Tag Archives: featured

Mark Pack

NEW POLL: Should capital and income be taxed at the same level?

By Mark Pack | Thu 10th June 2010 - 6:50 pm

In amongst the debate over capital gains tax and the politics of whether the Budget leans more towards the previous Liberal Democrat or Conservative policies on the topic is a significant issue of principle.

The Liberal Democrats (and previously the Liberals in particular) have traditionally been much keener on the idea that the tax system should treat ‘unearned income’ more equally to earned income, and so tax more equally the growth in capital value of assets compared with salaries.

Of course the use of the word ‘unearned’ is itself the trigger for a whole range of debates as increase values …

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Posted in Voice polls | Also tagged and | 33 Comments
Stephen Tall

Want to know who the most liberal Labour leadership contender is?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 10th June 2010 - 9:40 am

Before the election, Lib Dem Voice launched How Authoritarian is your MP?, a website which ranked how authoritarian – or liberal – were MPs in the 2005-10 parliament based on their voting record on 10 key issues. These ranged from ID cards to detention without trial to freedom of speech.

The five candidates for the Labour leadership are now official – so we can now see how their voting record compares, and name the contender who is, officially, the most liberal potential Labour leader …

(NB: if you click on their name you can see how their voting record stacks up).

1. Diane Abbott.

36% authoritarian, 64% liberal.

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , and | 35 Comments
Mark Pack

Turning Canadian

By Mark Pack | Wed 9th June 2010 - 10:20 am

Overseas places come and go as the fashionable one to talk about in Westminster political circles. After 1992 it was Japan, with the fourth Conservative general election victory in a row spawning comparisons with Japan and the long period of Liberal Democrat rule there. In the run up to 2005 it was the Australian state of Queensland, where an incumbent state government had seemed set for re-election but suffered a shock defeat, put down largely to complacency amongst its supporters. And of course, as a third example, when in doubt there’s always the 1960 US Presidential election, Barack Obama or …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

Clegg makes “impressive” debut at despatch box as DPM, sets out radical political reform plans

By Stephen Tall | Mon 7th June 2010 - 9:25 pm

Nick Clegg debuted in front of the House of Commons today in his new role (yes, it is still new: it’s only a month since the election) as deputy prime minister. And he used the occasion to set out how the new coalition government will make good the political reforms radical political reform plans that languished neglected during Labour’s 13 years in government. The government’s plans include:

    * A referendum on the Alternative Vote
    * The right to recall MPs who break the rules
    * Fewer, more equal-sized constituencies

…

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged and | 19 Comments
Stephen Tall

Do you pass the Lib Dem test? The 13 Yes/No questions that will give you your answer

By Stephen Tall | Fri 4th June 2010 - 11:20 am

With a tip of our hat to the Daily Mail – which today asks its readers 13 questions so they can tell if they’re posh or not – Lib Dem Voice presents our special How Lib Dem are you? test:


(Click on the image to enlarge).

All you have to do is answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the following questions to get your answer …

1. Do you complain about long driveways and low letterboxes after an afternoon’s leaflet delivery?
2. Do you obsessively count the number of garden posters of the different parties

…

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Posted in Humour | 45 Comments
Mark Pack

Bright spots of the 2010 election result: growth in number of winnable seats

By Mark Pack | Fri 21st May 2010 - 1:20 pm

The small overall net loss of seats in this month’s general election understandably rather overshadowed the growth in the party’s share of the popular vote, which was up for the third general election in a row.

The seat total was hit by the party not getting the lucky breaks in very close contests. The party won five of these knife-edge results but lost eleventwelve.

That gives a hint as to what was happening overall to the number of seats won or close to won. If you total up the number of seats the party has won or come within …

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Posted in General Election | 28 Comments
Mark Pack

What do I do with all these new members?

