Tag Archives: nick clegg

Mark Pack

Lords reform: what the failure means for the Coalition, David Cameron and Nick Clegg

By Mark Pack | Tue 7th August 2012 - 8:06 am

First up, here’s Nick Robinson’s take on yesterday’s events followed by myself, via the BBC News Channel:

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Chris Rennard

Chris Rennard writes… Restoring balance to the Coalition

By Chris Rennard | Mon 6th August 2012 - 2:42 pm

Nick Clegg’s statement dropping Lords Reform in this Parliament should come as no surprise following David Cameron’s failure to persuade barely half of his backbench MPs to support the Government’s Bill on this.

Two years ago, Conservative MPs were supporting a Queen’s Speech that made explicit the Coalition agreement to elect members of the House of Lords through Proportional Representation.

The Coalition Agreement is the contract that underwrites this government. In its name many Liberal Democrats have voted for compromises in legislation that we would not on our own have put forward.

So, the question is what to do when one side fails to honour its side of the contract?

You act swiftly and decisively, even ruthlessly, as Nick Clegg has done, to redress the balance. Hence, the boundary changes are no more.

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Stephen Tall

Are politicians really getting younger?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 5th August 2012 - 2:15 pm

“The worship of youth has diminished – perhaps generally – in recent years.” So said Vince Cable a couple of weeks ago in a newspaper interview which inflamed speculation he’d be partial to a tilt at leading the Lib Dems. It also prompted various politicians-are-getting-younger pieces in the media.

LibDemVoice’s Mark Pack took the time and trouble to dig out the data. He showed that while the trend-line in the first half of the last century was for prime ministers to get older, in the 50 years since there has been a movement towards younger premiers (James Callaghan being …

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Stephen Tall

The Coalition Agreement does not commit Lib Dems to supporting boundary changes

By Stephen Tall | Sun 5th August 2012 - 8:45 am

Over the last couple of months, Conservative MPs and commentators have made great play of the fact that the Coalition Agreement does not explicitly commit the Tories to voting for House of Lords reform. Let’s remind ourselves of its words again:

We will establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. The committee will come forward with a draft motion by December 2010. It is likely that this will advocate single long terms of office. It is also likely that there will be a grandfathering system for

…

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Stephen Tall

++ Clegg to announce Lords reform sunk; Tory rebels defeat Cameron; first breach of Coalition Agreement.

By Stephen Tall | Fri 3rd August 2012 - 8:44 pm

The Guardian reports tonight:

Nick Clegg is expected to announce next week he has been forced to abandon Lords reform in the face of implacable Conservative backbench opposition that David Cameron has been unable to overcome. … Clegg has to decide whether to respond to the Lords rebuff by insisting legislation designed to cut the number of MPs to 600 should be abandoned. The change is being promoted by Cameron as a way of cutting the cost of politics and equalising the electoral size of constituencies.

Lord Rennard, the Liberal Democrat peer and former party chief executive, denied the reverse on

…

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Caron Lindsay

Lord Rennard: “There’s no substitute for democracy”

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 1st August 2012 - 6:59 pm

Liberal Democrat peer and campaigning guru Chris Rennard went on Radio 4 yesterday to respond to the Earl of Glasgow saying that we should back down on Lords reform.

Lord Rennard said that there have been  plans for an elected Lords were not Nick Clegg’s alone and that there had been efforts to reform the upper House for 50 years before Nick Clegg was born.

