Tag Archives: featured

Mark Pack

Conference preview: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday

By Mark Pack | Fri 21st September 2012 - 9:20 am

This year, the Liberal Democrat autumn conference has one day per theme, covering jobs, education, environment and tax.

Monday is jobs, with policy motions on creating jobs and policy papers on both sustainable prosperity and also on mutuals, employee ownership and workplace democracy. The first of these (F23) may generate some lively debate around an amendment that would delete the reference to keeping to the government’s “fiscal mandate”.

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Mark Pack

Conference preview: Saturday and Sunday

By Mark Pack | Thu 20th September 2012 - 10:25 am

This year, the Liberal Democrat autumn conference has one day per theme, covering jobs, education, environment and tax.

Saturday is education day, with David Laws giving a keynote speech. For many party members he is more respected than trusted; recognised for his skills yet leaving people uneasy over quite what a David Laws manifesto would look like or whether it was right to bring him back into government this year. Saturday is his big chance to win over members.

If he chooses to take it, that is – as there …

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Posted in Conference | Also tagged , , , , and | 18 Comments
Stephen Tall

The pupil premium isn’t a quick-fix solution, it’s a long-haul policy

By Stephen Tall | Thu 20th September 2012 - 9:00 am

The pupil premium — additional cash targeted at the most disadvantaged children — is the policy of which Nick Clegg is proudest and with which he is most closely associated. The policy itself dates back to Julian le Grand in the 1980s (when it was touted as a progressive version of school vouchers) but it was Nick who put it firmly in the political mainstream as long ago as 2002 in a pamphlet he co-wrote based on experiences of it working within continental Europe.

Though the Tories nominally signed-up to the concept of a pupil premium in their 2010 …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Liberal Democrat conference: the daily themes

By Mark Pack | Wed 19th September 2012 - 10:25 am

Back in the 1990s, the idea of theming different days of party conference around particular themes was a fairly controversial issue, even playing a role in contested elections for membership of Federal Conference Committee and then elections from within its membership for Chair and Vice-Chair.*

Since then the idea has become well-established, if sometimes more in theory than in practice. Looking through not just the agenda for the 2012 autumn conference in Brighton but also associated conference publications and …

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Posted in Conference | Also tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

What the Liberal Democrats have done: new party booklet

By Mark Pack | Sat 15th September 2012 - 9:25 am

This is a rather nifty new publication from the party, with some great content and presentation that is well ahead of the traditional party fare for these sorts of documents.

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Posted in News | 30 Comments
Mark Pack

What do the academics say? Ashcroft’s campaigning worked

By Mark Pack | Fri 14th September 2012 - 1:52 pm

Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. Today – the impact of the Ashcroft-funded Conservative key seats campaign in the run-up to the 2010 election.

The latest edition of the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties (Volume 22, No.3) includes, “Laying the Foundations for Electoral Success: Conservative Pre-Campaign Canvassing before the 2010 UK General Election” by David Cutts, Ron Johnston, Charles Pattie and Justin Fisher:

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Posted in Campaign Corner and What do the academics say? | Also tagged , , , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

6 things Lib Dem campaigners can learn from Boris Johnson and George Galloway

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th September 2012 - 11:50 am

Boris Johnson has twice won a contest for a directly-elected Mayor. George Galloway has recently won a Parliamentary by-election.

That is why, for all the many reasons Liberal Democrats have for criticising both, smart Liberal Democrats also know that there are lessons to be learnt from their electoral successes.

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Posted in Campaign Corner | Also tagged and | 22 Comments
Mark Pack

10 ways to make your local party AGM better

By Mark Pack | Tue 11th September 2012 - 3:25 pm

The nights are getting shorter, the football has started and the first few “x days to Christmas” signs are appearing in shops. Yes, it all  means that the local party AGM season is approaching.

To help local parties get the most out of them, here then is a reminder of the simple factsheet giving 10 tips to lift an AGM from being a boring, business meeting that no-one comes to into an interesting and successful event. Though written in conjunction with London Liberal Democrats, the tips are applicable across the country.

Hope you find it useful – and of course please do share this post (or this pdf) with whoever is involved in organising the AGM in your own local party.

