Liberal Democrat Voice

OECD tax data: updated, still surprising

By Mark Pack | Tue 21st August 2012 - 2:50 pm

Back in December last year I blogged about how tax hasn’t changed over time, quoting the Mirrlees review:

Despite some predictions to the contrary, countries are not being forced inexorably to tax less in an increasingly globalized and competitive world economy. Between 1975 and 2008, taxes rose as a proportion of national income in virtually every OECD country. On average, the tax take rose from 29.4% to 34.8% of national income. In no OECD country was there a significant fall in the tax take over this period…

Posted in News | Tagged tax | 3 Comments

LibLink: John Pugh MP – With hindsight, Cable’s deficit reduction plan looks better than Osborne’s

By NewsHound | Tue 21st August 2012 - 1:20 pm

Lib Dem MP John Pugh has written a thoughtful, balanced piece on economic policy for the New Statesman website. He freely admits he has voted for every part of George Osborne’s economic strategy brought before the Commons (“I did not know if it would achieve all its major objectives but I certainly did not know it would not”) but says the facts are plain: it’s not working. Here’s an excerpt:

Yes, jobs are being created in the private sector, unemployment is not moving upwards, the deficit is down, our export markets are engaging with the emerging economies, inflation is low and

…

Posted in LibLink | Tagged economy, george osborne, john pugh and vince cable | 23 Comments

Opinion: It’s time for Assange to stop using WikiLeaks as a smokescreen

By Nick Sutton | Tue 21st August 2012 - 11:15 am

On Friday, three women in Russia were handed two year prison sentences for walking into a Moscow cathedral and performing a three minute protest song about the rotten state of their government, led by one man (Putin) in some shape or other, for nearly 13 years. The verdict has been condemned by the UK, US and German governments, human rights groups and the EU, who see this as a real test of Russia’s and Vladimir Putin’s credentials as a the leader of a ‘democratic’ state, something that has been …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged bradley manning, ecaudor, featured, julian assange, rape, sweden and wikileaks | 102 Comments

When should the Coalition end? Here’s what our survey said…

By Stephen Tall | Tue 21st August 2012 - 8:20 am

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 500 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Three-quarters want Coalition to go on til 2015 – but 40% say it should end early to allow for differentiation

LDV asked: When would you like the Coalition to end?

…

Posted in LDV Members poll | Tagged ConservativeHome | 5 Comments

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What the public thinks of… Cameron & Clegg for ditching Lords reform & boundary changes & of the Lib Dems in Coalition

By Stephen Tall | Mon 20th August 2012 - 7:55 pm

Here’s four intriguing findings from a ComRes poll for the Mirror and Independent released yesterday and conducted 15th-16 August…

By 34%-29% public thinks Cameron was WRONG to abandon House of Lords reform

Q: Do you agree or disagree that David Cameron was right to abandon the attempt to make changes to the House of Lords?

Interestingly 21% of Conservative voters disagreed with their party leader’s decision. Also interesting: the views of Labour and Lib Dem voters on this question were near-identical, disagreeing with David Cameron’s decision …

Posted in Polls | Tagged comres | 6 Comments

BBC: ‘Political parties’ donations fall by almost £1m’

By Stephen Tall | Mon 20th August 2012 - 2:05 pm

Here’s the BBC News report:

Donations to political parties fell by almost £1m during the second quarter of this year, official figures show. The Electoral Commission said £7,873,478 in funding had been reported – down £992,312 on the first three months of the year. The Conservatives received £3,785,579, Labour £2,964,471 and the Liberal Democrats £717,797.

The Lib Dem figure of £718k is the party’s lowest second quarter fundraising performance since 2006 (when it was less than half this year’s total, at £334k). This graph from the Electoral Commission which compiles the figures shows the disparity between the parties’ financial muscle, …

Posted in News | Tagged donations (Lib Dem), electoral commission and party funding | 4 Comments

What do we Lib Dems want from a reshuffle?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 20th August 2012 - 9:45 am

While the massed ranks of the mostly right-wing political commentariat obsess about the imminent Cabinet reshuffle, Lib Dem interest has been relatively muted.