He took a mild swipe at his Liberal Democrat colleague Lord Steel when asked about the latter’s plans to limit the reforms to allowing voluntary retirement and sacking those peers who don’t attend. Those things, said Rennard, …

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The Voice

Lib Dems push for ‘blind marking’ to level the playing field for ethnic communities

By The Voice | Tue 31st July 2012 - 3:10 pm

The Observer this weekend reported on the Lib Dems’ latest attempts to push for more equal treatment of citizens from different ethnic backgrounds:

Ministers are seeking to introduce “blind marking” of pupils’ schoolwork by teachers as part of a push to tackle a history of underachievement among black and ethnic minority groups, while banks will be required to carry out ethnic monitoring of people to whom they lend money. Under the proposals, the identities of pupils would not be a factor when teachers mark work, and banks could be held accountable for the racial profile of their customers. The controversial

…

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg says no to Tory plans for more welfare cuts

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 31st July 2012 - 10:58 am

Newspapers have been reporting for months that the Liberal Democrats were not prepared to sign up to Tory plans for £10 billion of welfare cuts in a spending review that would draw up plans for spending into the next Parliament. Today’s Independent says that Nick Clegg himself will ensure that this Government only produces spending plans for 2015-16. The electorate will then decide in the 2015 election whether they want to pursue further cuts in welfare or a heavier burden of tax on the wealthy.

 The report says;

The Liberal Democrats’ opposition means the review will have to be watered down. Before the

…

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NewsHound

Nick Clegg meets Ban Ki Moon

By NewsHound | Sat 28th July 2012 - 3:50 pm

Yesterday Nick Clegg had a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. He said:

Secretary General Ban and I discussed the encouraging progress that has been made in talks in New York towards agreeing an Arms Trade Treaty.

The UK has led the way in arguing for a treaty to raise standards across the world and to reduce the impact the illicit arms industry has on countless millions of people. Global rules govern the sale of everything from bananas to endangered species to weapons of mass destruction,

…

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Paul Burstow

Paul Burstow MP writes: Mental health, no excuses

By Paul Burstow | Fri 27th July 2012 - 11:50 am

Over the past few days Channel Four has been highlighting mental health with its #4goesmad series of programmes. With the aim of debunking the myths and stigma surrounding mental health, they are well worth a watch.

I watched both Ruby Wax and Jon Richardson programmes.  Both told powerful and compelling stories  of people coming to terms with their mental health and talking openly about it often for the first time. One such moment was when a successful chef told his restaurant staff that he had, quite recently, contemplated suicide. Getting this confession out into the open was a symbol of that …

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow’s 3 steps for employers on mental health

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 26th July 2012 - 12:56 pm

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s long running work on mental health issues took another step forward this week with the publication of a mental health implementation framework aimed at helping people suffering from mental health problems in the workplace. Employers will be asked to take 3 steps to identify and support those 1 in 6 workers affected. These are:

1)    Make this year the Time to Change: Sign your company up to the Time to Change campaign to end mental health discrimination. By signing up, you make a public commitment from the top of the organisation to the bottom, …

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg: Olympics belong to everyone

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 25th July 2012 - 4:56 pm

As some members of the Liberal Democrat Voice editorial team prepare to go a bit daft over the Olympics, watch sports most of us have never heard of and cheer on our favourite athletes, we were pleased to see that Nick Clegg went to welcome Team GB to their new quarters in the Olympic Village.

He told them that the people of Britain wouldn’t just be watching them, they’d be right there with them, backing them all the way:

The nation is gripped by Olympic fever in a way it never, ever has been. Because, when you host the Games, you

…

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Caron Lindsay

Congratulations to Sir Malcolm Bruce!

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 25th July 2012 - 2:35 pm

One of the highlights for me of the Queen’s Birthday Honours last month, as I wrote at the time, was the news that Malcolm Bruce, Liberal Democrat MP for Gordon since 1983, had been given a knighthood. This comes in his 30th year in Parliament and the 50th anniversary of him joining the Liberal Party.

Sir Malcolm is a former leader of the Scottish party and in that role made a searingly passionate speech to the 1992 Federal Spring Conference in Glasgow. Remembering it even twenty years on gives me goosebumps. Malcolm spoke for all of Scotland when he described …

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Caron Lindsay

What happens people work together – equal marriage to become reality in Scotland

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 25th July 2012 - 12:59 pm

The Scottish Government announced this morning that it would legislate for full equal marriage in Scotland, giving same sex couples the right to marry and allowing those religious organisations who wish to conduct these marriage ceremonies to do so. No celebrant or religious organisation will be compelled to carry out marriage ceremonies for same sex couples. This is everything that campaigners for equal marriage have been asking for and is the culmination of a vibrant 4 year campaign which has won hearts and minds across Scotland.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon made it clear that cross party support for equal marriage …

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Mark Pack

Today’s news is: Let’s all be shocked by the blatantly obvious

By Mark Pack | Wed 25th July 2012 - 10:25 am

Story one.

