Tag Archives: general election

Samuel Jackson

We need election debates for a Parliamentary Democracy

By Samuel Jackson | Fri 11th October 2024 - 5:41 pm

In 2024, ‘the year of elections’, the UK’s general election saw the end of fourteen years of calamitous Conservative governance, while the ongoing US election campaigns have proved tumultuous, to put it mildly. Regardless of the changes to the Democratic ticket, the presidential and vice-presidential debates gave Americans the chance to know who they are voting for in that race. In the UK, however, such debates have made things less clear.

The 2010 general election saw the advent of televised debates. Originally proposed in 1964, they were opposed in the belief that presidential-style debates were alien to British political culture and would emphasise personalities over policies and were prevented from materialising earlier by disagreements over format and partisan impulses to deny favourable coverage to opposition figures. Now, they are part and parcel of general election campaigns.

When they debuted in 2010, the ITV, Sky and the BBC leaders’ debates between Brown, Cameron and Clegg were accompanied by Channel 4’s Ask the Chancellors debate on fiscal policy and a series of policy area debates on the BBC’s Daily Politics between the responsible minister and their shadow counterparts. The latter formats arguably ensured that issues remained a focus during the election.

However, there were noticeable format changes in subsequent elections. The 2015 debates saw several new formats which emphasised the primacy of party leaders including a head-to-head programme between the two major party leaders, and the last Politics Daily debates between parties’ portfolio holders. From the 2017 election onwards, concerns regarding the propensity of presidentialism and personalities in debates have been vindicated. This trend likely arose due to parties who rely more on the popularity of their leaders than their policies manipulating broadcasters’ commitment to due impartiality to gain an advantage, or broadcasters succumbing to an impulse to entertain rather than educate.

We should seek to revive special policy area debates to make elections about issues and not personalities, and to re-emphasise the fact that we are a parliamentary – not presidential – democracy. However, we need to go further if we wish to remedy the latter problem.

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Mark Valladares

13 May 2024 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Mon 13th May 2024 - 9:00 pm
  • Bathing water: Govt needs to go further and stop sewage being pumped into bathing water sites
  • Maternity Care: Time Govt end postcode lottery
  • PM speech: Sunak should listen to the public and call a General Election
  • McArthur comments as legal action launched over deposit return scheme losses

Bathing water: Govt needs to go further and stop sewage being pumped into bathing water sites

Responding to the government announcing new designated bathing water sites, Liberal Democrat Environment spokesperson Tim Farron MP said:

The government needs to go much further and stop sewage being pumped into bathing water sites. Conservative Ministers allowed disgraced water firms to spill sewage into these sites over 30,000 times last year. No swimmer should have to fear raw sewage making them sick.

Today the Liberal Democrats have tabled an amendment to make water companies criminally liable for their sewage pollution. I am urging MPs from all parties to back this and finally get tough on these firms.

Maternity Care: Time Govt end postcode lottery

Commenting on the the Birth Trauma Inquiry, Liberal Democrat MP and Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Baby Loss, Helen Morgan MP said:

This inquiry has exposed what many of us have long feared about the state of the country’s maternity services.

For so many women to have such traumatic experiences of birth is nothing short of a national tragedy. Too many are being failed in pregnancy, birth and aftercare as this report shows.

It’s time the Government took action to end the postcode lottery in maternity services. I urge them to accept the report in full.

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Mark Argent

What if the Tories lose an Autumn 2022 General Election?

By Mark Argent | Thu 25th August 2022 - 1:55 pm

The temptation for Liz Truss to call a General Election soon after becoming Tory leader might be too much to resist. A shiny new leader might enable them to win. But I’m wondering about the other side: might they be planning to lose? In an ideal world they’d have done that before Boris Johnson’s position became completely untenable, but there’s a narrow window in which Truss might be able to lead per party to defeat and survive as leader by blaming her predecessor.

We need to think about this because it would inform our campaign and shape some difficult decisions afterwards.

