We wake up to two very good by-election gains in Adeyfield West ward on Dacorum Borough Council (think Hemel Hempstead) and Lodbourne ward on North Dorset District Council. First, Dacorum…
Adeyfield West, Hemel Hemstead by-election result: Lib Dem Ron Tindall 363, Lab 278, Con 229, UKIP 193, ED 51. Lib Dems go from 3rd to 1st!
— Sara Bedford (@sarabedford) March 21, 2013
Meanwhile, in North Dorset;
Next Tuesday, which is both my nephew’s 14th birthday and the 32nd anniversary of the founding of the SDP, the Justice and Security Bill comes back to the House of Lords for consideration. Now, my esteemed colleague Mr Valladares has given a very helpful account of what the Lords can and can’t do. He goes on to suggest that the Upper House will often back down in the face of pressure from the elected Chamber.
If ever, though, there was a time for the peers to kick off, it is now, when the right to a fair trial remedy for …
Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond announced today that the Independence Referendum would be held on 18th September 2014. Three and a half years of preparation and campaigning will come to an end and Scotland will decide whether its future lies within the UK or out of it. At the moment, the polls are looking pretty good for staying in the Union, but that is no cause for complacency. Every vote will have to be fought for across the whole country. It will be a very different sort of campaign.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that when you were deciding on …
It’s hard to believe, but more than a year has passed since Ed Davey stepped into Chris Huhne’s shoes at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Ed has spent much of that time fighting George Osborne and the Treasury to ensure that the Energy Bill – a once-in-a-generation opportunity to direct £110bn of investment towards a clean energy future – achieves its stated aims: cut carbon, secure our electricity supply, and rein in household fuel bills.
These are the aims of Liberal Democrats everywhere, and credit must be given to Ed for the vigour with he has pursued
…
House building fell dramatically following the financial crisis and hasn’t yet fully recovered. Last year 118,900 new homes were built in England. But with the number of households predicted to grow by 232,000 a year for the next 20 years and thousands currently unable to get onto the housing ladder, we need to build more than double that each year to keep up with demand, but we also need to tackle the sluggish housing market. That’s why housing was at the heart of the Budget yesterday, with more help for first time buyers and more money for affordable homes.
The …
Cyprus’s parliament couldn’t have been much clearer in its rejection of the plan, negotiated between eurozone members, to bail out the country’s failing banks. As a result, Cyprus is now turning from Brussels to Moscow for a lifeboat, and it looks like a deal might be done. Russia is demonstrating once again that is never backward in coming forward to build (or buy) new strategic alliances.
Yet outside the markets pages of the Financial Times, the merits of the original plan seem to have been little-discussed, with the assumption being that the plan was a universally bad one. But actually the idea …
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 2010, the Lib Dems pledged to increase the personal income tax allowance to £10,000, cutting the tax bills of low- and middle-income earners. Which of the following personal taxation policies, if any, would you most like to see the party campaigning on at the next election?
…
As one might expect, groups within the Lib Dems are united in welcoming George Osborne’s announcement that the coalition will deliver the Lib Dem policy of a £10,000 income tax personal allowance next year, earlier than previously expected. Both the Social Liberal Forum and Liberal Reform also agree that the chancellor needs to be more ambitious when it comes to stimulating economic growth, though the groups diverge somewhat on how to do so.
First up, here’s the SLF’s response:
The Budget contains some welcome measures, especially on childcare costs and raising the personal tax allowance to £10,000 next year. The
…
Here’s an email I sent to the BBC’s acting Director of News, Fran Unsworth, last night. Hat-tip to Richard Morris for highlighting the issue.
Dear Fran,
On the front of the 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto were four priorities. The first of these was a pledge to deliver “fairer taxes” by raising the threshold at which people begin to pay income tax to £10,000.
In his Budget speech this week, the chancellor stood up in the House of Commons and announced that next year the coalition will deliver this policy in full. It would not be an understatement to say, therefore, that this …
George Osborne’s fourth budget saw him finalise the commitment to implement in full the Lib Dems’ number one manifesto commitment: taking out of income tax all those who earn less than £10k a year.
