Over on the Biteback Publishing website, The Voice’s Mark Pack has been penning some words of advice for those planning party leader conference speeches:
Technological change has frequently altered the speaking styles of political orators. The exaggerated hand movements and booming voice projections of the pre-electrical era were essential for being seen and heard. As film footage spread, that approach increasingly came over as histrionic. The total distanced travelled by the hands and arms of politicians during their speeches therefore declined, thanks to the adoption of a more homely, direct style. Radio and TV both brought about their own changes, followed by the impact of the teleprompter in the 1980s…
The Comment Awards, run by Editorial Intelligence take place in October and aim to celebrate the “achievement of the UK’s finest print and online commentors”.
A wide ranging panel of judges, including our very own Jo Swinson MP, will judge 16 categories from Independent Blogger to commentators of the year on politics, business, foreign affairs, sport, media and culture. There are also Twitter categories, for politician and public figure.
Nominations are welcome from any individual or organisation, which obviously includes all of you. They close next Tuesday, 31st July. If you look at the list of winners from last year, …
In 2011 the Constitution Unit spent one year examining how the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition works. We interviewed almost 150 people about the Coalition: individuals from both parties—both in and outside Parliament—as well as civil servants, journalists, and interest groups. We have just published the result of our study in a book: The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Works
We are particularly grateful to all those Lib Dems who were so generous in giving their time to be interviewed, and for Mark Pack’s very kind review of our book. And in the same spirit, we offer some thoughts on lessons for the future. Professor John Curtice argues that the conditions that led to a hung parliament in 2010 remain; and even if the boundary reforms goes through, the possibility of a hung parliament is still quite high. Even if, as some suggest, the Liberal Democrats will lose a large number of seats in 2015, they may still be in a position to determine the shape of a new government. So what lessons are there to be learned from the last two years of the Coalition, and how might the Lib Dems approach a hung parliament in 2015?
The Hansard Society this week published part two of its annual Audit of Political Engagement, focusing on the media and politics. Three graphs in particular stood out for me…
63% of public say tabloids “look for any excuse” to tarnish politicians
… tabloid newspapers are consistently identified by two-thirds of the public as displaying negative traits in their coverage of politics and politicians. … Tabloids are three times more likely to be perceived to be negative in their approach to the coverage of politics than are the other
Is it possible to build a bigger Lib Dem core vote? Mark Pack has previously written here on the need for the party to adopt a ‘core vote’ strategy to protect the party from the adverse headwinds of the next election. I don’t disagree with the aim, I’m just not sure of its realism. Here’s why.
What do we mean by a ‘core vote’?
First, let’s define what’s meant by a ‘core vote’: voters who identify with the party and stick with it through the bad times as well as the good. Traditionally this identification has tended to be class-based: working-class …
Writing over on the Huffington Post, Lib Dem Voice’s Mark Pack has been taking a look at the party’s plan for the next year:
The plan of senior Liberal Democrats is to focus heavily on delivering and communicating the four priorities from the front page of the party’s 2010 manifesto:
Over at his day job at MHP Communications, Mark Pack turns his thoughts to how David Cameron should react to , stating that the Prime Minister has ‘two tricky problems to mull over’.
The first, and most talked about, is how to get his party to back some measure of Lords reform else risk seeing Liberal Democrats outside ministerial ranks (and even some inside) see it as open season on future legislation as it goes through Parliament. The sort of effective and tight whipping operations that saw Liberal Democrats in both Houses votes for a range of measures they did
You will forgive, I hope, a bit of collective pride from the Liberal Democrat Voice team. It’s not every day one of our co-editors is mentioned, in glowing terms, at a judicial enquiry, as Stephen has already written.
To recap, Andrew Marr was talking about the authority and credibility of the political blogosphere. Top left on page 83 if you don’t want to read the whole thing.
“You look around and a lot of the most influential highly respected political commentators aren’t newspaper journalists, actually, they are bloggers. I’m thinking of people like Tim Montgomery on Conservativehome or Mr Pack
Here’s the BBC’s Andrew Marr speaking in October 2010:
“Most citizen journalism strikes me as nothing to do with journalism at all. A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting. They are very angry people. … Most of the blogging is too angry and too abusive. It is vituperative. Terrible things are said on line because they are anonymous. People say things on line that they wouldn’t dream of saying in person.”
