Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of a variety of key issues, and what you make of the Lib Dems’ and Government’s performance to date. Almost 600 party members have responded, and we’re currently publishing the full results of our survey.
Today we’re looking at the Alternative Vote, the measure of electoral reform the Conservatives conceded in their ‘final offer‘ to the Lib Dems to secure the Coalition agreement. A preferential system of voting (in which the public can, if they choose, rank the candidates in order), AV is not …
The news broke at the weekend that NHS Direct is to be scrapped by the Coalition Government, and replaced with a new service – 111 – a move anticipated in July’s Health White Paper, in which it was promised to:
Develop a coherent 24/7 urgent care service in every area of England that makes sense to patients when they have to make choices about their care. This will incorporate GP out-of-hours services and provide urgent medical care for people registered with a GP elsewhere. We will make care more accessible by introducing, informed by evaluation, a single telephone number
The latest edition of Total Politics includes a feature piece about Sharon Bowles, Liberal Democrat MEP and chair of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee:
The Lib Dem MEP is a hugely powerful and yet virtually unknown British politician. She has had far more impact on our legislation than your average Westminster politician…
Although she claims to be “in favour of a healthy, vibrant City,” Bowles uses uncompromising language for bankers. She does not have much time for complaints about traders moving their businesses to other, less tightly-regulated locations. “I don’t actually believe there are only one or two great
Contradictory news from Facebook about the state of Lembit Opik’s campaign to become the Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor. The number of fans of his campaign page is now up to 178. However, although his campaign says the page is “the main point of contact for those involved in the campaign to win the nomination”, the last update from the campaign team on the wall is now looking rather dated, having been posted on 18 July.
Tamil Ceasefire protests – estimated total policing cost of £12.8m
G20 Summit – estimated total policing cost of £7.4m
Notting Hill Carnival – estimated total policing cost of £6.6m
Summer Climate Camp – estimated total policing cost of £2.3m
Some of those seem pretty good value for money such as the Notting Hill Carnival, bearing in mind the enjoyment so many people get from the event. Looking at some of the other costs, perhaps in future the police should offer to fund TV advertisements in return for protest not happening: could save money and make for more effective …
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of a variety of key issues, and what you make of the Lib Dems’ and Government’s performance to date. Almost 600 party members have responded, and we’re currently publishing the full results of our survey.
The possibility of a non-aggression electoral pact between the Lib Dems and Conservatives has been proposed by some of the more credulous political journalists (for instance, Jim Pickard in the FT here) – so we thought we’d take the temperature of Lib Dem Voice-reading party members.
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 184th 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 (22nd – 28th August, 2010), 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’ve been critical these past few weeks of the news media’s obsessional search to put a cigarette paper between Coalition politicians: mostly these have been the product of journalists’ desperation to fill space.
But today’s interview in the Observer with Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander is, I think, significant for the future of the Lib/Con partnership.
… Alexander makes clear that total tax revenue will have to remain at least at current levels throughout the parliament to put the nation’s finances back in order.
“I think the tax burden is necessary as a significant contribution to
“A healthy pedestrian mowed down by a runaway omnibus” – Trevor Wilson’s metaphor to describe the fall of the Liberal Party between 1916 and 1931 is quoted approvingly by Professor John Shepherd, co-director of the Labour Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University, in a fascinating article in the summer issue of the Journal of Liberal History.
One of the Coalition memes doing the rounds among some of the commentariat is that, by embarking on a partnership with the Conservatives, the Lib Dems have sealed their own fate, that a split is inevitable. After all, the argument goes, Lloyd George’s …
Last week, Pollwatch looked at the state of the parties in July and August; today it’s the turn of the coalition government leaders.
As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Only two polling companies – YouGov and Mori – this past month asked questions specifically to find out the public’s views of the Lib Dem and Tory party leaders. (Harriet Harman’s performance as Labour leader is not being measured). And each asks variants on the basic question – do you think Clegg/Cameron are doing a good job – to come up with their figures, so comparison ain’t easy. …
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of a variety of key issues, and what you make of the Lib Dems’ and Government’s performance to date. Almost 600 party members have responded, and we’ll be publishing the full results of our survey in the next few days.
A week ago, the news media’s silly season alighted on a suggestion that Charles Kennedy was about to defect to Labour, and flogged the story for all it was worth.
LDV asked: The news media this past weekend was dominated by suggestions – …
The news that a motion criticising free schools was to be debated at the Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference caused a rush of excitement among journalists looking for their next “coalition splits” angle. This lazy interpretation ignores the strong tradition within the Liberal Democrats of having open debate and grassroots influence on policy. Although I disagree with the motion, I welcome the chance for our party to debate the pros and cons of free schools.
So far too much of the public debate on free schools has been uninformed by the high-quality evidence that exists on the effects of free schools. In the document at the end of this post I show that the common criticisms of free schools (including those made by the authors of the motion) are not supported by the evidence. Indeed, free schools have benefited pupils overall where they have already been operating and there is no reason to think that England would be different. I hope that as many delegates as possible will read the evidence before the conference debate.
