Delete words in headline to suit your own preference for hyperbole and then savour Nick Thornsby’s pithy summary of the Liberal Democrat strategic choice:
The Lib Dem strategy must be public negotiation, not internal opposition
And then go read his post which explains his point in detail with a neat take on the issue.
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For those of you who don’t read the Daily Mail every day, there was a lead article last week all about how awful the Liberal Democrats are. No great surprise there, I hear you say. The reasons given this time were that the Lib Dems are looking to keep the 50p tax rate in place, uphold the Human Rights Act, and “frustrate every effort to cut immigration”. The party is also trying to promote too many green policies as well, ones that “threaten to cripple business”. Apparently, we are “reverting to type as the fringe party mouthpiece of Left-wing causes”.
Yet …
Following Chris Fox’s decision, announced today, to stand down as Chief Executive at the end of November, Nick Clegg and Tim Farron have praised the transformation he has brought to the party organisation.
Chris Fox took over the role of Chief Executive in July 2009. During his time in the role he has led on strategy and the air war and headed up the executive team during the General Election. Since then he has focused on modernising the party which culminated in a move to new high tech headquarters in the heart of Whitehall a week ago.
Chris Fox said:
Interview: Mike Moore MP – Action in Government, ideas for the future
It can’t be much fun being Alex Salmond these days. The euphoria of May has subsided, and he’s realised that there’s nobody else to blame for his majority Government’s actions. On top of that, wherever he looks, he sees the grin of Wilie Rennie, ready to highlight any example of anglophobia, of dodging , delaying, ducking and diving. The Scottish Liberal Democrat leader has had accolade after accolade in the press for providing such high quality opposition to the SNP …
The call made by Mark Pack, amongst others, for suggestions for media reform is both timely and important. For the majority of the country, the media represents the most important source of information we access on a daily basis. As a result, it cannot help but shape our opinions and inform our democratic decision-making; it is a key part of our national discourse and must be seen as such.
And yet the phone hacking scandal has demonstrated that we cannot rely wholly on journalists to hold themselves and their colleagues to account for their own ethical transgressions. A press …
The Saturday morning of party conference sees a consultative sessions on the May 2011 elections and AV referendum. Ahead of that, a brief outline report has been published by the party which is embedded below. It is from James Gurling, chair of the party’s Campaigns and Communications Committee.
The party’s post-general election review has attracted criticism for being kept fairly low profile, both in terms of who was asked to contribute and the subsequent circulation of the lessons. The general election report has not been made public by the party or circulated very far internally. So it’s good to see that one year on the review this time is being done in a more inclusive way – but that only means much if people take the opportunities to take part in the review consultation, either at conference or by submitting views via email as requested in the report.
The experience of the general election report suggests taking part will be well worthwhile, as several key decisions the party has taken since (e.g. over introducing Liberal Democrat Connect) clearly followed on from that report’s recommendations.
The report asks 27 questions. Guest posts for The Voice about one or more of the questions would be most welcome. In the meantime, Liberal Vision has also blogged about the review and consultation.
Liberal Democrats Election Review: May 2011 elections and AV referendum
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 237th 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 (28 August – 3 September, 2011), 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:
Writing in today’s Observer, Liberal Democrat peer Shirley Williams says:
As the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill has ground on, the doubts and questions that accompany it have become ever more difficult to address. This is a bill that has been subjected to a listening exercise, extensive consultation and a report by Steve Field, chairman of the Future Forum, redrafting by Parliament, more than 100 hours of debate, and dedicated efforts by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and the Liberal Democrat minister of state for social care, Paul Burstow, to amend it to meet the worries Lib
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Round 2 of our trip down PPB memory lane. Yesterday we trawled the 1950s, and today it’s time for the 1960s to take centre-stage…
Liberal Party election broadcast 1964 (with Frank Byers, Mark Bonham Carter, Jeremy Thorpe and Margaret Wingfield — alas, with some sound issues)
From today’s Observer:
Nick Clegg has thwarted plans by the education secretary, Michael Gove, to allow the new generation of “free schools” to make profits in the state sector after a massive ideological battle over the coalition’s education policy…
Clegg’s aides say he has also persuaded Gove to amend the admissions code from 2013 to allow free schools and academies to give priority to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds (those on free school meals). Free schools and academies will be expected to do all they can to ensure that, as a minimum, they have the same amount of pupils on free school meals
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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.
