Tag Archives: caroline flint

Chris White writes: Powerful stuff from Clegg at the LGA conference

One of the highlights of the political calendar is the annual Local Government Association (or more correctly ‘Group’) conference. It’s a bit like a party conference but people go to bed earlier. And there are other political parties here. And officers.

Its formal function is to be the sovereign body of the LGG. It also allows exhibitors to exhibit, group leaders to network and national politicians to showcase.

So we heard from David Cameron, the first serving prime minister to speak at an LGA/LGG conference. He told us sternly that pensions had to be reformed and that strikes would only hurt the …

Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 7 Comments

The Independent View: Why I’m voting Yes to AV – Simon Woolley

I was a little surprised to be invited to be guest speaker at the Liberal Democrat spring conference last week. But the surprise was not because I’m supporting the AV Yes Vote. After all, I am vice-chair of the campaign.

It was rather because party bosses are well aware of my criticism after the main conference last September. My beef with them, expressed in the Guardian and other places, was a result of the party’s failure to do something positive about its lack of BME political representation.

Of course, I wasn’t there to talk about representation. But I did anyway. …

Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged , , , and | 2 Comments

PMQs: Hattie tries to throw a “stinger” in front of voting reform

Prime Minister’s Questions is definitely becoming more subdued these days. The bellowing and ya-boo atmosphere has reduced by about 80% since the election. The Cumbrian shootings have dominated both sessions so far, which has added to the quietish feeling.

Harriet Harman has suddenly developed an interest in the electoral roll and the fact that “3.5 million people” who could be on it, aren’t. Fascinating. She seems to have suddenly come up with this as a reason to throw a sort of police “stinger” in front of voting reform – or at least constituency boundary re-drawing. She seems to have forgotten that her party was in power for thirteen years. Why didn’t they do something about electoral registration then? And, as David Cameron retorted, the last election was fought on recently redrawn boundaries anyway – which rather kiboshed Hattie’s argument.

Harman then had a go about CCTV. David Cameron went off on one, ending up about rights to enter people’s houses. He did make some good points about civil liberties during which Nick Clegg nodded very strongly. Harman raised an estate on her patch where they want CCTV coverage. Cameron said it was all about proportionality. If only he could say that about voting reform.

Good joke from Cameron:

Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , and | 42 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 28 September 2009

2 Big Stories


Germany elects new centre-right government to be led by Angela Merkel

The Financial Times reports:

Germany is on course for its first centre-right government in 11 years after voters gave chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and her Free Democratic allies a majority in parliament.

The victory of the conservative-liberal alliance – which had campaigned for tax cuts and a return to nuclear energy, but also social justice and tougher rules for finance – in Sunday’s poll ends four years of awkward co-operation between the CDU and its rival Social Democratic party in a grand coalition. …

Posted in Daily View | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 3 Comments

Question Time – open thread, 28/05 #bbcqt

Question Time returns to its previous time slot of 2240 this evening, and the BBC website tells us the panel will be:

Europe Minister Caroline Flint, Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson Jo Swinson, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and French businessman Pierre-Yves Gerbeau.

In the last week before the European elections, the programme is billed as a Euro special from London.  If the politicos can avoid being booed off stage merely for being politicos, there are loads of interesting ways the debate can go.  Caroline vs Caroline; Greens vs Lib Dems on who has …

Posted in Lib Dem TV | Also tagged , , , and | 13 Comments

Ed Davey on Lisbon treaty: “I’ve read all the key parts”

Caroline Flint, Labour’s minister of state for Europe, sparked some minor controversy earlier this week, after she admitted she had not read parts of the Lisbon treaty: “I have read some of it but not all of it,” she confessed. The Tories professed their outrage, seemingly forgetting Ken Clarke’s famous declaration, back when he was a senior member of John Major’s cabinet, that he had not read the Maastricht treaty.

LDV felt duty-bound to put the question to Ed Davey, the Lib Dems’ shadow foreign secretary – here’s what he told us:

I’ve read all the key parts, but there

Posted in Europe / International and News | Also tagged , and | 2 Comments
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