Tag Archives: nick clegg

LDV Caption Competition: “Knowing Me” Nick Clegg, “Knowing You” Steve Coogan Edition

By The Voice | Sun 21st October 2012 - 2:10 pm

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

(Photo by Dave Radcliffe from Lib Dems’ Flickr photostream.)

Here’s Nick Clegg meeting comedian, actor and Hacked Off campaigner Steve Coogan. What do you think might be being said or thought here?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Clegg meets Bono “Not U2″ Edition.

Posted in Caption Comp | Also tagged dave radcliffe and steve coogan | 11 Comments

Opinion: Clegg was right to refuse to sign Page 3 protest

By David Thorpe | Fri 19th October 2012 - 4:22 pm

In common with most of you, when I saw that Nick Clegg was The Sun newspaper’s hero of the week – I grew worried that the path to populism which Clegg has embraced in recent months had led to a particularly illiberal precipice.

Clegg has, since the unveiling of the differentiation strategy come to resemble politically the drunken man wandering from bar to bar trying to get served one final time, as the Deputy Prime Minister lurches from one initiative to another, hoping to turn the alchemy of populism into the solid gold of popularity. I discuss this further here and here

But in declining to back the banning on Page 3 girls, Nick has taken a position which is

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged page 3 | 33 Comments

Nick Clegg gets sassy at DPMQs

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 17th October 2012 - 3:51 pm

Yesterday saw the monthly “Pick on Nick Clegg” day at Westminster. Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions is not known for its searching scrutiny of Government. Instead, Labour and Tories line up to take cheap shots at Nick. The experience he gains there is probably why he’s so good at town hall meetings and question and answer sessions at Conference.

DPMQs usually passes by unnoticed by the press. Yesterday, however, was different. Nick had a “Stalin

Posted in News | Also tagged donald mcintyre, DPMQs, featured, huffington post, ned simons, simon hoggart, the guardian and the independent | 4 Comments

Clegg on McKinnon: “A day for celebrating”

By The Voice | Tue 16th October 2012 - 7:25 pm

Nick Clegg has just emailed Liberal Democrat members about today’s announcement that Gary McKinnon will not be extradited to the US:

In opposition, we were unequivocal: Gary McKinnon should not be extradited. I said at the time that he was too vulnerable to be uprooted from his friends and family and sent across the Atlantic, and if there was a case to answer it should be here in the UK.

So today I am absolutely delighted by the Home Secretary’s

Posted in News | Also tagged extradition, forum bar, gary mckinnon and janis sharp | 5 Comments

Opinion: Clegg’s cock-up over Page 3 – he should sign the “No More Page Three” petition now

By Daisy Cooper MP | Tue 16th October 2012 - 2:22 pm

In a BBC Radio 5 Live interview last week, Nick Clegg declined to back “the campaign to ban page 3 girls from the Sun,” on the grounds that the state should not dictate the content of newspapers. But the campaign in question- entitled Take the Bare Boobs Out of The Sun but better known by its twitter handle “@NoMorePage3” – ISN’T calling on the government to ban page 3. It is appealing directly to The Sun’s editor Dominic Mohan to stop printing it, on the basis that it simply isn’t appropriate to “show the naked breasts of young women in a widely read ‘family’ newspaper” for the purpose of the reader’s gratification.

Posted in News | Also tagged Jo Swinson, lynne featherstone and page 3 | 67 Comments

Employee share ownership – open letter to Vince Cable and Nick Clegg

By Tracy Connell | Tue 16th October 2012 - 10:53 am

We, the undersigned, are extremely concerned by the employee share ownership policy. We call for this bill to be amended to remove the part where workers have to give up their rights for share-ownership and, rather, for the proposal to mirror that agreed by the Liberal Democrat conference in this document.

The proposal appears to allow for workers to give up their rights in return for company shares, as detailed on the HM Treasury website:

Under the new type of contract, employees will be given between £2,000 and £50,000 of shares that are exempt from capital gains tax. In exchange, they

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged employee ownership, featured and vince cable | 80 Comments

Opinion: The challenge ahead for Nick Clegg

By William Jones | Mon 15th October 2012 - 10:53 am

The right-wing, who have been rocking the leadership boat for David Cameron, have been dealt with. With some PR mastery, that has relaunched him. Even the threat of Boris seems to have melted away.