And here’s Andrew Marr speaking to the Leveson Inquiry yesterday:
Remember the olden days under new Labour when many amateur photographers found themselves being stopped and searched under section 44 of the Terrorism Act just for, well, taking photographs. Liberal Democrats stood up against that then and in Government these searches were stopped.
Chris Huhne, then Home Affairs Spokesman, was robust at the time in saying that photographers and trainspotters should be left alone to pursue their perfectly legitimate hobbies without interference.
We thought we’d seen the last of these authoritarian attacks on innocent pastimes until the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport announced plans to ban photography completely on the subway, giving …
I was wondering how I could amuse readers on my own blog yesterday and I came up with this amazing idea of going back and finding out what I was writing about around this time in previous years. It was only later that I realised that Helen Duffett does this for Liberal Democrat Voice every Friday in the Friday Five . I hope she doesn’t mind me borrowing her idea and adding in a little extra spot.
What was good about my post yesterday is that a few other Liberal Democrat bloggers got in on the act and I spent …
Writing over on his work blog, The Voice’s Mark Pack has been crunching the numbers on the media performances of Liberal Democrat ministers ahead of a likely reshuffle:
No surprise that the top five places are taken by the five Liberal Democrat Cabinet members. Her push for equal marriage reforms has helped put Lynne Featherstone top of the list of non-Cabinet members, whilst Health Minister Paul Burstow’s mid-table ranking is a mixed blessing. He may be a minister in a hugely important area, but given the level of controversy attracted by Andrew Lansley and the Health and Social Care Act, keeping
Over on his work blog, Lib Dem Voice’s Mark Pack has been looking at the manifesto mailing for the London Mayor elections:
For all the value of the detail of the booklet, the reality is that most voters only glance briefly through such a publication. The initial, quick impression each candidate gives matters far more than the detail of what they say in third paragraph, fourth sentence. Those sentences only make it into wider prominence if an embarrassing typo makes them into diary column fodder or if policy naivety means a small detail can be turned into a tabloid front page
Like many of my fellow Lib Dems I have had steam coming out my ears these last few days after reading over the weekend that the Coalition was considering the mass, unchecked surveillance of the entire population’s emails, telephone calls, texts and tweets, as well as messages sent through Facebook and through games consoles like the Xbox.
Initial attempts at comforting growing rage amongst Lib Dems – the fact that there was to be no central database and that the contents of communications would still only be viewable with a …
If you wanted to pick an issue guaranteed to unite the whole party – protecting our civil liberties has to be it. So the last 48 hours have been a frenzy of claim, counterclaim, the candyflossesque spin of internal briefings and Lib Dems across the blogo/twitto/facebooko/forumosphere reaching dangerously apoplectic levels of disquiet.
Mark Pack, in his inimitable unflappable style offered an informative briefing via LDV – taking the optimistic view, reassuring us that “what the Home Office proposes is not the same as what Parliament will legislate. No matter how flawed the initial proposal put to Parliament by Theresa May are, they put the RIPA rules on the table – giving the opportunity to get them changed to meet what a liberal approach should be – as little intrusion as possible, only for the most serious of offences and with rigorous, independently verified safeguards”.
Easter egg manufacturers have been criticised for not doing enough to reduce packaging and improve how much can be recycled. Currently, an estimated 3,000 tonnes of waste is produced in the UK every year just from Easter egg packaging alone. And an annual survey by Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson has found the percentage of Easter egg boxes actually filled by chocolate was 38 per cent – the same figure as
Performers who make the leap from stage show to the TV very often run into a simple problem: TV eats up material at a fearsome rate. A stage show can be repeated around the country for months with only a few tweaks as events or audience feedback requires it. TV, however, requires completely new material each week.
