In a remarkable email exchange obtained exclusively by Liberal Democrat Voice, Conservative Parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith has accused East Midlands Conservative MEP Roger Helmer of being “utterly blind to the value of the environment”. In return, Helmer has attacked Goldsmith of “disseminatpejorative falsehoods”.
Here are the key extracts:
Roger Helmer, 20 October:
“I understand that you wrote to a constituent using the following words: ‘Roger Helmer is utterly blind to the value of the environment, and the need to protect it.’ This is a downright falsehood, and is highly pejorative … You are perfectly entitled to take a different view. But you
Something of a debate has been captivating the Liberal Democrat blogosphere recently. I don’t think this is something unique to the Liberal Democrats as a party; each party and movement is going through something of a process of struggle and redefinition due to the new financial climate in which we find ourselves.
Whatever your general view of capitalism as a social system, it is absolutely true in my eyes that the limitations of the markets have been cruelly exposed in the past weeks. Of course, this is not true if you are a die-hard libertarian; what has been exposed for them is the problems with fettering their beloved market. However, the consensus of opinion, even in such ‘loyalist’ tomes like The Economist and Financial Times, weighs heavily against the libertarian view of the correct lessons that should be drawn from the current crisis.
What has been teased out is that there is a need for a new consensus; maybe even A New Start, as posited by David Allen on these very pages. Of course, your view of how we got here will necessarily determine your view of which way forward is right.
However, what is abundantly clear is that the nature of the Liberal Democrats as a political party mitigates against the adoption of anybody’s ‘maximum program’. I would no more want to be a member of a party that abandons concepts such as social justice and the welfare of the people that the state is supposed to serve, as any libertarian would want to be of a party committed to the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights’, or even more extreme democratisation of capital.
So, middle ground has to be found. How can we go about this?
This being Prime Minister’s Questions, the burning topic of the day – should Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross be publicly flogged for crimes against Andrew Sachs – was not tackled. But, this being PMQs, there was plenty of other puerile posturing and manipulative outrage on display.
The Tories’ David Cameron returned to the questioning that brought him no joy last week: demanding that Gordon Brown accept that ‘boom and bust’, far from being vanquished, is alive and well in UK plc today. The rest of his questions got bogged down in trying to prove the Prime Minister has abandoned his infamous fiscal rules.
Mr Cameron is right about this, but it’s poor strategy for three reasons: (i) the Tory leader just doesn’t sound convincing when talking about the details of economic policy; (ii) the Prime Minister (rather as Tony Blair did after 9/11) is quite content, at least for the moment, to say extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures; and (iii) because, as The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson argues here, the Tory leader is failing to project any form of Tory narrative that might connect with voters. More than usual, Mr Cameron is adopting slick debating society schtick during these recession reality PMQs. It worked once; it’s not working now.
By contrast, the Lib Dems’ Nick Clegg used his two salvoes to make two big, connected points: that there are billions of government spending that not only can be cut, but should be cut (eg, ID cards and the surveillance database); and that the best and fairest way to stimulate the economy is to cut taxes for low- and middle-income earners. In doing so, Nick gains high praise from Fraser (again):
Finally, the right line from Prime Minister’s Questions – and it’s one that Gordon Brown will fear the most. “What people need now is more money in their pockets. He could deliver big tax cuts for people who desperately need help”. It was from Nick Clegg. You can argue – as I do – that the Liberal Democrats’ proposed tax cut is paltry. But the rhetoric and positioning is precisely right. It’s a binary distinction: Brown trusts the state, and wants to spend his way out of a recession. Clegg is saying he trusts the British public, and wants to stimulate the economy by letting them keep more of their own money. When Brown retorted that the “Liberal Party” would somehow damage the British economy by taking out £20 billion of spending, it sounded irrelevant. Clegg has astutely judged that the Tories are missing an open goal because of internal struggles with the concept of tax cuts. It’s a no-brainer in the current environment – has anyone see Barack Obama’s website recently? Obama’s figures, like Clegg’s, are paltry if you add them up. But the positioning is right. Clegg is showing the Tories how to do it.