Cameron is now considered a “real Tory” amongst activists after Osborne provided some red-blooded Tory announcements. He has removed any questions about his leadership, for now, if he can steamroller the Lib Dems with a further £10bn of benefit cuts, the shelving of any taxes

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged david cameron, ed miliband and george osb | 19 Comments

The Sun’s “Hero of the week” is a straw man

By Paul Walter | Mon 15th October 2012 - 9:23 am

The Guardian reports :

Nick Clegg has declined to back the campaign to ban page 3 girls from the Sun, on the grounds that the state should not dictate the content of newspapers. In an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live, the deputy prime minister said it would be “deeply illiberal” for the state to dictate what appears in newspapers…Clegg was asked by Shelagh Fogarty, the Radio 5 presenter, if he would support the page 3 ban during a live broadcast from Sheffield. “No, no, no,” he said. “I’ve got three little sons so I don’t have page 3

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, lynne featherstone and page 3 | 29 Comments

Nick Clegg blocks Tory bid to opt out of European policing measures

By Mark Pack | Sun 14th October 2012 - 8:25 am

LDV Caption Competition: Clegg meets Bono “Not U2” Edition

By The Voice | Sat 13th October 2012 - 2:15 pm

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

Here’s Nick Clegg meeting U2 frontman Bono. What do you think might be being said or thought here?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Jeremy Browne “Wiff Waff’s Coming Home” Edition.

Posted in Caption Comp | Also tagged bono and jeremy browne | 16 Comments

Nick Clegg is The Sun’s Hero of the Week… again

By Stephen Tall | Sat 13th October 2012 - 12:20 pm

Perhaps it’s a pre-Leveson softening up exercise. Or perhaps we’ve activated a Lib Dem sleeper agent at the heart of Wapping. Whatever the explanation, Nick Clegg has been awarded the accolade — for the second time in three weeks — of being The Sun’s Hero of the Week. I’m not sure the reasons for which the paper has saluted him will do him many favours with all Lib Dems, but (simply in the spirit of sharing) here goes anyway…

The Sun, 12th October, 2012

Notwithstanding the fact that he was our Hero of the Week just three weeks

Posted in News | Also tagged featured, lynne featherstone, page 3 and the sun | 30 Comments

Opinion: Shares for Rights? An open letter to Nick Clegg

By Nigel Quinton | Fri 12th October 2012 - 11:52 am

Dear Nick

Like most people I have spoken to this week I had imagined that Osborne’s announcement of “shares-for-rights” was for the Tory conference audience, and would not see its way into government policy, not at least while the Liberal Democrats are part of the government.

Yet today I read in Tim Gordon’s weekly update that we actually are supporting this as a promotion of employee ownership! Nick, it is anything but!!

Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged employment rights, featured and george osborne | 32 Comments

Opinion: Cameron’s lurch to the right is Clegg’s opportunity

By Rob Murphy | Wed 10th October 2012 - 11:54 am

Party conference seasons are rarely memorable. Apart from Cameron’s “call that election – we will fight, Britain will win” bluff, which prompted Gordon Brown to call off the “election that never was” in 2007. Apart from a few leadership shocks – Ed Miliband’s pipping of his brother to the line on the shoulders of the trade unions in 2010 and the foundering of David Davis’ leaden leadership bid in 2005.

It may be premature to pass judgment on this conference season just yet. But it is a season that will be remembered for three things. Nick

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged 2015 general election, conservatives and david cameron | 70 Comments

Conference: Calm and determined in the face of headwinds

By Dinti Batstone | Fri 5th October 2012 - 1:19 pm

The atmosphere in Brighton was stormy. Not, as journalists would have you believe, inside the hall but on the Brighton seafront.

It had started well. On Saturday, with temperatures soaring into the 20s, delegates debated early years, schools and House of Lords reform – all solid Lib Dem territory. Excellent speeches from a succession of mothers and grandmothers highlighted how childcare costs skew the economics of working, and delegates overwhelmingly backed investment in free early years education when finances allow. Debating Lords reform, Conference endorsed Nick Clegg’s withdrawal of support for constituency boundary changes, and Lord Tyler put forward a popular …

Posted in Conference and Op-eds | Also tagged jo shaw, Jo Swinson, steve webb and vince cable | 5 Comments

Nick Clegg: “Turkish entry into the EU is a strategic necessity”

By The Voice | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 3:23 pm

Nick Clegg is on a trade mission to Turkey today, and has announced £500m of business deals and £1m of funding for the Turkish Red Crescent in Syria.

He wrote this morning in Turkey’s Sabah newspaper, on the Turkish economy, trade between Turkey and the UK, visas for Turkish travellers, and the the response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. You can read the article in Turkish over at Sabah; the English translation is below:

This summer for a few, glorious weeks the United Kingdom became the centre of the world as we hosted the London Olympic and Paralympic

…

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged eu, syria, trade and turkey | 20 Comments

How progressive is the new tuition fees system?