A similar problem has befallen the Liberal Democrats when it comes to policy. In opposition sticking to saying only a few things repeatedly was an advantage;
Writing over on his work blog, Lib Dem Voice’s Mark Pack withdraws one Budget prediction and offers us three others instead:
Cunning negotiating strategy or basic mistake? Whatever the view you have of the tax motion at Liberal Democrat conference and Stephen Williams’s speech moving it, my interpretation of it was wrong.
Far from signalling the determination of the party’s leadership to see the 50p tax rate remain, it was in fact a sideshow and the rate will go. A kind interpretation is that standing by the 50p rate so publicly was part of a negotiating strategy to extract greater concessions
Writing for Total Politics, The Voice’s Mark Pack welcomes public arguments over the Budget:
What would you do if you have a really important set of decisions to make? Decisions that will have a direct impact on the lives of millions of people, on the future of the country and – although of course you are too saintly to think of this – on your own future career prospects.
Locking yourself away in secret and deciding all the key decisions on your own before presenting them to the rest of the world as a fait accompli is not the route you will
Over on the MHP Communications blog, Lib Dem Voice’s Mark Pack has been pondering what will happen next on NHS reform:
It is becoming a fixture on the political calendar, that as spring approaches so too does another Liberal Democrat conference debate on health. Cue headaches for Liberal Democrat party managers and nervousness among Conservatives. What will the Liberal Democrat grassroots demand? How much will Cameron and Lansley be prepared to concede in response?…
At the moment, there are three different options for changes to the NHS Bill which different Liberal Democrats are pushing (I’ve yet to encountered anyone in the party
The Voice’s Mark Pack has a post over at Total Politics, discussing the issues likely to dominate the upcoming Lib Dem Spring Conference in Gateshead.
The first thing to note, says Mark, is that some of the most contentious political issues of recent weeks such as the reforms to the NHS and to the welfare system don’t appear on the conference agenda as it was drawn up some time ago:
There is a slot for emergency and topical issues to cover this eventuality, but with only time for one motion, not all of the controversies can be aired. Unless a
The Voice’s Mark Pack has published some useful tips on how to get to where every busy Parliamentarian, councillor, candidate and activist wants to be – Inbox Zero.
They include such gems as:
3. Stop using your inbox as a substitute for filing
Quite often there will be an email you have read, responded to but do not want to forget quiet yet. Perhaps you have made an order and don’t want to bury away the confirmation until the goods arrive. That is fine — but do not use your inbox for that. Create a “pending” folder to hold these interim messages.
Over on his work blog, The Voice’s Mark Pack has a post looking at the extremely successful media coverage of Nick Clegg’s speech on tax policy, with the party using the fact that much of the media is still surprised by the idiosyncracies of coalition to our advantage.
Here’s a sample:
In a country used to coalitions, having the leader of one of the parties in government talk about their tax priorities a few months ahead of a budget would not be remarkable. With the British media habits, it had made today’s speech from Nick Clegg to banner news – lead story
As reported in The Guardian, these priorities include tackling tax avoidance by both corporations and wealthy individuals, clamping down on excessive and undeserved top pay, and re-engaging with governments and business in Europe following the Prime Minister’s unhelpful showing in Brussels at the end of last year.
Pressed on how that re-engagement would materialise, Nick …
Nick Clegg submitted himself to the new year delights of the primetime 8.10am Today Programme interview on Thursday. Here’s a round-up of what he said and the reactions to it…
Nick Clegg has kicked off his new year promising more action to curb executive bonuses, amid continued questions over his leadership. … The deputy prime minister insisted he was responsible for many of the tougher sanctions against high-earners and tax avoiders, saying he had inserted sections on tax avoidance into the coalition agreement.
“Look at this debate about irresponsible capitalism, what I call crony capitalism,” he told BBC Radio 4. “It’s Liberal Democrats who’ve led the debate on clamping down on bankers’ bonuses and we must be just as tough this year in the bonus season that’s coming up as we were last year, if not more so.”
