Tag Archives: lib dem voice

Let’s celebrate: LDV turns 20 next week

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 19th August 2026 - 8:57 am

On 27th August 2006, LDV burst onto the blooging scene with a post suggesting that Simon Hughes was “certain to be challenged for the party presidency.”

Word reaches the Voice that weeks before the position had been advertised in Lib Dem News, party officials in Cowley Street received a call requesting a copy of the nomination papers for party President – the caller was not acting on behalf of Simon Hughes.

Word also reaches us that one potential candidate is positioning himself to blitz Autumn Conference with an army of supporters bearing nomination papers, to seize the momentum.

A Presidential contest is no bad thing – though there is an argument that there are better ways to spend the money. The Voice has been told that a proposal is being put to the Federal Executive to double the campaign expenditure limit – to £5000 per candidate.

Clearly this put off any rival as a month later...

Multiple unofficial, but reliable, sources tell the Voice that Simon Hughes will not face an election for the post of Party President.

PS This time I am assured the Voice is right, unlike the other time. I really am right this time. 100%. There’s a press release coming, and everything.

UPDATE: The party’s official announcement is here.

For other elections (Federal Executive, FCC etc) the timetable now is as follows:

The final opportunity for candidates to withdraw their nomination has passed
The final opportunity for candidates to submit manifesto artwork has passed
Ballot papers will be sent out on 16 October
They should be returned by 3 November
The results will be announced on 6 November

Well, at least we were noticed. By September 2006, LDV was posting several times a day and since then has been there through the tension of leadership elections, the anxiety and rage of the coalition years, the dark days that followed and the rebuild to our best ever General Election result in 2024.

We’ve reported on births, deaths, marriages, party controversies, policy ideas, conferences, speeches. We’ve showcased Lib Dem achievements at all levels of Government. We’ve tried to encourage our party to be the best it cam be. We’ll be looking back on our two decades as part of the Liberal Democrat community over the next, well, for as long as we feel like it.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Why we are pre-moderating comments

By Mary Reid | Fri 30th June 2023 - 9:51 am

I am picking up on some comments made on a previous post. Readers had noticed that recently we have been pre-moderating comments more than usual and wondered why.

Sadly, we have been at the receiving end of a lot of trolling lately. Not only that, but comments have been posted that are defamatory and possibly libellous. Whatever the legal position may be about what appears on our pages (it is not clear whether we could be sued for something written by a commenter) we simply do not want to be associated with that kind of illiberal and hurtful content.

As many of you know most of the LDV team have day jobs (some very demanding ones) – I’m the only one who is enjoying retirement – and we are all politically active. So we fit our editorial duties around the other demands in our lives, including our families. It would be much simpler for us if we didn’t have to moderate every single comment, and it would be so much less frustrating for our commenters if they didn’t have to wait a couple of hours whilst their comments are sitting in limbo, so it isn’t a decision we take lightly.

We do try to pre-warn you with this note under the post:

This post has pre moderation enabled, please be patient whilst waiting for it to be manually reviewed. Liberal Democrat Voice is made up of volunteers who keep the site running in their free time.

Of course, people do get cross if their comment is binned, but there can be several reasons for that happening:

Posted in Op-eds | 19 Comments

On editing Lib Dem Voice

By Mary Reid | Wed 31st July 2019 - 8:02 pm

I have enjoyed being back in the editor’s chair today. My role on LDV these days is to provide cover when members of the team are away, unwell, or, as today, busy fighting by-elections.

I have been dealing with around eight submissions, some of which were more fully formed than others. Plus a few of those bizarre emails offering us guest posts on subjects ranging from setting up powers of attorney to tyre maintenance for car fleets.

But one thing struck me quite forcibly: ignoring the SEO chancers – not one of those eight submissions was put forward by a woman. In fact, of the 20 posts published so far this week only three had female authors, and two of those were written by our editor in chief, Caron Lindsay. A similar pattern emerges for the whole of the last month – and I have rather lost the will to trawl back further in time.

So what is going on?

Of course, I can’t pretend that there ever was a golden age when half our posts were penned by women, but I can certainly remember a higher proportion than we have now.

Posted in Op-eds | 1 Comment

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By The Voice | Tue 16th April 2019 - 10:25 am

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.