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Tag Archives: featured

Nick Clegg’s Letter from the Leader: “From Eastleigh to Africa – and back again!”

By Stephen Tall | Sun 17th February 2013 - 11:00 am

Nick’s latest weekly missive focuses on two places: his visits as party leader to the Lib Dem by-election campaign in Eastleigh, and his visit as Deputy Prime Minister to Mozambique and Ethiopia to focus on ‘the three Ts’ – tax, transparency and trade. Here’s his letter in full…

Like so many of you, I’ve been to Eastleigh this week. I was there to visit a local college with our excellent candidate Mike Thornton on Monday, and after a brief stop off to see the kids, I headed straight

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged africa, eastleigh by-election, ethiopia, G8, letter from the leader, lynne featherstone, mike thornton and Mozambique | Leave a comment

Eastleigh by-election: your essential round-up of the week’s campaign news

By Stephen Tall | Fri 15th February 2013 - 3:45 pm

It’s only just over a week since the Eastleigh by-election was called. But this first Lib Dem / Tory by-election battle of the parliament has attracted a lot of interest. One aspect that hasn’t been noted much in the media is the level of enthusiasm within the Lib Dems to fight this by-election, and fight it to win.

As the party’s weekly briefing itself noted, Mike Thornton’s campaign has broken the party’s by-election records, with “more volunteers, more money raised and more campaign literature delivered in the opening days of the Eastleigh by-election campaign than any other”.

Here a few of the stats:

Well over 1,000 Lib Dem volunteers have visited the by-election HQ since it was officially opened on Saturday morning.
On Thursday alone, 2,200 phone calls were made to prospective voters and activists knocked on 1,700 doors.
More than 650 individual donations have been received through the party’s website and through email appeals in the last six days.
21 of the party’s 57 MPs have already visited: Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander, Ed Davey, Vince Cable, Sir Malcolm Bruce, Sir Nick Harvey, Tim Farron, Jo Swinson, David Laws, Duncan Hames, Andrew Stunell, Simon Wright, Sir Robert Smith, Stephen Gilbert, Tom Brake, Roger Williams, Don Foster, John Leech, Tessa Munt, Mark Williams, John Pugh and Adrian Sanders.

Huge amount of action this morning at our HQ! Amazing turnout. #eastleigh instagr.am/p/VtMPkhhtpR/

— Mike Thornton (@Mike4Eastleigh) February 14, 2013

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Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged andrew sparrow, Danny Alexander, eastleigh by-election, ed davey, julian huppert, liberal youth, matt downey, mike thonrton and vince cable | 11 Comments

IFS verdict: Labour’s 10p tax idea “has no plausible economic justification”

By Stephen Tall | Fri 15th February 2013 - 8:00 am

Ed Miliband’s announcement yesterday that Labour will re-introduce a 10p starting rate of income tax paid for through the introduction of Vince Cable’s mansion tax has received a tepid response from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The IFS put out a note yesterday headed simply, Better options exist to help low earners than 10p tax rate:

A 10p tax rate would reduce taxes for those on low incomes and strengthen their work incentives. A far simpler and more sensible way of achieving these aims would be to spend the same

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Posted in News | Also tagged ed miliband, income tax, institute for fiscal studies, mansion tax, national insurance, tax and vince cable | 12 Comments

Rejoice! Labour has a policy. Even better it’s a Lib Dem policy.

By Stephen Tall | Thu 14th February 2013 - 11:35 am

Yesterday at PMQs Ed Miliband channelled Ronald Reagan. Today he’s channelling Vince Cable:

Labour does have a policy after all. Two in fact! It’s just that they’re both Lib Dem policies: tax cuts for low-paid funded by mansion tax.

— Stephen Tall (@stephentall) February 14, 2013

Here’s what Ed has just announced:

Let me tell you about one crucial choice we would make, which is different from this government. We would tax houses worth over £2 million. And we would use the money to cut taxes for working people. We would put right a mistake made by

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged Centre for Policy Studies, ed miliband, ronald reagan, ryan bourne, tax and vince cable | 31 Comments

Nick Clegg writes … A fairer and more prosperous world

By Nick Clegg MP | Tue 12th February 2013 - 1:00 pm

Lynne Featherstone and I are travelling to Mozambique and Ethiopia this week, which will be my first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as Deputy Prime Minister. We will see the changing nature of our relationship with these African countries, as well as the UK’s international development programmes in action.

