Mark Pack

Hundreds of tales of heartbreak and two numbers

By Mark Pack | Tue 17th May 2011 - 8:53 am

The story of May’s election results is not one that can simply be told with numbers. There are too many tales of personal effort and loss for statistics to do justice to the crushing disappointment suffered by many who had worked hard for so long in hundreds of communities across the country.

Nor do statistics do justice to the brilliant resilience in a precious few places – those with amazing gains such as in the Cotswolds and those largely unsung heroes in areas such as Eastleigh and Three Rivers who have got on with running councils and winning elections year after …

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Posted in Local government and Op-eds | Tagged | 6 Comments
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Mark Pack

Government takes action over ‘vulture funds’

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th May 2011 - 7:52 pm

When Labour were in power, Liberal Democrats regularly attacked the government for its inaction over so-called vulture funds (that is, in this context, financial funds who buy up debt from poor countries and try to make a profit out of it). For example, then International Development spokesperson Lynne Featherstone said,

Gordon Brown has said this is immoral but so far it’s been all talk and no action.

The Government needs to take a stand and use its influence in the IMF to help devise an internationally binding system to ensure companies can’t prey on heavily indebted developing countries in this way.

The

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | 6 Comments
John Pugh

John Pugh writes: is an apology in order?

By John Pugh | Mon 16th May 2011 - 2:29 pm

There was little real choice about choosing to enter the coalition. There was little real choice about addressing the nation’s colossal budget. There was no way to avoid risking unpopularity.

As the Liberal Democrat councillors took the bullet for the coalition on local election day and Conservatives emerged relatively unscathed, it must be asked whether the extent of our defeats was avoidable. To put it another way could we have played the coalition game better – both in terms of presentation and in terms of policy?

The answer is unequivocally yes and for that reason MPs owe an apology to …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 60 Comments
Paula Keaveney

Paula Keaveney writes: The Leading of Liverpool

By Paula Keaveney | Mon 16th May 2011 - 1:09 pm

As I write I have just finished my first week as the new Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Liverpool City Council.

And what a week it’s been.

As the first female leader of a major party on the City Council (that’s first ever) I had more than my fair share of attention. I have discovered the joys of the 6 am media call and suddenly being the person everyone wants to talk to.

And the enormity of the challenges ahead has been quickly sinking in.

Here in Liverpool we have a mountain to climb.

Like many …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 10 Comments
Stephen Tall

David Rendel on opposing the Coalition’s formation: “I felt very lonely indeed”

By Stephen Tall | Mon 16th May 2011 - 11:55 am

David Rendel, former Lib Dem MP for Newbury and one-time candidate for the party leadership, has broken his silence about being the sole member of the party’s ruling Federal Executive to vote against the formation of the Coalition with the Conservatives one year ago. Speaking to the BBC, David recalls:

“It was very lonely being on my own. I was with a group of about 250 people – all of whom I liked and respected. But I said in my speech that I felt this was a short-term government and all we would get would be short-term gains. Come the

…

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Mark Pack

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Desmond Banks

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th May 2011 - 10:25 am

Listen to Liberal Democrats make speeches and there are frequent references to historical figures, but drawn from a small cast. Just the quartet of John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, David Penhaligon corner almost all of the market, especially since Bob Maclennan stopped making speeches to party conference. Some of the forgotten figures deserve their obscurity but others do not. Charles James Fox’s defence of civil liberties against a dominating government during wartime or Earl Grey’s leading of the party back into power and major constitutional reform are good examples of mostly forgotten figures who could …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Brian Coleman tops lists of expense claims, again

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th May 2011 - 7:24 am

Conservative London Assembly member Brian Coleman has often been in the news over the years for his expense claims (not to mention his attempt to ban questions of himself), so I hesitate slightly to says it is “news” that new figures from the London Fire Brigade show him topping the list of expense claims:

Assembly Member
Brian Coleman April 2010 to March 2011 £3,480.20
Darren Johnson April 2010 to March 2011 £0.00
Gareth Bacon April 2010 to March 2011 £0.00
Mike Tuffrey April 2010 to March 2011 £0.00
Murad Qureshi April 2010

…

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The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #221

By The Voice | Sun 15th May 2011 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 221st 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 (8-14 May, 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:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Nick Clegg’s irrelevance to loss of AV vote

By Stephen Tall | Sun 15th May 2011 - 4:45 pm

How important was Nick Clegg to the loss of the referendum to reform the electoral system? Very important if you believe this anonymous source quoted recently in The Guardian (hat-tip to James Graham):

Last night a senior source in the campaign for the alternative vote admitted they knew “very early on” that there was no chance of winning the referendum and that Clegg had become part of the problem: “Every time Clegg spoke about AV our polling numbers went into free-fall. We knew from very early on, before the new year, that we couldn’t win, our message wasn’t getting

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 22 Comments
Mark Wright

Opinion: the end of the vision, pt 2

By Mark Wright | Sun 15th May 2011 - 3:00 pm

This follows on from yesterday’s post.