You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:
1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …
Well, this is an unusual twist as the changes in Libya reveal documents about relations between foreign governments and Colonel Gaddafi:
The documents claim that MI6 supplied its counterparts in Libya with details on exiled opponents living in the UK, and chart how the CIA abducted several suspected militants before handing them over to Tripoli.
They also contain communications between British and Libyan security officials ahead of Tony Blair’s visit in 2004, and show that British officials helped write a draft speech for Gaddafi when he was
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The party political broadcast (PPB for short) divides the anoraks from the average. Here at Voice Towers we try to cater to both, but this post’s most likely to pique the inerest of the former, as we rewind more than half a century, and recall some of the PPBs of yesteryear…
1951: Viscount Samuel (alas, this one’s brief and with poor sound quality)
(Available on YouTube here.)
The Liberal Answer (1955) with Frank Bowers & John Arlott, who found greater fame as a cricket commentator
The rolling saga that is security checks for people attending Liberal Democrat conference has generated a lot of heat, some light – and a fair degree of confusion. So this post is my attempt to untangle the main aspects of the story, which really fall into three sections: the principle of the checks, the way the checks have been communicated and the way the checks have in practice been carried out.
In theory, the principle of whether or not the Liberal Democrat conference organisers should have agreed to the police’s request for extra security checks on attendees for the autumn conference …
Autumn is traditionally the season why many local councillors and would-be councillor start thinking about sorting out their online activity ahead of next spring’s elections. It’s certainly a good item on the to-do list as leaving it all till after Christmas is leaving it all rather late. So as the weather is distinctively autumnal, here are four tips to make your use of email lists more effective:
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Lembit Opik had a piece in today’s Evening Standard ahead of the results declaration in the London Mayor selection. In it he said he expected to lose and went on to say:
Ever since I was first enticed into entering the fray as a potential candidate, I’ve experienced a remarkable degree of antagonism and aggression from certain Lib Dems.
Most of it has occurred in the strange and self-styled environment of the ‘blogosphere’ – a parallel universe where some people who’ve never been elected to public office feel qualified to pronounce on those who have.
When one meets these people for real, their courage
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Jonathan Fryer, Chair of London Region Liberal Democrats emails party members in London with the news:
The count has just been completed in the ballot for the Liberal Democrat London Mayoral candidate for 2012.
The selection contest turned into a really close race, reflecting the excellent choice of candidates London members were presented with.
I would like to congratulate Brian Paddick warmly on his victory, and all of us at Team London look forward to working with him and our GLA candidates over the next eight months to ensure the best possible result in May.
Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat Mayoral Candidate for 2012
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It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:
(2nd September, 2007-10)
(excluding Liberal Democrat Voice or its variants)
The other day at a London Underground station, I saw a man who was visibly distressed. A 50-something Asian gentleman in a suit, he’d been waiting for his wife when a man asked him to move out of the way on a narrow path. Except he hadn’t just asked him to move – he’d abused him racially and pushed against him.
I could see that he was upset, so I stopped and he told me what had happened. Imagine, however, if, instead of expressing sympathy, I had told him that he was in the wrong for having been in someone’s way …
In the run-up to the Liberal Democrat autumn federal conference, WinkBall is carrying out a series of short video interviews with different Liberal Democrats about the past year, the current political situation and what the future holds.
There are three video interviews up so far:
It’s been a while since we last reminded readers about this, so now seems a good time to publish the information again.