There are many reasons for the Lib Dems to support free schools but I will focus on one particularly good reason here (others can be found in the document below).
The current school system perpetuates inequality. Richer families have a much better chance of getting their children a good education than poorer families. Admissions to most state schools are based on proximity, which results in house price premiums of up to 26 percent. It also means that existing residential segregation is reflected in many state schools.
Free schools are likely to broaden choice for poor families in particular, partly because at least half of the groups interested in setting up free schools want to work with poor children. A lot of the criticism of school choice is based on the fear that poorer families will not be able to navigate the system. But there is no reason that the system has to be as complicated as it currently is in England: ballot-based or first come, first served admissions work very well in the USA and Sweden and are easy to understand. It is already Lib Dem policy to stop schools cherry-picking pupils, and this should apply to free schools too.
The experience of school choice in other countries does not support the idea that poor families can’t take advantage of it. On the contrary, when catchment areas were abolished in New Zealand low-income families were more likely to send their children to a school outside their old catchment area than middle- or high-income families. And in Edmonton, Canada, more than half of pupils go to a school other than their nearest one.
I am drafting an amendment to make the motion in favour of free schools, provided that Local Authorities have strategic oversight of schooling (though no veto on free schools); that free schools cannot cherry-pick pupils; and that the funding system is fair and does not increase the burden on already cash-strapped Local Authorities. I would welcome comments on the draft as well as signatories so that it can be debated at Conference. I can be contacted at n.c.w.smithgmailcom.
Niklas Smith is half-Swedish and has followed the development of free schools with interest. He was Junior Treasurer of Cambridge Student Liberal Democrats 2009-10.
The government has confirmed it is planning to scrap the NHS Direct telephone service in England and replace it with a cheaper option. A new 111 helpline is already being piloted in the North East. It was previously reported that the new service may replace NHS Direct, but now the Department of Health has confirmed it will definitely do so. The move comes as the government curtails public spending, even though it has promised to protect the NHS.
NHS Direct is currently used by 27,000 people a day, and provides expert health advice and information to callers, as …
David Cameron has ‘let it be known’ (ie, his press team briefed the Guardian) that shadow foreign secretary David Miliband “poses the greatest threat to the Conservative party of all the candidates in the Labour leadership contest”.
How to interpret this? Is Dave’s backing of David a cunning bluff: the Tory leader backing the most New Labour-identified candidate to put Labour members off backing him? Or could it be an even cunninger double bluff: the Tory leader, knowing his endorsement could be read as a bluff, backing the most media-awkward candidate in the hope Labour members will vote for …
Here’s Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather addressing conference delegates at the Liberal Democrat 2010 Spring conference in Birmingham – what do you think she might be saying, or her audience might be thinking?
The media are constantly looking for signs of policy splits within the Coalition. Across policy fields – the economy, welfare, housing, defence – the search is on for contradictions and conflicts, whether real, manufactured or imagined. While many of the stories have been given an airing here, one that passed relatively unnoticed was last week’s discussion of rail fares.
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond hinted that the current fiscal situation is so severe that it may be necessary to re-examine the formula restricting regulated rail fares to increases of no more than RPI+1%. The suggestion was that this might increase …
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of a variety of key issues, and what you make of the Lib Dems’ and Government’s performance to date. Almost 600 party members have responded, and we’ll be publishing the full results of our survey in the next few days.
First up we asked about Chris Huhne’s announcement that he is now backing nuclear power in order to ensure the stability of Britain’s energy supplies.
Do you believe Chris Huhne is right to say that nuclear power, alongside oil and gas and renewable sources, …
What would a minority Conservative government look like?
It is now widely accepted, by Jack Straw among many others, that a coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats would, sadly, have been unworkable.
The numbers didn’t add up, we suffered real difficulty – whichever account you believe – negotiating with Labour, and there was the ever-present threat of nationalist lobbying.
So the alternative was a Conservative minority government.
And what would this government have been able to pass through parliament with the support of the next biggest party Labour? What policies would be implemented by a minority Conservative government with Labour’s blessing?
A poll conducted by LDDPR last month got some positive exposure last week with a mention in Antonia Senior’s opinion piece in thursday’s Times “Over to you: Tell me why drugs must stay illegal.” It was also referred to at greater length in Mark Easton’s excellent blogpost “Drugs Policy: The British System” the day before.
I feel it is important for the results of this poll to be explored further as some of the implications are profoundly important for the progress of the debate on drugs policy in this country and beyond.
Welcome to a series where old posts are revived for a second outing for reasons such as their subject has become topical again, they have aged well but were first posted when the site’s readership was only a tenth or less of what it is currently or they got published and the site crashed, hiding the finest words of wisdom behind an incomprehensible error message.
Today’s is a review I wrote back in 2006 of a Demos publication from 1997. (Can you tell I was trained as an historian?). The main message of the piece has stood the test of time pretty well – thinks tanks (and others) are frequently pretty awful at getting big picture predictions right. The one part that hasn’t is the picture of Demos as an organisation whose best days were behind it. It has recently had a resurgence, with Richard Reeves moving from being its director to one of Nick Clegg’s top aides and in total 11 of its 25 advisory board members now have government roles.