By Mark Pack | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 12:25 pm

The Institute For Fiscal Studies (IFS) has been running its calculators and slide-rulers over the new system, and here are some of the key points that it has concluded:

“The new system eventually saves the taxpayer around £760 million per year, driven by a dramatic cut in direct public funding to universities.”
“But for universities, this cut is more than offset by almost £15,000 in additional fee income per graduate – a 140 per cent rise over the old system. Thus the total amount spent – from both private and public sources – on higher education is expected to increase as a result of these reforms.”

Posted in News | Also tagged education, IFS and tuition fees | 38 Comments

Opinion: Conference showed Liberal Democrat heart, soul and backbone

By Karen Wilkinson | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 11:26 am

I joined the Liberal Democrats in 2009 in the fug of the expenses and media scandals. The media wasn’t giving me a window, just leading me into a maze of distorted mirrors. With a slap to the forehead, it finally dawned on me that democracy is not something we wait to have thrust upon us at an election every 4-5 years, but something which we do. If I wanted to find out what was going on, I would have to go and look for myself. And if I wanted to change any of it, I would have to put my …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged liberal democrat conference and steve webb | 17 Comments

The top campaigning lesson from Ed Miliband’s speech: repetition is what you need

By Stephen Tall | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 8:25 am

“We are the One Nation party,” Nick Clegg will tell the Liberal Democrats in his speech to their spring conference tomorrow.

Remember this headline? Probably not. Yet it dates from March 2012, just six months ago.

So what happened? Two key things, I suggest. First, Nick’s ‘One Nation’ message was drowned out by the furore over the NHS reforms which dominated the party’s spring conference this year. Secondly, it was one line among many which was uttered and quickly disappeared, like a whispered greeting on a windy day.

There was some snarky commentary from journalists who heard Ed Miliband …

Posted in Conference and Op-eds | Also tagged ed miliband, featured and new labour | 27 Comments

Opinion: The Conflicts of Economic Policy

By Geoff Crocker | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 8:45 am

Nick Clegg’s conference speech committed Lib Dems to manage debt out of the economy and implement a fair tax regime. But the objectives of economic policy often conflict with each other.

Let’s take it that there are three objectives for current economic policy:

to reduce deficit and the debt it accumulates
to inject demand into the economy
to have a fair tax system

In the following table, I’ve had a try at evaluating recent and proposed economic policies against these objectives.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged deficit reduction and economic policy | 53 Comments

Opinion: Pensions for property scheme is profoundly flawed and illiberal

By David Thorpe | Mon 1st October 2012 - 4:54 pm

One can just imagine the proposed pension for property scheme (which Nick Clegg has announced) being the product of committee thinking, for, typical of the produce of many committees, it tries to cram all of the trendier topics of the day into one proposal, resulting in something which is less than the sum of its parts.

The current scheme, the product presumably of the Liberal Democrats’ desire to create popular policies which differentiate us from the Tories among the voters of middle

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged pensions | 20 Comments

Opinion: For the Lib Dems to challenge in 2015, the party must be forcefully centrist

By William Mosseri-Marlio | Mon 1st October 2012 - 10:24 am

You’ve got to give him credit. Nick Clegg stands strong as the party leader in the face of some truly dreadful polling. He has shrugged off a leadership challenge, and remains upbeat in spite of relentless media criticism.

This resilience must, in part, come from a belief that taking the Lib Dems to the centre ground was right for the party. Going into coalition with the Tories, the leadership knew votes would be haemorrhaged to Labour. But it was the correct decision, and one that was backed by all quarters.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged vince cable | 66 Comments

It’s not Vince you should be texting Ed

By Mark Pack | Sun 30th September 2012 - 7:25 pm

Ed Miliband’s text messages to Vince Cable may have got him in trouble with his own political party and even resulted in party officials taking away his mobile phone.

They also have been text messages sent to the wrong person if Ed Miliband’s serious about preparing the ground for future Labour-Liberal Democrat cooperation.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged ed miliband, nick thornsby and vince cable | 14 Comments

Nick Clegg’s autotuned apology viewed 1.8 million times

By Helen Duffett | Sun 30th September 2012 - 5:53 pm

Not only has the charity single version of Nick Clegg’s tuition fees pledge apology been the surprise hit of the year, entering the Top 40 download chart, but The Poke‘s video has now been viewed more than 1.8 million times on YouTube.

From The Wall blog:

James Herring, of PR firm Taylor Herring which worked with the The Poke on the autotuned story (and has done since The Poke launched two years ago), says that Clegg was such an easy target that the opportunity was simply too good to miss.