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NewsHound

FT says Labour and Lib Dems have informal pact for next general election

By NewsHound | Thu 17th February 2022 - 4:18 pm

The Financial Times today reports that Labour will fight only a “minimal campaign” in most of the Lib Dems’ top 30 target seats at the next general election, in “an informal Lib-Lab plan to topple the Conservatives”.

Apparently, Keir Starmer has told colleagues that Labour must “ruthlessly focus” resources on its target seats in the general election freeing the ground for the Lib Dems to be the main challengers in some seats.

Labour is aiming to gain more than 125 seats to reach the 326 required to form a government. The Tories are worried by potential Lib Dem gains in the blue wall southern and rural heartlands after the wins in the Chesham and Amersham and North Shropshire byelections.

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Mark Argent

Are the Tories planning an early General Election

By Mark Argent | Sun 30th January 2022 - 9:58 am

A few days ago Jacob Rees Mogg suggested that a change of Prime Minister would lead to an early General Election. He must know this isn’t true: are we being softened up for one?

His remarks have been read as an attempt to stop Tory MPs in former “red wall” seats siding against Boris Johnson, but aren’t these the Tory MPs with the strongest incentive to ensure that their party has a leader who people support?

What he’s reported to have said on Newsnight is:

“It is my view that we’ve moved, for better or worse, to an essentially presidential system and therefore the mandate is personal rather than entirely party and any PM would be very well advised to seek a fresh mandate.” 

The Tories won in 2019 on a promise to deliver Brexit, and shouldn’t be able escape the consequences by going to the polls early. The unravelling of Brexit and the consequences of their handling of Covid will mean they are in a weak position when the next General Election is due, in 2024. Going sooner than that, while they have a comfortable majority, would attract criticism. But a General Election in the “honeymoon” period of a new leader could be sold as “democratic”. Supporters of opposition parties would — rightly — cry “foul”, but the Tories would be gambling on coming back with a reduced, but viable, majority. 

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Vince Cable says we could win 30 more seats in 2024

By Andy Boddington | Wed 22nd December 2021 - 4:28 pm

Writing in the Independent today, Vince Cable predicts: ”A realistic if optimistic outlook is that the Lib Dems could take 30 more Tory seats at the next general election.” Some may think that is ambitious but if we don’t have ambition we are never going to succeed.

He begins with Orpington, a by-election, on a massive 26 per cent swing in 1962. That was fifty years ago and the political quicksand has shifted since then. But it doesn’t mean that, buoyed by our successes in Chesham and Amersham and North Shropshire, we can’t deliver 30 MPs.

The experience in North Shropshire was that people no longer talked about the coalition. Only the very left talks about that now. We need to stride forward. Build on the excitement and momentum that we have gained during 2021. Ensure that we can get more MPs elected in 2024.

Over to Vince Cable.

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NewsHound

Business leaders back Lib Dems in open letter

By NewsHound | Sat 30th November 2019 - 10:55 am

Senior figures from such companies as the New Covent Garden Soup Company, Superdry and Lovefilm are among business leaders who have endorsed the Liberal Democrats in a letter published in the I newspaper. It says:

Business is at the heart of our economy, providing the jobs that millions depend on, the prosperity that pays for public services, and the means by which we bring together our enterprise, ambition and creativity to find new solutions and opportunities.

We also know there is a big task ahead if we are to build a prosperous, fair, inclusive and sustainable economy fit for the 21st century. We must do more to address social and geographical inequalities. We need to act boldly and urgently to tackle the climate emergency. And we must create more quality jobs and investment if the UK is to truly prosper from the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Success will require government and business working together in partnership.This means commitment to investing in the education, skills, innovation, infrastructure and regional development critical to building an inclusive, world-class digital and green economy. We need support for small and growing businesses; and commitment to fostering responsibility and sustainability.

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Ben Rich

Time for a fresh start

By Ben Rich | Wed 23rd October 2019 - 11:56 am

My former boss, Tim Farron, was frequently heard to say that a party never lost a general election because its manifesto wasn’t long enough.

The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto process, whilst very democratic, has one fundamental weakness.  It starts from the bottom up with dozen of policies on top of which the party will then attempt to impose a central message, rather than with a core narrative, which it will then illustrate with a series of eye-catching retail policies.