Anyway, you can judge for yourselves, below, via YouTube and the Hansard transcript:
Former Tory party chairman Lord (Norman) Tebbit has urged David Cameron to follow the lead of Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg in demanding the British public be allowed an ‘in or out’ referendum choice on the UK’s membership of the EU. Okay, Tebbo didn’t put it quite like that… but, still, the effect’s the same:
David Cameron must promise a referendum on whether the UK should leave the European Union, former Tory chairman Lord Tebbit is expected to say. In a speech on Monday, he will call on the Conservative leader to show “Thatcherite courage” on the issue. This should
For months now, families across the country have felt the pinch as fuel and food prices have spiralled out of control.
They have watched as financial institutions hit the rocks and have seen the great lengths the Governments has been prepared to go to in order to bail them out.
As they read of the billions of pounds of their money that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have been prepared to pump into the banking system, it is understandable that they should ask what is being done to help them.
The Liberal Democrats are the only party to set out clearly what should …
Channel 4 News has commissioned a poll from YouGov in the 60 marginal constituencies David Cameron needs to win to form a Government. LDV doesn’t dwell on individual poll results – the only sensible way to use polls is to look at trends – but it’s worth highlighting one finding which is unlikely to get much publicity.
YouGov asked the question: “If you were to put political party preferences to one side who would be the best Chancellor for Britain right now?”
No surprises that the financial crisis again dominated the slanging-match exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions this week.
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg stuck to his week-in-week-out brief – asking punchy questions about the ‘bread and butter’ issues affecting the lives of everyday folk – this time focusing on fuel poverty, and the estimates that up to 80% of single pensioners will struggle to heat their homes this winter. Nick even managed to get in a sly dig at both Labour and the Tories over the Mandelson-Osborne Russian donor imbroglio, noting that Gordon Brown “is all at sea, if not in a luxury yacht, like some prominent members of the Opposition.”
David Cameron once again found himself on the defensive when challenging the Prime Minister, with his frustration levels visibly rising as he sees the Prime Minister growing in confidence in inverse proportion to the growth of the British economy.
The Tory leader has a problem at the moment: in times of crisis, you have to sound like you have a firm grip on policy, that you can offer solutions not just identify problems. Everyone knows the economy’s gone tits-up on Labour’s watch. But most of the public recognises that this is a global financial crisis, and that the Tories, just like Labour, failed to see it coming, and when it did happen stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Labour. So politicians are currently being judged on the proposals they put forward now, not the degree of foresight they showed previously (sadly for the Lib Dems and Vince).
Anyway judge for yourselves how Vince did, via the magic of YouTube and Hansard:
Former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard has dismissed John Redwood, chair of the party’s official Economic Competitiveness Policy Group, as not reflecting the mainstream views of the party in a radio appearance.
The criticism came on the BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster at the weekend when former Labour minister Patricia Hewitt raised the question of the Conservative policy review, chaired by John Redwood, that called for deregulation of the mortgage market:
Patricia Hewitt: John Redwood and this economic policy commission has only, what, in the last month or two said, ‘Let’s deregulate the mortgage market’.
Tomorrow’s Independent will carry a poll from Communication Research, the first poll conducted since last week’s financial bail-out of the banks (and therefore of more interest than LDV would normally give to any individual poll). John Rentoul reports the headlines over at the paper’s Open House blog here:
We asked whether people agreed or disagreed with the following statements:
It is right that taxpayers’ money should be used to bail out banks.
Agree 37% Disagree 58%
I will scale back my Christmas spending plans to save money.