By Mark Pack | Thu 20th May 2010 - 1:20 pm

During the election campaign the flood of new helpers coming in to the party made me write a post, OMG! People want to help – what do I do?, which turned out to be rather popular. Now that the campaign is over, it’s important to keep those new helpers involved – and also to make the continuing flow of new members feel wanted and involved too.

Far more people have joined than have left the party since the coalition was announced, which is a promising sign for the future. There will though be some tough times ahead and a strong local …

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Posted in Op-eds | 14 Comments
Mark Pack

Opinion poll reporting: who did it best this year?

By Mark Pack | Mon 17th May 2010 - 12:20 pm

Since the start of the year, The Voice has been tracking how newspapers do at reporting the political opinion polls they commission. Each time a newspaper reports on such an opinion poll, the report gets scored out of 30 against a set of basic criteria. The scoring system has generally worked well, though it doesn’t catch the nuance of newspapers commissioning poll questions about political matters and then not reporting certain ones which happen to contradict their editorial line (such as on this, this and this occasion).

How then do the different newspapers come out of this all? Here are the …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

+++ 91% of Lib Dem members back Lib-Con coalition agreement, says LDV poll

By Stephen Tall | Sat 15th May 2010 - 11:00 pm

Lib Dem Voice has been conducting a survey of party members registered on our members’ forum asking them for their views of the coalition government agreement between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. Over 600 have responded, and here’s what you told us …

LDV asked: If you were able to vote, would you choose to support the motion proposing the Lib Dems enter into a coalition government with the Conservatives?

91% – Yes, I would support the motion
9% – No, I would not support the motion
(excluding Don’t knows, 4%)

Our survey suggests there will be an overwhelming endorsement of Nick Clegg …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | 37 Comments
Mark Pack

Welcome to our many new readers

By Mark Pack | Sat 15th May 2010 - 11:50 am

The election may be over but the influx of new readers continues apace, with well in excess of 100,000 individual readers so far this month. Welcome to you all.

A few tips and pieces of housekeeping that may be useful:

  • You can sign up to receive a daily breakfast e-mail listing our posts from the previous day, with individual links through to each of them. It’s the perfect way to catch up with all the content on Lib Dem Voice. See the sign-up form here.
  • Lib Dem party members are welcome to join our private discussion forum, which now numbers well

…

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Posted in Site news | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Further details of special conference published

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th May 2010 - 7:28 pm

As reported earlier today by Helen, the party is holding a special conference in Birmingham on Sunday.

More details are now available. First, here’s the explanation from Duncan Brack (Chair of the Federal Conference Committee) about why it is being held:

The Federal Executive has called this special conference to enable the party to debate the coalition agreement reached between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party, and approved by the Federal Executive and the Parliamentary Party, on 11 May…

The motion endorsing the agreement – though not the agreement itself – is open to amendment … The amendments selected for
debate by

…

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Posted in Conference | Also tagged | 32 Comments
Mark Pack

Text of the Conservative / Lib Dem agreement

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th May 2010 - 3:21 pm

This document sets out agreements reached between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on a range of issues. These are the issues that needed to be resolved between us in order for us to work together as a strong and stable government. It will be followed in due course by a final Coalition Agreement, covering the full range of policy and including foreign, defence and domestic policy issues not covered in this document.

1. Deficit Reduction

The parties agree that deficit reduction and continuing to ensure economic recovery is the most urgent issue facing Britain. We have therefore agreed that there …

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Posted in News | 38 Comments
Stephen Tall

What Lib Dem members think about talking to the Tories: LDV poll results

By Stephen Tall | Mon 10th May 2010 - 2:25 pm

Lib Dem Voice has been conducting a survey today of party members registered on our members’ forum asking them for their views of the discussions that have been taking place between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. Here’s what you’ve told us …

  • 89% support Nick Clegg’s decision to let the party with the most votes and most seats try and form a government;
  • 90% support Nick Clegg’s decision to enter into discussions with the Conservative party on that basis;
  • 80% say that significant progress on electoral reform is a deal-breaker;
  • 98% rate Nick Clegg’s performance during the campaign as effective or very effective, with Vince Cable scoring 85%.