For the European elections the party communications staff very successfully circumnavigated this difficulty by ignoring the content of the manifesto altogether and simply plastering “Bollocks to Brexit” across the cover.

But the challenge of making a general election manifesto short enough to win an election still remains.   The devil has all the best tunes and there is no doubt that the Conservative message of “Get Brexit Done” seriously resonates on an emotional level.  We are seeing it in their steady climb in the polls and in the willingness of nineteen Labour MPs to endorse a Withdrawal Bill which they surely know is even more deeply flawed than Theresa May’s.  And we see it in the Labour party’s ambivalence both to a general election and to opposing the Withdrawal Bill outright.

At the same time, the Lib Dem message seems to have lost some of its emotional appeal.   It is still a vow to ‘stop Brexit’ but it feels more resigned “We will fight on” but lacks an imperative for the public to support it.

So what should be the Lib Dem equivalent to “Get Brexit done”?  The attractiveness of the slogan is that it speaks to the overwhelming sense that this has all dragged on too long and that we are all just desperate to make it stop.   Of course, getting the Withdrawal Agreement Bill passed would in no way “make it stop” – it would merely just trigger the next stage in the negotiations which would drag on years.

What the Lib Dems need to be shouting from the rooftops is that the only way to “make it stop” is to revoke or overturn the referendum result. Whatever way you look the sense is that the last three years have been an unmitigated disaster for Britain: whatever way you want to go we are currently headed in the wrong direction with politicians at war with each other and ignoring the people.

But “make it stop” is not enough.  It is an instruction not an impulse.   Instead, the sentiment that most attunes with people’s emotional need to rewind and start again is a fresh start.

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Jeremy Hargreaves

Federal Policy Committee report 16th October: Finalising the manifesto

By Jeremy Hargreaves | Fri 18th October 2019 - 10:25 am

The Federal Policy Committee is now on the final straight in to completing our manifesto for the expected General Election, and we cleared the agenda for our planned meeting on 16 October to focus on some key aspects of the document.

Our close collaboration with the Campaigns and Communications teams continues, and we started with a review of current research information about how messages are going down with voters, which was very helpful for our discussions which followed. Because of the way that we as a party make policy through conference, our policy on almost every area is already very well established.  So the challenge of writing a manifesto is not so much writing the policy as working with others so that we present it in the way which is most useful and appealing, especially to our target voters.

This is particularly visible in the area we discussed next, the few key headline policy commitments which will be most high profile. We want these, as well of course being the right policy, to make specific commitments which help to tell the wider story about areas that Liberal Democrats prioritise and the approach we take to them. Clearly Brexit will be central here, but there is plenty more we have to say about what we will do to help people in their everyday challenges.

One thing we are rightly proud of is that our manifesto is always accompanied by a robust set of costings which set out what our proposals will cost and how we will find the money to pay for these. This is something other parties tend not to do very properly, or not at all. We spent some time with Ed Davey, the shadow chancellor, going through these plans, and are now very well down the track of developing a strong plan for committing resources to our priority areas, funded in ways which make Britain fairer.

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Caron Lindsay

What would you think are the odds on the Liberal Democrats winning most seats in a general election?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 18th September 2019 - 8:15 am

Given that we have 18 MPs right now, you wouldn’t expect the odds on the Liberal Democrats being the biggest party in the House of Commons to be that good.

Maybe 100-1, maybe 50-1 at best.

Well, not so much.

Look here and you’ll see a range between 9-1 and 16-1.

That reflects the fact that we have left Bournemouth with a clear path ahead.

We know that our primary objective at the moment is to stop Brexit in order to make creating the more caring, more equal society that we want to see so much easier.

We are clear that if the Liberal Democrats win a majority at the next General Election before we have left the European Union, the very first thing that Jo Swinson will do if she enters Downing Street as Prime Minister, before she even puts the kettle on, will be to revoke Article 50.

The political earthquake that it would take for us to go from 18 seats to 326 would be more than sufficient mandate.