It prompted this post by my Co-Editor Caron Lindsay yesterday – Why it’s worth being a member of the Liberal Democrats – recalling the recent history of this focus on raising the tax-free allowance. Which in turn triggered this comment by Alex Wilcock, recalling the slightly less recent history:
The fact is, raising thresholds was party policy in the 1990s, then put back on the agenda when Chris Huhne made it the central plank of his Leadership campaign in February 2006.
Curious, I thought I’d do a quick fact-check. Here’s what I found:
Move along, nothing to see here… This was a steady-as-she-goes budget at a time when the economy is anything-but-steady.
Of course as Lib Dems it’s great to welcome the final push towards lifting all those paid less than £10,000 out of income tax. As my Co-Editor Caron Lindsay notes here, this is a policy direct from the front page of our 2010 manifesto to the Coalition’s budget. That’s no mean achievement — we know that because the Tories keep trying to claim it as …
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 317th 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 (10 – 16 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:
Today, the Liberal Democrats fulfilled their key election pledge of raising the income tax threshold to £10,000.
And they’ve produced a nifty little picture to tell us about it. And we should rightly be proud.
This doesn’t tell the whole story, though. How did this get in to our manifesto in the first place? Did it fall out of the Orange Book and hit David Laws on the head? I have to say there’s no clue in either of the emails I’ve seen from Danny Alexander today.
Actually no. It came from …
There are, at most, 777 days until the next UK General Election. Today’s Budget was the last real chance to introduce measures that will have time to create a real impact before then. This, however, was not a Budget designed to alter the path of the economy in any dramatic way: the Coalition has never veered far from the course set at the Spending Review almost three years ago. Instead, this was a narrow Budget, full of small measures.
That is not to say that this Budget is not important in terms of the next election. Small as its measures were, …
Today’s Budget delivers Liberal Democrat policies to help families with the cost of living and invest in the future of our economy, while making responsible choices to deal with the financial problems Labour left us with.
The announcement that the Coalition will increase the personal allowance to £10,000-one year ahead of schedule-is a huge victory for the Liberal Democrats. At the last General Election, we made big tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes the centre piece of our manifesto. We have delivered that promise-helping deliver a strong economy in a fairer society, so everyone can get on in …
A furore has broken out over whether the Royal Charter on press regulation, and the amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill that accompany it, would mean that bloggers and tweeters would be subject to ‘exemplary damages’ in the event of successful complaints brought against them.
The Guardian’s live blogger Andrew Sparrow initially thought that blogs and Twitter might be subject to regulation by the newly created press regulator – the independent body recommended by Lord Justice Leveson. He was swiftly corrected, and the correction sheds light on the source of confusion – the definition of “relevant publisher” in both the Royal Charter and amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill.
There is no doubt that today is a very good day for the Liberal Democrats. The party has delivered a major pledge from its 2010 manifesto, as this infographic from Mark Pack shows:
This is not an idea that fell out of the Orange Book. It came from Elizabeth Jewkes, an ordinary member. I wonder how she feels today. It goes to show that being a member of this party can give you opportunities to make a real difference to people’s lives.
To deliver on such a pledge …
Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing our planet – if we don’t tackle it we will continue to see extinction of species on an industrial scale, parts of our world will become uninhabitable for humans, and we will see increasing conflict between nations over scarce resources and the mass migration of impoverished peoples. We need to step up to this environmental challenge and use all of our ingenuity and resourcefulness to meet it head-on.
As the Secretary of State I’m determined …
George Osborne is about to get to his feet to deliver his Budget.
In Parliament Square this morning, Enough Food IF campaigners gathered to remind him to stick to the 0.7% overseas aid pledge.
Join us for our budget live blog.
“It was of course inevitable that debit reduction would impact on growth, but what the independent OBR figures show quite clearly is that other factors – namely the weak international picture and higher-than-expected inflation – have had a much greater impact on economic growth. Given the risks of not …
I’m a bit bleary eyed today. One conference is exhausting, two on successive weekends is positively foolhardy. Following that up with a trip to London for Federal Executive is craziness.
I spent the weekend in Dundee where Scottish Liberal Democrats held their main Conference. Over three days, there were no fewer than twelve policy debates, some of them incredibly powerful or controversial. Here are my highlights.