Full results below:

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Posted in General Election and LDV Members poll | 91 Comments
Stephen Tall

Deal or no deal? Here’s what I think

By Stephen Tall | Sat 8th May 2010 - 12:45 pm

Who would want to be in Nick Clegg’s place today? For all the talk during the campaign that the Lib Dem leader would end up as ‘Kingmaker’, that now looks the least enviable position imaginable.

I’ve read and absorbed lots of the commentary of the last 24 hours – both on this site and elsewhere – and am amazed by the striking naivete of those who appear to imagine there is an easy option for the Lib Dems, that whatever choice we make in the days ahead won’t involve compromise and pain. Sorry guys: it will.

Nick Clegg has just three realistic choices, and all of them are unappetising in one way or another.

A deal with the Tories:

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Posted in News | 300 Comments
Stephen Tall

The morning after the night before: 10 questions we need to answer (but maybe not today)

By Stephen Tall | Fri 7th May 2010 - 12:55 pm

Here’s a few to ponder … Or perhaps best to sleep on them.

1. What happened to the predicted Lib Dem surge? Did people change their mind at the last minute? Did young people not turn out? Did floating voters turn their back on us?

2. How did the opinion polls get the Lib Dem share of the vote so badly wrong? They were pretty accurate in terms of the Labour/Tory vote, but all nine of the final polls put the Lib Dems in the 26-29% range when in fact we scored 23%.

3. What happened to our targeting strategy? Given our share of the vote was higher than in 2005, how did we lose so many seats? Did we over-reach ourselves? Or did we underestimate the residual Labour/Tory vote?

4. Why were there such differences between results in individual Lib Dem seats, sometimes making gains against the Tories (eg, Wells, Eastbourne), sometimes suffering horrendous swings (eg, Oxford West & Abingdon, Montgomeryshire). Incumbency seems to have helped in some places, not in others: why?

5. Should Nick Clegg have ruled out any form of coalition before the election to avoid a week of the campaign getting bogged down in the usual hung parliament media process stories? Was it a mistake to state openly the party wouldn’t work with Gordon Brown if Labour came third?

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Posted in General Election | 101 Comments
Mark Pack

The significance of May 27th

By Mark Pack | Thu 6th May 2010 - 8:49 pm

One of the tragedies of the general election campaign was the death of John Boakes, UKIP candidate for Thirsk & Malton. As a result polling in the general election there has been delayed until May 27th.

These sorts of delayed polls happen thankfully rarely and are not usually of wider political significance. However, if the election result is as close as the polls suggest it will be, May 27th could turn into one of the first significant political tests for whoever is Prime Minster and whatever arrangements they’ve made (or not made) to get that post.

The notional result in 2005 …

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Posted in General Election | Also tagged | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

Dear Ian Cowie…

By Mark Pack | Sat 24th April 2010 - 1:42 pm

Dear Ian,

I’m a bit confused by your article about hung Parliaments in the Telegraph, where you wrote:

The last time a British election failed to produce a decisive result, in February, 1974, the FTSE All Share Index – a broad measure of the stock market – fell nearly 15pc in a month and ended the year more than 50pc below where it began.

The piece even has a graph starting in January 1974 and going through to late 1974.

Why does this leave me confused? Well, I’m sure on most financial matters you know far more than me. But even I know …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

The technological impact no-one was expecting

By Mark Pack | Sat 24th April 2010 - 9:50 am

I’ve often written about my scepticism of excited comments about 2010 being the first internet general election both because they miss how much at the organisational level has already been altered by the internet over the last two general elections and also because people looking at the internet’s impact on the external side of politics spend far too much time looking at the national scene when instead they should be looking at the local scene.

