Today saw a weird piece of media face with an impostor conning several news outlets into reporting that Edinburgh West MP Mike Crockart was going to resign as a PPS and vote against the tuition fees increase. The impostor even got as far as being interviewed by the BBC on the World at One before the hoax was rumbled. His office said that, “Mike is still waiting to see what the final offer will be before he votes and that has always been our line”.
(Ironically just before this took place, I was in Millbank to appear on the BBC’s …
We all know that the review is merely a suggestion for how the government should approach this situation. Yet the fact that Nick and Vince seem to be jumping on the Browne bandwagon leads me to expect the worst. It would seem that they need reminding of the slogan we fought with during this year’s General Election
The Market Research Standards Board (MRSB) has cleared YouGov of all the complaints made about its polling of 16-19 April during the general election – but in so doing has raised a big question about what now counts as ‘ethical’ polling. The MRSB’s ruling gives the green light to pollsters asking questions on behalf of their clients which contain false allegations about a person, even if those allegations have not previously been made in public.
The Market Research Society Code of Conduct (to which YouGov subscribes, along with other British political pollsters), states that “researchers shall be … honest” and …
Two very positive Liberal Democrat stories today in the Herald Scotland:
The first: Flourishing LibDems cast Scottish politics in a good light reports that Liberal Democrat membership in Scotland is up 18% this year and sees it as a sign that of public acceptance of the party’s role in the Coalition government.
The Herald also has an interview with Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, which charts his progress from childhood to the Cabinet, revealing his family’s deep Liberal roots:
“My mother tells the story of how she caught my grandad rocking me in the pram when I was six months old saying ‘repeat after me, I’m a member of the Liberal party’.”
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 11th September 2010 - 6:50 pm
Ros Scott’s announcement that she is standing down from the position of party president has come as a surprise to Lib Dem members.
First, because it has become almost traditional for party presidents to serve two terms — Ros’s three predecessors, Simon Hughes, Lord Dholakia and Lord Maclennan all served two terms each, unchallenged. Secondly, because Ros herself is popular among the party’s grassroots. Though her authority took something of a knock during the MPs’ expenses scandal, the Voice’s most recent survey of party members showed she had a very good net effectiveness rating of +30%.
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 – …
So today, at last, the news media is finally reporting the pretty unsurprising news that Charles Kennedy, leader of the Lib Dems from 1999 to 2006, is not leaving the Lib Dems in 2010.
Now it is of course the silly season, and we can easily write off this journalistic confection as mere desperation to fill some column inches / dead air-time. But actually I think it’s a symptom of a wider malaise in political journalism, its ‘tabloidisation’.
How an unsourced rumour went viral
Let’s go back to Friday afternoon, when the Kennedy defection rumours started circulating, and work out how …
Charles Kennedy has set the record straight over rumours of his defection which kept the political tweeters and bloggers buzzing yesterday whilst everyone else sensibly got on with their Saturday. As Scotland on Sunday reports, he made the comments after a meeting with constituents in Dingwall.
It is absolute rubbish, I am not joining the Labour Party and have not had any discussions about it with anyone from the Labour Party.
I will go out of this world feet first with my Lib Dem membership card in my pocket.
We at LDV Towers know nothing more than anyone else about rumours circulated by Ed Miliband’s campaign team yesterday of Charles Kennedy thinking of defecting from the Lib Dems to Labour.
According to Lib Dem sources, Kennedy has personally scotched them.
The most likely explanation would seem to be that tried and tested Labour technique of spreading unfounded stories about others to cover up bad news about themselves.
Whatever the reality, one thing would be very odd indeed were the story to be true: the timing.
The information clearly hasn’t come from Kennedy, but from the Labour Party. Yet if a party …
Former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy and his wife Sarah are to separate. A statement issued by the couple’s respective lawyers said it was “with great sadness” that they had decided to split.
“In doing so amicably, our ongoing and overriding priority will obviously remain our son,” it went on. “We wish this to remain an entirely private family matter.”
