But if Liberal enthusiasts for merger were to have their hopes crushed, Liberal sceptics were to be confounded too. There were many who feared the new party would see Liberalism submerged within Social Democracy or junked in an enthusiasm for all things new.
He shared it on Twitter yesterday, saying that he had been one of the Liberal Party members who had opposed the merger.
His tweet prompted a confession from Tim Farron:
I would have voted in favour and was all set to attend (I lived pretty close!) but I was being pathetic over a girl in lower sixth and went round to see her instead…she dumped me the week after, served me right!
I actually came to the new party from the SDP. I had been very much in favour of merger and told Bob Maclennan so in no uncertain terms on the day after the disappointing 1987 election.
It didn’t take long for a photo of a very New Romantic Tim Farron and his two band-mates to appear on the internet. Within hours of Jonathan Calder revealing the name of our leadership hopeful’s band this morning, he was sent a photo, from around about 1987, of a teenage Tim Farron in his band, Fred the Girl, previously known as The Voyeurs until they realised what exactly that meant.
I have spent many fruitless hours trawling You Tube to see if I could find some footage. I suspect if it’s there, it’s unlisted so nobody will be able …
Jeremy Browne’s decision to stand down as MP for Taunton Deane at the next election surprised many in the party. Ed Fordham wrote a tribute to Jeremy’s long service for the party on LDV here today — and the Lib Dem blogosphere has also had plenty to say. Here’s a selection…
I was not initially planning to get particularly involved on the David Miranda Schedule 7 issue except as a concerned, nay horrified, spectator. After all, I’m an MEP not an MP nor (at present) able to be active as a peer, and I have plenty on my plate in Brussels.
But from early Monday morning, as I read the admirably vigorous response from the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation David Anderson QC – and the immediate if deeply hypocritical reaction from Yvette Cooper – I did start to wonder who from the party was going to be vocal. So I tweeted …
One element missing from the Queen’s Speech was the Communications Data Bill, aka the ‘snoopers’ charter’. No surprise to Lib Dems: Nick Clegg torpedoed it last month.
I asked Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert (who’s played a crucial role in safeguarding civil liberties this parliament, including on this Bill) if there were any truth in it, and got an immediate reply…
Peter Kellner, the President of polling company YouGov, has written a typically thought-provoking piece analysing – using recent polling figures – what he believes to be the reasons behind the Lib Dems’ current difficulties, and suggesting some solutions to overcome them.
The piece is a good one, and worth reading in full, though I have some reservations, not primarily about his conclusions but about how he reaches them. One of the key polls he cites asks voters to place themselves, the main parties and the party leaders on a spectrum of right to left. And while voters overall place both …
Under Charles Kennedy’s leadership, the party had a simple and generally popular approach to public services: Kennedy consistently supported higher spending on favourite public services and appointed as party spokespeople those with experience of that service. So in education, for example, it was ex-headteacher Phil Willis leading for the party, promoting costed policies to put more cash into the party’s priorities.
Overall, the party’s plans involved raising at least as much in extra taxes or savings as it wanted to spend, so the net effect was fiscally respectable but for each individual public service the party’s answer was pretty much, “we’ll …
This weekend Jonathan Calder brought us the news that Lembit Öpik had contrived an appearance in a wrestling ring at Welshpool Town Hall. Distressingly, video footage has now been unleashed:
I tend to aim off from all instant, hyperbolic reactions to the Budget. When I worked as a press officer in the oil industry, Budget Day was a time for synthetic outrage at the latest iniquity heaped on the long suffering motorist or on the plucky explorers of the North Sea. And then the sun continued to rise and set.
In the current global economic circumstances which only compound the reckless public
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 30th November 2011 - 5:55 pm
What presents are you looking forward to giving or receiving this year? That’s the question LDV posed to a group of Lib Dem bloggers. All this week we’re revealing what they told us, with link-throughs to Amazon for your shopping convenience (and ‘cos the referral fees help support LibDemVoice: so get clicking and ordering). Part I is available here; Part II here; and Part III here. In part three, our fourth trio of bloggers – Jonathan Calder, Caron Lindsay, and Mark Pack – give us the low-down on their Xmas faves…
The Independent this weekend carried a brief article reporting that Nick Clegg’s aides are urging the party’s ministers to be more ‘out and proud’ of the Lib Dems’ successes:
Nick Clegg’s ministers have been told to go on TV and declare proudly “I’m a Liberal Democrat” in an effort to improve the party’s poll ratings. Party strategists are demanding better “messaging” from politicians. It includes using the phrase “as a Liberal Democrat …” at every opportunity, and regularly uttering the word “coalition”, which research finds is popular with voters.
