Tag Archives: charles kennedy

Phil Bennion

Phil Bennion MEP writes: Manufacturers say Britain must stay in the EU

By Phil Bennion | Wed 16th October 2013 - 10:25 am

 EU flag - Some rights reserved by European ParliamentOn Monday, the UK’s manufacturing sector gave us a clear message. In Europe, in work. In a landmark report by the EEF, a trade association representing 6000 companies, manufacturers emphasised the importance of being part of the EU for their exports and business plans. 85% of firms surveyed would vote to remain in the EU.  One third said that they would be less likely to increase investment in Britain if we were to leave the EU.

Politicians across the political spectrum

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Caron Lindsay

What has my marriage got to do with the Liberal Democrats?

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 8th July 2013 - 7:53 am

More than you would think, I guess. My long-suffering husband at least went into our union with his eyes open. If there wasn’t actually a large bird of liberty in the room at the registry office, he knew that the party would play a large part in our lives together. And even then, I think it’s played an even bigger part than he anticipated and he’s dealt with it with patience, fortitude and humour. Most of the time, anyway.

Why is this even relevant? Well, it’s a Summer of 25th anniversaries. Next month, we will have been married for 25 years. Yesterday, it was 25 years since Paddy Ashdown was elected as leader and this video was released by the Party to celebrate.

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Caron Lindsay

Helena Morrissey’s Report: No excuses – we have to do what she says and do it well

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 14th June 2013 - 8:33 am

helena morrissey reportMy co-editor Stephen Tall has already published his first thoughts and a follow up post outlining where praise is due, which I agree with pretty much entirely. I’ve now emerged from my trip to London and subsequent burial under a pile of things that need to be stuffed into envelopes to add a few random thoughts of my own.

“A missed opportunity”

Norman Lamb started to draw up procedures for dealing with harassment in 2003. This work was never completed. Morrissey says:

Lamb is unsure why the drafted procedures were

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Charles Kennedy

Charles Kennedy MP writes…

By Charles Kennedy | Sun 9th June 2013 - 3:29 pm

Charles Kennedy and Malcolm Bruce today celebrate 30 years as MPs for their constituencies. They have both issued messages to mark the occasion. Here is Charles’.

This coming Sunday will mark thirty years of serving Ross, Cromarty and Skye; Ross, Skye & Inverness West and currently, Ross, Skye & Lochaber. Through the many boundary and name changes it’s a continued privilege to serve the largest and arguably one of most beautiful constituencies in the country. The last three decades have brought have a wealth of issues to the constituency table; from the building of the Skye Bridge, ensuring the continuation of …

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Caron Lindsay

Clegg and Rennie congratulate Bruce and Kennedy on 30 years in Parliament

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 9th June 2013 - 12:00 pm

David Steel at Malcolm Bruce's anniversary dinnerTwo senior  Liberal Democrat parliamentarians have been celebrating 30 years representing their constituencies in parliament. Sir Malcolm Bruce MP for Gordon and Charles Kennedy MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber both thanked constituents and Liberal Democrat party members this weekend for their support.

They have both marked the occasion with events in their constituencies. I travelled to Inverurie on Friday to attend a dinner in honour of Malcolm. His wife Rosemary had organised a few surprise guests for him too. The evening had no fewer than …

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Stephen Tall

Benefits Uprating Bill: Andrew George and Charles Kennedy’s arguments AGAINST

By Stephen Tall | Tue 22nd January 2013 - 10:40 am

The Government last night won the vote for its Benefits Uprating Bill, with the third and final reading passed by 305 votes to 246. A fortnight ago, six Lib Dem MPs voted against or abstained from the Coalition line that benefits rises should be capped at the same rate as public sector pay (a below inflation 1% pa) for each of the next three years.

Andrew George, Charles Kennedy and other Lib Dems sought to move an amendment to the Bill, linking future welfare increases to the rise in average earnings. However, time expired before it was put …

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Stephen Tall

++ Government wins vote on Benefits Uprating Bill; 6 Lib Dem MPs rebel

By Stephen Tall | Tue 8th January 2013 - 7:45 pm

There were no serious doubts the Coalition Government’s Benefits Uprating Bill — pegging increases in welfare payments at a below-inflation 1%, the same as public sector wage rises, for the next three years — would be approved. The only question was the size of majority and how many Lib Dems would rebel (I’ve been keeping a running tally here this afternoon).