But something happened around new year 2011…

The Tory right, previously marginalised and outweighed by the Lib Dems, somehow forced their way back into the story. Whereas previously it was clear that the Cameron-Clegg axis was running the show, it became increasingly clear that the Hague-Osborne axis was the conduit for the will of the Tory right. The Tory right became petrified that AV would lead to perpetually bland “One Nation” Tory policies and prevent a Thatcherite party winning power alone again. (They were right, of course).

But whereas Cameron had previously gone on without the …

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Posted in News | 20 Comments
Mark Pack

The Sunday papers on Lords, environment and Chris Huhne

By Mark Pack | Sun 15th May 2011 - 11:20 am

From The Observer:

Cabinet ministers have agreed a far-reaching, legally binding “green deal” that will commit the UK to two decades of drastic cuts in carbon emissions…

The deal was hammered out after tense arguments between ministers who had disagreed over whether the ambitious plans to switch to more green energy were affordable. The row had pitted the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, who strongly backed the plans, against the chancellor, George Osborne, and the business secretary, Vince Cable, who were concerned about the cost and potential impact on the economy…

Green groups had feared that ministers would refuse to back the committee

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 39 Comments
Mark Pack

Learning the lessons: round-up

By Mark Pack | Sun 15th May 2011 - 9:54 am

During the week, I’ve done a series of posts about our poor election results, which were leavened by only a few bright spots (such as in Bedford).

The series expands on what I told the BBC and if you missed any of the series, here’s the full list:

Posted in Op-eds | Leave a comment
Nick T

LibLink: Podcast – Mark Pack on the coalition’s first year

By Nick T | Sat 14th May 2011 - 6:34 pm

Over at The Guardian, The Voice’s own Mark Pack has taken part in a discussion with Hugh Muir and Martin Wainwright of The Guardian and Conservative Home’s Harry Phibbs to mark the first anniversary of the formation of the coalition. The discussion touches on most of the high and low points of the last year, and the views of the contributors as to whether the government will last its full term through to 2015.

The discussion, as well as contributions from voters in both Nick Clegg’s and David Cameron’s constituencies, is available to listen to as a podcast at The Guardian …

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Mark Wright

Opinion: the end of the vision, pt 1

By Mark Wright | Sat 14th May 2011 - 3:00 pm

When the coalition was formed it was clear there was a meeting of minds between Clegg and Cameron and the two party leaderships. The vision was of a “joint agenda” – a radical and reforming government that would tackle several of the great UK problems: the gargantuan budget deficit, widespread welfare dependency, constitutional reform, NHS restructuring, etc. The mood was “can do”. No issue was too big, or too totemic to tackle.

The 5-year coalition of a centre-left party and a right-wing party would create a government of moderate centre-right, with the centre of gravity over the Ken Clarke/Michael Heseltine territory. …

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Posted in Op-eds | 8 Comments
Andy Atkins

The Independent View: Lib Dem green credibility in crisis

By Andy Atkins | Sat 14th May 2011 - 10:58 am

The environmental credibility of the Liberal Democrats is under threat.

Its general election manifesto was easily the most ambitious of all the main parties, with the environment firmly at the heart of every policy area.

So our hopes were high when the party joined forces with Cameron’s Conservatives last year  – and higher still when one of the new Prime Minister’s first acts was a promise to lead the greenest Government ever.

Twelve months on the picture looks much bleaker.

Friends of the Earth asked the former chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, Jonathon Porritt, to review the Coalition’s first year in office. His assessment was pretty damning.

Little or no …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged , , , , and | 24 Comments
Mark Pack

Learning the lessons from last week #6: Talking to yourself is not enough

By Mark Pack | Sat 14th May 2011 - 8:57 am

There was a highly symbolic moment late in the Yes campaign when its final TV broadcast was made. The TV broadcast featured Dan Snow and was a remake of an earlier Dan Snow film, shot to higher production standards (understandable) and also, intentionally or not, featuring a cast that overall looked younger. From being a film that featured people of a range of ages it became one that primarily featured young people. That was the general tenor of the campaign – with an overall cast of talking heads (in online films, TV films and elsewhere) younger than the average voter.

