected] by Friday 5th April.
Helena explained what she was looking for in an article on this site last week:
With a week to go before the deadline for written submissions, I’d like to make a further call for any evidence that may be relevant to my independent inquiry. As previously indicated, the review covers three
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Liberal Democrat MP for Bristol West Stephen Williams is Total Politics magazine’s MP of the month for April persuading the Commons to pass his motion calling on the Government to make progress towards lowering the voting age to 16. We brought you the story earlier this year.
Total Politics wrote about Stephen’s work:
The MP’s care for young people’s representation is self-evident, as he has also served on the children, schools and families committee and education and skills committee. In 2006, he organised the latter committee’s first inquiry into
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Like Caron, I spent more than a healthy amount of my Bank Holiday Monday watching BBC Parliament’s re-run of the 1983 general election.
It’s not an election I remember (I was 6). But the symmetry of yesterday’s hyperbolic Guardian (‘The day Britain changed’) front page and the televised reminder of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide seemed calculated to confirm the left’s view that 1st April 2013 marked the ultimate victory of those on the right who wanted (and still want) to destruct the welfare state.
What Mrs T, Geoffrey Howe …
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 319th 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 (24-30 March, 2013), 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:
I spent more of my bank holiday than is healthy watching the rerun of the 1983 election on BBC Parliament.
When I lived through it, I was an innocent and idealistic 15 year old. I really believed people would be so outraged that the Alliance had polled 7 million votes, finishing marginally behind Labour but with about a ninth of their seats. As Shirley Williams said, it was “absolute rubbish.” Surely we would have PR within a decade?
Thirty years on, it depresses me that we are no further forward. Westminster remains the last bastion of first past the post, for Scots …
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 650 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.
It has been proposed the Liberal Democrats should be able to allow job-share candidates to stand on a joint ticket for election to Parliament to open up the role of MP to a wider group of people than at present. If elected, agreed protocols around voting, serving on select committees and other …
The Children’s Society reveals that 1.2 million school age children in poverty aren’t getting free school meals, 700,000 because they aren’t even entitled to them.
At the same time the Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill comes into force, under which almost two thirds of the money saved comes from the poorest households. According to the Department for Work and Pensions, the effect of the Bill is to increase child poverty by 200,000 children. The Institute of Fiscal Studies estimates that by 2015/16 there will be 300,000 more children in poverty than today.
The bedroom tax, which kicks in this month, affects 660,000 lower …
How would non-partisan observers see the condition of UK democracy over the decades as viewed from above the stratosphere ?
With Labour they might see a political party that replaced the Liberals as the party of reform in the 1930s and after WW2, based on representing the ‘working class’ – then working mostly in industry. They might contrast this with today’s Labour party – now mostly funded and controlled by public sector unions – both a strength and weakness in terms of the progression of democracy. A public sector union is a very peculiar animal. Without the constraints of industrial competition, and with senior ‘two-hatted’ civil servants facing conflicts between the public interest and the interests of their unions, one can understand why the Labour party has certain weaknesses as part of the democratic system. Hence their conflation of the public interest with ever-expanding public employment, usually couched in the language of additional benefits to the public, (and a policy cohabitee with Tory centralization). Therein lies Labour’s key weakness as well as its strength.
Last week, Mary Reid published an excellent couple of articles — Changing culture is a long term project – the past; and its companion piece: the future — highlighting social progress achieved in her lifetime.
One area she didn’t mention is the way parliament is much more diverse today than it has been in the past. I mention it today in part at least to respond to Aditya Chakrabortty’s post in today’s Guardian (David Miliband and the debasement …
I hope you all spotted that we had not one, but two, April Fool posts yesterday.
Simon McGrath announced a Special Lib Dem Conference to be held on April 1st 2016 when all former Lib Dem Ministers would don sackcloth and ashes and apologise for their actions in Government. I hear a song coming on …
That was followed by a post by our new co-editor, Caron Lindsay on how you can help Liberal Democrat Voice. Oh, sorry … that was deadly serious.
But later in the morning the Lib Dem Voice collective revealed that secret talks had been going on between the …
A Bank Holiday snippet from the Daily Mail today. It shows both good news and bad news for Nick Clegg:
Poor, benighted Nick Clegg. According to the Lib Dem Voice website, his approval rating is minus 2 per cent. Not that David Cameron can take much comfort from the figure. The BBC1 quiz Pointless gave 100 people 100 seconds to name a Cabinet minister. Clegg was top with 32 per cent compared with 22 per cent for Cameron and Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business Secretary. No one mentioned George Osborne.
Liberal Democrats have taken a pounding across the Labour supporting media over the past few days. Article after soundbite condemns the welfare reforms which come into effect from now. It’s been a clever, co-ordinated onslaught which seems aimed at demoralising Liberal Democrat members and activists rather than opposing the changes themselves. After all, I haven’t heard Ed Miliband promise to repeal any of them. And we have to remember that it was the Labour Government who introduced Local Housing Allowance – the Bedroom Tax of the private sector.
That Labour would use …
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 650 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.
David Cameron has said the next Conservative election manifesto will include a pledge to hold an in/out referendum on the UK’s continuing membership of the European Union. Do you think the next Liberal Democrat manifesto should include the same pledge?