After the first TV debate you could already imagine the election post mortems headlined, “First internet election? Or first TV election?” Old-fashioned TV has …

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Posted in News and Online politics | Also tagged | 11 Comments
Mark Pack

Agree with Nick, too? Here’s 4 things you can do today #iagreewithnick

By Mark Pack | Fri 16th April 2010 - 10:10 am

You’ve watched the debate, you’ve heard Nick Clegg, and like millions of others you like what you saw and heard. But what next?

Here are four simple things you can do to help turn Nick’s words into
actions that bring about real change and make Britain fairer:

1. Join the Liberal Democrats:

Politics isn’t about one man bands: Nick Clegg and Vince Cable need a strong team behind them supporting their work.

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Posted in General Election | Also tagged | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Liberal Democrat manifesto by numbers

By Mark Pack | Wed 14th April 2010 - 9:35 am

The Liberal Democrat manifesto by numbers:

  • 9 different formats for the manifesto (hard copy, video, on screen, iPhone app etc.)
  • 6 photos of Nick Clegg
  • 5 pages of index
  • 4 pages of detailed costsing
  • 4 steps to a fairer Britain
  • 3 photos of Vince Cable
  • 0 mentions of chocolate
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Posted in General Election and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged , , , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Liberal Democrat manifesto: advance peek

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th April 2010 - 10:00 pm

Tomorrow Nick Clegg is launching the Liberal Democrat manifesto, but tonight The Voice can give you an advance peek at what it will be saying. We’d like to report that this is due to our cunning radio controlled artificial pigeon which we have flown in to the roof of Cowley Street and used to point a webcam at the desk of the Director of Campaigns, but instead it’s thanks to the more prosaic method of receiving email, reading it and then blogging. Ah well, next time.

But back to the manifesto and let’s start with the cover:

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Posted in General Election and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged and | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

Tactical unwind or tactical rewind?

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th April 2010 - 1:49 pm

For a long time after David Cameron’s election to leader of the Conservative Party there was widespread talk of “tactical unwind”, that is how his changes to the Conservative Party may result in much less anti-Tory tactical voting at the next general election. It’s one of the range of reasons that many Tories quote for believing that they will do better in terms of seat numbers than the overall vote numbers suggest.

However, what’s struck me for some time is how the overall political campaigning is playing out in a way that is likely to rewind the unwind.

For example, on cutting …

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Posted in General Election, Op-eds and Polls | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

New government powers to snoop on your post – forced through by Labour and Tories

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th April 2010 - 12:20 pm

The ramming through of the Digital Economy Bill during Parliament’s ‘wash-up’ period has got the most attention, online at least. However there is another measure that was forced through, and this one without even a proper vote, which should have people up in arms.

A change to Section 106 of the Postal Services Act 2000 might not at first sound that important, but the change means that in future postal operators (such as the Royal Mail) can decide to detain any item of post and send it on to Customs and Excise for inspection.

Previously this could be done, but only if …

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Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged and | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dems attack Tories’ tax-war on widows, working couples and jilted wives

By Stephen Tall | Sat 10th April 2010 - 10:50 am

A tax-break for married couples, is how the Tories are trying to spin it. The reality could scarcely be different – here are the groups of people the Tories are now officially classifying as undeserving:

  • Two married teachers bringing up a child.
  • A co-habiting couple who have lived together for years but not married.
  • People whose partners have abandoned them and their children.
  • A widow whose husband has died in Afghanistan.

But perhaps I’m being unfair … after all the Tories will reward some people at the expense of those clearly undeserving groups:

  • Those happily married for 50 years.
  • Over a million people in Britain who have separated but are still legally married.
  • Somebody who abandons their partner and children and then remarries.

The Tories’ feeble defence of their Edwardian tax-war on groups in society they regard as unworthy is that it their £150 a year will help solve the much-talked about ‘Broken Britain’ – so what will the Tory policy do for those living in poverty?