There were two votes tonight. First, a Labour amendment to the Bill, defeated by 321 votes to 262, a government majority of 59. Then a vote on the unamended second reading, which the government won by 324 votes to …

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Stephen Tall

In other news… Trident, MI6, DECC, defections & other stories

By Stephen Tall | Sun 22nd July 2012 - 5:25 pm

Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past few days…

Coalition set for new split on cut-price Trident plan (Scotsman)

COALITION splits over Britain’s nuclear deterrent are set to be reopened after an internal Ministry of Defence review suggested a slimmed-down version of the £25 billion Trident replacement could be an option. … The report, led by Lib Dem armed forces minister Nick Harvey, looks set to reopen coalition divisions with many Tory back-benchers concerned that Britain’s replacement for Trident could end up being sacrificed for political reasons. However, with final decisions not

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Charles Kennedy – Lords reform: we’ll defeat the rebels

By Mary Reid | Tue 10th July 2012 - 1:13 pm

In the Guardian yesterday evening Charles Kennedy challenged Labour to restore faith in Parliament today by supporting Lords Reform.

He writes:

For 100 years progressives in British politics have tried to bring democracy to one of the most important but arcane institutions in our country – the House of Lords. And for 100 years, the establishment has resisted, blocked or talked out those who argue for change at every turn. But today we have an historic opportunity to finally bring about that change – and it is in Labour’s hands.

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Labour politicians for

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Mark Pack

David Boyle’s appointment is excellent news

By Mark Pack | Mon 25th June 2012 - 9:53 am

Under Charles Kennedy’s leadership, the party had a simple and generally popular approach to public services: Kennedy consistently supported higher spending on favourite public services and appointed as party spokespeople those with experience of that service. So in education, for example, it was ex-headteacher Phil Willis leading for the party, promoting costed policies to put more cash into the party’s priorities.

Overall, the party’s plans involved raising at least as much in extra taxes or savings as it wanted to spend, so the net effect was fiscally respectable but for each individual public service the party’s answer was pretty much, “we’ll …

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Stephen Tall

Labour’s not-so-very-local election broadcast shows how unimportant local decision-making is to Ed Miliband’s party

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th April 2012 - 7:58 pm

Tonight’s Labour local election broadcast, starring telly’s very own Lord (Robert) Winston, climaxes with the rallying cry:

On Thursday May 3rd, vote NHS, vote Labour

Exactly how voting Labour then will help the NHS isn’t explored — not surprisingly, because it won’t. There’s a reason these elections are called local elections, after all.

Before highlighting Labour’s misleading tactics I thought I should first check out the Lib Dem record on fighting local elections. I have to say I was expecting to find comparable examples, times when the party leadership had called …

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Remembering the 1992 general election, 20 years ago today

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th April 2012 - 10:45 am

Thursday, 9th April, 1992 — the first election for the newly-formed Liberal Democrats, and the last election when the Tories won a parliamentary majority. Here’s a video trip down memory lane…

Andrew Marr on John Major’s biggest popular mandate in electoral history

Paddy Ashdown on the campaign trail

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Stephen Tall

In other news… Richard Kemp for Liverpool, Kennedy on the UK, defection in Cambridge, Hughes at Leveson

By Stephen Tall | Sun 4th March 2012 - 3:45 pm

Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past week…

Richard Kemp to represent Liberal Democrats in Liverpool mayor election in May (Liverpool Echo)

‘He said: “I am standing because I believe that only the Liberal Democrats have the long term strategies which will place this city in a leading position able to create the jobs and investment which this city so badly needs. Liverpool needs an encompassing vision and direction that everyone in the city, residents, business and friends can buy into and support.”

You can read Richard’s own account of …

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Helen Duffett

Nick Clegg’s speech to Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference

By Helen Duffett | Sat 3rd March 2012 - 10:25 am

Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference started yesterday in Inverness and runs until tomorrow (Sunday). Nick Clegg addressed Conference yesterday afternoon; here is his speech in full:

Liberals from the Highlands and Islands have always been at the heart of our party. From the late great Jo Grimond and Russell Johnston, great leaders like Bob Maclennan, Charles Kennedy and Jim Wallace in Scotland, to our current team at Westminster, Highland and Island voices have shaped who the Liberal Democrats are.

In Danny Alexander and Alistair Carmichael, I have Liberals from the Highlands and Islands with me right at the heart of British Government. …

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Mark Pack

Was there a Clegg coup? Review of The Clegg Coup – Britain’s First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George by Jasper Gerard

By Mark Pack | Wed 23rd November 2011 - 9:54 am

Many book titles reveal little about what their book contains, either providing but a banal name for its contents or a clever, clever name which obscures rather than reveals. However, The Clegg Coup – Britain’s First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George by Jasper Gerard has a title which is revealing in two aspects. First, the way general accuracy in the book is marred by detailed slips – for whilst the general point of the title is true, with the May 2010 coalition being the UK’s first peacetime coalition in Westminster since before 1939, the title does not use the …

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Iain Sharpe

Book review: Peace, Reform and Liberation – “the first port of call for anyone wishing to learn more about Liberal and Liberal Democrat history”

By Iain Sharpe | Wed 16th November 2011 - 10:25 am

There has long been a need for a single volume history of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat parties covering the entire period from its roots in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century to the present day.