In one sense this isn’t surprising.

As it stands, 18 of the party’s 57 MPs are on the government payroll, so Nick Clegg has little room for manouevre even among the middle ranks of government. And with only five cabinet positions (four if you exclude Nick himself as Deputy Prime Minister) there’s even less wiggle-room at the top table. Nonetheless, this reshuffle will most likely be …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged coalition agreement, Danny Alexander, featured, fraser nelson, lynne featherstone, nick clegg, nick harvey, reshuffle and steve webb | 39 Comments

Who Lib Dem members want to see stay/axed in the next Cabinet reshuffle

By Stephen Tall | Mon 20th August 2012 - 8:15 am

LDV asked: In the next couple of months David Cameron and Nick Clegg are likely to hold a Cabinet reshuffle. For each of the following 28 Cabinet members please say whether a) they’re doing a good job and should stay in their post, b) they could be doing a better job but should still stay in their post, c) they’re doing a poor job and should be removed from their post or d) Don’t Know/Never heard of them…?
NB: To produce the overall ‘net stay in post’ figures, below, I’ve added together the first two options (a and b above) and subtracted the third (c).

All the data is available below, but here are the key two Top 5s for those who want the quick skinny.

Top 5 cabinet members Lib Dem party members think should stay in post:

Posted in LDV Members poll | Tagged cabinet and reshuffle | 16 Comments

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #287

By The Voice | Sun 19th August 2012 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 287th 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 (12-18 August, 2012), 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:

Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment

Review: 101 Ways To Win An Election by Mark Pack & Edward Maxfield

By Stephen Tall | Sun 19th August 2012 - 1:25 pm

101 Ways To Win An Election is a welcome and pleasant surprise.

Now that might seem a lukewarm introduction to a review of a book co-written by my co-editor Mark Pack, together with fellow Lib Dem Edward Maxfield. But it’s not intended to be either ironic or half-hearted because what makes this book such an excellent guide to political campaigning is that it succeeds in being a whole lot more than that.

In fact, its 308 pacy pages cheerfully zig-zag between marketing manual, self-help book, and campaigning A-Z — with dollops of political history, pop-psychology, and behavioural economics thrown in for good measure.

The authors have clearly put a lot of thought into creating a book which people will actually want to read — and to re-read — on a subject many but the most obsessed political aficionado might initially dismiss as dull and boring.

Posted in Books | Tagged edward maxfield and Mark Pack | 2 Comments

Who’s up, who’s down? How party members rate the performances of leading Lib Dems

By Stephen Tall | Sun 19th August 2012 - 9:00 am

Today we focus on the performances of the leading lights of the Liberal Democrats — those of our MPs in the cabinet, those occupying ministerial positions, and other leading Lib Dems.

LDV asked: How would you rate the performances of the following leading Liberal Democrats and government ministers?

Full results are published below, but here’s three key lists for those who want to cut to the chase… (with comparison to June 2012 ratings in brackets)

Top 5 Lib Dem performers in the Government:

Posted in LDV Members poll | 5 Comments

Opinion: Liberal Youth take on a Dictator… with teddy bears

By Harriet Ainscough and Sam Fisk | Sat 18th August 2012 - 2:10 pm

In Belarus, a country within Europe and bordering the European Union, Alexander Lukashenko’s regime continues to stifle free speech and fend off calls for democracy. We’ve previously posted about how clapping in the street can earn you an arrest, now it seems a photo with a teddy bear can do that too.

