Back in 1995 the Liberal Democrats under Paddy Ashdown made a video explaining what the party stands for and why people should back it. If you’ve been around in the party a few years you can have some fun spotting familiar faces from 15 years ago (including a young Danny Alexander), and even if not it’s striking how well some of the points have aged:
The long awaited outcome of the review of counter-terrorism and security powers is to be announced this week. Already last week, the expected and widely trailed outcome was confirmed that the length of time for pre-charge detention has been halved from 28 to 14 days – this 28 day power will lapse on Tuesday. It now appears that Theresa May will announce the outcome of the review on Wednesday, after Cabinet presumably discusses the issue on Tuesday.
The most thorny issue for the Liberal Democrats is what will go and what will remain of the highly controversial Control Order regime. David …
After all the anticipation and build-up, yesterday’s Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was a bit of a damp squib.
Labour retained the seat with a decent and improved majority, as would be expected of the only major opposition party. The Lib Dems held our own, Elwyn Watkins nudging up the share of the vote he received in May 2010, but not surprisingly proving unable to break the 30-year run of governing parties not gaining at by-elections. And the Conservative vote collapsed after a half-hearted campaign, provoking a few squeals from activists and a shrug of indifference from their party leader.
Last night, at 3am, I got to do the job of telling everyone how well we did in Oldham despite the fact that we lost… I’m aware that there are few things more clichéd than a politician who loses an election and makes this statement, but in our case it’s actually true. This result provides a good stepping stone towards the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and English council elections.
In Elwyn Watkins we had first class candidate and I am hugely impressed by the way he has handled this by-election and everything that lead up to it. By taking on Phil Woolas and challenging his dirty campaign, Elwyn made a significant leap in the fight towards cleaning up politics for good and for that we should all be grateful.
The election in Oldham East & Saddleworth has been the perfect opportunity for us as a party to come together after what has been, let’s be honest, a very difficult few months. Vast numbers of volunteers descended on Oldham to lend a hand from across the country and many more who could not make it to Oldham, got involved in other ways from telephone canvassing to addressing envelopes!
It was great to see Nick out rallying the troops and walking up and down the icy lanes to speak to voters and deliver leaflets, as well as many of our fantastic team of ministers joining the ranks, such as Scottish Secretary Michael Moore – who got stuck in to the polling day knock-up yesterday getting our voters out to the polling stations! Never before has a by-election been more cathartic and unifying for our party.
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Over 660 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results over the next few days.
An 80% elected House of Lords
LDV asked: The Coalition Agreement committed the Government to “a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation”. It is reported that Nick Clegg will present plans for 80% of the new house to be elected under the Single Transferable Vote. Would you be happy …
We reported last night the results of the three opinion polls published ahead of the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election this Thursday. Let’s take a look now at the only two questions that matter when reading these polls…
1. Will the opinion polls prove accurate?
Opinion polls in by-elections have a notoriously patchy record — unsurprisingly, as the pollsters are unable to refine their techniques over time and measure their snapshots against actual results as they are able to with their general election predictions. For example, pre-by-election polls in Glasgow East (2008) and Blaenau Gwent (2006) showed the wrong winners.
Earlier this week, Lib Dem Voice highlighted the No2AV campaign’s embarrassing failure to check whether all the Labour MPs they said were opposed to reforming the UK’s unfair electoral system actually are opposed. It turns out that five of the 114 named were listed wrongly.
As a result of the No camp’s confusion, the Yes! to Fairer Votes campaign is asking the public to help make sure all MPs come clean about which side of the debate they support:
What really matters in this referendum is what the people want, not politicians. But since they are meant to represent us,
Another day, another nail in the coffin of liberalism in the Labour Party. Sadiq Khan, the party’s shadow justice secretary, today amped-up the debate on votes for prisoners by condemnIng the Coalition’s proposals as — POPULIST CLICHE ALERT — “a slap in the face for victims of crime”.