By working with Mozambique, Ethiopia and other developing countries, we are helping to create a world that is fairer, more prosperous and more secure.

This year the Coalition Government will meet our commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income on international development – an achievement that comes with much controversy but one I am proud to deliver.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged ethiopia, G8, lynne featherstone and Mozambique | 2 Comments

The real political battle isn’t Conservative vs Labour or Cameron vs Miliband

By Mark Pack | Mon 11th February 2013 - 11:53 am

Skim the political news – or brace yourself and watch some of festival of braying adults that is PMQs – and you could easily think that British politics is primarily a contest between Cameron and Miliband, Conservative and Labour, to be top dog. You could – and you would be wrong. It’s a diversion from where the real action is.

The real political contest is both elsewhere and not one single contest. It is not about Conservative versus Labour, except by incidental outcome.

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Posted in Op-eds | 13 Comments

Maria Hutchings, Eastleigh Conservative candidate, plays hide and seek with the media

By Mark Pack | Mon 11th February 2013 - 8:50 am

One of my favourite moments from the 1997 general election campaign came when I was stood on a street corner in Harrogate, talking to a report about the challenge from Lib Dem candidate Phil Willis, who was trying to take the seat from the Conservatives. Suddenly, the journalist looked over my shoulder, muttered ‘excuse me’ and ran off down the street, partially dignified, chasing a van that had driven past behind me.

The reason? The van was that of the Conservative candidate, Norman Lamont, who had been spending the whole campaign trying to avoid talking to the press. The result? Much of the press coverage was dominated by stories of journalists trying to track him down around the constituency.

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Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged eastleigh, Maria Hutchings and Norman Smith | 1 Comment

Libby Local, Episode 10: “Stalled!”

By Libby Local | Sun 10th February 2013 - 2:15 pm

The day after a crazed man confronted me in Demsbury, Mark, the local community support officer came to see me. I had met him at a number of police and community meetings and we get on well.

Mark told me quite a bit about the man who confronted me. Whenever trouble erupted in Demsbury, it was like as not that this man was at the heart of it. Yet, because he mostly engaged in petty crimes and antisocial behaviour, they could do little to control him.

It was all rather depressing. Mark was very thorough, giving me advice on …

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Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments

Nick Clegg’s Letter from the Leader: “If you want fairer taxes, there’s only one party for you: the Lib Dems.”

By Stephen Tall | Sun 10th February 2013 - 12:00 pm

No prizes for guessing which subject dominates this week’s letter from Nick Clegg to party supporters: the forthcoming Eastleigh by-election. Nick reflects on his own experiences campaigning in by-elections of yore – “exhilarating, exhausting and exciting in equal measure” – and urges all party activists to help in whatever way we can in the next three weeks. A major feature of the campaign in Eastleigh and across the country will be the Lib Dems’ push for Fairer Taxes, and it’s great to see Nick’s message including web-links to enable readers to take action for themselves on this key message. Here’s …

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Posted in News | Also tagged eastleigh, fairer taxes, letter from the leader and nick clegg | 20 Comments

Your essential weekend reader — my personal pick of the week’s must-reads

By Stephen Tall | Sun 10th February 2013 - 10:50 am

It’s Sunday morning, so here are 12 thought-provoking articles to stimulate your thinking juices culled from all those I’ve linked to this last week. You can follow me on Delicious here.

In Search of Monsters – Stephen W. Smith looks at the background to France’s military intervention in Mali: ‘One could even say that they will provide the Saharan Taliban with the very thing they were thirsting for: an expeditionary force of infidels on home turf.’

Trident is no longer key to Britain’s security …

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Posted in News | Also tagged weekend reader | 2 Comments

Mike Thornton selected for Lib Dems in Eastleigh

By Helen Duffett | Sat 9th February 2013 - 6:54 pm

Photo by Helen Duffett on Flickr.