Yes, I’m biased as I proposed the motion rejecting the Government’s proposals, but the debate itself was very high quality. Liberal Youth co-chair Kavya Kaushik won the Russell Johnston award for the best …
We need your help to deliver another Lib Dem win in the Scottish Parliament. We’re on a tight deadline – we need you to act before 5 pm today.
The Liberal Democrats were the first party to support gay rights in a General Election manifesto. For decades, we’ve always been there for equality. The Scottish Liberal Democrats led on equal marriage, before the Federal Party became the first major national party to support the policy.
The Scottish Government are consulting on the details of implementing equal marriage, for a Bill later this year. You can help ensure that the Bill is liberal, well thought out and promotes equality …
If George Osborne really wants to find enough dosh to get Britain out of the mess he has created, our advice should be: Go after the tax-cheating multinational corporations.
It is about time these cross-border pirates were put in their place. And one place to be urgently put is paying tax on the profits made from operating businesses in countries outside their home base.
While no-one knows how exactly much money they are cheating us of, estimates vary from somewhere between £10bn and £20bn. Given that the Economist quotes a total worldwide figure of some $20 trillion lost in avoidance and evasion, that …
Every week, Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Moore MP, writes a column for newspapers in his Borders Constituency. Here is the latest edition.
Despite the fact that we are now well into March, it seems that there is no let up in the cold snowy weather and I know that at this time energy bills remain a major concern to my constituents. To help people reduce these bills and cut down their energy use, the Government has taken action and introduced a scheme called the Green Deal. This enables people to improve the energy efficiency of their …
One of the things that seems to characterise Tory ministers in this government is a remarkable attraction to putting ideology and an assumption that they know best ahead of little details like “facts” and “evidence based policy”.
A good example of this comes in the form of Michael Gove’s education reforms which have been characterised by a breathtaking disregard for decades of research into what works and an aversion to listening to anything or anyone who disagrees with the reforms.
Nevertheless, I’d like to highlight the following facts about education. It would be nice if he paid attention:
…
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.
Thinking of the current state of the economy and the Coalition’s approach, which of the following statements is closest to your own view?
…
A typically colourful quote from Mayor of London Boris Johnson on any ambition he might harbour one day to occupy Number 10:
“I would like to be the lead singer of an international rock group. That was my aim, or a good guitarist. I would love to have been a world-famous painter or a composer. There are many things that I would like to have been able to do. … Obviously, if the ball came loose from the back of a scrum – which it won’t – it would
…
It’s been a long political day, and we have the Budget to look forward to tomorrow. So sit back and enjoy Norman Baker’s first single ‘Piccadilly Circus’, with his band The Reform Club.
The Guardian provides these passnotes:
Baker fits the rockstar profile perfectly. He has been a troublemaker in the House of Commons, and campaigns for environmental and animal welfare causes.
What do the public think are the key determinants of child poverty? New DWP polling released last week aimed to answer this question, but in fact proved anything but conclusive.
Asked to choose four out of a possible eleven factors that should be regarded as important when deciding if a child is growing up in poverty, respondents’ answers were spread remarkably evenly across the board. All the factors – from low income to parental disability, poor housing conditions to debt – were …
The leadership’s positioning over secret courts has angered many of the party faithful over the past week, but for me the major disappointment has been our uncritical support of the Tory inspired ‘spare bedroom subsidy’ policy or how I think more accurately describes it – the ‘bedroom tax’. Our leader Nick Clegg used the provocative ‘spare bedroom subsidy’ term in a Q&A session at last week’s Spring Conference, and it has been repeated by senior Lib Dems including Mike German on Newsnight in the days following.
The policy, which is part of the government’s welfare reform package, will cut the amount …
The publication of a new poll by ICM for Civitas on the NHS should give encouragement to those in the Lib Dems who believe that we should not be bound by a single provider approach to the NHS. The poll shows that people are proud of the NHS but not concerned by who provides their healthcare.
The key question is:
“It shouldn’t matter whether hospitals or surgeries are run by the government, not-for-profit organisations or the private sector, provided that everyone including the least well-off has access to care”.
83% o agreed with …
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