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Posted in Campaign Corner and Party policy and internal matters | Leave a comment
Toby Fenwick

In depth: Was the 2003 invasion of Iraq illegal?

By Toby Fenwick | Mon 10th September 2012 - 1:54 pm

In responding to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s call for Tony Blair to face the International Criminal Court, I made clear my view that the 2003 Iraq invasion was an illegal – and criminal – act of aggression. John Rentoul of the Independent on Sunday angrily disputed this on the BBC World Service’s “World, Have your say”, and other commenters here on LDV have asked for an outline of my reasoning.

Aggression – known at Nuremburg as “crimes against

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 45 Comments
The Voice

LDV debate: The Lib Dem leadership

By The Voice | Fri 7th September 2012 - 10:54 am

On September 2nd, Liberal Democrat Voice co-editor, Stephen Tall, strongly supported Nick Clegg’s leadership of the Liberal Democrats, in his piece, Nick Clegg’s leadership: 3 thoughts from me.

Giving one other side of the debate, Monday editor of LDV, Paul Walter, here explains why he cannot support Nick Clegg as leader any more. Below Paul’s piece, fellow day editor, Nick Thornsby responds.

Against – by Paul Walter

This week I have had a peculiarly “beard and sandals” type of personal crisis.

I heard that Jeremy Hunt had been promoted to run one of the largest and most cherished government departments – Health. This …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 154 Comments
Mark Pack

Reshuffle thoughts: how does it score against my four criteria?

By Mark Pack | Tue 4th September 2012 - 9:31 pm

Ahead of the reshuffle, I posted four criteria against which the Liberal Democrat part of the shuffling should be judged. Now nearly all the details are in, how does it look?

 

Most importantly, have people been put in jobs they’ve got a decent chance of doing well? It’s hard enough being a minister in the smaller party in a coalition government without having lots of people thrown into policy areas they are completely new to.

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Mark Pack

How to write, with the help of Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and Tim Leunig

By Mark Pack | Mon 3rd September 2012 - 11:50 am

How to speak. That’s a common topic in training for would-be candidates and a frequent chapter in books for would-be campaigners. How to write? Much less so.

That’s an omission I plead guilty to, for 101 Ways To Win An Election has a chapter called “Making speeches” with no accompanying “Writing words”. Implicit in many of the other chapters are ideas that will help you to write effectively. Yet on reflection there should really have been explicit advice too.

Short, sharp writing has always been important for leaflets and news …

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Posted in Campaign Corner | Also tagged , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Nick Clegg’s leadership: 3 thoughts from me

By Stephen Tall | Sun 2nd September 2012 - 2:15 pm

Today’s papers are full of speculation about Nick Clegg’s leadership prompted by a handful of party members — inevitably labelled ‘senior’ — calling on Nick to go, such as Lib Dem peer Lord Smith of Clifton, with Torbay MP Adrian Sanders urging Nick to get better advice to avoid “bumbling along”. Here are the three thoughts on the issue which strike me (before I head off to the Olympic stadium for tonight’s Paralympic athletics action)…

1) I’m more surprised by how few people are calling for Nick Clegg to go

It’s not especially surprising there’s some discontent among members. The party is …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 71 Comments
Mark Pack

The party with the British instincts

By Mark Pack | Fri 31st August 2012 - 7:18 pm

Rather nice graphic from Liberal Martin:

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 13 Comments
Lynne Featherstone

Lynne Featherstone MP writes… George Galloway’s comments on rape are totally unacceptable, and they have an effect

By Lynne Featherstone | Wed 22nd August 2012 - 3:23 pm

In recent days, on both sides of the Atlantic, there have been not one, but two expressions of the kind of attitudes on rape you had hoped died with the Dark Ages.

First, a US Republican Senate Candidate, Todd Akin, suggested that most women do not become pregnant after being raped as their body can, and I quote, ‘shut that whole thing down’.