Dear politician, do you think people should knowingly assist others in breaking the law? What, you say ‘no they shouldn’t’? Hold the front page, I’ve got a scoop!

Story two.

Dear politician, might you want to lead your party one day? What, you might!? Hold the front page again. This is an amazing scoop discovering a politician who would fancy leading their party.

Story three.

Dear politician, if there is another hung Parliament, would you take the same approach as you did to the last one? What, you would? OMG! Someone saying they would do the same thing again! Unthinkable! …

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Paul Walter

Fantasy leadership scenarios – the silly season has arrived

By Paul Walter | Mon 23rd July 2012 - 4:53 pm

There currently seems to be a cottage industry of Tories writing off Nick Clegg. This article by Iain Martin in the Telegraph is typical:

The reality is that if Labour is the largest party after the next election and the Lib Dems want to talk, then a pre-condition is going to be the absence of Clegg.

This ignores two points:

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NewsHound

Clegg: ‘I’d form a new coalition with Ed Miliband’

By NewsHound | Mon 23rd July 2012 - 10:23 am

There was an interesting interview with Nick Clegg in yesterday’s Sunday People:

Nick Clegg would form a coalition with Ed Miliband in the next government, he told The People.

The Lib Dem leader could even stay on as Deputy PM if a general election ­replaced one governing party with another.

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Stephen Tall

LDV Caption Competition: Lumley & Clegg “Ab Fab” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sun 22nd July 2012 - 3:05 pm

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


(Picture by PaperMaven.)

Here’s Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg with star of Absolutely Fabulous Joanna Lumley. What do you think might be being said or thought by or about them?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Nick Harvey “Pleased to see me?” Edition.

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Stephen Tall

In other news… Thurso on banking, Ward on immigration, Swales on G4S & other stories

By Stephen Tall | Sun 15th July 2012 - 5:25 pm

Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past few days…

John Thurso MP to lead banking inquiry (John O’Groat Journal)

CAITHNESS, Sutherland and Easter Ross MP John Thurso has been elected to lead an inquiry into how the banking system is run. The Lib Dem politician has been chosen as one of five representatives who will

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Stephen Tall

How Jeremy Thorpe (and then Nick Clegg) broke the electoral system

By Stephen Tall | Sun 15th July 2012 - 2:45 pm

Democratic Audit this week published its latest analysis, its depressing conclusions summed up by The Guardian’s headline British democracy in terminal decline.

A fascinating aspect of the Audit, even for those of us still scarred by the rejection of electoral reform in the 2011 referendum, is its detailed dissection of how the First-Past-The-Post system is failing democracy. And in particular the pinpointing of the year when FPTP started to go bad: 1974, and the Liberal insurgence under Jeremy Thorpe, when the party increased its support from 7.5% in 1970 to 19.3%.

This, say the Audit’s authors, marked a turning point in the UK’s electoral history, a moment when ended the dominance of the ‘Golden Age’ of FPTP (1950-70) and introduced instead its ‘Dysfunctional Age’ (1979-2005):

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Stephen Tall

Why the Lib Dems cannot end the Coalition. And what we should do to try and rescue it.

By Stephen Tall | Sun 15th July 2012 - 8:55 am

How do we revitalise the Coalition? I realise that for many Lib Dems that’s the very last question on your minds. After a week in which Tory rebel MPs forced the Government to delay a key plank of the Coalition Agreement — House of Lords reform — rather more Lib Dems, and not just the ‘usual suspects’, are turning to the question: how quickly can we be shot of the Tories?