Agree 62% Disagree 36%
Gordon Brown’s decisive handling of the bank crisis means that Labour has a
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 18th October 2008 - 12:50 pm
Fan as I am of The Times’s Sam Coates’ Red Box blog, an article today by Sam for the newspaper contains one of those Westminster Village myths which quickly establishes itself as fact unless challenged:
Some Conservatives may fret , but they do not have it as bad as the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg gave a speech on Monday morning cautioning that the crisis was an “economic 9/11”. Not a single sentence of the speech was reported in Tuesday’s papers.
Now, to be fair, I didn’t buy all of Tuesdays papers to check this out. What I did do, though, was …
Yesterday I looked at the impact of the current financial crisis on the Lib Dems, the one party which correctly anticipated the credit crunch and its impact. Inevitably (if frustratingly) much of this will depend on the extent to which the public blames Labour for the mess the UK currently finds itself in, or the extent to which they credit Labour if the Government’s bail-out package helps rescue the UK from amidst the debris of the current global crisis.
In short, what the Lib Dems have to say is unlikely to have any immediate positive or negative impact on …
None of our biz, of course, but that shouldn’t stop us poking our big yellow beak in, should it?
In a time of headlines like London shares slump is worst for 21 years, Panic selling piles pressure on G7 leaders and Councils trapped in £1bn black hole (and that’s just today’s), the old grandees of economics are increasingly on a media roll. These are people who can interpret moment-by-moment macro-economic unravelling with a nimbleness and acuity that can’t be faked with slick presentation and a good researcher. Suppose, for example, HSBC went into receivership in the middle of Newsnight? You can’t just get on your Blackberry and ask for three paragraphs and a killer metaphor involving rooves and sunshine with Jeremy Paxman glaring at you. Big serious suits containing big serious people fill (often literally) our screens every evening.
Welcome to the 85th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (28th September – 4th October), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.
How about starting with the most popular blog-posting, and we work our way down? Here goes:
If you listened carefully, you will have heard David Cameron mention the environment in his speech to the Tory party conference today. Here are his remarks in full:
I want a clean environment as well as a safe one.
and
didn’t champion green politics as greenwash but because climate change is devastating our environment because the energy gap is a real and growing threat to our security and because $100-a-barrel oil is hitting families every time they fill up their car and pay their heating bills.
So, there you have it: two sentences. That’s 59 words in a speech of 7,134 words …
We tend not to be too poll-obsessed here at LDV – of course we look at them, as do all other politico-geeks, but viewed in isolation no one poll will tell you very much beyond what you want to read into it. Looked at over a reasonable time-span and, if there are enough polls, you can see some trends.
Here, in chronological order, are the results of the eight polls* published in September:
Tories 44%, Labour 25%, Lib Dems 17% – ComRes/Independent (6th Sept)
Tories 46%, Labour 27%, Lib Dems 16% – YouGov/Sunday Times (14th Sept)
Tories 52%, Labour 24%, Lib Dems
By Vince Cable
| Tue 30th September 2008 - 10:45 am
Gordon Brown’s response to the economic crisis has been too little, too late.
For years I warned him of the oncoming economic problems. Unsustainable levels of personal debt, mostly secured against the illusory ‘wealth’ of rising, vastly inflated property prices. An economy based so heavily on debt was never going to be in a fit state to deal with global shocks like the credit crunch.
And so it has proved. Gordon Brown is now facing the consequences of his years of inaction. The housing bubble has burst. Unemployment is rising fast. Tens of thousands of families are losing their homes.
There’s been a double-dose of criticism from the Spectator today for Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft and his refusal to come clean on whether he has kept the promise he made at the time he was made a peer.
As I’ve blogged before (such as here), on being appointed to the House of Lords, Lord Ashcroft promised he would become a UK resident and start paying tax here.
Since getting the peerage (which of course can’t now be removed if he didn’t keep his promise), he has refused to state whether he’s kept his word, journalists who have dug into the story …
One of David Cameron’s Shadow Cabinet has been exposed for misleading the public after suggesting his London base is a leaky ex-council flat with faulty wiring.