Yet in a relatively low turnout (I say “relatively” because, once again, turnout was much higher than many of the auto-pilot electoral doom-mongers in the media predicted) election it’s older people’s votes who are vital.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Stephen Tall

What you think of Lib Dem Voice’s comments policy… your chance to comment!

By Stephen Tall | Sat 14th May 2011 - 8:45 am

In our most recent survey of Lib Dem members signed-up our discussion forum, we asked what folk think of the comments posted by our readers on the public blog.

We’ve tried different approaches to comment moderation on Lib Dem Voice. Initially, we were uber-liberal almost laissez-faire, only moderating comments which we judged were legally risky. Then, at the start of 2010, we decided in response to feedback from readers (including from those who ‘lurk’ but rarely comment) to moderate more actively, declining to accept comments which were at all abusive, or were completely off-topic. Our aim was, and …

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Posted in LDV Members poll and Site news | 58 Comments
Chris Fox

Chris Fox writes: Changing the way we support campaigning

By Chris Fox | Fri 13th May 2011 - 7:46 pm

After three days of consultations with staff and discussions with people such as Regional Chairs I am now able to update you regarding the way we hope to take our campaigning forward.

Some of you will have seen or heard rumours about major changes in the way we support campaigning – some accurate and a lot less so.

It is my responsibility as Chief Executive to ensure that our professional organisation remains as effective as possible and makes best use of the resources available to us. The changes we have made at Cowley Street since the last General Election are already well known, …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 18 Comments
Nick T

LibLink: Chris Huhne – No reform now means bigger reform later

By Nick T | Fri 13th May 2011 - 3:55 pm

The Independent on Sunday featured an article by Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, arguing that, while the AV referendum result was clearly a setback for electoral reformers, the pressures that still exist within the system will at some point make change inevitable. Now that such a change has been delayed, Chris argues, when the time for reform does come again, it will be on a much bigger scale than the relatively modest reform that AV would have been.

Here’s a sample:

The problems to which electoral reformers are responding have not gone away and will continue to demand an answer. British society

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , and | 14 Comments
Jonathan Hunt

Opinion: why the coalition will never bring us votes

By Jonathan Hunt | Fri 13th May 2011 - 11:45 am

One thing the disastrous election results should do is convince Lib Dems that we cannot rely on the coalition to miraculously bring us victory at the next election. However successful the government may be in its raison d’être of reducing the deficit, little of the credit will accrue to Liberal Democrats.

That’s why the party must begin to devise and develop policies that will demonstrate we really are a truly progressive Liberal Democrat party, and not just “a bunch of bloody second-hand Tories” as one voter suggested on his doorstep last week. We must start to be selfish, and put the …

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Posted in Op-eds | 27 Comments
James King

Opinion: 5 reasons the AV referendum lost

By James King | Fri 13th May 2011 - 10:30 am

Here is my take on the five main reasons why the UK gave such a comprehensive thumbs down to AV, with one important lesson for the future:

  1. Tuition fees and trust – This is not the place to rehearse all the arguments on tuition fees. But there can be no denying that it was a significant turning point in public perceptions of Nick Clegg. Even though over 300 Tory MPs voted for higher fees, the Conservative-dominated No campaign ruthlessly exploited this as an argument against coalitions in general and Clegg in particular. While I believe the policy itself can be justified, Clegg clearly under-estimated the political cost of a U-turn, particularly in the context ofacritical referendum that needed to be won only a few months later.
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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 46 Comments
Mark Pack

Learning the lessons from last week #5: You can’t be distinctive with someone else’s vocabulary

By Mark Pack | Fri 13th May 2011 - 8:58 am

A favourite pastime of cynical journalists with space to fill is to take select phrases from the speeches of different party leaders, remove the names of the authors, jumble up the order and then ask the reader to guess which leader said which. Even with the wondrous variety of the English language, it’s no surprise that words and phrases often overlap, even between politicians with radically different views of the world. There is, even so, sometimes a deeper truth in this parlour game for cynics.

It’s a truth that the words of Liberal Democrats in the run up to last Thursday’s …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Major restructuring in the Campaigns Department

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th May 2011 - 10:40 pm

Big changes are afoot in the Liberal Democrat Campaigns Department.

