Tag Archives: jeremy browne

The Voice

Jeremy Browne turns down Argentina invite during 30th anniversary Falklands tour

By The Voice | Sat 9th June 2012 - 8:15 am

The Independent reports that Lib Dem foreign office minister Jeremy Browne has turned down an invitation to attend talks in Argentina when he visits the Falklands next week in what appears to be a diplomatic but pretty unambiguous FU from the FO:

“We have today received an invitation from Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timmerman, for Mr Browne to visit Buenos Aires next week,” the spokesman said. “However he has a full schedule of events in the Falkland Islands to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the conflict there. This has been arranged for some time.

“Mr Browne is grateful for the invitation.

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 7 Comments
Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Jeremy Browne MP on the Government’s actions to prevent torture

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 1st February 2012 - 10:58 am

Liberal Democrat Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne  in the Guardian about the Coalition’s strategy to prevent torture throughout the World and about the independent enquiry which will investigate whether Britain was implicated in torture after 9/11:

We know that we face a long and difficult road ahead. But our vision is for people to be treated fairly and able to speak freely in every country. We should never be comfortable with a world where journalists, lawyers and activists endure ill treatment for criticising their governments. This is a core part of what this coalition stands for, and we will continue to

…

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Posted in Europe / International, LibLink and News | Also tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Clegg on RBS Hester’s pay – “these figures seem like they’re from another planet”

By Stephen Tall | Sun 29th January 2012 - 9:40 am

The debate reverberated here on LibDemVoice yesterday: Should Stephen Hester accept his bonus? Here’s what Nick Clegg had to say about it all yesterday:

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Posted in YouTube | Also tagged and | 10 Comments
Carl Quilliam

The weekend debate: Should Stephen Hester accept his bonus?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 28th January 2012 - 9:25 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

Since the £963, 000 shares bonus for RBS Chief Executive Stephen Hester has been revealed there have been opinions pouring out from across the political spectrum.

When Ed Miliband accused David Cameron of a “failure of leadership” over it, Cameron promptly distanced himself from the process altogether, with George Osborne claiming it was due to rules put in place by Labour.

Boris Johnson seems to be against it, as is our usually economically …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 28 Comments
Paul Reynolds

Opinion: Memo to Jeremy Browne MP

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 27th January 2012 - 4:30 pm

Dear Jeremy,

Thank you very much for your typically robust performance on BBC TV’s Question Time last night. However I wish to counsel you against using the prospect of war with Iran as a vehicle to demonstrate your resolve, and the Party’s new-found ‘establishment’ credentials. Your political future, and maybe even your personal freedom, are at stake here….

In the debate you not only expressed your support for blockade-type unilateral sanctions, that do not have UN support, but also you gave the distinct impression that you were in favour of the UK joining a major war against Iran.

The recent rise …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 11 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV Caption Competition | Sir Bob Russell “snookered by Nick Clegg” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th January 2012 - 11:50 am

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader…

(Hat-tip to the Colchester Daily Gazette.)

Here’s veteran Lib Dem MP for Colchester Sir Bob Russell, knighted for public service in this year’s honours, enjoying a frame of snooker with Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. What do you think might be being said or thought by or about those pictured?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Jeremy Browne “it’s not always this black-and-white” Edition.

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Posted in Caption Comp | Also tagged and | 18 Comments
Mark Pack

Which four Liberal Democrat ministers have most improved their standings in 2011?

By Mark Pack | Wed 28th December 2011 - 11:55 am

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. Some 564 party members responded, and we are publishing the full results here over several days.

Jeremy Browne, Vince Cable, Ed Davey and Lynne Featherstone are the four Liberal Democrat ministers to have significantly increased their standing in the eyes of party members over this year, according to the surveys of party members carried out by Liberal Democrat Voice four times in the year.

When asked how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with a range of party …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged , , , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Jeremy Browne: absolutely right

By Mark Pack | Sat 17th December 2011 - 10:24 am

From an interview the Liberal Democrat Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne gave the Evening Standard this week:

I think there is a danger that we are defined by a relatively small set of issues that are relevant and significant but do not give a rounded picture of what the Liberal Democrats are in government in order to achieve.

