Tag Archives: charles kennedy

Opinion: Will you take the ‘Bunker Pledge’?

A recent post on LDV speculated who would be in the new leader’s shadow cabinet. A more interesting question is who will occupy his kitchen cabinet.

Every political leader has one – a group of staff and unpaid advisors acting as an ‘inner circle’. At best, such groups provide leaders with a sounding board and confidential advice from people they can trust. At worst, a bunker mentality develops, with the inner circle isolating the leader and feeding him information selectively.

Ming Campbell was not in the job long enough for this to become a serious problem but all his predecessors, at …

Posted in Op-eds | 18 Comments

How the MPs are lining up (UPDATED)

By popular request, here’s the current list of which Lib Dem MPs have declared for which leadership candidate so far. (Originally compiled with the help of Jonathan Isaby of The Daily Telegraph.)

The list shows that Nick has attracted two MPs who supported Chris as leader in 2006: Greg Mulholland and Stephen Williams; and eight who supported Simon Hughes (all listed below). Chris has attracted one former Ming Campbell backer – Tom Brake – and three MPs who supported Simon Hughes last time.

Eight MPs have stated they will not declare for any candidate; four have yet – so far as I’m aware – to state their intentions.

As we continue to note, the number of MPs who declare for any one candidate is, in one sense, irrelevant: we are a one-member-one-vote party. Clearly, however, MPs’ endorsements will carry some influence with party members, especially among non-activists.

The full list appears below:

Posted in Leadership Election and News | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , and | 4 Comments

Who are your favourite (and least favourite) non-Lib Dem bloggers

A new poll is coming to LDV: who are your favourite, and least favourite, non-Lib Dem bloggers. Nominations are now open, so please feel free to use the comments thread. (Self-nomination is allowed, Iain.)

There’s still chance, by the way, to vote in the LDV poll asking who you would have voted for, given the chance, among those Lib Dem MPs who ruled themselves out of the leadership race. Eyes right, if you’ve not yet cast your ballot.

Julia Goldsworthy and Charles Kennedy are currently neck-and-neck, with David Laws and Steve Webb not far behind. (I have to say I think Vince’s …

Posted in Voice polls | Also tagged , and | 24 Comments

Opinion: Calamity, Conspiracy & Clegg

I can claim to have encouraged Chris Huhne to stand for the leadership when Charles Kennedy stepped down, while simultaneously believing and saying for some time that Nick Clegg will be/should be the next party leader.

I can also claim to have opposed both of them over the anodyne and partly mistaken views of the Huhne Commission – remember when PFI was thought to be a good idea?

In backing Nick I have had my credentials as a definitely left-of-centre Liberal questioned by a few parliamentary and non-parliamentary colleagues – along the lines of, “Dont you realise he is a …

Posted in Leadership Election and Op-eds | Also tagged | 16 Comments

Opinion: Why I’m supporting Nick Clegg

What is the point of the Liberal Democrats? It’s a question leveled at party supporters, in some form or another, time and time again, over and over; one almost always delivered with lashings of self-satisfaction and smugness.

It’s also an odd sort of question. Because in asking it, you are asking: What is the point in the only mainstream political party to oppose the Iraq war and Israels actions in the Middle East? What is the point in the only mainstream political party to oppose tuition fees? The only mainstream political party to propose plans to tackle inequality with radical and …

Posted in Leadership Election and Op-eds | Also tagged and | 20 Comments

Leadership Platform 3: Nick Clegg – Richard Allan writes…

We all know from experience that election campaigns are 90% perspiration and 10% Riso ink, and this one is no exception. Bu there are always things that keep you going during these marathon efforts.

In Nick’s campaign this has been the endorsements that people have been pouring in on the website. So for today’s campaign update, I thought I’d share what people are saying about Nick – you can add your own endorsement here!

As for what I think about Nick – and why his nickname used to be Grizzly Fish – you can find out in this video by …

Posted in Leadership Election | Also tagged , and | 18 Comments

Join the CK for constitutional affairs Facebook group

There has been much talk lately of what job Charles Kennedy should be given in the shadow cabinet. This has been fuelled by both Nick and Chris heavily indicating that they would like to see Charles back on the front bench.

My position for a long time has been that Charles should be put in charge of constitutional affairs. As one of Britain’s most popular and widely respected politicians, I feel that he is the only person who is capable of dragging the subject up the political agenda. The media like him, the public like him.

I am pleased …

Posted in Online politics | Also tagged | 1 Comment

What will the next Lib Dem shadow cabinet look like?

Five weeks’ today, the Liberal Democrats will be announcing who is to be the next leader of the party: Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne. One of the first jobs for whoever is the victor is to decide who should be in their shadow cabinet – never an easy task.