While Liberal history has received plenty of attention from historians, previous studies of the party have been limited to a specific eras or themes. In many ways of course the party has several histories. This includes the origins of the Liberal tradition in the Whigs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the heyday of Liberal government in the middle of the nineteenth century, the party’s decline and near extinction between the 1920s and 1950s, its recovery in the second half of the twentieth century, and now the challenges of governing in coalition with the party’s historic enemies, the Conservatives.

So it is welcome that the Liberal Democrat History Group has sought to fill a gap with Peace, Reform and Liberation.

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Mark Hofman

Opinion: The failings of This Week

By Mark Hofman | Sun 23rd October 2011 - 9:25 am

As we kick back and relax from a hard day’s work (or job seeking as is so often the case), we would expect our licence fee funded BBC to reflect our views, those of 23% of the electorate according to last year’s poll (the national election).

However, a glance at our daily political programming would suggest that the BBC is still pandering to the cosy duopoly of Labour and the Tories.

Perhaps this cosy duopoly is most evident on Thursday nights with “This Week” (BBC 1 11.30pm ish), promising “politics with attitude and without the spin”. Andrew Neil (ex-Conservative party employee and …

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Stuart Bonar

Opinion: Who will sort out our colossal National Debt?

By Stuart Bonar | Sun 9th October 2011 - 9:56 am

The one group I’d most expect to be drawing up a roadmap to a debt-free Britain would be true-blue Tories. Some of them at least understand the problem. In a new book by five Conservative MPs – After the Coalition: a Conservative Agenda for Britain,  dubbed by the Independent as the Bible of the new Tory right wing, there is an entire chapter on the National Debt and the risk it presents.

As I have argued elsewhere, it is wrong to think that debt doesn’t matter… that so long as you can keep getting enough out of Peter to pay Paul then …

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo at Conference | CK on Nick, the DPM’s last year, and party leadership contest rules explained

By Stephen Tall | Thu 22nd September 2011 - 7:55 am

Were you at Birmingham and so missed out on how the Lib Dem conference was reported? Not at Birmingham and so missed out on seeing Lib Dem MPs and government ministers up close and personal? We hope these videos will help (re-)connect you…

Charles Kennedy on Nick Clegg


(Available on the BBC website here.)

Nick Clegg’s highlights over the last 12 months

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo | Election archive special… 1992

By Stephen Tall | Sat 27th August 2011 - 6:15 pm

Last weekend — in a desperate attempt to offer our readers an alternative to The X-Factor — we highlighted some clips from elections of yesteryear: first, the 1960-70s, then the 1980s. Today, we’re scrolling forward to the video footage of the 1992 general election…

Paddy Ashdown on the campaign trail

(Available on YouTube here.)

Don Foster wins Bath from Chris Patten (from 3:05)

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Laura Cronshaw

Independent View: Catch21 is helping demystify Parliament

By Laura Cronshaw | Tue 9th August 2011 - 12:48 pm

Here at Catch21, our sole aim is to engage and inform our vibrant and vocal electorate, in the ever changing world of politics. To provide discussion, discourse and good old debate in on-trend topics, and to enable the freedom of opinion and understanding to reach out from the House of Commons into our own comfortable common rooms.

In 2009, Catch21 set up the Uni-Q project, a political discussion show that gave students a chance to air their own political opinions whilst grilling willing MP’s. Mirroring the format of BBC Question Time, Uni-Q set off touring colleges and universities across the …

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Helen Duffett

LibLink | Charles Kennedy MP’s views on the AV referendum, health reforms and Murdoch

By Helen Duffett | Wed 3rd August 2011 - 11:53 am

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Stephen Tall

Top 10 tweeting MPs: congratulations to Lib Dem @julianhuppert in at No. 6!

By Stephen Tall | Sun 31st July 2011 - 2:20 pm

Who are the top 10 Twitterers in the House of Commons? That’s the question the Mail on Sunday answers today, following a survey by Westminster Public Affairs.

The list looks not at number of followers, but at the volume of tweets each MP has sent out. Heading the list is Labour’s Kerry McCarthy with well over 27,000 tweets. Cambridge’s Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert — elected to Parliament just last year — comes in at number six, having sent over 10,000 tweets, and now with over 4,000 followers.

