Tag Archives: featured

Mark Pack

How does UK employee protection compare with other countries?

By Mark Pack | Mon 28th May 2012 - 11:24 am

Rather handily, the OECD complies a set of international indicators of employee protection, the latest version of which was revised in September 2010, using 2008 data. The survey looks at “the procedures and costs involved in dismissing individuals or groups of workers and the procedures involved in hiring workers on fixed-term or temporary work agency contracts”.

What does it show?

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Stephen Tall

How referendums are the most effective way to maintain the status quo & what it means for Lords reform

By Stephen Tall | Thu 24th May 2012 - 1:55 pm

Warning: this post contains paradoxes and thinking in progress…

Paradox 1: When asked, most people in this country say the current system of British politics needs to change. Yet the public consistently votes for small-c conservative parties and causes.

Paradox 2: As both a liberal and a democrat, I want a more participative democracy. Yet I’m sceptical referendums are the best way to achieve this.

A brief history of referendums in this country

Let’s take a look at our three most recent experiences in this country of referendums:

  • Just three weeks ago, 11 cities in England voted on whether or not they

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 22 Comments
Mark Pack

Five of the most common mistakes that Lib Dem campaigners make

By Mark Pack | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 9:50 am

Over the next few weeks, I’m taking part in a handful of training sessions about learning the lessons from May’s elections. There’s much to learn from May and from being in government, but I’ve also noticed that many of the old favourite, long-running lessons are very much still with us. So here’s my selection of the top five of those Golden Oldies.

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Posted in Campaign Corner | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

We must be doing something right – Mail rails at ‘Commie Clegg’, Telegraph blasts ‘Socialist Vince’

By Stephen Tall | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 8:25 am

There’s a measure in marketing known as Advertising Value Equivalents (AVE) — it’s used to assess the impact of coverage in the media. Glancing at today’s right-wing press, the Lib Dems have won headlines money can’t buy…

Nick Clegg’s push for increased social mobility, to equalise opportunities for the poorest in society, has earned him the tag ‘Commie Clegg’ in today’s Mail. This is of course the same paper that only two years ago splashed on the bizarre headline ‘Clegg’s Nazi slur on Britain’.

Meanwhile …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 27 Comments
Mark Pack

Coalition partners: sink or swim together?

By Mark Pack | Tue 22nd May 2012 - 11:50 am

The idea that Liberal Democrat and Conservative political fortunes are tied together comes in two forms. The basic – that with both being in government, the public’s overall view of the government (and in particular its economic record) will heavily determine its view of both parties come the next election. Sink or swim together then. Then there is version which adds an asymmetric twist. Namely that if the public views the coalition as a failure both parties will sink together, but if the public rates the coalition as a success, being the smaller of the two parties means the Liberal Democrats won’t necessarily get their share of the credit.

What does the polling data show?

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Posted in Polls | 22 Comments
Mark Pack

A five point plan to reform the media post-Leveson

By Mark Pack | Thu 10th May 2012 - 12:55 pm

As investigative theatre goes, the Leveson Inquiry has been top-notch. As a route to embarrassing individuals for their past performance, it has excelled. As a way of unearthing previously secret information, it has been gripping.

But as a route for reforming the media? That’s a rather different story.

Some things have already been achieved. The Press Complaints Commission has already been sent to the retirement home for failed regulators and politicians have already been shamed into distancing themselves from newspaper moguls. It will be a long time before Ed Miliband repeats this sort of photo op, for example.

There is, however, an awful lot left to do, especially as Lord Leveson has not been looking at the underlying causes. As I wrote much earlier in the proceedings:

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Mark Pack

Ludovic Kennedy: a man who just missed becoming Liberal leader

By Mark Pack | Wed 9th May 2012 - 10:25 am

For many years Adrian Slade has interviewed prominent Liberal Democrats. To mark his recent decision to make his archive of the interview recordings available to researchers and other interested parties, Lib Dem Voice is running a selection of his write-ups of interviews from over the years. The latest is with broadcaster, writer and twice Liberal candidate Sir Ludovic Kennedy from 2003.

In the 1959 general election just 2,000 votes separated Ludovic Kennedy from becoming Liberal MP for Rochdale, and possibly a future party leader.

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Stephen Tall

Is this the day the Coalition admitted reality and buried its claim to be a radical government?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 8th May 2012 - 9:50 pm

One of the iconic images of the early days of the Coalition — in the midst of the summer haze of the leggeron rose garden bromance — was The Economist’s front cover depicting the Prime Minister as a punk, representing the Coalition’s self-appointed claim to be one of the most radical governments in history.