First, you have to reward those who’ve backed your campaign. Then you have to bend over backwards to be nice to the runner-up against whom you’ve been sparring for two months. And then you have to prove your unifying credentials by giving some key posts to those MPs who didn’t back you. …

Posted in Leadership Election and Op-eds | 17 Comments

CK on the Union

Former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has an article on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website taking apart Malcolm Rifkind’s Tory proposals to create an English ‘grand committee’ to legislate on wholly English domestic policies.

You can read it in full here. Here’s an extract:

As a Scot, representing a Scottish constituency for almost the past 25 years, I do not harbour an overweening ambition to pronounce on each and every matter exclusively English. But I have always had a sense that our essentially make-it-up-as-you-go-along unwritten constitution is rather like one of those water mattresses – push down on one part

Posted in News | 6 Comments

How the MPs are lining up (UPDATED)

I’m grateful to Jonathan Isaby of The Daily Telegraph, who has compiled (and allowed me to reproduce here) his up-to-date list of which Lib Dem MPs have declared for which leadership candidate so far.

Jonathan comments: “Below are my most up-to-date lists, which suggest that Huhne now cannot possibly overtake Clegg in terms of MPs declaring. Brackets state where they went in the 2006 election.”

The list shows that Nick has attracted two MPs who supported Chris as leader in 2006: Greg Mulholland and Stephen Williams; and seven who supported Simon Hughes (all listed below). Chris has attracted one former Ming Campbell backer – Tom Brake – and two MPs who supported Simon Hughes last time.

Nine MPs have stated they will not declare for any candidate; 14 have yet to state their intentions.

As was pointed out in the comments on yesterday’s thread, the number of MPs who declare for any one candidate is, in one sense, irrelevant: we are a one-member-one-vote party. Clearly, however, MPs’ endorsements will carry some influence with party members, especially among non-activists.

It will also influence how the media perceives, and then reports, the strengths of the respective leadership campaigns. Though, of course, being seen as the favourite is not always the most comfortable of positions, as Ming Campbell discovered last time. Lib Dems do love an underdog.

Posted in Leadership Election and News | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , and | 26 Comments

New poll: the alternative leadership contest

Barring something remarkable taking place between now and close of nominations, the coming leadership campaign will be a two-horse race between Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne.

A number of potential candidates have ruled themselves out of the race despite messages of support from many party members. So the new poll question is simple:

“Of those MPs who’ve ruled themselves out of standing, who would you have voted for given the chance?”

– Vince Cable
– Ed Davey
– Lynne Featherstone
– Julia Goldsworthy
– John Hemming
– Simon Hughes
– Charles Kennedy
– Susan Kramer
– David Laws
– Steve Webb

Feel free to mount a write-in campaign for any MPs …

Posted in Leadership Election and Voice polls | Also tagged and | 10 Comments

Which Lib Dem shadow cabinet job should Charles get?

Both leadership contenders have stated they want to see former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy make a return to the party’s shadow cabinet:

* Chris Huhne – “The party needs Charles to come back in a key, front-line role as soon as possible. He is far too big a talent to sit on the subs’ bench.”

* Nick Clegg’s campaign manager, Danny Alexander: “We’re all huge fans of Charles and extremely keen to see him return to the front bench as soon as he’s ready.”

The question is what job should he get? (Doubtless a cue for Tory trolls to …

Posted in Leadership Election and News | 12 Comments

The race for the leadership: who’s in, who’s not

Here’s the current position as I understand it, with links where I have them.

Declared:

Chris Huhne
John Hemming

Actively considering:

Nick Clegg
Steve Webb

Unlikely:

Charles Kennedy

Ruled out:

Vince Cable
Ed Davey
Lynne Featherstone
Julia Goldsworthy
Simon Hughes
Susan Kramer
David Laws

(For those interested, the current betting prices can be found here.)

Posted in Leadership Election and News | Also tagged , , , and | 34 Comments

The race to succeed Ming starts today

Who will run? That will be the fascinating question which will be answered in the days ahead. Here’s some of the press speculation today:

Lib Dem leadership bids expected
(BBC)

Charles Kennedy May Run For Leader Again (Glasgow Daily Record)

Two outsiders may run for Lib Dem leader (Daily Telegraph)

Huhne set to launch Lib Dem leadership challenge (Liverpool Daily Echo)

Please use the comments to highlight other stories we may have missed.

Posted in Leadership Election and News | Also tagged and | 26 Comments

Ming: why I quit

Ming Campbell has given a series of interviews this afternoon setting out his reasons for choosing to stand down as Lib Dem leader.

You can watch Ming’s interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson here.