Firstly, the network of Campaigns Officers around the country, currently mostly funded by a mix of central and regional monies, is being moved over to a purely regionally-funded system. That will save the federal party money, but will also cede control over the network to regional (and Welsh/Scottish) parties. The previous joint funding arrangements often took up huge amounts of time to negotiate and also resulted in many tensions over what the people in post should be prioritising in their work (e.g. should a regional campaigns officer be sent to work …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 21 Comments
Kelly-Marie Blundell

Opinion: Putting the Localism Bill in a Social Liberal context

By Kelly-Marie Blundell | Thu 12th May 2011 - 4:15 pm

In embracing principles of The Big Society and Localism, have the Liberal Democrats being railroaded into an erosion of the public state, seemingly by accident?

The initial premise of the Localism Bill appeals greatly to Liberal Democrat in the Conservative-led Coalition. What is there about bringing power to local communities that is not to be liked?

It could be argued that the principles of the Localism Bill were in fact first proposed within the Coalition Agreement, where Page 11 states;

We will promote the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 12 Comments
David Boyle

Opinion: It’s all my fault!

By David Boyle | Thu 12th May 2011 - 1:33 pm

For the past half century, the party has been growing steadily in influence and numbers. There have been electoral set-backs (1970, 1989, and now 2011). The question is: is this our nadir?

And what will decide if this is really the low point, or if we are doomed to carry on sinking in the esteem of the public?

Most commentators have talked this question in terms of short term issues, like how the party manages to play the coalition. But actually there is something far more fundamental that requires attention.

It is whether we can …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 46 Comments
Mark Pack

House of Lords waters down fixed-term Parliaments legislation

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th May 2011 - 12:57 pm

In a vote this week the House of Lords decided to make it significantly easier for future Parliaments to change the rules for fixed-term Parliaments.

The legislation going through Parliament to remove the power of the Prime Minister to fix election dates to their own convenience cannot make them fixed in perpetuity as no Parliament can bind future Parliaments in that way. So the question is how difficult is it for a future Parliament to change the rules – and hence how rigidly fixed the terms of Parliaments really are.

The government’s proposals would have required future Parliaments to pass primary legislation …

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Posted in Election law | Tagged and | 9 Comments
The Voice

Statement from David Laws

By The Voice | Thu 12th May 2011 - 11:30 am

From a party news release:

David Laws, MP for Yeovil, today commented on the conclusion of the Inquiry by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and the Standards and Privileges Committee.

The Inquiry identified a number of breaches of rules, in particular it found that Mr. Laws was in breach of the partner rule, and should have designated his constituency home as his main home from 2004/05, on the basis of the nights spent test.

However, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards accepted that Mr. Laws’ motivation was privacy and not financial benefit, and both the Commissioner and the Committee accept that his claims would …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 63 Comments
Matt Boyes

Independent View: Help residents recognise their councillors

By Matt Boyes | Thu 12th May 2011 - 10:48 am

With councillors starting new terms following the local election, now is a great opportunity to review how they communicate and get involved with people in their communities. This is actually quite a challenge. Would you be surprised to hear that over two thirds of voters are unable to identify any of their local government representatives? Worryingly, despite the hours of work and campaigning that councillors invest in their local areas, most people admit that they wouldn’t be able to pick them in a line-up. That’s what we found in our Connecting Communities Report, having surveyed over …

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Posted in The Independent View | 7 Comments
David Hennigan

Opinion: surveying the wreckage

By David Hennigan | Thu 12th May 2011 - 9:44 am

As a political organiser, I’ve seen the highs and now the lows that come with the territory. In Rochdale in 2005 and Manchester Withington in 2010 – the results made all the effort and long hours worth it.

In Manchester last week, I presided over losing every single seat. Yes, every single one!

It wasn’t through lack of effort. Take for example Simon Ashley, the former group leader. Simon has delivered close to 200,000 leaflets since May, good quality leaflets focusing on crucial issues like the closure of his local swimming baths (where his 2000 plus …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 25 Comments
Stephen Tall

Do Lib Dem members think the Coalition will collapse early? And what the public thinks about Nick Clegg…

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th May 2011 - 9:08 am

Channel 4 News has conducted an interesting YouGov poll surveying former and current Lib Dem members about their views on the Coalition. Their political editor Gary Gibbon gives the skinny on his blog:

We have a YouGov poll, taken from 396 Lib Dem members and 118 former members, on the programme tonight. It found that 52% of (396) members sampled thought the coalition wouldn’t run the full five years, though 63% thought it should. The poll suggests 35% think Nick Clegg shouldn’t lead the party into the next election (against 45% saying he should) – worth remembering he only won

…

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Posted in Op-eds and Polls | Tagged , , , and | 14 Comments
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