In fact Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Chris Grayling is a wealthy landlord with FOUR homes worth at least £2million…
Mr Grayling said : “I have an old council flat near Victoria Station. The bathroom used to leak and the wiring in the kitchen once gave me an electric shock. There’s an image that people in the Shadow Cabinet all come from the same background, which isn’t true.”
David Cameron faced embarrassment on the eve of his party conference last night after members of a secretive club of Tory donors were linked to the ‘short-selling’ of the collapsing Bradford & Bingley.
As the bank was taken into the hands of the authorities ahead of its break-up or nationalisation, two members of Mr Cameron’s elite Leaders Group were revealed to have bet on its falling share price, which has dropped by 95 per cent in a year.
A hedge fund managed by Michael Hintze, who has given £660,000 to the Tories since Mr Cameron took
Few in a Labour party currently riven by civil war and threatened with electoral wipe-out will be giving much thought to the relationship with the Liberal Democrats.
For their part, the Lib Dems are busy putting as much distance as possible from the government as they seek to take advantage of Labour’s current political weakness. Yet, as I argued recently in an issue of Progress magazine the very same factors currently driving them apart – Nick Clegg’s redirection of the Lib Dems and the resurgence of the Tories – may in fact end up moving them closer together in …
Following a tip-off from a constituent of Richard Benyon, Conservative MP for Newbury, I took a look at his website, which states:
This site is the responsibility of Richard Benyon MP and is paid for from his Communications Allowance.
The Communications Allowance is one of the pots of public money MPs are given to help them do their jobs and therefore it comes with various restrictions, including (to put it simply) not using it for party political campaigning.
So I took a look at the site’s blog to see whether it kept to the rules. Or rather, I tried to look …
Although on the surface, British politics appears to have settled down a little in the last few months (Conservatives ahead, Gordon Brown in Michael Foot territory), underneath it all there is still a huge brittleness about it all.
You see it many weeks in council by-election results, where the Liberal Democrats often notch up dramatic swings from the Conservatives in by-elections in the southern-half of England.
You see it in research such as Newsnight’s focus group comparing Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. At the start – few very had heard of Nick – but by the end – he …
By Alix Mortimer
| Sat 20th September 2008 - 11:30 am
Yikes! What is this unlovely shower of coutured smuggery? Why, it’s a future Conservative cabinet, of course!
Thanks to society magazine Tatler, 10 young Conservatives – billed as the party’s stars of the future – were treated to a makeover, transforming them from dour political animals to fashionable clothes horses.
Tatler says the photo shoot, involving several parliamentary candidates in marginal seats up and down the country, proves “David Cameron’s Notting Hill Toryism reaches further than leafy W11”.
The men wore Gieves & Hawkes, Crombie and Moschino, while the women wriggled into dresses by the likes of Yves
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 18th September 2008 - 6:35 pm
Lib Dem Voice has devoted some space this week to our Media Moron Watch – so let’s redress the balance and highlight a handful of articles which have attempted fair analyses of Nick Clegg’s speech and the Liberal Democrat conference. A couple are pretty positive, a couple less so: but they’re all thoughtful:
Against the odds, the Liberal Democrats have held a successful conference. Tumultuous events elsewhere meant media attention was limited, but they managed still to convey, with some success, a new message. They wish to be seen as Britain’s new radical tax-cutting party, one that is still committed to social justice. The fact that the message got anywhere at all was remarkable, as they have yet to offer any precise details about how they will cut the overall amount paid in tax. Nonetheless, they have conveyed the same message to themselves as well, the equivalent of conjurors falling for their own trick. … needs to send out signals in what for them is a highly complex and changed political situation, needing to defend themselves against a more popular Conservative party while seeking to make the most of a decline in support for Labour. At the broadest strategic level, they have pulled it off, with an offer of tax cuts while retaining a commitment to social justice.