Mr Kennedy married Sarah Gurling in 2002 and their son, Donald, was born during the 2005 general election campaign while he was still party leader.
The Coalition decision to raise VAT was, by some measure, the most controversial aspect of the Government’s first budget. In our recent survey of party members, 42% opposed the move, though 48% endorsed it (however reluctantly) to deal with the deficit.
The party’s MPs have also been wrestling with the issue. The VAT increase was debated on Tuesday night in the Commons – in the end only Colchester’s Bob Russell from the Lib Dems voted against the Government, siding with a Labour amendment.
As Jim Pickard in the FT notes, St Ives MP Andrew George, and four other Lib …
Former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy has urged the Government to look at ways of “mitigating” the impact of an immigration cap on universities. Mr Kennedy, rector of Glasgow University, challenged universities minister David Willetts over the policy at question time.
“Given the Government’s policy on a cap on immigration, you will be aware Universities UK and many others right across the sector are worried about the impact this will have,” he said. “Ten per cent of university staff across the UK are non-EU nationals – 2,500 staff at the Scottish universities alone.
The last edition of ALDC’s Campaigner before the start of the election contained this piece from me:
Knowing why people vote the way they do is tough. It’s not just because people may be reluctant to be honest to others about their motivations, but people are also often bad at understanding themselves.
In fact, one of the findings increasingly coming out from research into how we make decisions is that often we make a decision using our subconscious and only afterwards come up with a justification for it. Our subconscious decides, our conscious rationalises.
It is an intriguing – and in some ways, scary – finding that is best illustrated by a clever experiment where people were shown two photographs of similar, but different, people. They were asked to pick which one they thought was the most attractive. They were then given that photograph and asked to explain the reason for their decision.
“I will only really believe it when I see it in print!” – so read a text message to me from one of the party’s senior campaign strategists after news started spreading about the latest poll:
BPIX/Mail on Sunday: Lib Dem 32%, Conservative 31%, Labour 28%
ComRes/Independent/Mirror: Conservative 31%, Lib Dem 29%, Labour 27%
ICM/Sunday Telegraph: Conservative 34%, Labour 29%, Lib Dem 27%
OnePoll/People: Lib Dem 33%, Conservative 27%, Labour 23%
YouGov/Sunday Times: Conservative 33%, Labour 30%, Lib Dem 29%
The YouGov poll gives Nick Clegg the eye-watering personal ratings on doing well/badly as party leader of 81% versus 9%. At the height of the Iraq …
It will be almost like old times for the Lib Dems, with former leader Charles Kennedy joining Nick Clegg to launch the Lib Dems’ Scottish campaign – as CK himself tweeted earlier today. Here’s how the BBC reports it:
Mr Clegg will get the Scottish campaign under way in Glasgow along with Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott and senior party figures, including Charles Kennedy.
The party – Scotland’s second biggest in Westminster terms –
The Liberal Democrats will centre their campaign on joint appearances by Nick Clegg, leader, and Vince Cable, Treasury spokesman, in an attempt to project a blend of youth and experience.
A clutch of former Lib Dem leaders will be deployed in the regions. Paddy Ashdown is taking a hands-on role directing the Lib Dem’s defence of the south-west heartlands. Sir Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy will be touring seats in Scotland and the north.
The article also lists Chris Huhne (“pugnacious, quick-footed”) and Lynne Featherstone (“sound media performer”) as ones to watch in the Liberal Democrat campaign.
Tony Benn’s lament that politics should be about issues, not personalities, is one echoed even by many who would struggle to find any issues on which they agree with him.
But it’s not a view I share. Why? Because the detailed policies of election manifestos or conference speeches frequently get swept aside in power by events. It’s not just the unexpected new event, it’s also the fallibility of forecasts which mean that decision making is often made from a very different perspective from that used to draw up pre-election policy promises.