But his pandering to the forces of authoritarian conservatism hasn’t gone down well with all Labour members. Over at LabourList, Kevin Peel has an excellent post criticising Mr Khan’s outburst, pointing out that no matter what you think of the decision the UK was under a legal obligation following a …
Building up traffic to a local party or councillor website is much like building up a delivery network: it brings big benefits, but it’s not the sort of thing you can do overnight. They are both best achieved by making slow and steady progress over a period of time.
Steadily work your way down the list over the next couple of months and by the time this May’s election campaigns proper kick off you should really notice the difference.
Make sure the site is listed:there are numerous websites and blog directories, but generally only two really matter for political sites: DMOZ …
Paul Moorcraft’s account of his several decades touring the world’s violent trouble-spots as a journalist and some-time government representative entertains as well as informs. From Rhodesia in the 1970s through to his contemplation of pioneering a niche market in blind observers for African elections in 2010, Moorcraft’s account reflects plenty of the swagger of many war correspondents but with enough self-mockery to make the account illuminating and interesting rather than a macho display. Even the clichés about drinking and womanising journalists, which he seems to have often fulfilled to the maximum, are full of his own failings.
The result is a portrait of not only the countries he visited but also the breed that makes up war correspondents, with their bravery, their bravado and their desire to get the story and the footage even at great personal risk. The motivation for such story getting may often be as much ego as public service, but in the end the public benefits from people willing to take remarkable risks with their personal safety in the name of journalism.
In what is fast becoming a pre-New Year tradition as eagerly anticipated as ‘the biggest ever DFS sale’, Lib Dem Voice is publishing its list of 10 key questions, the answers to which we think might well help shape 2011 for the party. You can read last year’s list here; and our answers to those questions here (Part I) and here (Part II).
Here below, then, are my top 10 questions for the coming year in Lib Demmery:
1. The biggest question of all: will the Lib Dem / Conservative Coalition Government last the year?
Plenty have predicted its …
A year ago, Lib Dem Voice posed 10 questions, the answers to which we believed might shape the Lib Dem year – time to revisit them, wethinks. You can read Part I of our round-up here.
6. Will any of the party’s senior figures – within or without the Lib Dem shadow cabinet – take an official position offered by whoever forms the next government?
When I posed this question I rather had in mind Gordon Brown’s GOAT appointments — such as Lib Dem MP-turned-peer Lord (Matthew) Taylor’s housing review, or Baroness (Shirley) Williams’ advice on nuclear proliferation. …
By Stephen Tall
| Fri 31st December 2010 - 8:30 am
A year ago, Lib Dem Voice posed 10 questions, the answers to which we believed might shape the Lib Dem year – time to revisit them, wethinks.
1. In the 2010 general election, how many Lib Dem MPs will be elected? Will we increase our number from the current total of 63; or will we fall back? Will we increase our vote percentage compared with 2005, when we polled 22% of the popular vote? Or could we do, as we did in 1997, see our popular vote drop, but our Parliamentary strength grow?
Nick Clegg has released his New Year message to Lib Dem members, a simple and positive riff on the party’s four key manifesto commitments from the 2010 General Election.
In fact, for a New Year’s message, it’s very much about continuity; there are no fireworks or surprises, as I found when I played a little game earlier with a couple of colleagues – “Guess what’s in Nick’s New Year message?”
And we guessed correctly, almost to the word: a reiteration of the party’s “big four” commitments, with examples of where we’ve delivered (more examples here); a quick mention of coalition politics, without dwelling overly on “incredibly difficult decisions”; a look towards three themes for 2011: political reform, social mobility and economic recovery – each with a helpful, yet sparing definition in plain language. (AV, after all, is best presented as a fairer system which makes MPs work harder for your vote, rather than a mathematical conundrum.)
Nick rounds off with a rallying cry, to prove the naysayers wrong, and “continue to build the Liberal fairer, greener Britain that we all believe in.”
Here’s Nick’s message in full:
Well what a year! A white-knuckle election; a new coalition government; Liberals in power for the first time in 70 years.
Just eight months ago we were campaigning on our four big manifesto priorities – fairer taxes; extra money for disadvantaged children in schools; a green, rebalanced economy; a new, open politics.