Eastleigh Liberal Democrats have selected a local Business and Development Manager as their candidate for the upcoming Parliamentary by-election in the constituency.

Mike Thornton, a parish and borough councillor since 2007, plays an active part in the community. He is involved with the annual Bishopstoke Carnival and is a member of the local church.

Mike lives with his wife and daughter in Bishopstoke and …

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Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged eastleigh and mike thornton | 39 Comments

The PM and the EU: Cameron’s zen art of compromise maintenance

By Stephen Tall | Sat 9th February 2013 - 10:25 am

Credit where it’s due. If David Cameron had returned to Britain empty-handed or walked out of the EU budget talks in a fit of pique he’d have been pilloried. Plenty of his opponents were hoping he’d do just that.

As it is, he’s able to boast (not without justification) that he’s successfully negotiated a 3% real-terms cut in the EU budget — to a cumulative €960bn (2014-20) — and protected the British rebate. Nick Clegg, who’s been a particular critic of …

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Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged angela merkel, david cameron, eu budget, european union, james kirkup and the economist | 13 Comments

5 reasons for Lib Dems to campaign in Eastleigh (just in case you needed any more)

By Stephen Tall | Fri 8th February 2013 - 8:15 am

Mark Pack has posted last night’s poll findings from Eastleigh, showing the Tories narrowly ahead with both Labour and Ukip out of serious contention. In case you needed some reasons to help the Lib Dem campaign in the next three weeks in whatever way you’re able here are 5 from me…

The Lib Dems can win…

Lord Ashcroft’s poll is pretty ideal for the party: it piles the pressure on the Tories as early front-runners, while confirming how tight the contest will be. The Lib Dems’ local strength is significant …

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Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged chris huhne, eastleigh, lord ashcroft and Mark Pack | 7 Comments

+++ Neck and neck: first Eastleigh constituency poll

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th February 2013 - 6:46 pm

1st Eastleigh poll puts Con + LDs within margin of error: C34 LD31 Lab 19 UKIP 13 (Ashcroft poll)

— Mark Pack 🔶 (@markpack) February 7, 2013

That 3 point gap is within the margin of error on the poll, and so it is, as they say in the US about such results, a statistical dead-heat.

What is clear is that this is a contest between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. Nigel Farage was right it would seem to back out of fighting the seat – and Labour too are clearly out of it in Eastleigh.

The Labour vote share is particularly interesting as we’ll see how well the party can do at squeezing a clearly third-place Labour in a Parliamentary by-election. The pre-2010 record is of course very good …

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Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged eastleigh and nigel farage | 47 Comments

++ The ayes have it! Equal marriage approved with 225 vote majority

By Stephen Tall | Tue 5th February 2013 - 7:18 pm

The BBC reports:

MPs have voted overwhelmingly in favour of the government’s legislation for same-sex marriage in England and Wales. At the conclusion of the Commons’ first opportunity to debate the The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, MPs voted by 400 to 175, a majority of 225, in favour of the legislation.

It’s estimated some 140 Tory MPs voted to reject equal marriage.

Here was my immediate reaction…

Equal marriage passed by 400 votes to 175 – 225 majority in favour of the state treating everyone equally. That’ll do.

— Stephen Tall (@stephentall) February 5, 2013

And here’s what some …

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Posted in News | Also tagged equal marriage and lynne featherstone | 4 Comments

An earlier Letter from the Leader

By Antony Hook | Mon 4th February 2013 - 4:23 pm

Liberal Democrat members now receive a weekly letter by email from the party leader, Nick Clegg. I found a 32-year-old example of a “Letter From the Leader” to party members – one from David Steel on 27 February 1981. (Click to enlarge photo)

Without email, Steel asked for Local Association Chairmen (sic) to “take an early opportunity to read and discuss at appropriate constituency executives and other meetings.”

He noted that the party was campaigning on “unemployment and cuts” (today it is “jobs and growth”). Presumably, this observation was really a …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged david steel | Leave a comment

The end of Chris Huhne’s career in politics: initial reactions

By Stephen Tall | Mon 4th February 2013 - 12:25 pm

Chris Huhne’s political career is over. That’s not a sentence I expected to be typing today.