As he rightly says, there’s a danger in the events of 2011 that the party ends up leaving just that impression:

It would be a mistake for the Lib-Dems to come to be known in the public minds as the party that in 2011

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 26 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Jeremy Browne’s pledge to Sam Fox: I’ll raise issue of tiger farms with Chinese government

By Stephen Tall | Thu 24th November 2011 - 7:45 am

As the BBC reports:

The former model and singer Sam Fox challenged foreign office minster Jeremy Browne on the Daily Politics about tiger farms in China which she wants to see closed. Mr Browne told her that he would raise the matter with the Chinese. Fewer than 3,500 tigers remain in the wild around the world.

You can watch the exchange below:

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Posted in YouTube | Also tagged , and | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

LDV Caption Competition | Jeremy Browne “it’s not always this black-and-white” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sun 20th November 2011 - 5:45 pm

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader…


(Hat-tip to ChinaDaily.com.)

Here’s Lib Dem foreign minister Jeremy Browne enjoying a bite to eat with one of two pandas on their way from Bifengxia Yaan Panda Base in China to Edinburgh Zoo. What do you think might be being said or thought by those pictured?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, John Hemming “you’ll have had your tea” Edition.

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Posted in Caption Comp | Also tagged | 30 Comments

Opinion: Lib Dems promoting human rights abroad

By Jonathan Baldie | Sun 8th May 2011 - 2:23 pm

As a Liberal Democrat member*, I’m proud of the fact that our  party is in government, with ministers making tough choices about the UK.

While most attention is on electoral reform and tuition fees, I want to steer your attention towards foreign policy. In the Foreign Office there is one Lib Dem minister, Jeremy Browne MP. He takes the responsibility in the FCO for human rights policy among other things.

Mr Browne recently made an excellent Q&A video on YouTube last month, focussing on the UK’s action on promoting foreign policy abroad:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 6 Comments
Helen Duffett

LibLink: Jeremy Browne and Nick Harvey on an International Arms Trade Treaty

By Helen Duffett | Thu 3rd March 2011 - 5:42 pm

Over at Comment is Free today, Jeremy Browne and Nick Harvey argue for the need for an international arms trade treaty, and that Britain must lead its creation:

On Monday the second round of negotiations to establish an international arms trade treaty (ATT) began at the United Nations headquarters in New York. These negotiations, and the need for better regulation of the arms trade, could not be timelier.

The courage displayed in the popular uprisings across the Middle East and north Africa over the last month has been fascinating and inspiring. But the shocking retaliatory brutality, especially of

…

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , and | 6 Comments
Antony Hook

Opinion: An historical comparison – the Big Society vs the Great Society

By Antony Hook | Tue 15th February 2011 - 11:34 am

In the late 90s, Tony Blair’s New Deal deliberately adopted the name of US President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1930s programme to increase public spending, create jobs, and escape the Great Depression.

Thirteen years later, one assumes that David Cameron’s Big Society (that Jeremy Browne praised yesterday) at least partially invokes another significant American liberal reform era: the Great Society of President Johnson in the 60s.

I fear that substituting “big” for “great” represents a lesser moral ambition. The Kennedy-Johnson years in America were self consciously “a call to greatness”. Politicians talked of “new frontiers”, putting an end to war, conquering …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 16 Comments
Jeremy Browne MP

Jeremy Browne writes: Why liberals should support the Big Society

By Jeremy Browne MP | Mon 14th February 2011 - 5:23 pm

I am instinctively very supportive of the Big Society. But it is not a new concept and I have another name for it. I call it liberalism.

My liberalism is a belief that power should start at the bottom and feed upwards. It is about personal empowerment, choice and, sometimes, quirky individualism. It is about self-pride, community and, often, a suspicion of authority. It is human in scale and organic in its development.

I have a nervous attentiveness to the need to protect this precious but delicate grassroots liberalism from the steam-roller of the overbearing state. What my liberalism is emphatically not is authoritarian or bleakly conformist. It does not idealise the placing of power at the top in the hands of the mighty and then working downwards. It is instinctively unsettled by orthodoxy and drab uniformity.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 42 Comments
Nick T

LibLink: Jeremy Browne – Lib Dems can’t just be a home for protest votes

By Nick T | Fri 11th February 2011 - 5:45 pm

Over on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free site, Liberal Democrat MP for Taunton and Foreign Office Minister, Jeremy Browne, makes a valuable contribution to what will be an increasingly important conversation for Liberal Democrats to engage in in the coming years: how we can make our participation in government an electoral asset, and make it more likely that 2010-2015 will not go down in history as simply a one-off period of Liberal Democrats exercising national power.