For no particular reason other than I recently found a second-hand copy on sale cheaply, I have just finished reading Demos’s 1997 collection, Life after politics.
Although these days Demos – with its reports on the crucial importance of hairdressers to modern society – tries a little too hard to be different and thought provoking, it was in its heyday one of the most successful think tanks in the UK. Leading lights such as Geoff Mulgan – the editor of this collection – went on to exercise significant real political power under New Labour; he spent time as Director of Policy at 10 Downing Street and also headed up the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit for several years.
A staple stock in trade of think tanks is analysis that ends up concluding that other people have got things wrong, aren’t preparing for the future correctly and don’t understand what is coming. Yet think tanks rarely look at their own record. So – nearly a decade on – how does Demos’s work shape up? Where they really right in what they were foretelling? Or would a government that followed its recipes ardently ended up getting things horribly wrong?
Over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free website, former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris argues that it’s misleading to say atheist doctors are ‘more likely to hasten death’, and asserts that the real issue is adequate patient consultation. Here’s an excerpt:
Read in isolation, the headline of the Guardian’s report into newly published research on doctors’ attitudes and behaviour (“Atheist doctors ‘more likely to hasten death'”) might lead you to think that there are a bunch of humanist physicians poised, with potassium chloride-filled syringes, over the bedside of sick patients. However, the article itself informed us that the problem did not
Labour pundits were eagerly predicting the Lib Dems would be slaughtered in a Sheffield local by-election yesterday, and would simply be hoping to avoid coming last. The reality was a little different.
Labour comfortably held on to their safe Woodhouse seat, with both them and UKIP taking votes from the Conservatives, who were pushed into fourth place, just a few votes ahead of the BNP.
The Lib Dems came a clear second place, with the party’s vote down just 0.5% on the May result, and well up on every other election in the last few years, as Labour struggled to …
Congratulations to Aldbury and Wigginton Liberal Democrats, where Rosemarie Hollinghurst has gained a seat from the Conservatives on Dacorum Borough Council.
The press notice from the Electoral Reform Society says:
Katie Ghose has served for 5 years as Director of the British Institute of Human Rights, a national charity with a mission to bring rights to life for everyone in the UK. A public affairs specialist and barrister with a background in human rights law and immigration, she served as a Commissioner on the Independent Asylum Commission from 2006-2008, where she helped to conduct the biggest ever indepedent review of the UK asylum system. She has worked in campaigns for several third sector organisations including Age UK (then Age Concern England
So, a new era dawns! Not only with an unusual election result, but with a Queen’s speech unusually peppered with political slogans and dumping blame on predecessors. Since this is the only transport we have into the immediate future, we must hope that it is not too uncomfortable a ride.
And yes! It is a new era, isn’t it? All party leaders have promised us an end to the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and dishonourable practices which sullied the reputations of our Members of Parliament latterly. One of the three main planks driving the coalition programme is fairness. Well, we shall see. It …
Large head and shoulders photographs did, however, previously feature heavily in our election literature – on leaflets if not posters. For decades many leaflets look like this effort from Sir W Lacon Threlford who was standing for election as a City of London Alderman in 1935:
Pausing for a moment of sympathy for the clerical …
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, writing in today’s Financial Times (free registration required), champions the government’s commitment to fairness and explains why he believes yesterday’s IFS report is asking the wrong questions.
Fairness is about every child getting the chance they deserve, regardless of their background. Poverty and deprivation matter enormously but fairness also demands that what counts is not the school you went to, the jobs your parents did, or the colour of your skin but your ability to move beyond the circumstances of your birth.
…there is a bigger problem with the analysis: it measures the impact of
No, I didn’t think so either. Which makes the case of the Yes2AV.org domain name a little curious.
Check the official records and you find that it is registered to Matthew Elliott, not the Australian cricketer but the man from the Taxpayers’ Alliance who is going to head up the “no” campaign for the AV referendum. Also listed is on the registration is Andy Whitehouse, complete with his Taxpayers’ Alliance email address.
If you are campaigning for a “no”, having a domain name with a “yes” just might cause some confusion, don’t you think?
Keith Legg I think the "triple lock" was needed when it was introduced, but there was always that risk that it would become too much of a burden if wages increased too qui...
Jason Connor The same questions have been asked before. I live in a Labour controlled local authority area with a Labour MP so see things very differently. I don't think dis...
expats @ Jason Connor 30th Sep '26 - 10:26am..
Burnham, at least, asked the questions. .He might not have all the answers but you appear to be 'discarding the good ...
Matt (Bristol) What's weird is that whilst the 'Right' eco-system is going to town on the possible adjustment of the Triple Lock, Badenoch isn't (that I've seen so far). She's...
For no particular reason other than I recently found a second-hand copy on sale cheaply, I have just finished reading Demos’s 1997 collection, 
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The Joy of Six 1584
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