Economically (a cuts agenda intended to rebalance the economy between the private/public sectors), socially (from free schools to gay marriage) and politically (police commissioners to Lords reform) — this ‘liberal conservative government’ was supposed …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 27 Comments
Mark Pack

Vince Cable: Free Radical – what the memoirs say about the man

By Mark Pack | Mon 7th May 2012 - 10:25 am

A little belatedly, I’ve got round to reading Vince Cable’s memoirs (or rather, listening to the audio book version – what better accompaniment to a delivery round?).

Vince Cable’s memoirs do much to explain both the praise and the criticism he has received. At one point he writes how “I am often asked why I am not party leader…”. Conceit or modesty? You can read that comment either way and it is easy to see why he produces such different views.

Views differ too over quite where …

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Posted in Books | Also tagged and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Six thoughts on the results so far (UPDATED)

By Mark Pack | Fri 4th May 2012 - 8:50 pm

An update to my earlier post, adding in the YouTube clip and reflecting a couple of other pieces of news, though still pre-London results.

For the overall picture, see my views on BBC Breakfast from the amazing new Salford studios this morning:

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Posted in Local government and Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 80 Comments
Stephen Tall

Elections 2012: It’s another bruising night for the Lib Dems

By Stephen Tall | Fri 4th May 2012 - 8:00 am

Results are still coming in, but the overall picture of this year’s local elections is clear: this has been a second successive disappointing result for the Lib Dems. Here’s a topline summary:

National vote share: The projected currently projected share of the national Lib Dem vote is 16%, with Labour on 39% and the Tories on 31%. This is the same share of the vote for the party as in 2011. So while the anger on the doorstep against the party may have lessened compared to 12 months ago, we’ve fallen a long way short of translating that into enthusiasm to vote Lib Dem. If last year’s elections were a anti-Lib Dem protest, this year’s are an anti-Coalition protest. Though I guess that’s a little fairer — both governing parties sharing the blame for voter discontent — it’s still no help to the party, even if we are now all in it together.

Number of councillors: The party’s total number of councillors across the UK will dip below 3,000 after these elections (as I write Lib Dem losses stand at 125 on the night) — that’s half Labour’s total number of councillors, and a third of the Tories’. For a community politics-based party which prides itself on its record of action in local government, this hollowing-out of our activist base is worrying.

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 88 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg trashes Liam Fox’s economic policy demands

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd May 2012 - 9:55 am

During yesterday’s Radio 4 interview with Nick Clegg there was a feisty exchange over why so much time in the interview was being taken up with the details of when and to who Jeremy Hunt should next answer questions to about his conduct, rather than issues such as the state of the economy.

Certainly the media loves investigatory process stories. Not only the Clegg interview but the subsequent coverage of it neglected the economy, even though Clegg had some choice words to say about former minister Liam Fox:

Martha Kearney: Liam Fox recently accused the Liberal Democrats of being a brake on

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

‘Brand Clegg’ continues to out-poll ‘Brand Miliband’: what it means for the Lib Dems

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st May 2012 - 9:15 am

It’s a harsh reality that ‘Nick Clegg’ has become an easy punchline for many comedians. Nick can perhaps draw some comfort from the truth universally acknowledged that it’s better to be joked about than never to be joked about at all.

But he can draw greater comfort from some of the polling evidence showing him doing better than Ed Miliband, even though the Lib Dems’ ratings significantly trail Labour’s. The Independent’s Matt Chorley noticed this little-noticed phenomenon last week:

Most, though not all, months the Independent on Sunday/Sunday Mirror/ComRes poll has asked voters whether they agreed or disagreed with these statements

…

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Posted in Op-eds and Polls | Also tagged , and | 42 Comments
Mark Pack

How much chocolate can you put on a gingerbread man before he becomes standard-rated for VAT?

By Mark Pack | Mon 30th April 2012 - 8:25 am

You may not have considered this question before, so I’ll give you a little time to ponder it.

So, got your answer?

Here’s the official one from HMRC: standard-rate VAT applies to “Gingerbread men decorated with chocolate unless this amounts to no more than a couple of dots for eyes”.

But, but, but… what if the eyes are not chocolate and instead the gingerbread man has a couple of chocolate buttons instead? And what if, hurtling dangerously out of the 19th century, the gingerbread man is actually a gingerbread …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 30 Comments
Mark Pack

The Interception of Communications Commissioner has failed

By Mark Pack | Fri 27th April 2012 - 10:25 am

I’ve been reading through all the annual reports issues by the Interception of Communications Commissioner since the passage of Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. He is meant to make sure that the powers granted to public bodies under RIPA to intercept our communications are being used correctly.

The annual reports are not a pretty read, especially when set against a modicum of knowledge about the outside world during the years the reports cover. Consider the following.