They have done it in such a way to make nonsense of claims that the party is moving rightwards. There were two challenges for Nick Clegg as he delivered his first address to the party conference. One related to a question of style. Could he pull off the daunting task of delivering a big speech at his annual conference? The answer was an unequivocal “Yes”. He looked at ease as he wandered around the stage aided by the invisible autocue.
In terms of substance, he more or less pulled it off as well, stressing that he was as committed to social justice as previous leaders and yet outlining a distinctive pitch far removed from the Conservatives and Labour in its current plight. On the stage, although not in all the interviews he has given this week, he looked entirely comfortable, much more so than his immediate predecessors.
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 17th September 2008 - 7:20 pm
There’s a paradox about party leaders’ conference speeches (akin to Prime Minister’s Questions): they are dissected by supporters, opponents and journalists, while in reality the ‘real people’ in the country might perhaps catch a 10-second clip on the news. But speeches remain fundamentally important – not only for the morale of members, but also as probably the only time in the year when serious journalists (not always an oxymoron) will listen for any length of time to a politician expressing their ideas.
Let’s be clear about one thing straight away: Nick’s speech was excellent. Every Lib Dem who heard it …
By Alix Mortimer
| Tue 16th September 2008 - 6:42 pm
A barnstormer of a speech from Chris Huhne this morning as he dealt with his own portfolio and then segued into a full-out attack on the Tories. He was so impressive I have even forgiven him for backing into me in full Chris-gesture mode causing me to spill coffee all down myself.
The Eco Towns motion passed at the Liberal Democrat conference was flawed: in seeking to oppose centrally imposed Eco-Towns the policy centrally imposed a rigid policy across the country, with no regard for local circumstances.
In my hometown of Oxford we have some of the worst housing problems in the country. I myself was homeless only eight years ago, sleeping in the city’s homeless shelter for young people. I’ve also been at the sharp end of trying to solve the crisis, as Oxford city council’s housing portfolio holder from 2006 until this May.
The reality is that the housing crisis in Oxford is destroying lives. We have thousands of people on the waiting list, and thousands more in private sector accomodation not even on the list. We have hideous problems of overcrowding, homeless shelters and hostels that are regularly full, with few homes free for people to move off the streets. The average waiting time for larger affordable homes is 10 years. Locally produced estimates of housing need show that we need at least 1700 new affordable homes every year just to keep pace with demand, let alone tackle the backlog. Remember: behind these statistics are real human lives, real tragedies.
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 15th September 2008 - 12:15 pm
Two good, fair, balanced editorials on the Lib Dems from today’s Indy and Grauniad. In many ways, they mirror each other, reflecting that the party has had a troubled couple of years, but that its increasing self-confidence in liberal values will stand us in good stead come the next general election. We at LDV have been a tad critical of the press this week. Yet today’s editorials identify clearly and consistently what the Lib Dems stand for, and also show how what the party has to say distinguishes us from both Labour and the Tories.
Peter Martin @ Kira,
The words you quoted were from Peter Davies'. Not me. I wouldn't agree with raising VAT on energy to 15% right now. I'd leave it as is.
The point ...
Peter Martin “‘why can’t social care and NHS spending be treated as ‘investment’’. Of course, that wont wash”.
I'd agree if were talking about re...
Peter Martin There's really only two fiscal rules that make any sense:
1) If inflation caused by an overheating economy is the main issue, then governments should tax mor...
Peter Davies @Kira Collins You seem to have missed the bit about raising tax allowances. That primarily helps those on low wages....
David Wright According to this well-argued article (by Lib Dem councillor Mark Ellis), a simple wealth tax wouldn't work, but tax on TRANSFER of wealth could, if current tax...
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Martin Wainwright's Guardian obituary of Michael Meadowcroft
Evaluating different electoral systems for the House of Commons
Brexit and summer holidays
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Peter Martin 
Peter Davies 
David Wright 