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Posted in General Election | Also tagged , and | 19 Comments
Stephen Tall

Tory VAT tax rises and Michael Caine … the spoof posters collection

By Stephen Tall | Fri 9th April 2010 - 8:20 am

On the day that the Lib Dems tried to smoke out the Tories’ true position on whether they’ll jack-up VAT by 3% – annual cost to the average household, £389 – to pay for their unfunded tax-cuts, David Cameron was joined by a man worth £45m who rather likes the Tories’ promise to cut taxes for the wealthiest at the expense of everyone else.

Full marks to Lib Dem HQ who were smartly on the case to splice the two stories memorably together:

Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson had his own pithy take on it:

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Posted in General Election and Humour | Also tagged , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

How do the media election websites compare? (UPDATED)

By Mark Pack | Tue 6th April 2010 - 11:50 pm

The FT beat me to the punch with a review of the different election websites, so I’ll give my review a slightly different focus: which are best for local information about candidates? And if you are a candidate (or helping a candidate) what online information should you worry about making sure is correct?

BBC:

  • More extensive constituency descriptions that others listed below, but otherwise the constituency pages are surprisingly skimpy by comparison with only very limited election results and candidate information.
  • Some links to BBC news stories where there has been one relevant to the constituency.
  • Uses Thrasher & Rallings for the

…

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Posted in General Election and Online politics | Also tagged | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Donate today – help get the Lib Dems off to a flying start! #ge2010

By Stephen Tall | Tue 6th April 2010 - 4:35 pm

Today marked the official start of the general election campaign. And today’s the day you could help ensure the Lib Dems get the best possible result – by making a donation to support the Lib Dem Voice election appeal.

Thanks to the support of LDV readers, we have just crossed the £1,000 threshold – a terrific response. But the candidates in our five battleground seats will need more than that to help get their campaigns off to a flying start.

So please: make a donation to help the Lib Dems today.

Here are some examples of what your gift could do to help the party get its message across:

    * £10 will pay for a Focus newsletter for 500 houses
    * £25 will buy 2,000 tabloid-style newspapers
    * £50 pays for a dozen super-size election garden posters
    * £100 will cover a Focus leaflet for a whole ward
    * £250 will pay for 10,000 addressed letters to be delivered by volunteers
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Posted in General Election | Also tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Opinion poll reporting: The Times does it best, the Daily Mirror the worst

By Mark Pack | Mon 5th April 2010 - 10:20 am

It’s not been a great month for newspapers reporting their own polls. Despite the concept of newspapers accurately reporting their own polls – i.e. a story that they’ve paid for and been given the full details of – being a fairly basic standard to aim for, we’ve had such low lights as the skewed graph in the Mirror along with its over-hyped language and the Sunday Times so twisting the findings of its own poll you’d have thought there must have been two. Not to forget the attack in The Telegraph attack on that dodgy process of …

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Posted in Polls | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

3 ways the Labservatives blocked the Lib Dems cleaning up politics

By Stephen Tall | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 2:45 pm

Labour and Conservatives, Conservatives and Labour: same difference, as the Lib Dems’ rather fabulous Labservative website points out. Here are just three examples from the past 12 months of ways in which the Labservatives have blocked Lib Dem attempts to reform our broken political system …

The public’s right to sack MPs

The Liberal Democrats tabled an amendment in June 2009 to place a responsibility on the Secretary of State to review and report on procedures for constituencies to recall their MPs if they have been found guilty of misconduct.

Labour voted against these measures and the Tories refused to back them.

Cap on party donations

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Sarah Teather cleared, mystery of forged letters remains

By Mark Pack | Tue 30th March 2010 - 7:40 pm

The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has cleared Sarah Teather of allegations that she broke Parliamentary expense rules. You may remember those claims being enthusiastically hawked around by Tory Bear and others as if they were copper-bottomed fact; actually their claims were more like a rusty colander.

As the local newspaper reports of the Commissioner:

He discontinued the inquiry because he had no grounds for believing that claims Ms Teather made from parliamentary funds for her office provided support to the cost of the Lib Dem party…

Brent Liberal Democrats said the party contributed over and above its usage of the office, as approved by

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 19 Comments
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