I had thought Chris would somehow squeak through his court case by the skin of his teeth. Certainly when I spoke to Chris at the last Lib Dem conference he was confident (his default mode, it’s true, but still). But now his career lies in tatters.

Last year he resigned as a cabinet minister; this year he’ll resign as an MP. And all over a speeding charge – or more to the point his attempt …

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Posted in News | Also tagged chris huhne | 78 Comments

Opinion: Tackling homophobic bullying in schools

By Richard Giddings | Mon 4th February 2013 - 9:53 am

Liberal Democrat colleagues may remember that one of Liberal Youth’s big campaigns was to stop homophobic bullying.

As the former Liberal Youth Chair in Northamptonshire it was a campaign that is very close to my heart. Too many LGBT young people are subjected to terrible abuse and bullying – just because of who they are.

When I was elected to the County Council in 2009 I wanted to do

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged bullying and homophobia | 6 Comments

Majority back same-sex marriage

By Mark Pack | Sun 3rd February 2013 - 2:49 pm

From the polling published this weekend:

Would you support or oppose changing the law to allow same-sex couples to marry?
Support: 55%
Oppose: 36%

Amongst Conservative voters the results are 44% – 49% (which is a statistical dead heat, when you remember to factor in the margin of error).

Interestingly, the majority support comes despite the lead-up to the question being a tadge inaccurate:

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged equalities, same sex marriage and yougov | 46 Comments

Nick Clegg’s Letter from the Leader: “Ignore the papers, here’s the real truth about the Coalition’s plans for childcare”

By Stephen Tall | Sun 3rd February 2013 - 2:40 pm

The latest letter from Nick Clegg to party supporters takes us behind the scenes of the Coalition’s negotiations over how best to help families with the cost of childcare. He dismisses newspaper gossip of splits in the ‘Quad’ as “total nonsense”, before setting out the principles that have guided their decision-making — focusing help on low- and middle-income families, and especially those with kids under 3 who don’t qualify for the current free 15 hours’ early education provision. Here’s Nick’s letter in full…

You’ll often hear politicians say,

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged childcare, children, families, letter from the leader and nick clegg | 7 Comments

Putting the party’s message in a distinctively liberal context – Part 3: a fairer society

By Nick T | Fri 1st February 2013 - 12:50 pm

This is the third of three posts looking at the party’s messaging. The introductory post was published here, and yesterday’s on the economic part of the message is here ; this last and final post concentrates on the second part of the message: social justice.

The second part of the party’s message is “building a fairer society”. Fairness was, of course, the theme of the party’s 2010 manifesto, linking the four key policy platforms on which we fought the election (fairer taxes, a fair start for every child, fairer politics and a fairer, more balanced economy).

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged fairer taxes and fairness | 28 Comments

Putting the party’s message in a distinctively liberal context – Part 2: the economy

By Nick T | Thu 31st January 2013 - 12:37 pm

This is the second of three posts looking at the party’s messaging. The first was published here yesterday; the last and final post will appear tomorrow.

The first half of our message emphasises economic competence: bringing back (as David Laws once put it) Gladstonian Liberalism to the Treasury and setting us up to be competitive in a fast-changing, globalised economy.

So far, much of the focus has been on our willingness to take “tough decisions”. Here, for example, is David Laws speaking to the Independent recently: “in the past people have known we stood for a fairer society but have …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged doha trade talks, economy, free trade and party strategy | 64 Comments

New university data shows everyone was wrong about tuition fees

By Mark Pack | Thu 31st January 2013 - 8:25 am

May I introduce you to my latest graph? It’s based on the new data just published about university applications in England and compares the application rate for university places from the most deprived parts of the country with those from the least deprived. As you might expect, the least deprived areas see a higher university application rate than the most deprived. But look what’s happened to that gap:

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Posted in News | Also tagged tuition fees | 80 Comments

LibDem International Office: Strengthening liberal democracies

By Mary Reid | Tue 29th January 2013 - 10:57 am

As an accredited party trainer I was intrigued to receive an email last week asking if I would like to provide some training for the Republican Party in Georgia next month.