If we don’t win an overall majority, we would go for a people’s vote with a Brexit option and the option to Remain.

Over the last few days, Jo Swinson has shown herself to be a calm, capable, infectiously enthusiastic, likeable and determined leader, surrounded by a talented team.

She has been in the job for less than 2 months and already she tops the popularity ratings.

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Mark Valladares

10 September 2019 – the overnight press release

By Mark Valladares | Tue 10th September 2019 - 9:32 am

Parliament shutdown will not silence Lib Dem campaign to stop Brexit

Responding to Boris Johnson shutting down parliament, Liberal Democrat Leader Jo Swinson said:

The Liberal Democrats, along with other opposition parties, voted against the Prime Minister’s election this evening. We will not allow him to use an election to sneak through a dangerous No Deal Brexit, for which he has no mandate.

We relish the chance to take on Boris Johnson in an election, but only once Article 50 has been extended. And thanks to cross-party legislation, the Prime Minister must request an extension to Article 50 rather than crash us

…

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Patrick Maxwell

Boris Johnson is the most vulnerable Prime Minister to enter No 10

By Patrick Maxwell | Fri 9th August 2019 - 10:27 am

Boris Johnson reminds me of an old school bully of mine. Behind the confidence and malcontent facade of someone who knows he can exploit those less fashionable (my politics never helped) lies the hidden fragility. The pursuit of popularity and the insatiable desire to be liked create a deep personal weakness, the lack of authenticity or character, masked by the charade of charm and affability. Eventually the act wares off, and he is left as a lamentable figure, destined for either a melancholy reprisal of his previous life or a painful self-evaluation. You nearly end up feeling sorry for him. Nearly.

Boris Johnson shares many of the same traits. His lifelong desire to become Prime Minister has meant that his principles can be shifted to suit the beliefs of whatever crowd he wants to please. His Euroscepticism can be traced back to his early years as the Brussels correspondent for The Telegraph, where he found that plainly ludicrous stories could get him a loyal and supportive following. Later, as London mayor, he promoted an image of himself as a liberal, pro-European leader, who was in favour of the single market. Sir Nicholas Soames begged him to pledge his support for Remain, even offering to run any future leadership campaign. Later Soames would say that he knew that Johnson never backed Leave in his heart, and was trying to appeal to the Tory grassroots to win them over for the leadership. Johnson has always moulded his political stances to please a certain crowd, and his desire to be popular could well be his downfall.

With no mandate for the job from the British public, Johnson’s assuredness about getting another deal from Brussels is severely displaced. Any hope avoiding the backstop will not pass the approval of the twenty-seven member states and will also fall in Parliament. Theresa May’s deal with a smiling face may well be the only way forwards, but it would be soon discovered by Johnson’s hardline comrades to be a betrayal of their interests. Then the government as a whole could be brought down. 

Any plans for an early election may also prove fatal. The Brexit Party still has a large support base, and a split between them and the Tories could easily let the Lib Dems through in many marginal constituencies as the unequivocal vote of Remain. This could also lead to the dangerous situation of Johnson being able to defeat Labour and command a majority through the Lib Dem surge. Whatever the scenario, no Tory leader can expect to win a large majority, with a threatening Brexit Party and the resurgent Lib Dems. It gives Jo Swinson a huge chance to capture a mood that can transform the party’s fortunes. The first past the post system has always dogged their chances, but a strong Remain Alliance could have important consequences for the future of the country, as the Brecon by-election showed. 

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Hugh Andrew

Be careful what you wish for

By Hugh Andrew | Wed 31st July 2019 - 3:20 pm

Lib Dem Voice is currently full of excited speculation about the timing and possibilities of an election. It is worth standing back a little.

Who else really secretly wants an election? Certainly not Labour – it is difficult to think of an opposition in a less credible state. But Boris Johnson does. By tacking to the hard right he can destroy the Brexit party while the collapse of Labour means he has nothing to fear from that direction. His only care is a working parliamentary majority. He could not care less whether the Liberal Democrats get 50 seats or 150 provided …

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David Warren

Parking the bus or total football?