After all, didn’t enough of our MPs walk the plank on the Coalition’s behalf on tuition fees, a policy directly counter to the Lib Dem manifesto? Meanwhile David Cameron cannot even persuade his party to back a reform that’s featured in the last three Tory manifestos. So what’s the purpose of the Coalition any more?

I get the emotional pull of the argument… but it doesn’t persuade me.

Coalition matters more to the Lib Dems than the Tories

The simple truth is that it’s more important for the Lib Dems to try and make this coalition work than it is for the Tories.

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Mark Pack

Nick Clegg gives the William Beveridge lecture

By Mark Pack | Sat 14th July 2012 - 6:28 pm

Nick Clegg gives the William Beveridge lecture

Speaking at the at Social Liberal Forum Conference 2012 on Saturday morning, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg gave the William Beveridge memorial lecture. Here are my tweets of the event, interspersed with some links to older blog posts that expanded on some of the issues which came up.

Storified by Mark Pack · Sat, Jul 14 2012 10:25:17

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Bill le Breton

Opinion: Why a referendum on second chamber reform would be good for the party

By Bill le Breton | Fri 13th July 2012 - 11:56 am

The Liberal Democrats built their electoral success on the three ‘Cs’: Concentrate, Communicate and Campaign. The campaigning zeal of the Party took us from a handful of councillors and a few MPs dotted around the Celtic fringe in the mid ‘Seventies to a truly national party, with over 3,500 councillors, 60MPs, power and influence in the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament, power and influence in over 150 councils, from Newcastle to Newquay, Liverpool to Islington.

Campaigning is the life blood of the movement we endeavour to create around the drive to seize and redistribute power. We do this by the simple means of helping people to take and use their power in their communities. Campaigning succeeds by involving people beyond the party in our campaigns. It energies and strengthens communities and nurtures the tolerance that comes from understanding others and identifying the common causes that link us. These common causes centre upon the injustice stemming from subjection to illegitimate power – be that banks that gamble with our money and provide shocking service, supermarkets that drive farmers to ruin and fix prices or bureaucrats who entangle citizens in red tape and restrict people’s opportunities.

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John Pugh

Opinion: No economic case for regional pay

By John Pugh | Fri 13th July 2012 - 10:36 am

The clamour against regional pay received renewed vigour yesterday as 25 Liberal Democrat backbenchers endorsed a paper calling for the government to scrap any plans to link public sector pay to private sector earnings across the UK. The paper prepared in the office of John Pugh MP, analyses the evidence submitted to the Treasury and Office of Manpower Economics and concludes that there is no economic case for introducing regional pay.

The government has considered the introduction of regional pay in light of concerns that public sector pay premiums across the UK are ‘crowding-out’ the private sector. However statistics show that the private sector is not struggling to recruit staff, as vacancies in the public sector go unfilled for longer and a survey of business leaders shows that the majority have not struggled to compete with public sector wages.

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David Thorpe

Opinion: Liberal Democrats must not apologise for cuts

By David Thorpe | Fri 13th July 2012 - 8:54 am

Occasionally Nick Clegg, or his speechwriters create a phrase which deserves to live on in the political lexicon long after the rest of the speech has been confined to the political dustbin. The pre-2010 General Election debates were transformed by Nick referring to the “two old parties” and asking voters to “do something different this time”.

While the phrases were memorable, they were hardly that effective. Voters did what they did the last time they faced a Labour government mired in staggering incompetence and a Tory party leadership tacking to the centre while the grassroots howled. That was in the 1970’s when voters gave Labour a kicking and the Tories the mandate of largest party in parliament but no overall majority. In 2010 the outcome was the same with Labour weakened and the Tories becoming the largest party, except that on this occasion, the Liberal Democrats, from MPs to ordinary members, voted by a huge majority for a coalition. But while the phrases used in the debates were clever and eye catching, it was another of Nick’s phrases which should help set the tone for the party in the future. Nick said there would be “savage cuts”, while Vince Cable joined his Tory and Labour colleagues in saying that post-election there would, under a Liberal Democrat government, be “cuts faster and deeper than Thatcher”.