It took a moment to register that it was talking about the Georgia to the north of Turkey on the Black Sea and their Liberal party, not the one to the north of Florida and the GOP.

Now I have acted for the party in a similar capacity before, when I met the youthful members of the Liberal Democrat party in Serbia and tried to convince them that an election cannot be won entirely on the Web. Sadly I have a by-election to attend to next month so I will not be offering my services this time.

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Posted in News | Also tagged international office, peter lesniak, training and westminster foundation for democracy | Leave a comment

I apologise for my lack of enthusiasm for HS2. It’s been unavoidably delayed owing to the lack of evidence

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th January 2013 - 9:45 am

‘All aboard!’ exhorts the email I received last night from Lib Dem transport minister Norman Baker, hailing his announcement of the Coalition’s plans for Phase Two of Britain’s High Speed Rail Network (aka HS2). I’m afraid, though, I’m going to have to apologise to Norman for the delay in arrival of my goodwill owing to what I suspect is the wrong type of investment on the lines.

HS2, we are told, will cut journey times, help the environment, heal the North-South divide and boost growth. Each of these arguments is less …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged christian wolmar, HS2, john tomaney, madrid, railways, seville and trains | 45 Comments

Ed Davey MP writes… The Green Deal goes live

By Ed Davey | Mon 28th January 2013 - 2:55 pm

Today marks a very significant achievement of our party in Government. The Green Deal is being launched.

After two and half years of toil the pledge in our manifesto to, “offer a home energy improvement package … paid for by the savings from lower energy bills” has become reality.

Chris Huhne started the ball rolling way back in 2010 and Nick Clegg and I are visiting a college in Sheffield today to mark the opening of a brand new market in home energy efficiency and meet trainees in home insulation.

Millions of homes do not have full double-glazing. More than half do not …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged chris huhne, green deal and nick clegg | 10 Comments

Norman Baker MP writes… High Speed 2: Transforming our national rail network

By Norman Baker MP | Mon 28th January 2013 - 1:53 pm

In the two centuries since the Golden Age of British railways, from the opening of the Stockton and Darlington line in 1825, Stephenson’s Rocket and the railway boom of the 1840s, Britain has tumbled from the position of being the envy of the world, to lagging sadly behind. The busiest sections of our old Victorian railways are now struggling to cope as the railways become increasingly popular. As anyone who travels regularly by train as I do will know, the West …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged high speed 2 | 20 Comments

Nick Clegg’s son’s schooling is none of your business

By Nick T | Sun 27th January 2013 - 11:58 am

Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, Nick Clegg was asked once again which secondary school he would send his eldest child too. He quite rightly dismissed the question as a personal one – he and Miriam have strived to keep their children out of the public eye, so why should they change that now?

As I tweeted at the time:

Anybody who thinks it’s any of their business which school Clegg’s children go to is one of the problems with our political culture.

— Nick Thornsby (@NickThornsby) January 27, 2013

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged nick clegg | 138 Comments

Welcome apology and clarification from David Ward MP

By Paul Walter | Sat 26th January 2013 - 7:02 pm

Earlier this evening, David Ward MP, on his website, issued the following apology and clarification regarding his remarks on Friday.

This is very welcome.

My criticisms of actions since 1948 in the Palestinian territories in the name of the State of Israel remain as strong as ever.

In my comments this week I was trying to make clear that everybody needs to learn the lessons of the Holocaust.

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Posted in News | Also tagged david ward | 28 Comments

5 points on Clegg’s admission that Coalition was wrong to cut capital spending

By Stephen Tall | Fri 25th January 2013 - 8:40 am

Nick Clegg has sparked a flurry of excitement with his admission in an interview for The House magazine that the Coalition cut capital spending ‘too far, too fast’ to coin a phrase. Here’s what he said to Paul Waugh and Sam Macrory:

“If I’m going to be sort of self-critical, there was this reduction in capital spending when we came into the Coalition Government. I think we comforted ourselves at the time that it was actually no more than what Alistair Darling spelt out

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged building schools for the future, deficit reduction, fiscal multiplier, imf, jonathan portes, nick clegg, paul waugh, sam macrory and the house magazine | 45 Comments

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