And here are extracts from Ming’s conversation with Sky News’s Adam Boulton:

MC: … at the end of last week I worked out there had been seven consecutive days of reports in national newspapers about leadership and it became clear to me that if the party was going to make the kind of progress which it deserves and the British people need, it could be

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 10 Comments

Vince on Ming’s leadership: “under discussion, not under threat”

Vince Cable, the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, has had this to say to the BBC about the future of Ming Campbell’s leadership:

“It’s certainly under discussion. But I don’t think it’s under threat and I think the key point for all our activists and MPs and lords is that we shouldn’t panic in what is a very volatile political environment.”

He added: “I remember in the middle of our party conference, which was only a few weeks ago, our leader was being shown in some polls to be more popular than David Cameron. Brown was ruling the roost: he was

Posted in News | 8 Comments

Lib Dem MP: “We have to think about where we want to be in 18 months’ time”

From today’s Guardian:

there are now also questions over the fate of the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ming Campbell, 66, who has failed to push up his party’s fortunes in the opinion polls in recent months. He was chosen in 2006 to provide a safe pair of hands after Charles Kennedy had to resign – but he also has younger MPs who are keen to take the job. …

One Lib Dem MP said last night: ‘This election decision is going to have big ramifications for us all. We will have to take a good hard look at our own party,

Posted in News and Op-eds | 68 Comments

Okay, so here come some polls

I do love it when Iain Pravdale gets his knickers in a twist about the failure of Lib Dem Voice to turn itself into the kind of insta-pundit knee-jerk blog he relishes. This time it’s because we haven’t obsessed about the latest AnyansweryouwantGov poll showing the party at 12%.

For the record, LDV has no policy about whether or not it covers individual opinion polls. I guess we’re more likely to highlight one that’s good for the party than the contrary – we’re only human – but to be honest I think there are more interesting and important things to …

Posted in Polls | 10 Comments

A rogue poll, or are we kidding ourselves?

There’s no point obsessing about every poll, but… having reported last week’s ICM survey for The Guardian showing the Lib Dems with a 20% share of the vote, balance compels me to mention tonight’s Channel 4 YouGov poll showing the Lib Dems with just 13%, the party’s lowest YouGov rating since January 2006.

YouGov has (as Lib Dem chief executive Chris Rennard remarked on LDV last week) been consistently recording lower vote-shares for the Lib Dems than other pollsters for some months now.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that – if this poll is accurate …

Posted in Polls | 8 Comments

Video exclusive: the CK interview

You know how it is. You’re wandering through Brighton’s Grand hotel, and you bump into former Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy (okay, it was by arrangement, but no matter). What would you ask him?

Lib Dem Voice put the following four questions to Charles when we met up earlier today:

* What do you think of the current state of the party? Should we be despairing or hopeful?

* What do you think the Lib Dems stand for today?

* Do you support the party’s idea of a referendum on the European Union, in or out?

* Do you want to come back as leader

Posted in Conference and Lib Dem TV | 6 Comments

Who wants to play ‘follow the leader’?

The media are having fun. This morning Sir Michael White quipped that Ming’s ‘toilet bowl’ photo must have been behind the poll surge reported by his august organ and friend of Lib Dem Voice, The Grauniad. But their main sport is speculating on who will be the next Lib Dem leader – even though, as most of the mooted contenders point out, there is no vacancy.

At the afternoon press briefing, hacks were keen to veer off the topic of Sir Ming’s speech, and onto the question. Ed Davey was asked for the second time in the day whether he’d stand. …

Posted in Conference and News | 1 Comment

Guardian asks, ‘Could Ming bounce?’

A rather bizarre headline distracts from a shrewd, but by no means comfortable, analysis of the Lib Dems’ prospects by Lewis Baston, co-editor of Politico’s Guide to the General Election 2005 and research officer at the Electoral Reform Society, on The Guardian’s CommentIsFree blog.

It’s worth reading in full here – but here’s the conclusion:

There are two strategies available , to slog on and hope the climate improves, or to shake it up. More or less the only way the party has to shake things up is to dispose of another leader. Rumblings against Charles Kennedy were audible at the

Posted in News | 5 Comments

Opinion: Lib Dems must support LVT

I’ve been asked to preview the conclusions and argument for my book Location Matters: Recycling Britain’s Wealth here. If you subscribe to Liberator or Challenge (the Green Lib Dems’ journal) you will get reviews by others of the book before Conference. In the current Challenge you will also see a piece by me about how the Liberal Democrats’ Tax Commission got in such a depressingly non-radical place with Land Value Taxation (LVT) – which is what my book is about.

What I want to do here is explain the conception of the book, its purpose and what I hope happens next. But first, as requested, in a single sentence: conclusions and arguments. If the Liberal Democrats do not go into the next General Election campaign with a pledge to retain some form of nation-wide property tax at the same time as scrapping Council Tax, they will have betrayed their forebears and – more importantly – future generations of British people and will not deserve the support of voters.