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg’s e-mail to party members on Lords reform

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 11th July 2012 - 7:55 am

In the aftermath of last night’s vote (and non vote) in the Commons, Nick Clegg sent a remarkably temperate e-mail to party members. Calm though the language may have been, his message to David Cameron, that he needs to sort his MPs out, is clear. Here’s the e-mail in full:

This evening we overwhelmingly won an historic vote on the Second Reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill – a Bill that will finish something our party started a century ago.

This is a huge triumph for our party, and a clear mandate to deliver much needed reforms to the House

…

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Stephen Tall

The 15 words that mean the Coalition won’t fall, no matter what happens to Lords reform

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th July 2012 - 10:45 pm

There’s a very simple reason why — even if enough Tory MPs inflict the Coalition’s first defeat on a key plank of the Coalition Agreement which appeared in their last three manifestos — the Government will not fall tomorrow. It’s these 15 words from the May 2010 Programme for Government:

The deficit reduction programme takes precedence over any of the other measures in this agreement.

There is also, of course, the small matter of the current opinion polls: neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems will relish a rush to the ballot box at the moment. A Coalition once held together by radicalism and conviction is now bound together by a pact of mutually assured destruction.

The inconsistencies in Tory backbenchers’ position on Lords reform are legion. I won’t unpick them here, as Nick Thornsby has already highlighted six examples on his blog here.

What the Lords fracas reveals about the Tories’ mood

More interesting than trying to pick through the rubble of Tory excuses is to try and understand why a policy on which the two Coalition parties officially agree should be showing up so clearly David Cameron’s inability to lead his party.

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Stephen Tall

The word ‘straight’ isn’t homophobic. Now can we get on to the stuff that matters, please?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 8th July 2012 - 12:20 pm

Two significant events this week in the campaign for equal LGBT rights…

First, as we reported this week, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg asked that the ‘Pride flag’ be flown from Whitehall to symbolise Government support for Saturday’s rally in London. As The Sun’s political editor Tom Newton-Dunn tweeted:

(The picture show here was taken by Verity Harding: you can follow her on Twitter here.)

Secondly, Nick Clegg voiced his personal support for religious gay marriage for those which wish to recognise and celebrate a same-sex union:

… in an interview with the London Evening Standard to mark the World Pride event, Mr Clegg said: “This is a personal view at the moment, but I think that in exactly the same way that we shouldn’t force any church to conduct gay marriage, we shouldn’t stop any church that wants to conduct gay marriage. I don’t see why two individuals who love each other and want to show commitment to each other should not be able to do so in a way that is socially recognised as being marriage.”

A couple of weeks ago, Nick recorded this message — described by Attitude as “a really passionate, well-articulated support for equal marriage” — for Out for Marriage:

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The Voice

Clegg orders Government to fly LGBT pride flag

By The Voice | Fri 6th July 2012 - 10:33 am

PinkNews today reports:

In a first for central Government, the Cabinet Office is flying a rainbow flag to mark World Pride being held this weekend in London.

The iconic flag has been flown on the personal request of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Officials say that Mr Clegg thought it ‘was about time for Whitehall to bring itself up to date’ by flying the flag in solidarity with the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) community.

Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “There has to be a first time for everything – flying this iconic flag in the heart of

…

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Nick T

The banking system was rotten to the core – Clegg

By Nick T | Wed 4th July 2012 - 5:56 pm

The deputy prime minister is interviewed in tonight’s Evening Standard, where he speaks about, among other things, his attitude towards the British banking system. Here’s an excerpt:

“There is no doubt in my mind that what we saw, what peaked in 2008, was rotten to the core,” he says. “We cannot afford as a society, as a country, to have a banking system that is like a cuckoo in the nest, which pushes everything else out and which causes huge costs for millions of  British taxpayers.

“Yet again the lid has been lifted on a culture which appeared to be permissive of

…

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