1. No scrutiny of the costs system

First, under RIPA there is provision for the government to pay communication service providers costs for meeting the …

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Mark Pack

Barry Norman on life as film critic and a liberal

By Mark Pack | Thu 26th April 2012 - 10:25 am

For many years Adrian Slade has interviewed prominent Liberal Democrats. To mark his recent decision to make his archive of the interview recordings available to researchers and other interested parties, Lib Dem Voice will be running a selection of his write-ups of interviews from over the years. The first is with broadcaster, writer and Liberal Democrat, Barry Norman from 2003.

For British cinemagoers Barry Norman is the personification of film. For twenty-six years, with only a brief break in ‘81/’82 when he fronted ‘Omnibus’ for the BBC, he was the authentic voice …

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Stephen Tall

I would have sacked Vince Cable for standing up to Murdoch – what Ed Miliband said 16 months ago

By Stephen Tall | Tue 24th April 2012 - 3:53 pm

Ed Miliband The SunJeremy Hunt is in hot water today following the revelations at the Leveson Inquiry of the closeness of his relationship with the Murdochs during their attempted takeover of BSkyB.

The culture secretary was handed quasi-judicial responsibility for handling the deal after Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable was snared by the Telegraph declaring war on the Murdoch empire before it became fashionable.

According to the Guardian, the Labour party ‘is likely to demand an urgent Commons statement from Hunt to set out the nature of …

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Stephen Tall

Psst! Whatever you do, don’t tell the Tories democratic reform is in their own best interests

By Stephen Tall | Mon 23rd April 2012 - 10:45 am

A few weeks ago I wrote an article for Conservative Home offering some unsolicited advice to David Cameron’s party. I argued that a party that had achieved electoral success in the 1980s by appealing to the classless entrepreneurialism of aspirant ‘Middle England’ had once again become established in the electorate’s eyes as the party of established wealth and privilege. If the Tories want to regain the voters they have lost, they need to take drastic action to counter that view.

Reform of the House of Lords was one policy area I said the Tories should seek to make their …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

The past month shows this Government urgently needs a Coalition 2.0 Agreement

By Stephen Tall | Sun 22nd April 2012 - 2:10 pm

We’re fast approaching the two-year mark of this first post-war Coalition Government, and I think it’s fair to say the strains are starting to show. It is inevitable there will be tensions when two parties — with different traditions, values, expectations — come together to try and govern a country at a time of economic torpor.

Until now, a lid has more or less been kept on the inter-party warfare, not least thanks to the determinedly tight-knit fastness of the dual leadership of Messrs Clegg and Cameron. But that lid is now starting to shake as the pressure builds within and between both parties.

Coalition: making friends of enemies, and enemies of friends

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 30 Comments
Stephen Tall

The Tories’ and Labour’s collective tax omnishambles

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th April 2012 - 8:55 pm

Labour is against reducing the 50p top-rate tax to 45p for those earning more than £150,000. What could be clearer? As it happens, quite a lot could be clearer.

First, the omnishambles…

Given how widely predicted George Osborne’s decision to reduce the top-rate was you would have thought Labour would have anticipated it and worked out their line. They failed to — as Mark Pack noted here, Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna contradicted himself within 24 hours, while Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls declined to declare his hand.

When Labour did …

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Stephen Tall

Avant le déluge: If you want to follow the French presidential elections…

By Stephen Tall | Sun 15th April 2012 - 10:25 am

The UK is approximately 3687 miles from the United States of America, and separated by an ocean. The UK is approximately 22 miles away from France, and separated by a channel.

Yet there has already been more coverage expended on the race for the Republican nomination than there has been on the battle to become President of France. The White House trumps the Élysée Palace every time in the mind of the media even though France is closer and the result is more likely to impact directly on the UK.

However, …

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Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Winston Churchill: Tory or Liberal?

By Mark Pack | Sat 14th April 2012 - 11:50 am

Winston Churchill“I am an English Liberal. I hate the Tory Party, their men, their words and their methods.” So said Winston Churchill in 1903.

As a Liberal, Churchill held high government office and, along with Lloyd George, was regarded as one of the driving forces of Asquith’s reforming administration. Was Liberalism his true political ideology? Or should we judge his position from his re-ratting in 1924 and his long association and later leadership of the Conservatives?

Those were the questions posed in the latest Liberal Democrat History Group meeting, held at the party’s spring conference. In case you were not at conference, or were there but not able to make it into the standing room only venue!, you can now watch the meeting online:

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Also tagged and | 15 Comments
Lynne Featherstone

Lynne Featherstone writes… Banning, or rather not banning, crosses at work

By Lynne Featherstone | Fri 13th April 2012 - 9:50 am

Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone writes a monthly column for one of her local newspapers. Here is the latest one, looking at the legal action over people wearing crosses at work.

I was walking down Crescent Road in my constituency the other day when a woman came up to me and said something to the effect of, ‘I think you are a fantastic MP – but I am so upset that you are banning people from wearing the cross’.