Posted in Books, Conference and Op-eds | 6 Comments

Tim Garden: An Appreciation

You would expect someone with the titles Marshal of the Royal Airforce, Professor, the Lord Garden to be, at the very least, a little self important if not down right pompous. I had not met Tim Garden before Charles Kennedy nominated him for a place in the House of Lords in 2004. So I was not prepared to meet so fully a paid up member of the human race. My sense of humour can veer towards the schoolboy, so calling one of the highest ranking officers in the Royal Airforce “Biggles” could have tried the patience of lesser men. But …

Posted in News and Op-eds | 1 Comment

Serve a liberal helping

What does Charles Kennedy like for breakfast? What does Lembit Opik do whilst watching Question Time? What has Navnit Dholakia never told his family? The answer to all these and many other questions you’ve never asked yourself are in Serve a Liberal Helping, the cookbook about to be published by Camden Liberal Democrats.

Ordering details are over on the Camden website.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Better late than never?

The Tories have today called for an inquiry into the war in Iraq, with shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague arguing, according to the BBC, it should be along the lines of the wide-ranging inquiry into the Falklands War.

Sound familiar? Yep. Here’s why:

Tony Blair claims his Government has been open and straightforward on Iraq. But every piece of information has been wrung out of them in the face of stiff resistance.
It took the death of David Kelly before, at the Hutton Inquiry, we found out the truth behind the dodgy dossier and the infamous 45

Posted in News | 1 Comment

Opinion: Don’t panic Mr Mainwaring!

Menzies Campbell with Charles Kennedy behind himWell, here’s a thing. I didn’t think I would be rushing into print to defend Ming Campbell’s leadership of the Lib Dems.

Last year I voted enthusiastically (although fairly quietly as I was employed by the party at the time) for Chris Huhne. I didn’t think it was wise for the party to opt for a sexagenarian leader just when we had connected so effectively with young voters over issues like Iraq and tuition fees. I feared that he would …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 20 Comments

Opinion: Ming keeps his head down and his mouth shut

Carl Quilliam writes…

DimblebyOn Thursday night Ming Campbell made what can only be described as his most recent appearance on Question Time. For large portions of the show he gave a reasonable performance, no more than I would expect from a party leader. However, there were a few glaring omissions as well as some quite strange statements that make me personally to further doubt his leadership. When he was asked about how he became party leader, he firstly seemed to delight in the insinuation that he knifed Charles Kennedy take the leadership and then, …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 8 Comments

Opinion: Ming must stay

Ming must stayDropping the pilot is precisely the wrong reaction to our local election results. Last week’s results were not fantastic, although Mark Pack has rightly pointed how well we held up in our key seats. That old saying remains true, though: while success has many parents, failure is an orphan. This seems to be the case with our “mixed bag”.

While we all take pride in the quality of our local campaigning when he win, we are naturally more inclined to blame the national leadership when we lose. So is it all down to local fighting or national leadership? The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 28 Comments

Opinion: The ‘five tests’ raise deeply worrying questions about strategy

Menzies Campbell with Charles Kennedy behind himI didn’t vote for Ming Campbell to be party leader, but I’ve never been one of those who have criticised his leadership, I have had no time for those who listened to the media fluff about dissent in the party over his style & age. In fact his first year has been better than I expected or even hoped for. He has imposed a degree of organisational rigour on the party that was sadly lacking previously, he has set a clear policy lead challenging much of the party´s soggy corporatist hobby horses and he has generally repaired and steadied a ship that was badly holed below the water line by Charles Kennedy’s messy departure.

So far, so good or at least until last weekend it was. 

Ming’s speech to the party’s Spring Conference has left me deeply worried about the strategic direction of the party and the advice that he is getting. In his speech he laid out Five Tests for a Gordon Brown government. This was at best a very peculiar thing to do. Don’t get me wrong the tests themselves were perfectly sound in as far as they went, though they were a little vague and with one or two glaring omissions. However, publicly declaring them was I believe a serious tactical error.

One of Charles Kennedy’s significant achievements as Party Leader was to reach a point where the Lib Dems were being judged, for better or for worse, on our own agenda and our own terms. He did this by resolutely refusing to discuss the idea of pacts, deals or coalitions, until journalists finally became bored of receiving the same non-answer, something he even managed to maintain under the intense pressure of two General Elections.

That achievement is now being undermined. Although the 5 Tests were presented to the party as criteria for judging a pre-election Brown Government it is clear from the media reaction that virtually no-one has taken them at face value. They are widely seen as the opening gambit for coalition talks should Labour be the largest party in a hung Parliament after the next general election. Even if they genuinely are not, that is how they are perceived, perceived by the public, the media and by the Labour party. 

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