58% – No, it
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Even before the Eastleigh result was announced it had become clear that strong Liberal Democrat and UKIP campaigning has the potential to crush Conservative support from both sides. Many Conservative seats throughout England could fall to one party or the other given the right co-ordination of UKIP and Liberal Democrat strategy. Even where the Liberal Democrats could not win, the Conservatives could be sufficiently weakened to hand a seat to UKIP, and vice versa.
While of course UKIP and the Liberal Democrats have big policy differences, most notably on Europe, if there …
The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.
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An unprecedented alliance of groups within the Liberal Democrats have announced an agreement to turn the Spring 2016 gathering into a special Conference. Liberal Vision, the Social Liberal Forum, Liberal Left and Liberal Reform have agreed with the Federal Conference Committee that normal arrangements will be suspended in favour of a special ‘we’re sorry’ day.
A spokesman for the four groups said:
Rather than spending each Conference for years to come rejecting various policy items which the Party supported while in Coalition it seemed much easier to do it all at once .
The format has been agreed as a series …
It’s Sunday afternoon, so here are a baker’s dozen of thought-provoking articles to stimulate your thinking juices, culled from all those I’ve linked to this past fortnight. You can follow me on Delicious here.
Even Britain has now abandoned austerity – Anatole Kaletsky highlights the abandonment of Plan A: “While Osborne repeated his mantra that “you can’t cure a crisis caused by debt with more debt,” he will now do exactly this by creating a British equivalent of government-guaranteed Fannie Mae mortgages to …
Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander has published a robust defence of the Coalition’s welfare reforms in The Sun on Sunday. Here’s how it starts:
Last week a young woman came to talk to me about her housing situation. Her frustration was obvious. She was working hard in a low-paid job and was stuck in an overcrowded home with a young family and desperately needed to move to a bigger home. She couldn’t understand why she had to wait so long to get a home that was the right size for her and her family. It’s a story
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Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 650 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.
In principle, do you support or oppose withdrawing benefits from unemployed people who refuse offers of work without good reason?
21% – Oppose
9% – Don’t know
The overwhelming view — held by 7-in-10 of those Lib Dems who responded — was that in principle withdrawing benefits …
Nick Clegg’s latest letter to supporters wishes us all the very best for a relaxing Easter holiday. He’s off on a family break visiting his parents — or “holidaying at a millionaires’ playground” if you prefer the Mirror‘s styling. My Co-Editor Caron Lindsay has written a reply highlighting the many and various ways Lib Dem members will be spending the break: campaigning. However you spend it — we at LibDemVoice wish you all the best.
Just a quick note this week to wish you a happy
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Last Tuesday I wrote a post in which I looked at some of the major changes for the better that had occurred in my lifetime. In many cases they were eventually consolidated in legislation, but cultural shifts had to happen over a long period of time before Parliament was willing to formalise them in law.
Before outlining some ideas for the future, I wanted to highlight a few more changes in my lifetime. Some of these required only minimal or no legislation but the changes in culture were nevertheless significant.
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“Tell me more about what the Liberal Democrats believe”. Whether it’s a possible new member, a potential council candidate or a new office volunteer asking, I’ve always found over the years that one of the trickier questions to answer. Not because of the inherent question, but rather because of the paucity of materials available to conveniently answer it.
There’s always been a simple short 1 or 2 sentence answer to hand (such as the slogan of the day or an extract from the preamble to the party’s constitution) or a really long answer available, such as Conrad Russell’s superb An …
When I heard yesterday that the local MP had called for the NHS Medical Director to resign following his decision to suspend all paediatric heart surgery at Leeds General Infirmary I dismissed it as predictable populist rabble rousing in search of a good local headline. On realising it was our own Greg Mulholland I felt angry and ashamed. How could one of our MPs have got this so wrong? Or as Stephen Thornton, the Chief Executive of the Health Foundation put it last night, “How low will local MPs stoop? Why does ‘local’ always trump quality in their eyes”. Quite.
In …
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 650 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.
Lord Rennard has been accused of sexual impropriety during his time as Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats. He has denied all the allegations. From what you have seen or heard about the story, how well or badly do you think the Liberal Democrats handled the allegations against Lord Rennard during his …
The annual conference of the Political Studies Association (PSA) offers the discipline a chance to get together, share ideas and support the publicans of a particular city for a few days. This year, it was hosted by the city of Cardiff, the last of a four-year tour of the capitals of the UK. As a young PhD student, these conferences offer me a chance to not only meet and get merry with more senior academics; they also let you see how the discipline is evolving through panels and papers, as well as more informal sessions.
What is always disappointing …
It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock (ahem, ish). Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:
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What does a Lib Dem “trans activist” look like? (Caron Lindsay)
Winning back a generation starts with fixing the broken student loan system (Tom Gordon MP)
Welcome to my day: 21 September 2026 – time to clean up our politics? (Mark Valladares)
What I would have said about homeless children at Conference (Suzanne Fletcher)
Caron’s kitchen table diary (Caron Lindsay)
David Allen 
David Raw 
Paul R 
Johnmc 
Jack Nicholls 
A podcast on Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down
We are in the fight of our lives: Ed Davey
My view on a bland Lib Dem conference