Jeremy’s main thesis is that, to ensure future success, the Liberal Democrats need to replace those voters who supported the party as a protest, whose …

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Posted in LibLink | 69 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo conference edition (3): Hughes, Huhne, Alexander and Browne

By Stephen Tall | Sat 25th September 2010 - 12:45 pm

Anyone starting to get conference withdrawal symptoms? For those of you who were there, here’s a few videos from the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool to help you catch up with what you missed by, erm, being there. And for those of you who weren’t there and saw it all on telly anyway… well, here’s another chance to enjoy some of the highlights.

(Please note, as these are BBC videos it’s not possible to link to them: they will therefore only be visible to readers viewing Lib Dem Voice directly through your web browser.)

Is Simon Hughes on the political left or right?

Chris Huhne’s ‘green deal to offset budget cuts’

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Posted in Conference and YouTube | Also tagged , and | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

LDV Sunday caption competition: “Jeremy Browne passes the hat” edition

By Stephen Tall | Sun 25th July 2010 - 2:45 pm

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader …


(Credit: UK in Indonesia, hat-tip Andrea Gill).

Here’s Jeremy Browne, Taunton Deane Lib Dem MP and Minister of State at the Foreign Office, marking the launch of the Indonesian Embassy’s new hybrid car “Prius” at the Ambassador’s residence. What do you think Jeremy or the Ambassador might have been saying or thinking?

The winner of our most recent caption competition, the “Mark Pack points at pothole” edition – according to …

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Posted in Caption Comp | 16 Comments
The Voice

Three Lib Dem MPs fighting Legg’s expenses judgement

By The Voice | Sun 31st January 2010 - 10:20 pm

Three Lib Dems are among the 70 MPs who lodged appeals after being told to pay back some of their taxpayer-funded Commons expenses by Sir Thomas Legg, reports today’s Telegraph:

At least 35 Labour MPs and former Labour MPs have appealed against Sir Thomas’s findings, as well as 30 Conservatives, three Liberal Democrats and two independents. Among them are MPs who made some of the highest-profile claims exposed by the Telegraph investigation, including £1,645 for a duck house.

Sir Thomas’s 30-page report is thought to identify more than 300 MPs — nearly half of those in Parliament — whom he found

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 1 Comment
John Bridges

By-election news: Great start to the New Year

By John Bridges | Fri 29th January 2010 - 7:02 pm

There were two principal council elections held on the 28th January. The Lib Dems held one seat and gained one from the Tories. In the only Town and Parish Council results reported to ALDC the Tories held the seat.

The Great Bowden and Arden Ward of Harborough District Council in Leicestershire saw this year’s first by-election gain, at the expense of the Conservatives. Tory attacks fell flat when faced with candidate Phil Knowles’ wide experience of local issues and hard-working reputation established during his previous …

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The Voice

Jeremy Browne wins expenses appeal – acted “openly and honestly”

By The Voice | Thu 28th January 2010 - 8:58 pm

The BBC has the story of how Lib Dem MP Jeremy Browne has won his appeal against repaying £18,000 of expenses.

Taunton MP Jeremy Browne complained after auditor Sir Thomas Legg ruled he must repay the cash claimed for mortgage interest on his second home.

Sir Paul Kennedy, who was appointed to hear appeals, said he had acted “openly and honestly” when making his claim.

Mr Browne said he felt “relieved” and “vindicated”, but “not elated”.

He is the first of the 80 MPs who challenged Sir Thomas’s requests to repay money to make the results of his appeal public.

Labour’s Frank Cook, Frank

…

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Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Times backs Jeremy Browne’s expenses appeal

By Stephen Tall | Fri 18th December 2009 - 11:15 am

As LDV reported yesterday, Lib Dem MP for ultra-marginal Taunton is appealing against Sir Thomas Legg’s request for repayment of almost £18,000 in expenses which Sir Thomas says were against the rules.

Today’s Times carries a leader column backing Jeremy’s appeal – here’s an excerpt:

Take Jeremy Browne, the Liberal Democrat and the first MP to confirm that he would appeal. Upon entering Parliament, Mr Browne removed equity from a London home that he owned before he was elected and used it to buy a property in his constituency. He then claimed against his allowance for the (now larger)

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem MP Jeremy Browne appeals against decision which would have stopped him buying Taunton home

By Stephen Tall | Thu 17th December 2009 - 10:20 am

Here’s the statement on Jeremy’s website:

Taunton constituency MP Jeremy Browne is appealing against a decision by the House of Commons ACA Review Team that would have prevented him from buying a home in Taunton with his own money. Instead Sir Thomas Legg’s House of Commons ACA Review Team has requested a repayment of £17,894 in mortgage interest payments, dating from the initial arrangements Jeremy Browne made when he was elected in 2005. The appeal, conducted by Sir Paul Kennedy, will be considered and published, along with the full ACA Review Team report, in January 2010.