My Co-Editor Mark Pack has compiled a …

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Thomas Hemsley

Liberal Youth: appealing to Lib Dems everywhere

By Thomas Hemsley | Mon 30th May 2011 - 5:23 pm

Conferences are a foundation stone of being a Liberal Democrat. There have been some really huge and important ones – Brighton, 2002, where we laid out a principled position on Iraq; Llandudno, 1981, where Shirley Williams and David Steel spoke passionately in favour of an alliance; Sheffield, 2011, when we opposed the NHS reforms. Conference is the best way for the membership to exert their influence over the leadership. Past leaders, from Steel to Ashdown, from Kennedy to Clegg, have often feared Conference for the skill and passion with which it has put its arguments. And so the tradition of …

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Helen Duffett

“Thursday is decision day” – Charles Kennedy’s eve of poll message to members and supporters

By Helen Duffett | Wed 4th May 2011 - 5:53 pm

Charles Kennedy MP has emailed Liberal Democrat members and supporters with a “get out and vote” (and “get out the vote”) message, ahead of tomorrow’s elections and referendum:

Tomorrow you have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have your say on how we elect our MPs to Westminster. Important elections are also taking place across the country for the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament & local councils. Thursday is Decision Day.

When I was first elected in 1983, the idea of changing our voting system for Westminster elections seemed important, but the chance seemed remote. When the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly were established, neither

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Mark Pack

Charles Kennedy: I’ve learned to love the coalition

By Mark Pack | Thu 21st April 2011 - 7:54 am

In a piece for Prospect magazine, published today, former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy gives his backing to the coalition government. Though Kennedy didn’t vote in favour of the coalition last May, abstaining instead, he now backs it:

I admit that this coalition wasn’t exactly my preferred option. I’ve always considered myself in the reforming, centre-left tradition, so a centre-right arrangement puts my compass in a spin … But those of us who genuinely wanted to explore other routes—from a rainbow coalition to a minority tory administration— were sunk when figures like David Blunkett and John Reid were so against

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Charles Kennedy

Charles Kennedy writes… Why Vote Yes – A chance for change we cannot miss

By Charles Kennedy | Sun 20th March 2011 - 11:55 am

I’ve campaigned for electoral reform for as long as I can remember. I’m both President of DAGGER (Democratic Action Group for Gaining Electoral Reform) and the Liberal Democrat Group of the Electoral Reform Society, so you can imagine how I felt when I found out that we have a chance to change our outdated, broken electoral system and replace it with something better.

Let’s be clear: AV may not be perfect, but it IS better and fairer than First Past the Post. Even the ‘No2AV’ campaign know that, which is why they’ve resorted to making things up …

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Mark Pack

Charles Kennedy to join Ed Miliband on a pro-electoral reform platform

By Mark Pack | Thu 17th March 2011 - 8:55 am

It’s hardly surprising that Charles Kennedy and Ed Miliband would be appearing together to promote electoral reform. Kennedy has long been a supporter of electoral reform and by virtue of not being in government is seen by many in Labour as an easier figure to campaign alongside (even though one of Kennedy’s first acts on becoming party leader was to end the party’s then work in government with Labour). Ed Milband in turn is the author of Labour’s general election manifesto which not only pledged a referendum but also called for a change in the electoral system to follow from …

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Helen Duffett

Charles Kennedy MP: No2AV ads “shocking and outrageous”

By Helen Duffett | Fri 25th February 2011 - 11:49 am

Charles Kennedy MP has urged Liberal Democrat members and supporters to take action by registering their disappointment and disgust at the advertising tactics of the No2AV campaign.

The No campaign recently took out a two-page advertisement in the Birmingham Mail claiming that a sick baby “needs a new cardiac facility NOT an alternative voting system”. The ad misleadingly implies that the public must choose between an alternative voting system and frontline services.

Here’s what Charles said in his email this morning:

Over recent days No2AV have published a series of ads in local papers that can be described as distasteful at best,

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Helen Duffett

Charles Kennedy MP re-elected as Glasgow University rector

By Helen Duffett | Wed 23rd February 2011 - 8:13 am

Congratulations to Charles Kennedy MP, the first person since Disraeli (1871-1877) to serve two consecutive terms as the rector of Glasgow University.

From STV.tv:

Mr Kennedy won convincingly after securing 2601 votes out of a possible 3166. The writer received 565 of the votes from students.

The contest to become Glasgow University’s 121st rector came as the institution faces protests over course cuts. And both candidates attempted to win the hearts and minds of the student body by issuing a warning to university bosses.

Mr Kennedy told the Herald before his win: “My job, if re-elected, is to get all

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