Then Britain’s own George Galloway, while offering his opinions on the Julian Assange case, took it upon himself to assert that certain acts of sexual violence are nothing more than ‘bad manners’, and that having …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 49 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem members split 47%-46% on whether Nick Clegg should fight 2015 election as party leader

By Stephen Tall | Wed 22nd August 2012 - 7:15 am

Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 500 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

47% say Nick should stay to fight 2015 election; 46% say he shouldn’t

LDV asked: Thinking about Nick Clegg’s position as Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Lib Dems, which of these scenarios do you want to see happen?

  • 47% – I want Nick Clegg to continue both as Deputy

…

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged and | 62 Comments
Nick Sutton

Opinion: It’s time for Assange to stop using WikiLeaks as a smokescreen

By Nick Sutton | Tue 21st August 2012 - 11:15 am

On Friday, three women in Russia were handed two year prison sentences for walking into a Moscow cathedral and performing a three minute protest song about the rotten state of their government, led by one man (Putin) in some shape or other, for nearly 13 years. The verdict has been condemned by the UK, US and German governments, human rights groups and the EU, who see this as a real test of Russia’s and Vladimir Putin’s credentials as a the leader of a ‘democratic’ state, something that has been …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 102 Comments
Stephen Tall

What do we Lib Dems want from a reshuffle?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 20th August 2012 - 9:45 am

While the massed ranks of the mostly right-wing political commentariat obsess about the imminent Cabinet reshuffle, Lib Dem interest has been relatively muted.

In one sense this isn’t surprising.

As it stands, 18 of the party’s 57 MPs are on the government payroll, so Nick Clegg has little room for manouevre even among the middle ranks of government. And with only five cabinet positions (four if you exclude Nick himself as Deputy Prime Minister) there’s even less wiggle-room at the top table. Nonetheless, this reshuffle will most likely be …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 39 Comments
Stephen Tall

On Twitter, Leveson, media standards… and Labour MP Ian Austin labelling Russell Brand “a disgusting, sleezy [sic], horrible creep”

By Stephen Tall | Sat 18th August 2012 - 12:13 pm

I love Twitter and I hate Twitter. At its best, it is a brilliant way of enjoying a shared moment with friends and friends-of-friends, whether glorying in the Olympics or bitching about X-Factor. At its worst, it is a bile-filled bearpit, where opinions are sprayed with scant regard for their accuracy in the race to be first or funniest or most outraged.

For fans of cognitive dissonance, it’s a wonderful window-on-the-world which explains much about how and why the media works as it does. Lord Justice Leveson would have learned much from observing a life-in-the-day-of Twitter.

He would, for example, see …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Have I gone mad?

By Mark Pack | Fri 17th August 2012 - 12:39 pm

I’m wondering if I’ve gone mad.

There’s this issue that I just can’t think about without one question occurring to me. For me, it is blindingly obvious, absolutely basic and impossible to avoid if you want to talk about the issue.

And the thing is, it doesn’t appear to have occurred to anyone else.

I’ve read plenty of media stories about the issue, and I’ve not found one that asks, answers or even obliquely mentions this blindingly obvious question.

The problem gets worse than that, however.

I’ve waded through lots of public comments on the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 50 Comments
Mark Pack

Lib Dems publish plan for 300,000 homes to be built a year

By Mark Pack | Thu 16th August 2012 - 12:44 pm

I’ve talked a few times about how housing has become an increasingly important policy in the rhetoric of Liberal Democrat ministers (see Danny Alexander set to up the ante on anti-Tory rhetoric and housing and Vince Cable on “one of the great acts of economic vandalism in modern times”).

Whether or not that rhetoric will produce policy results is the big question.

At which point, enter stage left a policy motion in the agenda for next month’s Liberal Democrat conference:

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Posted in Conference and News | Also tagged and | 47 Comments
Stephen Tall

What Lib Dem members say about the party’s direction and Nick Clegg’s leadership

By Stephen Tall | Thu 16th August 2012 - 9:05 am

Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 500 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Net satisfaction with party’s direction dips to +23%

LDV asked: Do you think, as a whole, the Liberal Democrats are on the right course or on the wrong track? (Comparison with June’s figures.)