Aides to the Deputy Prime Minister fear too many low-profile Lib Dems
Sometimes the toughest speaking gigs for MPs is when they are talking to a friendly audience – but something interesting is happening behind them. So it was a few months ago with Julian Huppert talking to Putney Liberal Democrats. Very thoughtful speech, well received by the members and supporters present – but Julian had to struggle to avoid being upstaged by the cute, preening, attention-seeking cat paddling back and forth behind him.
When Tim Farron came to speak to Haringey Liberal Democrats last night, there was no cat to distract – but instead the minor drama of the stalwart member who …
Over on his blog Jonathan Calder makes a good point about the speech-making abilities of Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron:
My impression of Tim is that he is very good at saying things people agree with. So in Cumbria he is against second homes and in favour of farming subsidies and Kendal mint cake…
Now that Tim Farron is being spoken of as a possible party leader, he needs to risk the odd unpopular speech. Someone in that class cannot always be telling people what they want to hear.
In the top 50 of the blogs list, Lib Dem Voice is in at number 12 (up from 27 last year), Caron Lindsay at 25, Jonathan Calder at 38 and Andrew Reeves at 44.
In the top 50 of the bloggers list, I’m in at number 20, Caron Lindsay at 29, Andrew Reeves at 43 and Jonathan Calder at 49.
The Social Liberal Forum — a group of Liberal Democrat members who advocate ‘that a democratic and open state has a positive role to play in guaranteeing individual freedom’ — met yesterday for their first conference on a high note: their mobilising role at the party’s spring conference is widely credited with having strongly influenced the Coalition’s changes to the controversial NHS reforms.
Here’s how the Independent on Sunday, with an inevitable nod towards stereotypes, reports the gathering:
Welcome to the first annual conference of the Social Liberal Forum – the home of “proper” Liberal Democrats. Not the quasi-Tory,
However, what has been less commented on in the coverage in the last few days is the way Jane Collins escaped being investigated by the General Medical Council last year:
The chief executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital has escaped investigation over the Baby P scandal …
A favourite pastime of cynical journalists with space to fill is to take select phrases from the speeches of different party leaders, remove the names of the authors, jumble up the order and then ask the reader to guess which leader said which. Even with the wondrous variety of the English language, it’s no surprise that words and phrases often overlap, even between politicians with radically different views of the world. There is, even so, sometimes a deeper truth in this parlour game for cynics.
It’s a truth that the words of Liberal Democrats in the run up to last Thursday’s …
Jonathan Calder reports on the latest goings on in the lively world of Leicester politics, including Conservative Councillor Nigel Porter resigning from his party and deciding to fight his ward for the Liberal Democrats in May’s elections.
I can remember JFK being assassinated and being taught to say that Alec Douglas Home was Prime Minister, but really my Liberalism dates from the early 1970s when my father left us (an experience that taught me I was not a Tory) and the Liberals were winning by-elections.
I realised that I was not a Socialist a couple of years before that when Boxmoor County Primary School demanded a letter from your parents before you were allowed not to have custard with your pudding.
2. When did you start blogging?
The first post on Liberal England is dated 4 March 2004.
However, I did write the diary of Whittington (Susan Kramer’s cat) during the first London Mayoral election in 2000. That has some claim to be the first political blog in Britain.
3. Why did you start blogging?
I wanted a shop window for my various writings, but blogging soon became an important activity in its own right.
4. What five words would you use to describe your blog?
6. Which post have you most liked writing in the last year (and why)?
Andrew Mitchell, the great and the good, and me from September last year. It reminds me of my trip to New York for Oxfam and reports an event that no mainstream journalist would get to attend.
7. Which post have you most liked reading in the last year (and why)?
I was very impressed by The Contented Lib Dem’s series of posts on the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance. They are summarised here. He or she argued a controversial case, backed it up with evidence and engaged with the commenters, getting the better of most of them. Unfortunately, nothing has appeared on that blog since.
8. What’s your favourite YouTube clip?
Assuming that the Bible and complete works of Steve Winwood are already on the island, how about this version of Dolphins by Tim Buckley?
Over on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, Liberal Democrat blogger-in-chief, Jonathan Calder, turns his attention to one of this week’s most important political stories: the arrival of Larry, Downing Street’s newest resident (who also happens to be a cat). It was, of course, Downing Street’s rodent problem (no, actual rats, thank you Harriet) that necessitated Larry’s presence, and Jonathan even has time for a brief history of Westminster’s rodential (yes, that really is a word) residents, as well as its feline ones.