By David Warren | Sat 2nd February 2019 - 11:56 am

For those football fanatics among us tactics are something we study closely in our desire to enhance our enjoyment of the beautiful game.

Some of us marvel at a defensive approach where a team plays an unadventurous formation designed to avoid conceding goals and then nicking one at some point in the game to come away with a 1-0 victory. This is often called parking the bus and despite his protestations to the contrary it is the favoured approach of the self styled Special One Mr Jose Mourinho.

Others prefer a purist method, the most advanced version being the one used by the Dutch national team in the past and christened total football by admiring commentators. A number of teams have deployed a variation of this philosophy but few have gained the plaudits earned by Rinus Michels the coach of the legendary Netherlands 1974 World Cup team playing in those fabulous bright orange shirts.

So what does this have to do with politics I hear you ask?

Well as in football, politics is about tactics and for our party the Liberal Democrats the way we deploy our key players will be crucial to our fortunes at the next General Election.

Do we take a cautious approach and look to retain the seats in the House of Commons that we currently hold, extend ourselves a bit by trying to win a handful of target seats or be really adventurous by running campaigns wherever we are able.

There are of course many factors to consider in making a final decision, not least the strength of the opposition and the willingness of members of our team to be deployed ‘out of position’. We also have to bear in mind the fact that politics has become much more unpredictable post Brexit.

Success may well come in some unusual places.

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Caron Lindsay

Be prepared: We could well be heading for a General Election

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 20th January 2019 - 3:44 pm

I am starting to think that the likelihood of a General Election is rising.

Theresa May’s options are limited.

She could probably get a majority of MPs to back a Norway style Brexit if she put some effort into it. She could have done that two years ago. But that would split her party. So she won’t.

She could, as Vince suggested to her, put her own deal to the British people. But every poll that has been done on that possibility suggests that it would lose against a Remain option. However right that would be, it would split her party and leave her with a huge amount of egg on her face.

Or she could go for an election by the same mechanism she used in 2017 – a motion in the House of Commons backed by 2/3. Corbyn could hardly vote against it given that he has been calling for an election for months. We should vote against it, by the way, on the grounds that it won’t solve Brexit and we don’t trust the Government to behave itself with the powers that the EU Withdrawal Act gives it while Parliament is dissolved.

Now, I get that it is unlikely that she could find a manifesto promise on Brexit that her entire party would unite behind. She might consider that it doesn’t matter, though. Because she’ll make the election about going after Corbyn. We saw from Michael Gove’s closing speech in the No Confidence debate the other night a glimmer of what they would unleash in his direction. Every picture of him with dodgy people will be coming to a billboard near you – and he really hasn’t helped himself this week by refusing to talk to May when he’s talked to all sorts of nefarious characters with the stated intention of sorting out the Middle East or Northern Ireland.

I know that May has promised not to lead the Conservatives into another election but her argument would be that Parliament was frustrating the will of the people. This vote, though, would be a chance, however unlikely,  to get her the parliamentary majority which she came within a few thousand votes of getting in 2017. Then she could govern relatively untroubled until 2023. Although she shouldn’t take too much comfort from that prospect given how Major’s last five years as PM went.

And, with Parliament dissolved, heaven knows what the Government would do in terms of illiberal and unscrutinised instrument and order throughout the election campaign. The EU Withdrawal Act does give it a lot of untrammelled power, after all.

An election wouldn’t solve Brexit, of course. She couldn’t get a third of her own MPs to vote for her deal and that is unlikely to change. But that is not what it is about. 

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George Potter

What do the local elections tell us about Lib Dem prospects?

By George Potter | Tue 4th December 2018 - 12:39 pm

When it comes to local election results, punditry usually heads in one of two directions. Either the local elections will be held up as an ironclad prediction for the next general election result or they are an utter irrelevance which tells you nothing about how people will vote in national elections.

Strangely, which of the two positions punditry tends towards seems to be very much linked to whether the local elections have been bad or good for the party backed by the pundit in question.

As you might expect, of course, the truth lies somewhere in between – and the data can actually tell us something useful about Liberal Democrat prospects at the next general election, whenever that may be.