“We worked through the night to create the mash up

…

Posted in Humour | Also tagged james herring, paul walter and the poke | Leave a comment

Conference: the good, the bad and the ugly

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 30th September 2012 - 2:39 pm

Now that I’ve had some sleep and recovered from the fun of Federal Conference in Brighton, I thought I’d share with you some of the highs and lows of a thoroughly enjoyable five days.

The Good

When Shami beat Paddy: You don’t often see Paddy Ashdown being completely bested in an argument, but Liberty director Shami Chakrabati managed it with aplomb. Paddy said in his speech to a packed Liberty fringe meeting that secret courts were fine as long as everything was overseen by a Judge. Shami went for him. She said she knew she was abusing the chair, but it was her meeting and …

Posted in Conference and Op-eds | Also tagged Alistair Carmichael, jo shaw, Jo Swinson, peter andre and shami chakrabati | 28 Comments

Clegg: “Communities need to front up to abuse in their midst”

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 29th September 2012 - 6:38 pm

Nick Clegg has told The Times that Police should investigate allegations of sexual abuse “without fear or favour.” His comments come in the wake of this week’s report showing deficiencies in the way police and social services handled allegations of sexual abuse in Rochdale.

Nick said:

It is completely unacceptable if perceived cultural sensitivities or political correctness ever stops crimes being investigated fully or allows abuse to continue. No one would pretend that sexual exploitation is exclusive to any community or race, but major cases like this raise tough questions about the profile and attitude of the abusers towards their victims.

…

Posted in News | Also tagged child protection and rochdale | 1 Comment

Nick Clegg’s speech: analysis from Matthew Parris, Lance Price and myself

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th September 2012 - 11:50 am

On Wednesday night Radio 4’s The World Tonight lined up the three of us to talk about Nick Clegg’s speech to the Brighton conference. You can listen to our discussion, along with interviews with other conference attendees here:

Posted in Conference and News | Also tagged 2012 Brighton Conference, lance price and matthew parris | 4 Comments

Nick Clegg: re-elect Tim Farron as Party President

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th September 2012 - 8:50 am

Neither is quite so gauche as to say it explicitly, but you hardly have to peer between the lines to work out what message is meant to be imparted by a piece from Nick Clegg praising Tim Farron’s record as President, especially when it’s contained in a leaflet handed out at conference by Tim’s re-election team and with a form asking people to sign Tim’s nomination papers tucked inside.

It is looking like it will be an uncontested re-election so far, but credit to Tim for still taking it seriously. …

Posted in News, Party policy and internal matters and Party Presidency | Also tagged claire thomas and tim farron | 6 Comments

Nick Clegg’s speech to conference: “A fair, free and open society”

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th September 2012 - 3:24 pm

Much of the pre-speech briefing was about how Nick Clegg’s conference speech would major on how the party is becoming one of government. This is not a message aimed at the party itself really, as the debate in Brighton has been over what to do in government, not whether or not to be in government. Much more, the message was aimed at the media who love to attack the party for pushing policies they disagree with, dressing up disagreement with them as meaning the party can’t be serious about government or taking tough decisions.

Instead, Clegg argued that the party is up …

Posted in Conference and News | Also tagged 2012 Brighton Conference | 76 Comments

+++ Paddy Ashdown to chair 2015 general election campaign

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th September 2012 - 3:13 pm

Party leader speeches at conferences rarely contain completely untrailed and fresh news. Nick Clegg’s does: that Paddy Ashdown will chair the party’s 2015 general election campaign.

Although his name wasn’t one of those I speculated about previously, it is a logical choice because the party’s plan is to fight a 1997-style general election campaign, with a tough national vote share environment hopefully bucked by very effective Parliamentary by-election style campaigns …

Posted in Conference and News | Also tagged 2012 Brighton Conference, featured and paddy ashdown | 14 Comments

Opinion: Why I will withhold my standing ovation from Nick Clegg today

By Paul Walter | Wed 26th September 2012 - 1:24 pm

Today, for the first time at the numerous leader’s speeches I have attended, I intend to remain seated when Nick Clegg gets the standing ovation for his speech.

I won’t do it with any rancour or anger. I am a great fan of Nick Clegg (I just cannot support him as leader of our party anymore, as I have outlined ad nauseam elsewhere). I will be there, seated, smiling and clapping enthusiastically. But I am damned if I am going to stand.

My reasons for doing so are based on …

Posted in Conference and Op-eds | Also tagged 2012 Brighton Conference | 16 Comments

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