Jeremy Browne said:

“When I was

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 13 Comments
Helen Duffett

South West under siege from Tory “lovebombing”?

By Helen Duffett | Wed 5th August 2009 - 5:36 pm

Lib Dem constituencies in the South West (map from the Independent)

The Independent has a piece today on the Lib Dems’ General Election prospects in the South West:

On the Cornish doorsteps, the Conservatives’ man for the Camborne and Redruth seat at the next election is detecting signs that his party is on the verge of a major breakthrough. “There is a feeling here that the Liberal Democrats have not delivered locally,” he says. “There’s everything to play for.”

His quiet confidence in defeating Julia Goldsworthy, the high-profile

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 22 Comments
Stephen Tall

Jeremy Browne: VAT cut has helped the richest the most

By Stephen Tall | Wed 8th April 2009 - 11:09 pm

The Lib Dem press release headline is stark: Wasteful VAT cut only benefiting the rich. (It’s also, whisper it gently, not 100% accurate: for ‘only’ read ‘mostly (ish)’).

Here’s what Lib Dem shadow chief financial secretary Jeremy Browne has to say about the party’s research showing that the VAT ‘savings work out at an average of over £9 a week for the richest households, while poorer households are saving less than £3, despite recent claims from Gordon Brown that families would save at least £5 a week’:

The Government’s defence of its wasteful VAT cut continues to unravel. Its benefits

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 1 Comment
Helen Duffett

Jeremy Browne: A year on from “Apocalypse Now”

By Helen Duffett | Thu 2nd April 2009 - 2:54 pm

“Colourful and lurid fiction” and “hysterical over-reaction”: that’s how Treasury Minister Angela Eagle described Liberal Democrat warnings about the economy exactly a year ago today. A Lib Dem Opposition Day Motion had warned of an extreme bubble in the housing market and mass repossessions, but was dismissed by the Government as “scaremongering.” Eagle even compared it to a storyboard for “Apocalypse Now.”

Then, as now, Jeremy Browne, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, spoke of the Liberal Democrats’ economic foresight. You can watch yesterday’s question time with Jeremy Browne on moneysupermarket.com in which he …

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Helen Duffett

Join Jeremy Browne for a live webchat on Liberal Democrat finance plans

By Helen Duffett | Thu 26th March 2009 - 4:43 pm

Jeremy Browne, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, will be taking part in a live webchat on Wednesday 1st April at 1pm.

From moneysupermarket.com:

Jeremy is responsible for helping set the Liberal Democrats’ financial policies. Clare Francis, editor of moneysupermarket.com, will be putting your questions to him in a live webchat at 1pm on Wednesday April 1.

As always, your questions really do set the agenda. So if you want to know what the Liberal Democrats would do to tackle to recession and ongoing financial crisis and how their policies would affect your finances submit your questions now and come

…

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Stephen Tall

MPs decide (eventually) to allow UK Youth Parliament to meet in Commons

By Stephen Tall | Tue 17th March 2009 - 9:45 am

The UK Youth Parliament will be allowed to hold a meeting in the House of Commons following overwhelming approval from MPs – after a two-hour long debate. The BBC reports:

The move, which was resisted by a handful of Conservative MPs, will see the chamber being used by non-elected parliamentarians for the first time. Opponents said the Commons would abandon its traditions by agreeing, and set a precedent for other groups.

The Youth Parliament, whose 500 members are aged between 11 and 18, is expected to convene over the summer recess. This summer’s meeting will be a one-off event after

…

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Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged , and | 12 Comments

Opinion: January Reshuffle – Big Surprises and the Liberal ‘Big Beasts’ (Part II)

By Letterman | Thu 1st January 2009 - 12:20 pm

Part Two – Beyond the Big Beasts (To read Part I – Two Big Surprises – published yesterday, please click here).

Lynne Featherstone has clearly earned a promotion to shadow Ed Balls at the Department of Communities and Local Government, with her work around the ‘Baby P’ case. And David Laws would better suit a move to Energy and Climate Change, where he could make a good case for the economics of our green policies and be an effective opponent of Ed Miliband, thought by many to be the more talented Miliband brother and certainly someone to be …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 15 Comments
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