Last week a Swedish PR firm parachuted teddy bears holding messages about democracy over Minsk, democracy in an attempt to break through the heavy media censorship. This caused a diplomatic dispute, with Lukashenko asking all Swedish diplomats within Belarus to leave. Since then two journalists have been …

Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | 3 Comments

Scrapped Greater Manchester Police Authority holds party at 5-star hotel

By Mark Pack | Sat 18th August 2012 - 12:47 pm

The Manchester Evening News reports:

Members of Greater Manchester’s axed police authority are to toast their own demise – with a taxpayer-funded bash at the five-star Lowry Hotel.

About 100 people are expected for a three-course meal at the swish city-centre venue to mark the scrapping of the authority.

Set up to hold Greater Manchester Police to account, it will make way for the region’s first elected police commissioner in November.

Well, that’s one way for the (Labour-run) body to spend money…

UPDATE: The dinner has now been axed (though may still cost some money).

Posted in News | Tagged greater manchester | 5 Comments

On Twitter, Leveson, media standards… and Labour MP Ian Austin labelling Russell Brand “a disgusting, sleezy [sic], horrible creep”

By Stephen Tall | Sat 18th August 2012 - 12:13 pm

I love Twitter and I hate Twitter. At its best, it is a brilliant way of enjoying a shared moment with friends and friends-of-friends, whether glorying in the Olympics or bitching about X-Factor. At its worst, it is a bile-filled bearpit, where opinions are sprayed with scant regard for their accuracy in the race to be first or funniest or most outraged.

For fans of cognitive dissonance, it’s a wonderful window-on-the-world which explains much about how and why the media works as it does. Lord Justice Leveson would have learned much from observing a life-in-the-day-of Twitter.

He would, for example, see …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured, ian austin, leveson inquiry, russell brand and twitter | 4 Comments

Adrian Sanders writes… What progress has been made towards achieving full primary education for all children?

By Adrian Sanders | Sat 18th August 2012 - 9:49 am

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were created by the world’s richest nations and institutions to tackle the major problems facing the developing world. The second goal states that by 2015 all children should be able to complete primary school. This was an ambitious goal as primary enrolment rates in 1999 were under 60% in some countries.

Current primary school enrolment stands at 90%, however progress varies over the developing world. The enrolment rates of wealthier regions like Latin America have remained roughly the same over the last decade staying around 95%, but poorer regions have seen much larger improvement since the …

Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged international development and millennium development goals | 11 Comments

The LDV Friday Five: 17 August 2012

By The Voice | Fri 17th August 2012 - 5:00 pm

It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

Posted in Friday Five | Leave a comment

Independent View: Danny Alexander’s green line

By Liz Hutchins | Fri 17th August 2012 - 1:49 pm

Danny Alexander is right to recognise Liberal Democrats will not be forgiven for delivering George Osborne’s attacks on the environment. Alexander’s ‘Generating Growth and Jobs in a Time of Austerity’ conference motion is pretty bold and we hope it is an opening salvo in a serious re-adjustment in the Liberal Democrats’ environment agenda in Government.

Alexander’s intervention is needed. Osborne has seized the environment as an issue and is using it to play to the Tory right in an attempt to save his political skin. This has involved much tilting at wind turbines and charming his friends and relatives by proposing …

Posted in The Independent View | Tagged Danny Alexander, energy, energy policy and friends of the earth | 12 Comments

Have I gone mad?

By Mark Pack | Fri 17th August 2012 - 12:39 pm

I’m wondering if I’ve gone mad.

There’s this issue that I just can’t think about without one question occurring to me. For me, it is blindingly obvious, absolutely basic and impossible to avoid if you want to talk about the issue.

And the thing is, it doesn’t appear to have occurred to anyone else.

I’ve read plenty of media stories about the issue, and I’ve not found one that asks, answers or even obliquely mentions this blindingly obvious question.

The problem gets worse than that, however.

