Tag Archives: featured

Mark Pack

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

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

Norman LamontOne 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 , and | 1 Comment
Libby Local

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
Stephen Tall

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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Stephen Tall

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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Helen Duffett

Mike Thornton selected for Lib Dems in Eastleigh

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

.@dannyalexander congratulates @Mike4Eastleigh on his selection by local Lib Dems tonight
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 and | 39 Comments
Stephen Tall

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

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

David Cameron - Some rights reserved by The Prime Minister's OfficeCredit 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 , , , , and | 13 Comments
Stephen Tall

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

eastleigh campaignMark 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 , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

+++ Neck and neck: first Eastleigh constituency poll

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

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 and | 47 Comments
Stephen Tall

++ 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…

And here’s what some …

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Antony Hook

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)
image
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 | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

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

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

huhne quitsChris 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 | 78 Comments
Richard Giddings

Opinion: Tackling homophobic bullying in schools

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

Gay teen supporters of Stonewall and its campaign against homophobic bullying in schools, celebrating London's Gay Pride. July 2009 - Some rights reserved by lewishamdreamerLiberal 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 and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Majority back same-sex marriage

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

Wedding ringsFrom 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 , and | 46 Comments
Stephen Tall

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…

libdem letter from nick clegg

You’ll often hear politicians say,

…

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Nick T

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

Liberal Democrat badge - Some rights reserved by Paul Walter, Newbury, UKThis 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 and | 28 Comments
Nick T

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 , , and | 64 Comments
Mark Pack

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 | 80 Comments
Mary Reid

LibDem International Office: Strengthening liberal democracies

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

GeorgiaAs 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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Stephen Tall

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

HS2‘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 , , , , , and | 45 Comments
Ed Davey

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 , and | 10 Comments
Norman Baker MP

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

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

High speed rail Medway - Some rights reserved by Matt's photostreamIn 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 | 20 Comments
Nick T

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:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 138 Comments
Paul Walter

Welcome apology and clarification from David Ward MP

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

David WardEarlier 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 | 28 Comments
Stephen Tall

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 in DublinNick 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 , , , , , , , and | 45 Comments
Stephen Tall

Why Cameron is now the ‘Yes to the EU’ campaign’s best hope

By Stephen Tall | Thu 24th January 2013 - 2:30 pm

cameron-europeThere are two very good reasons David Cameron didn’t want the Tories endlessly to bang on about Europe. First, because most of the public just aren’t that interested. Secondly, because the Tories are irreconcilably split on the issue and not even a referendum will settle matters.

That’s why for seven years as Tory leader Cameron tried to quell discussion, and then when that failed sought to steer a mid-course with gestures of Euroscepticism, such as December 2011’s faux-veto. In the end, he couldn’t hold out any longer. The …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 27 Comments
Stephen Tall

5 initial thoughts on David Cameron’s Europe speech

By Stephen Tall | Wed 23rd January 2013 - 10:53 am

David Cameron - License Some rights reserved by Statsministerens kontor David Cameron delivered his long, long-awaited speech on Europe this morning (text here). Caron’s rounding up the reactions from Lib Dems here – but here are my five initial thoughts…

This is the speech Cameron didn’t want ever to have to give.

Let’s be clear, David Cameron is making this speech now to try and keep the Conservatives together. The threat from Ukip and the party’s right has proved too powerful to withstand. Offering a referendum was no longer …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 37 Comments
Caron Lindsay

South Bronx is just as important as Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 22nd January 2013 - 1:55 pm

South Bronx - Some rights reserved by Nathan CongletonIt is lovely to watch a US President taking the oath of office and not be scared. The feeling of dread I experienced in 1981 and 2001 when Reagan and the younger Bush took office was not pleasant. While Barack Obama has not been perfect, his heart is generally in the right place. His achievements in his first term are all the more remarkable when you consider that he faced a Congress full of some of the most right wing, conservative Republicans we’ve seen in our lifetimes whose sole aim was to thwart his every move.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Adam Nathan

Opinion: A new group to urge close EU ties and fight the growing isolationist tide

By Adam Nathan | Mon 21st January 2013 - 9:53 am

European Union flags - Some rights reserved by tristam sparksAs a Lib Dem member who supports membership of the EU but sometimes finds this hard to verbalise to my friends, I have often noticed that Europe brings out strong opinions in people.

It can be a source of heated argument around the dinner table and on TV studio sofas. The stronger the views on one side, the more entrenched the other can become. Facts can be in short supply.

The hard truth is that Europe represents half of all our trade in

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 16 Comments
Libby Local

Libby Local, Episode 8: “Sneering and jeering”

By Libby Local | Sun 20th January 2013 - 2:15 pm

I wasn’t going to be a Lib Dem. And at times during the last two weeks, I have wondered whether I still want to a councillor. As thick snow fell across Demsbury, I poured out my frustration to Melissa over a glass in the Market Tavern.

I leant across the table towards her. “I’m furious. I feel unaccountably angry,” I said. “I think I may have made a mistake in standing for council at all.”

The very good thing about Melissa is that she is both calm and calming. She talked about the weather, the lack of gritting of pavements …

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Posted in Op-eds | 2 Comments
Nick T

Where is the British Borgen?

By Nick T | Sun 20th January 2013 - 12:39 pm

Alastair Campbell asked an interesting (if not altogether original) question on Twitter this morning:

As a massive fan of The West Wing, and an avid viewer of Borgen, it is a question I have also thought about. Britain is the world leader in political satire, yet we must be close to bottom of the league when it comes to political drama.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 17 Comments
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