Take the economy. It’s hard enough to know whether it is …
There are many, many reasons why the snow coup melted away so quickly. In amongst them is the lack of any groundswell of support, whether from backbench MPs or activists around the country, for the latest attempt.
Today’s Guardian throws an interesting light on the detail of how such grassroots opinion is followed in contemporary politics:
Downing Street on Wednesday monitored the Labour grassroots response to Hoon and Hewitt through Twitter, finding little or no support for their push.
That certainly partly reflects Labour reaction but it also reflects the degree to which Hoon, Hewitt and their allies are of a different political generation from those who naturally …
An aspiring MP has gone to extreme lengths to protest against the three main political parties.
Adam Osen, 50, has officially changed his name to None Of The Above and hopes to attract support from disillusioned voters as an independent parliamentary candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green.
The move was suggested by Mr Above’s brother, Gideon, who took the idea from the film Brewster’s Millions, which sees a character run a political campaign under the same slogan.
The former Mr Osen, a painter and decorator of Woodberry Way in Chingford, said his wife, Rebecca, 43, tried to talk him out of the move and many did not believe he would go through with it.
However, he admitted his two children, Gabrielle, 18, and Michael, 15, were less surprised as he has a reputation for coming up with “off the wall” ideas.
Mr Above, or None as he is known to friends, has lost faith in Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties since the MPs’ expenses scandal.
Sad news has reached us here at Lib Dem Voice that Anna Werrin has died of a stroke. Anna worked for Charles Kennedy from the year he was first elected to Parliament, in 1983, and was his head of office until his resignation as leader of the Lib Dems in 2006. She was subsequently Chris Huhne’s campaign manager in his second leadership attempt, in 2007.
On behalf of the team here at LDV, we extend our sympathies to Anna’s family and friends. Please do leave your tributes in the comments thread, below.
The 1997 general election turned out to be a once in a generation opportunity for many local Liberal Democrat campaign teams to gain a Parliamentary seat from the Conservatives. At the tail end of a by then deeply unpopular Conservative Government, the election saw unprecedented numbers of seats falling to the party. A few seats that were not quite gained from the Conservatives in 1997 did subsequently fall in 2001 and 2005, but it was the 1997 election with the Conservatives in government that was the main opportunity. Nearly every campaign that missed then did not subsequently win.
It’s a Lib Dem-tastic edition of today’s Independent – in addition to Nick Clegg’s article calling for the Queen’s Speech to be cancelled so that Parliament can focus on the big issue of reforming itself, former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy is the focus of the paper’s ‘You Ask The Questions’ feature, in which readers pose their own often sharp and pointy questions. There’s some straight-talking from Charles, along with some discreet evasion on issues such as:
the circumstances of his forced resignation as leader (“I’ve long since moved on and would continue to advise everyone else to
The author, broadcaster and campaigner Sir Ludovic Kennedy has died aged 89. A former BBC Panorama journalist, Sir Ludovic spent decades investigating miscarriages of justice, including the case of the Birmingham Six. He contributed to the abolition of the death penalty and was also president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.
Nick Clegg has joined in the tributes to Sir Ludovic, a member of the Liberal party and later the Lib Dems, for most of his life:
Ludovic Kennedy was one of the great thinkers of his generation. His pursuit of justice and his championing of sometimes unpopular and controversial causes marked him out as a true liberal. He will be greatly missed.”
Sir Ludovic was the Liberal candidate and runner-up in the 1958 Rochdale by-election, propelling the party to its highest vote in the constituency since the 1920s, with the Tories pushed from first to third place. It was the first UK election to feature televised debates between the candidates, with Granada also broadcasting the count – another first.
He quit the Lib Dems in 2001 in protest at Charles Kennedy’s refusal to countenance legalised euthanasia, even standing as an independent candidate for the cause in Devizes, Wiltshire, polling just over 1,000 votes. He later re-joined the party.