Nick Clegg has vowed to push ahead with plans to curb executive pay and introduce anti-avoidance tax rules for businesses, as part of a wider drive to clamp down on irresponsible practices that he has branded “crony capitalism”. … “It’s Liberal Democrats who led the call, as Vince Cable did last September in our party conference, for restraint and new transparency and accountability on unacceptable excess in executive pay where people are being paid huge amounts of money even though they fail to do well for those companies,” he said. …
However, Mr Clegg was unwilling to discuss the status of the Lib Dems’ long-sought mansion tax, which is strongly opposed by many Conservatives. When pressed on whether a mansion tax was likely to be introduced, Mr Clegg said: “We will see what comes in future Budgets. One thing I’m absolutely clear about is that our cornerstone commitment to make the tax system fairer by lifting the point at which you start paying income tax is something that this government, because of Liberal Democrats, will deliver one Budget after the next Budget after the next.”
Asked about the on the Today programme this morning, Nick Clegg would only say “we will see what comes in future Budgets”. He spoke of his desire to capture “unearned wealth” but seemed to think that George Osborne was unlikely to act soon, if at all. The corollary of this is that the 50p tax rate is likely to remain for the duration of the parliament. The Lib Dems will not accept the abolition of the top rate unless it is replaced with some kind of wealth tax. …
Elsewhere in the interview, he attempted to bridge the coalition divide on Europe by emphasising that the government was united on the need to make the EU “more competitive”. But he damningly added that “no one planned for an outcome which left Britain in a position of one. There was no real planning or discussion about Britain being in a corner on its own.” However, the former MEP also attempted to shed his image as an unthinking europhile. “I’m not a starry eyed pro-European,” he said, recalling that it took the EU 15 years to agree on a definition of chocolate.
Over on the LSE’s British Politics blog, The Voice‘s Mark Pack has been explaining why commentators speculating about a snap general election have got it wrong:
Fixing the date of the next general election (and future ones) outside the control of the Prime Minister was a central part of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition agreement because it was a way of guaranteeing the five-year deal. Otherwise the risk for the smaller party is that at any point the larger one can suddenly pull the rug out from under an agreement and call an election. No doubt it helped sweeten the pill for
Over on Left Foot Forward, Mark Pack has blogged an infographic analysing the patterns of rebellion amongst Liberal Democrat MPs:
Liberal Democrat peers used to be in a remarkably privileged position in the party. Not only because they have held office without the pesky need for elections but also because for many years the third party in the House of Lords has been the key swing vote when the government has been wanting to get legislation through…
helped by the primacy of the Commons, revolts by Liberal Democrat MPs which could cost the government its majority are now no longer the neglected,
David Allen A clear, credible, principled strategy from the Yorkists! Makes a welcome change.
Sadly, followed by twenty below-the-line posts, providing nearly twenty ve...
Simon McGrath so we get a permanant increase in costs for these subsidies based on ( alleged ) windfall profits. Its another big increase in spending -how is it to be paid ...
Peter Davies @Kira CollinsThat assumes we want to help people more with their energy bills than with all the other bills they may be struggling with. There is no reason why ...
Rob Heale Agree that we need to focus on strategy and have clearer messaging:-
1. We MUST prioritise membership recruitment in all we do, including PPB's, most leaflets...
Kira Collins Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...
Like many of my fellow Lib Dems I have had steam coming out my ears these last few days after reading over the weekend that the Coalition was considering the mass, unchecked surveillance of the entire population’s emails, telephone calls, texts and tweets, as well as messages sent through Facebook and through games consoles like the Xbox.
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The Joy of Six 1530
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Should Labour reconsider the Brexit red lines?
Raising a flap about letterboxes
Restrained
Chase Park fair photos
David Allen 
Simon McGrath 
Peter Davies 
Rob Heale 
Kira Collins 
Who are your favourite commentators? Nominate them for Comment awards by 31 July
The Comment Awards, run by Editorial Intelligence take place in October and aim to celebrate the “achievement of the UK’s finest print and online commentors”.
A wide ranging panel of judges, including our very own Jo Swinson MP, will judge 16 categories from Independent Blogger to commentators of the year on politics, business, foreign affairs, sport, media and culture. There are also Twitter categories, for politician and public figure.
Nominations are welcome from any individual or organisation, which obviously includes all of you. They close next Tuesday, 31st July. If you look at the list of winners from last year, …