I’ve waded through lots of public comments on the …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured and journalism | 50 Comments

Jeremy Browne – working for abolition of the death penalty abroad

By Jeremy Browne MP | Fri 17th August 2012 - 12:22 pm

Next month, it will be 48 years since the last execution on British soil. Internationally, more countries than ever have been electing to also abandon the death penalty. Amnesty International’s latest report on death sentences and executions shows that the number of countries retaining capital punishment has decreased by one third over the last decade. More countries than ever are also instituting moratoriums on the practice. However, Amnesty reports that 149 more people were known to be executed in 2011 than in 2010. In the Middle East in particular, 2011 saw a steep rise in the number of recorded executions. …

Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged death penalty and jeremy browne | 3 Comments

20’s Plenty: Road Safety Set For Debate At Conference

By Antony Hook and Sarah Osborne | Fri 17th August 2012 - 10:30 am

We are ecstatic that our motion “Twenty’s Plenty: Saving Lives On The Road” will be debated at the Party Conference next month. We believe that the Liberal Democrats can best lead the country on road safety.

Too many of us, including one author of this article, have experienced the dreaded phone call or police visit to say a friend or relative has been killed on a residential street. We do all we can to prevent this avoidable pain.

Road deaths are a public health crisis. We suffer one of the highest proportions of pedestrian fatalities in Europe and it is worsening. 2011 saw a 12% increase in pedestrian casualties, and half of road deaths and serious injuries in Britain occur on 30 mph limit roads.

There is cause for hope. We can change this. Our motion calls for 20mph to become the standard speed limit on residential roads.

Posted in Conference and News | Tagged speed limits | 56 Comments

Revealed: What Lib Dem members think of Ed Miliband and David Cameron

By Stephen Tall | Fri 17th August 2012 - 8:05 am

Miliband, at -20%, gets best rating yet among Lib Dems

LDV asked: Do you think Ed Miliband is doing well or badly as leader of the Labour party?

Posted in LDV Members poll | Tagged david cameron and ed miliband | 43 Comments

The Conference agenda – media roundup

By Mary Reid | Thu 16th August 2012 - 3:15 pm

The agenda for Autumn Conference has been online for five days, and has already attracted attention from the media. It is instructive to see which stories are picked up by whom.

The Guardian focuses on the Housing Policy paper under the headline: Liberal Democrats propose major housebuilding programme.

The Independent homes in on the motion proposed by Danny Alexander on ‘Generating Growth and Jobs in a Time of Austerity’: Liberal Democrats slam Osborne over green policies.

Our opposition to airport expansion, and the motion from Watford, are also of interest to the Independent: Lib Dems to oppose South East airport expansion plans. This is also picked up by the BBC, by ITN.

Posted in Conference and News | Tagged Danny Alexander | 17 Comments

Lib Dems publish plan for 300,000 homes to be built a year

By Mark Pack | Thu 16th August 2012 - 12:44 pm

I’ve talked a few times about how housing has become an increasingly important policy in the rhetoric of Liberal Democrat ministers (see Danny Alexander set to up the ante on anti-Tory rhetoric and housing and Vince Cable on “one of the great acts of economic vandalism in modern times”).

Whether or not that rhetoric will produce policy results is the big question.

At which point, enter stage left a policy motion in the agenda for next month’s Liberal Democrat conference:

Posted in Conference and News | Tagged featured, housing and richard kemp | 47 Comments

LibLink: Mark Pack – Give people power over the sharing of their data

By NewsHound | Thu 16th August 2012 - 12:25 pm

The Voice‘s Mark Pack has been writing about individual electoral registration for the IPPR’s website:

If I were to move, I would be quite happy to let the gas company, the TV Licensing authority, the local council’s tax department, the electoral registration services and many others know, all in one go.

Posted in Election law and LibLink | Tagged electoral registration | Leave a comment

Opinion: Are we being taken for a First(Group)-class ride?