And now we are delivering on every single one, and more.
It’s an unnecessarily well-kept secret that the Liberal Democrats have already achieved much in Government since the General Election.
Despite the Guardian saying today that “the Liberal Democrats have rushed out a checklist of 67 party manifesto commitments already or nearly achieved in eight months in office” it’s not that easy to find the checklist online, nor to understand why the newspaper used the word “rushed” when the party has waited two thirds of a year before compiling and releasing it in a low-key way to Lib Dem campaigners.
Nonetheless, the list is impressive, and deserves to be shared widely. So I’m publishing it below,
You may have seen mentioned in the weekly Golden Dozen round-ups reference to LibDig – but there’s much more to the site than sharing a story for hopeful inclusion in the round-ups. Thanks to LibDig, Liberal Democrat members can easily share interesting, useful or enjoyable stories, videos or blog posts.
You can either post up content you have seen, or vote on content that other people have posted up; either way it’s a way of saying, “I found this interesting. I think you’ll find it interesting too.”
Social bookmarking sites like this have been around for a while, but they tend …
Over the last week I’ve had a series of posts about the main Liberal Democrat challenges for 2011. In case you’ve missed any of them over the Christmas festivities, here is a quick recap:
The economy – get this right, or little else matters
Winning elections – for a political party winning votes is key to success
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 26th December 2010 - 4:45 pm
LDV wants to find out who our readers think merits the title Liberal Voice of the Year 2010, and we’ll be running a New Year poll to find the individual or group which has most inspired you in the last year. But, as is our traditional little twist, we want to look outside the Liberal Democrats – and find the greatest liberal who’s not a member of our party.
So, who would you pick? It could be a member of another political party, or one of the majority of Britons who belong to no party; or a group of people, or …
David Cameron’s recent speech laying out his vision of the Big Society provides a yardstick to judge it against traditional Liberal Democrat (and before that Liberal) beliefs in community politics.
The underlying motivation for the Big Society, as expressed by Cameron, could have come from one of the many Lib Dem / Liberal pamphlets or articles about community politics:
It comes from the belief that over many decades this country has become too centralised, too bureaucratic and too top-down.
And this is not just inefficient and overly-bureaucratic but also has an insidious cultural effect, because it robs people of responsibility.
If you are hoping to get elected in one of the elections due in May (or, very wisely, are already thinking further ahead), then hopefully you’ve found many of the posts we’ve run over the last few months useful in giving you ideas.
Here’s a quick recap of five of the main posts worth (re)reading over Christmas to look for ideas and tips:
I am just back from canvassing with Elwyn Watkins in Oldham East and Saddleworth. I’m writing this now from the by-election HQ in Greenfield in Saddleworth.
I came up to help today because I felt it was so important that after a tough week for us as a party, we work together to fight for what we stand for as a party.
Here in Oldham the fight is against a Labour Party that have been caught out lying about their opponent and stirring up racial tensions in order to get elected.
I don’t think there’s a Liberal Democrat who feels that’s right. It was quite clear to me on …
Many Liberal Democrat councillors and campaigners have both a Twitter account and a Facebook profile alongside their blog or website. Linking the three together efficiently can greatly increase the political impact of them individually, especially as many people find that Twitter is one of the best ways of driving traffic and Facebook one of the best places to get comments, whilst it’s on their website that is more convenient for longer or more detailed content. With each having a different role, how best then to put all three together?
The basic option that many people go for is to have a …
London Liberal Democrats have today announced their team of candidates for the London Assembly top-up list in 2012. Caroline Pidgeon AM topped the poll of London Liberal Democrat members to lead the London Assembly campaign in 2012.
The list is as follows:
Caroline Pidgeon
Stephen Knight
Bridget Fox
Shas Sheehan
Jeremy Ambache
Merlene Emerson
Emily Davey
Steve Bradley
Marisha Ray
Nick Russell
Ajmal Masroor
Turnout was 55.6%.
Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington and London Spokesperson Tom Brake said:
The Liberal Democrats have a proud record on the London Assembly of holding the Mayor to account. Our Assembly members have led the fight for better value for money from City Hall, better transport services
Contrasting poll results from YouGov and ICM on the AV referendum show how important it is avoid the referendum becoming a vote for or against the government rather than about the merits of the alternative vote compared to first past the post.
An ICM poll has found the Yes camp leading by 35% – 22% (with the balance don’t know or wouldn’t vote), which compares to a 35% – 41% deficit on the latest YouGov poll.
However, there is an important difference between the wording of the two polling questions, with YouGov’s question starting, “The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government are committed …
Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. This time it is a paper from David Brockington (University of Plymouth) and Todd Donovan (Western Washington University) looking at the political impact of increasing taxes.
After reviewing the work of others in this area, they focus in on council tax levels and election results in English local councils, comparing the performance of Labour and Conservative against changes in council tax levels:
We have tested if governments that presided over marginal increases in existing taxes lost vote share and seat share in the subsequent election. We find that
By Chris Davies
| Sat 4th December 2010 - 10:55 am
As you may have heard on the news, High Court judges have dismissed the appeal by former Labour MP, Phil Woolas, against his conviction for illegal practices in the General Election.
There will now be a by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth with a likely polling day of January 13th.
Last May, Elwyn Watkins lost by just 103 votes because of the lies told by Phil Woolas that have been condemned by the Court. A couple of days ago I canvassed one couple who told me: “We we’re going to vote Liberal Democrat, but when we read what Labour were saying about your …
I recently spent a couple of days visiting some of England’s surviving windmills with a couple of friends. Though it was a holiday rather than a deliberate exercise in political education, two political points came out clearly.
One, which I’ve blogged about previously, is how the windmill not only used to be a key part of the English landscape but also, in its horizontal axis / vertical sail form, is an English invention.
So windmills not only are a British (or perhaps more accurately English) tradition, they are also an example of technical inventiveness of which we can be proud. And yet …
Many insider accounts have already appeared of the events retold in David Laws’s book 22 Days in May: The Birth of the Lib Dem-Conservative Coalition. It is therefore one of the book’s strengths that not only is it written in a lively style which gives some freshness to the now familiar sequence of events but it also adds many new insights.
Although only briefly mentioned by Laws himself, perhaps the most important is how much the Liberal Democrats owe to Chris Huhne. In April, just before the second TV debate, I wrote,
Here’s your starter for ten in our Saturday slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
In his recently published book, 22 Days in May, David Laws writes,
The coalition needs to redefine what fairness means. Fairness cannot mean just maintaining people above an arbitrary income line, whatever their personal circumstances. Fairness means giving people the educational and employment opportunities to ensure that they are not dependent on an over-mighty state and trapped in dead-end lives.
Since the general election I’ve been to speak at fifteen local party events and two trends have struck me. First, the increase in the party’s headline membership figures comes over on the ground, with new faces turning up at events and new people interested in helping. Second, and less promising, is the heavy reliance on only two questions when someone new pops up: “can you deliver leaflets?” or, if they look really keen, “do you want to be on the local party executive?”
Those are both good questions – and the enthusiasm for getting people directly involved with leafleting is a …
Rob Heale The boldest option would be to adhere to our aims set out in the Party Constitution to be free from poverty. People living in poverty can rarely be free because...
Chris Moore Battling on against the current with scarce means or attention from the media.
Excellent radical liberal focussing on the issues that really matter.
An...
Adam 4,700 Jewish soldiers fought for the Prussian army in the Franco Prussian war. They fought with distinction - many of them received the Iron Cross. When Germany...
Paul Thank you Jane for your tireless work over the last decade. You stood for leader when it would have been easier not to, you’ve fought elections when it would ...
Adam "The problem is that being ‘understanding’ of anti-immigrant views led to the holocaust."
This is both wrong, and bloody insulting to those German Jews w...
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Jane Dodds stands down as Welsh Lib Dem leader
The straight and narrow path to Marzipan Tunnel
A U-turn too far
Rob Heale 
Chris Moore 
Adam 
Paul 