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged | 21 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem members’ support for Coalition still high… but the trend is down

By Stephen Tall | Wed 15th August 2012 - 8:15 am

Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 500 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

77% still support Coalition (that’s the first time it’s fallen below 80%)

LDV asked: Do you support or oppose the Lib Dems being in the Coalition Government with the Conservatives? (Comparison with June 2012’s figures)

    77% (-3%) – Support
    18% (+2%) – Oppose
    5% (+1%) – Don’t know / No opinion

Support for the Coalition remains high, at 78%, in spite of …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

The sensible campaigner is the campaigner with backups

By Mark Pack | Mon 13th August 2012 - 2:55 pm

The office wall in one of my former jobs had a cartoon with two drunks slumped in an alleyway bemoaning their fate. One was saying to the other, “It all started to go wrong when I realised the backups hadn’t been working…” He at least had been trying to use backups.

Sometimes people fear trusting data to computers, worried that a wrong key press may result in valuable information being lost. That is to get things wrong: data is safer on computers because it is much easier to do regular backups.

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Posted in Campaign Corner and Online politics | Also tagged , , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

By 48% to 19%, Lib Dem members prefer post-2015 alliance with Labour to continuing pact with Tories

By Stephen Tall | Mon 13th August 2012 - 7:55 am

Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 500 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Post-2015, 48% choose Lib-Lab pact; 19% a Lib-Con pact; 13% prefer opposition

LDV asked: Assuming the Lib Dems do not form a majority/minority government after the next election, which would be your most preferred outcome:

    2% – A Labour majority government with the Lib Dems in opposition
    6% – A minority Labour government with the Lib Dems in opposition
    19% – A Labour-Lib

…

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Posted in LDV Members poll | 20 Comments
Mark Pack

Danny Alexander set to up the ante on anti-Tory rhetoric and housing

By Mark Pack | Sat 11th August 2012 - 12:52 pm

One of the best speeches given by a Liberal Democrat Cabinet Member in the last year was Danny Alexander’s to the GMB conference. It was not only a good speech, it went down well with a tough audience that disagrees strongly with many things the government is doing.

As I wrote at the time:

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Stephen Tall

62% of Lib Dem members agree with Clegg decision to vote down boundary changes over Tories’ Lords reform retreat

By Stephen Tall | Tue 7th August 2012 - 8:15 am

Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. 446 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

What party members say about Tory breach of Coalition Agreement

LDV asked: Within the package of constitutional reforms proposed in the Coalition Agreement was a pledge to reduce the number of parliamentary constituencies and re-draw them to ensure each individual’s vote counts roughly equally no matter where they live. It is believed by electoral experts this will benefit the Conservatives and have an adverse …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged and | 24 Comments
Mark Pack

Lords reform: what the failure means for the Coalition, David Cameron and Nick Clegg

By Mark Pack | Tue 7th August 2012 - 8:06 am

First up, here’s Nick Robinson’s take on yesterday’s events followed by myself, via the BBC News Channel:

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Posted in News and YouTube | Also tagged , , , , , and | 10 Comments
Stephen Tall

The Lib Dem membership slump: how it compares and how we can respond

By Stephen Tall | Mon 6th August 2012 - 8:25 am

The Lib Dems published its statement of accounts this week, including the most recent membership figure for the calendar year 2011. If you don’t want to know the score, look away now…

As at 31 December, 2011, there were 48,934 Lib Dem members. That’s 25% down on the previous year, 2010, when there were c.65,000 members. True, that figure was inflated by the ‘Cleggmania’ of the 2010 election and the initial excitement of the Coalition, but it is still down 17% compared to the pre-election year, 2009.

Though this is by some way the sharpest recorded decline in the modern party’s membership, …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 34 Comments
Stephen Tall

Are politicians really getting younger?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 5th August 2012 - 2:15 pm

“The worship of youth has diminished – perhaps generally – in recent years.” So said Vince Cable a couple of weeks ago in a newspaper interview which inflamed speculation he’d be partial to a tilt at leading the Lib Dems. It also prompted various politicians-are-getting-younger pieces in the media.

LibDemVoice’s Mark Pack took the time and trouble to dig out the data. He showed that while the trend-line in the first half of the last century was for prime ministers to get older, in the 50 years since there has been a movement towards younger premiers (James Callaghan being …

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