By Prateek Buch | Thu 16th August 2012 - 10:55 am

As someone who has used the west coast mainline regularly for the past fifteen years (and would have done so more if the cheaper fares were more readily available), I can testify to a significant improvement in reliability and levels of service in recent years. Much of this was of course down to the £9bn and more of public investment in upgrading the line, and much was down to Virgin themselves – I carry no torch for Sir Richard but there’s little denying that Virgin trains, expensive though they undoubtedly can be, ran what became a reliable, punctual, comfortable service.

But …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged FirstGroup, railways, richard branson, trains and transport | 19 Comments

What Lib Dem members say about the party’s direction and Nick Clegg’s leadership

By Stephen Tall | Thu 16th August 2012 - 9:05 am

Net satisfaction with party’s direction dips to +23%

LDV asked: Do you think, as a whole, the Liberal Democrats are on the right course or on the wrong track? (Comparison with June’s figures.)

Posted in LDV Members poll | Tagged featured and nick clegg | 21 Comments

Opinion: Liberal Democrats must stay true to our traditions post 2015

By David Thorpe | Wed 15th August 2012 - 1:17 pm

The period between now and the next general election in 2015 will be crucial in deciding the immediate future of the Liberal Democrats-but the post general election period will have a much longer term significance. I have long been one of those Liberal Democrats who believe that the word ’Liberal’ has been a little to silent in the party name – as policies around goldfish at fairs and ever increasing public spending without corresponding accountability have cast the party a long way from the roots developed by Beveridge, Keynes and Gladstone.

Posted in News | Tagged david cameron, ed miliband, equidistance, keynes, william beveridge and william gladstone | 65 Comments

LibLink: Mark Pack – Voters get to choose how they think

By NewsHound | Wed 15th August 2012 - 11:50 am

Over on the Biteback Publishing website, The Voice‘s Mark Pack has been writing about how voters make their decisions:

One of the findings increasingly coming out from research into how we make decisions is that often we make a decision using our subconscious and only afterwards come up with a justification for it. Our subconscious decides, our conscious rationalises.

It is an intriguing – and in some ways, scary – finding, that is best illustrated by a clever experiment where people were shown photographs of two similar, but different, people and asked to pick which one was the most attractive. They were then given that photograph and asked to explain the reason for their decision.

Except that what the researchers did was try out a bit of sleight of hand, so sometimes the person was actually given the photograph of the other person.

Posted in LibLink | Tagged campaigning and Mark Pack | 5 Comments

Opinion: Deregulate Sunday trading to go for growth

By Theo Clifford | Wed 15th August 2012 - 9:36 am

The Coalition needs to get over its obsession with small businesses – and deregulate Sunday trading
With the recent fragility of the Coalition, it’s easy to forget that the Lib Dems do agree with the Tories on some issues. If we didn’t, it would have been impossible to forge a workable government in the first place. Mounting instability over constitutional reform makes it all the more important that the two parties can work together where their philosophies do align. One of those areas is economic and regulatory policy. Despite some notable blind spots, the Conservatives do share our belief in the strength of the free market to provide long-run economic growth. While many regulations are necessary and right, the Coalition should be able to work together in order to eliminate arbitrary and damaging rules that distort rather than level the economic playing field.

Posted in News and Op-eds | Tagged coalition, mark pritchard, small business, sunday trading, usdaw and vince cable | 55 Comments

Op-eds

Conference or What? (Roderick Lynch)
Where next on the Triple Lock? (Shaun Ennis)
I watched Ed Davey’s speech. Here’s why it matters (Kamran Hussain)
Citizens abroad and party strategy (Tom McAdam)
How to capture the Tonbridge Tories (Cody Butler)

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Three-quarters want Coalition to go on til 2015 – but 40% say it should end early to allow for differentiation

By 34%-29% public thinks Cameron was WRONG to abandon House of Lords reform

Top 5 cabinet members Lib Dem party members think should stay in post:

Top 5 Lib Dem performers in the Government:

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

Miliband, at -20%, gets best rating yet among Lib Dems

Net satisfaction with party’s direction dips to +23%

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