For decades various teams of political scientists have been working out National Equivalent Vote Shares (NEVS) based on local election results. That is, they take the raw figures and make adjustments to take account of the fact that local elections take place in different parts of the country each year (for instance, most of the councils which had elections in May this year won’t have elections again until 2022).

This means that the NEVS is, broadly speaking, a reliable snapshot of support for each party UK-wide at the time of the local elections.

However, this does not mean that a NEVS is the same thing as how the party will perform in a general election. In the case of the Lib Dems, we have routinely underperformed our NEVS from the previous year in a general election.

The table below shows the Lib Dem performance in each of the past six general elections as well as our NEVS in the year before’s local elections. As can be seen, typically the Lib Dem vote has dropped by 1 to 7 points between the local election and the general election – and the two general elections with the lowest drop were dominated by the Iraq War and Cleggmania respectively, making them fairly atypical.

GE Result Year Before’s NEVS Difference
1997 17% 24% -7
2001 19% 26% -7
2005 23% 27% -4
2010 24% 25% -1
2015 8% 13% -5
2017 7% 14% -7

 

So, given that the typical drop has been 6 or 7 points, what does this tell us about Lib Dem prospects at the next general election?

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The Voice

A Newbie’s reflections

By The Voice | Wed 20th December 2017 - 10:25 am

When I first walked in to the offices of Eastbourne and Willingdon Lib Dems in April of this year, I had little idea just how swept up in it all I would get. Like many new (and more established!) members, I had got to the point with politics in this country where I felt “something must be done”!

On the first action day of the GE, I was warmly welcomed and soon sent out with the first of many walks to deliver. The bonhomie, and feeling that we were all working towards a greater good has stayed with me ever since. Being on the ground for the tail end of the local elections and the full GE campaign gave me an appreciation of how many other people shared my new-found passion for challenge and change. It also made me appreciate the necessity of an army of supporters to ensure we can continue challenge the big money (business or union) backing of other parties.

After the briefest of introductions to the local elections, the GE rapidly got into full swing. Election night in Eastbourne was bittersweet for us, our local success being tempered by the knowledge that despite working just as hard, Lib Dems across the country were meeting a brick wall. It was also the night that fully cemented my anti-Tory sentiment – as the results were announced in the town hall by the returning officer, the Tories, each and every one, booed the Green party candidate. The Tories, true to pantomime-villain form, picking on the weakest member in the room.

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Paul Tyler

Lord Paul Tyler writes…An early general election

By Paul Tyler | Fri 1st July 2016 - 8:40 am

All the runners in the Conservative Leadership steeplechase may be denying that they would seek a General Election before 2020, but I suggest that you should examine their track record in terms of broken promises.   If the Labour Party is still suicidal, and if the dishonest Brexit commitments are beginning to unravel with devastating effect on people’s expectations, what Prime Minister could resist the temptation to go to the country?

In any case, there will be a strong reaction to the imposition of a new PM and Government on the whim of a 130,000 electorate.  Where is our much vaunted “Sovereign Parliament”, and the demand that our democracy must “take back control”, in that process?  When Cameron was elected there were 253,689 eligible members of the Tory Party, down from 328,000 when they selected Iain Duncan Smith.

In such circumstances, the new Leader could justifiably claim a moral duty to seek a new mandate from the whole country.

I have challenged Ministers to confirm that an early General Election – this year or next – would be contested in the current constituencies, with no boundary changes or reduction in the number of MPs.  Not for the first time, they seem clueless – you can see our exchanges here: 

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Mark Argent

Opinion: The next election?

By Mark Argent | Mon 20th July 2015 - 6:44 pm

 

Three Lib Dem gains in council by-elections coinciding with Tim Farron’s election as leader are great news. They invite the language of a gradual comeback to a much improved result in 2020.

But is the next General Election five years away?

In the normal course of events the Conservative majority of 15 would be vulnerable to defections and losses through by-elections. In the last parliament, there were two defections from the Tories to UKIP and 21 by-elections. It is entirely possible that they would seek form a minority government, but the Tories would lose their overall majority of just eight seats moved to other parties. In the normal course of events, that happening in this parliament would be far from implausible.