Here’s an extract:
You could argue that his arrival marks a much-needed victory for Nick Clegg. True, Larry is
Over the years we’ve covered Andy Coulson many times on this blog, over both his extremely high salary when working for the Tories (much higher than salaries levels Tories were criticising others for having) and also – more importantly – the phone hacking allegations.
Although yesterday he resigned, he is unlikely to depart the political stage quickly or quietly as the long queue of people at various stage of taking legal action over allegations of phone hacking mean the details of who did what and with whose knowledge will continue to be newsworthy for a good while yet.
The decline of Labour as a coherent intellectual force is one of the defining features of recent British politics. No doubt the next few years will see a healthy process within Labour to seek to heal the wounds and to re-focus. I suggest that under the banner of ‘progressivism’ this process has started.
2010 saw commentators for the first time in the UK judging political propositions on the basis of whether they are ‘progressive’ or not. Ed Miliband’s own analysis is that in government Labour “…lost that sense of progressive mission.” But what on earth does progressive mean? What kind of …
This is the final piece in a series of posts on the main Liberal Democrat challenges for 2011. You can find all the posts in the series here.
Having started this series with the economy and then moving on to more internal issue in latter posts, it seems fitting to return to economic issues for the final post in this series.
Getting the substance on economic fairness right is and should continue to be a top priority for the party. In addition, getting the messaging right will help differentiate not only the Liberal Democrat contribution to the coalition from that of …
Wondering what to get people for Christmas presents? Here’s a selection of what various Liberal Democrat bloggers suggest:
Jonathan Calder recommends Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music by Rob Young: “Anyone with an interest in folk music will find this book engrossing. Young traces the rise of the genre from Cecil Sharp and other Edwardian song collectors like Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth, through the post-war radialism of Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker, to its electronic heyday in the hands of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. He finds the visionary spirit living on in unlikely artists such as …
Here’s your starter for ten in our Saturday slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
I was struck by this recent article by the Economist’s political columnist Bagehot, headlined When progressive actually means misanthropic, reflecting on the Lib Dem conference, and specifically the debate on free schools.
Highlighting that, while the party may have lacked power at Westminster, the Lib Dems have for decades now been a major player in local government, it observes that:
… local government occupies much of the mental space taken up by national politics in the Labour and Conservative parties. … more
By Helen Duffett
| Thu 23rd September 2010 - 7:33 pm
Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is representing the UK at the United Nations Millennium Development Goals summit in New York.
The BBC’s Laura Trevelyan writes fulsomely about Clegg’s diplomatic experience and linguistic skills here.
Meanwhile, here’s his speech:
Introduction
It is an honour for me to address the General Assembly today for the first time as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
And it is a privilege …
In July the Mail on Sunday reported allegations that Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt had falsely claimed a council tax discount. As the BBC now reports:
Wells MP Tessa Munt has been cleared of allegations of falsely claiming a single occupier council tax discount.
The Lib Dem has always denied any wrongdoing over newspaper allegations she had friends living with her.
The Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year Awards, run by Lib Dem Voice, are back for their fifth year. As usual, they’ll be awarded in a budget lavish ceremony at the party’s autumn conference in Liverpool. (There’s further information on the event over at the Lib Dems’ Flock Together site). Click on the following links to see last year’s Shortlist and the Winners.
What I think Richard under-plays is the way the party’s attitude towards the state has changed not in response to different internal ideological views gaining ascendancy but rather in response to changing external circumstances. Given the huge expansion in public spending in the middle years of the Labour government, and the big expansion of central control in the early, middle and late years of Labour government, it is hardly a surprise that many who previously instinctively reached for more public spending and new regulations
Joseph Bourke Michael Wolff in his second Trump biography claimed that Trump's business interests formed part of a "semi-criminal enterprise." He quoted the Trump confidante ...
Nonconformistradical "but is the answer to defend the status quo, preserving all aspects of the current system in aspic for all time?"
I wouldn't have thought so. There will be d...
Tim Leunig There is clearly a case for improving existing housing, but how does that create new supply? There is very little derelict, unoccupied housing, particularly in ...
Craig Levene 'Ukraine is taking tens of thousands of casualties to protect Europe'...
Ukraine is protecting itself. Western European capitals are not under threat from the...
Christian de Vartava Division of spoils indeed. And a ruthless one to be. As to increasing the size of the British Armed Forces and it's technological abilities, now a matter of urg...
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Paul Walter reports …
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Alan Bennett on Dudley Moore and jazz
West End ward surgeries today #dundeewestend
Speculation over Labour's benefit cuts
Joseph Bourke 
Nonconformistradical 
Tim Leunig 
Craig Levene 
Christian de Vartava 