So – from the mischievous misinformation from the pages of our print …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 28 Comments
Stephen Tall

A question for the Coalition: Would Lib Dems and Tories support the Charity Tax if Labour had proposed it?

By Stephen Tall | Fri 13th April 2012 - 8:05 am

One of the aspects of the furore over the Coalition’s Charity Tax that has struck me is that charity is a more divisive issue than I’d realised.

Those of us who work in the charity sector probably take for granted that our organisations provide a public good, that the aggregated generosity of donors and the endeavours of staff make for a better society. That’s probably a majority view among the wider public, but it clearly isn’t a universal attitude.

Look at the reader comments on major news …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 23 Comments
Mark Pack

Free schools: what should the party’s policy be in 2015?

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th April 2012 - 11:25 am

An empty classroomNews that the National Autistic Society is planning to set up a free school highlights an impending policy dilemma. Currently, the party’s policy is officially one of opposition to free schools. However if, by the time of the 2015 general election, free schools started by popular and worthy organisations such as the National Autistic Society are up and running, would it be either sensible education policy or practical politics simply to say, ‘we don’t like free schools; they have got to go’?

A different option would be …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 59 Comments
Stephen Tall

Labour’s not-so-very-local election broadcast shows how unimportant local decision-making is to Ed Miliband’s party

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th April 2012 - 7:58 pm

Tonight’s Labour local election broadcast, starring telly’s very own Lord (Robert) Winston, climaxes with the rallying cry:

On Thursday May 3rd, vote NHS, vote Labour

Exactly how voting Labour then will help the NHS isn’t explored — not surprisingly, because it won’t. There’s a reason these elections are called local elections, after all.

Before highlighting Labour’s misleading tactics I thought I should first check out the Lib Dem record on fighting local elections. I have to say I was expecting to find comparable examples, times when the party leadership had called …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 23 Comments
Mark Pack

Campaign Corner: Good luck

By Mark Pack | Mon 9th April 2012 - 3:50 pm

Thank you to everyone who has read, commented on or contributed ideas for the Campaign Corner series over the last 25 weeks. With this final post, it’ll have been going for six months and now, with people in full flight campaigning for May’s elections, is a good moment to bring it to an end.

If you are putting some of that advice to the test in May, and especially if you’re a Liberal Democrat!, best of luck and I hope it helps.

(If you’re not a Liberal Democrat by all means do follow the main themes of the advice: the public hate …

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Stephen Tall

Mary Ann Sieghart socks it to Quentin Letts for his “witheringly misogynistic” assault on Lynne Featherstone

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th April 2012 - 1:55 pm

I try as hard as possible not to link to the Daily Mail — it’s my small and admittedly token gesture not to encourage them. And Quentin Letts is the Mail at its most unpleasantly execrable, slavering to stick his pen-knife into anyone he cares to disdain, especially if they’re female or have a funny accent or some other personal tic to pick on.

Last week, he laid into Lib Dem equalities minister Lynne Featherstone. It was classic play-the-woman-I’ve-got-no-balls Letts:

Though aged 60 (and counting), she teeters up to the Despatch Box in high heels, grinning girlishly at the Opposition benches before

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 21 Comments
The Voice

Tim Farron replies to Lib Dem members’ letter: “Britain must be more liberal and free as a result of Liberal Democrats in power, not less”

By The Voice | Fri 6th April 2012 - 6:00 pm

Earlier this afternoon, Lib Dem Voice published An open letter to Lib Dem party president, Tim Farron: Concerns over our liberal identity and mission in government following recent suggestions the government would seek to increase the authorities’ web surveillance powers. Signed by more than 150 Lib Dem members (with many more adding their names in the comments thread) it urged the party’s ministers “to heed our call – block these illiberal proposals and lead the charge for reform of RIPA to ensure our citizens enjoy the fair, free and open society we seek to build and safeguard.”

Tim Farron has sent us this response:

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 32 Comments
Stephen Tall

Time for Nick Clegg and the Coalition to see sense and stop the ‘Charity Tax’

By Stephen Tall | Wed 4th April 2012 - 9:15 am

This year’s budget was, in general, a good one for Lib Dems. Most notably, the party’s number one priority of taking more low-paid workers out of tax was fast-tracked, while the controversies, and specifically the cut in the 50p top-rate at a time when pensioners’ tax allowances are being frozen, have hit their Tory backers’ support in the polls.

However, there is one lesser noticed and malign Budget change, the ‘Charity Tax’ — a cap on tax relief which threatens to cost the charitable sector hundreds of millions of pounds — which has not attracted mainstream media attention. That needs to change if the Coalition is to be talked down from a policy with Lib Dem fingerprints on it, and which will undermine philanthropic giving at a time when it is needed more than ever during the public funding squeeze.

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