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Caron Lindsay

So what exactly will the Liberal Democrats do if involved in coalition negotiations?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 26th April 2015 - 4:30 pm

As Nick Clegg had the good grace to say in his email to members yesterday, that the decision about whether the Liberal Democrats go into coalition or not if in a position to do so is not in his gift.

We’re a democratic party. In the end, the decision to form a coalition rests not with the leader but with the party.

That is kind of true. I thought it would be worth taking you through what will happen should Liberal Democrats be involved in coalition negotiations after the election. The process is different from last time. Then all the leader had to do was to get the approval of the parliamentary parties in the Commons and Lords and the Federal Executive. The Special Conference which took place was not actually a requirement, but it was thought to be good practice. It overwhelmingly endorsed the Coalition Agreement.

This time, things are different, due to a motion passed at Spring Conference in 2012. Now, this will deliver a clear answer on whether to go into coalition or not, so the markets need not worry themselves, but it would be wrong to overlook the potential for longer term chaos it could ignite in the party. What conference was thinking of when it passed this, I have no idea. Here’s the motion:

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Paul Walter

Should we have a day off to vote?

By Paul Walter | Fri 14th November 2014 - 4:54 pm

your vote matters lib dem leafletEarlier this year, I was planning a call with a colleague in South Africa when he said: “I can’t do it on that day. It’s Voting Day.” I didn’t realize that South Africans have a public holiday to vote. Perhaps that would be a good idea in the UK – some MPs are thinking that way.

PoliticsHome reports:

A report by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is inviting responses from the public to further suggestions including introducing compulsory voting, online voting and lowering the voting age from 18 to 16.

The MPs point out that almost 16 million eligible voters chose not to cast a vote at the last general election, warning this is “not an acceptable state of affairs for a modern democracy”.

And they call for elections to be held on a specially designated public holiday or at weekends to try and stem the tide of voter apathy.

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Paul Walter

Can moderate public engagement be a good thing?

By Paul Walter | Mon 22nd September 2014 - 10:55 am

Scottish referendum ohot by gerardferryimagesWhile I was a governor at a primary school, we had a yearly dilemma. By law, we had to hold an annual meeting with parents. About a dozen usually turned up. Normally the same faces. Interested and engaged, they gave us good feedback and a nice time was had by all. Soft drinks and nibbles supplied.

But a dozen parents for a school with several hundred pupils was considered low. So, annually, we considered ways of increasing parental attendance, only to be frustrated. After several attempts, I jokingly suggested that the only way to increase attendance was to announce that, at the next meeting, we would be showing a preview of an experimental Swedish sex education video which we were considering showing to pupils.

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Stephen Tall

The Lib Dem vote share: not always the best guide to how successful the Lib Dems have been…

By Stephen Tall | Tue 4th December 2012 - 3:30 pm

An important point, with graph to match, from PoliticalBetting’s Mike Smithson:

To illustrate the point further:

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Tim Farron MP

Tim Farron MP writes… This week could have been very different

By Tim Farron MP | Thu 18th October 2012 - 11:20 am

Last weekend was the fifth anniversary of the day that Gordon Brown changed his mind at the last minute and didn’t call the widely anticipated 2007 autumn General Election. Given the remainder of his tenure it is easy for many of us to forget that following his succession to No. 10 Downing St, Gordon Brown did received a popularity bounce. Brown was 10% ahead in the polls, David Cameron was floundering following a difficult period as opposition leader, and of course the banking collapse of 2008 had not yet happened.

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    'Needless to say the poorest in British society paid the price for this' I remember canvassing , the poorer the area the less interested they were. Membership ...
  • GWYN WILLIAMS
    A balanced and fair assessment of the Senedd campaign. Unlike in Scotland, Wales has not as yet polarised into for and against Independence camps. The Welsh Lib...
  • Jana
    The logic of this article is that we should be rejoining the Single Market. That is different from signing up to complete political Union by joining the EU. ...