During the 1980s and ’90s, Sir Ludovic gained fame among a new generation (such as myself) through his appearances as himself in the superior BBC comedy programme, Yes, Minister, as well as his interviews with Peter Cook, playing Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, for A Life in Pieces. Here’s the first programme from that fantastic series, first broadcast in December 1990:
For the Liberal Democrats, perennial favourite former party leader Charles Kennedy will be responding to public questions Joining Charlie will be Ben Bradshaw, Theresa May, Dr David Starkey and Dambisa Moyo
If you’re tuning in, you can join the simultanous online Twitter debate here at #bbcqt, or the LDV debate in the thread below. Meanwhile Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson will be liveblogging events via CoverItLive at his own blog.
Charles Kennedy and Sir Menzies Campbell are the former political ‘big beasts’ that the public would most like to see more of, according to a new PoliticsHome poll. 1,228 UK adults were shown a list of former political big hitters and asked to tick all of those they would like to see return to prominence.
The two former Lib Dem leaders were the most popular choices, with just over a third of people (thirty four per cent) wishing for Kennedy’s return, and twenty two per cent backing Campbell. Kennedy was the most popular choice among supporters of all political parties and none.
For the record, here’s the list of former big-hitters missed most by Lib Dem supporters, and whom we’d – apparently – like to see more of:
While Nick Clegg has publicly disagreed with the SNP Scottish executive’s decision to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi, former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has joined David Steel in declaring his belief that the decision was the right one. Charles’s local paper the Ross-shire Journal reports his views:
The Justice Secretary faced an unenviable decision, in which neither of two practical options represents a good outcome. The whole tragic, tangled web of Pan Am Flight 103 raises profound issues of principle and of process.
“The most regrettable aspect of what has happened is that the appeal was withdrawn, and there is now no clear route to try to resolve all the doubts which surround the Lockerbie bombing and Mr Al-Megrahi’s conviction.
It’s one of the curiosities of YouTube that, because it’s only four years old, even fairly recent events and people of prominence are sometimes almost absent. Search for ‘nick clegg’, elected leader of the Lib Dems 18 months ago, and you’ll find 520 videos; search for ‘charles kennedy’, who led the party from 1999 to 2006, and there are fewer than a hundred, many of them relating directly to his resignation.
Here are three of the clips I found, and dusted down for your viewing delectation:
First up, and seven years before Charles was elected party leader, he was one of the Lib Dem talking heads for the BBC’s 1992 general election coverage. And doesn’t he look youthful:
Secondly, Charles gives a personal explanation of what motivated him to get into politics (the shakiness is down to the cameraman, I think, rather than CK):
Fortunately, the Post has done the hard work for us. There is of course the usual, now unsurprising, confirmation that Saddam had no link to, nor even any sympathy with, Al Qaeda:
Part Two – Beyond the Big Beasts(To read Part I – Two Big Surprises – published yesterday, please click here).
Lynne Featherstone has clearly earned a promotion to shadow Ed Balls at the Department of Communities and Local Government, with her work around the ‘Baby P’ case. And David Laws would better suit a move to Energy and Climate Change, where he could make a good case for the economics of our green policies and be an effective opponent of Ed Miliband, thought by many to be the more talented Miliband brother and certainly someone to be …
John Reed This is such a disappointing announcement.
We must push to have the present system for pricing all electricity based on the cost of the most expensive, usual...
Peter Hirst I would add caring to bold and relevant. Getting a sympathetic ear at the end of a telephone help line is as important as an extra pound in your pay slip. Under...
Peter Hirst One of the more important issues that the electorate care about is how much political parties understand what matters to them. This varies from person to person...
Peter Hirst Inequality must be seen in the round. I appreciate living in the north-west because it gives me easy access to mountains such as in Snowdonia, The Lakes and Der...
Peter Hirst One of the aims of most societies is some sort of redistribution. So fiscal federalism must have a mechanism for the rich regions giving to the poorer. Without ...
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Brexit and summer holidays
The pine martens of Shropshire
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
John Reed 
Peter Hirst 