You may have noticed that next to some people’s comments is a small picture of themselves, such as:
If you want a picture to appear next to your comments you need to do two things.
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Whisper it, but it seems they might be starting to get it. It’s only taken them a year and a half.
‘They’ of course are the assorted numpties of the British press and ‘it’ is how coalition government works and just how important and influential Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are within it.
For most of the time since May 2010 a crude and simplistic caricature of our government and the Lib Dems’ role in it has taken hold – that this is really a Tory government and the Lib Dems are either naive puppets being taken for a ride by …
During the week, The Independent covered one of the most interesting pieces of work that has come out on the causes of the riots. It’s a piece of research that was released earlier in August from a group of researchers at Essex and Royal Holloway Universities:
Lack of trust in politicians was a significant factor behind the riots that erupted in England this month, according to a major academic research project.
Although poverty and lax moral values played a part in people’s decision to join the disturbances, a stronger influence was their attitude towards politicians…
According to the report, “There will be
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The Voice’s Mark Pack has been guesting over on the Huffington Post again, this time writing about what he thinks is missing from the Birmingham conference agenda:
There are many weighty issues on the agenda for the Liberal Democrat autumn conference in Birmingham, as well as some potentially significant debates overthe party’s medium term strategy and policy outlook. There is also, however, a curious omission: tax.
The word tax is not completely absent from the agenda, but aside from a reference in one motion calling for the party to look at its tax policy as part of a big policy review, there
…
So writes Paul Goodman in the Daily Telegraph:
That Clegg persuaded his party to cohabit with the Conservatives is a tribute not only to his powers of persistence and his colleagues’ appetite for office, but also to the Coalition Agreement itself. Its importance can be over-stated. The Government has done things that aren’t in it, such as housing benefit cuts. And it won’t do things that are in it, such as postal ballots for primaries. But its carefully crafted terms, approved by a Liberal Democrat team apparently surprised by the co-operation of the Conservative one, achieved many of the party’s objectives.
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I don’t suppose many readers spend much time on the Daily Express. Most people don’t. But a quick glance at yesterday’s editorial rant finds that they have it in for the Lib Dems.
At a time when the tax burden and cost of living are rising and families are being squeezed ever more with each passing day the Lib Dems are fighting the Conservatives not for a tax cut but a tax rise.
This is a reference to the re-emergence of the mansion tax.
Not many Express readers live in £1 million homes. But they aspire to. And just to raise their fears …
Here’s a little conundrum for you.
Imagine you are a journalist working on one of the many titles that the Information Commissioner found was involved in dubious practices to get hold of personal information about people.
Don’t you think it’s quite likely you would now and again have wanted to get hold of someone’s home address? Perhaps to track down someone to doorstep them. Or maybe to trawl round the relatives of someone famous to find if anyone is willing to give you an interview.
Now imagine there is a database of people in Britain which is so comprehensive and has been built …
News from Lib Dem HQ of the Liberal Democrats’ new campaign software:
Campaigning across the party is set to get a major boost when Connect comes online later this year. Connect is the UK version of the world’s leading campaign software that’s being built for the party by Voter Activation Network (VAN).
It is based on the tried and tested technology successfully used by Barack Obama and the Democrats in the US and in several other countries around the world. Connect combines high level security and stability, powerful campaigning tools …
Laws are infringements of an individual’s liberty. Where they exist, they must be justified (and plenty of laws are perfectly justifiable), but those that cannot be justified should be ditched.
We have seen some of this work being done by the Coalition – through the Protection of Freedoms Bill and Vince Cable’s Red Tape Challenge (which is set to repeal the wartime Trading with the Enemy Act) – but there is a hidden layer of rules and regulations, much of it petty, obsolete or needless: council bye-laws.
Let me justify each of those criticisms with examples from the bye-laws currently in …
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Big Tall Tim 
James Brough 
Amanda Clark 
Julian Brookes 
Institute of Urban T 
