Tag Archives: nick clegg

LibLink: David Laws MP writes about the Lib Dem ambition for fairer tax

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 22nd February 2012 - 12:53 pm

David Laws has argued at the Guardian’s Comment is Free site that the Coalition should accelerate Liberal Democrat tax cutting plans.

The government’s previous plan was for the allowance to rise in steps of £630 over the next few years, to reach £10,000 by April 2015. Clegg and chief treasury secretary Danny Alexander are rightly insisting that we look to bring forward those tax cuts. This week they seemed to attract the unlikely support of Labour’s Ed Balls. But his plan for a totally unfunded tax cut is as unlikely to convince the deputy prime minister as it is the chancellor.

The

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Posted in News | Also tagged david laws, deficit reduction, ed balls, george osborne, raising tax threshold and tax | 28 Comments

“A shitty time to be a liberal”: The Economist’s must-read piece on the Clegg paradox (and 2 reasons why it’s wrong)

By Stephen Tall | Sun 19th February 2012 - 9:55 am

There’s a must-read column by The Economist’s Bagehot this week focusing on the Lib Dems’ dilemmas, titled The Clegg paradox. It’s a serious and weighty analysis, which asks some uncomfortable questions of the party’s strategy. Here’s it’s conclusion:

At a recent meeting of the Lib Dem parliamentary party, Tim Farron, an ambitious left-winger and party president, reportedly cheered this anti-Tory success, but bemoaned the fact that unelected peers had led the charge against the NHS reforms and got the credit for it, rather than Lib Dem MPs who need votes. That drew a rebuke from Jeremy Browne, a foreign office

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged bagehot, featured and the economist | 18 Comments

A man, an eaten banana, a door, a piece of string and the leader of a political party

By Mark Pack | Wed 15th February 2012 - 10:25 am

A man, an eaten banana, a door, a piece of string and the leader of a political party.

Each of them on their own are quite normal. Put them together however and you have still the most puzzling moment in a political video I’ve seen. Sure, there are the strange adverts, the bizarre adverts and the baffling adverts, but watch this film and wait for the moment 30 seconds or so in:

Posted in Lib Dem TV | 4 Comments

EXCLUSIVE: What Lib Dem members say about the party’s direction and Nick Clegg’s leadership

By Stephen Tall | Wed 15th February 2012 - 7:50 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 570 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

70% say Lib Dems on right course, highest figure since July 2010

LDV asked: Do you think, as a whole, the Liberal Democrats are on the right course or on the wrong track? (Comparison with December’s figures.)

Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged featured | 23 Comments

LibLink: James Plunkett – Budget 2012: 20 minutes in, 1-0 Team Clegg

By NewsHound | Mon 13th February 2012 - 12:25 pm

Over at the New Statesman, James Plunkett, who is leading the Resolution Foundation’s Commission on Living standards, looks at what we’ve learned from the recent interventions by Nick Clegg (pushing for a £10k income tax threshold to help the lowest-paid) and Danny Alexander (urging this be paid for by ending higher-rate pension relief) — and what those interventions might mean for George Osborne’s budget this March…

If there’s one thing Alexander’s intervention confirms it’s this: the key question for the 2012 Budget is no longer whether the Lib Dems will get anything on personal allowances but how the next

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged Danny Alexander, james plunkett, pensions and tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 3 Comments

The failure of David Steel’s Lords reform measure is good news

By Mark Pack | Sun 12th February 2012 - 1:10 pm

The attitude of former Liberal Party leader David Steel to Nick Clegg’s House of Lords reform proposals has been lukewarm at best. Although the party he headed up repeatedly called for a democratic upper house, Steel has not been supporting Nick Clegg’s attempt to turn those often made demands into policy. He even signed a cross-party letter against the proposals that was published the day of Clegg’s formal announcement.

Instead, Steel has been pursuing a different, much more modest, line – arguing that some modest reforms can be secured and they should be banked immediately as radical reform will take …

Posted in News | Also tagged constitutional reform, david steel and lords reform | 6 Comments

LDV Caption Competition: Clegg, Cam & Lansley “You can hear the white coats flapping” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sat 11th February 2012 - 3:50 pm

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

Here’s David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley rolling up their sleeves over the NHS reforms — 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, Ed Davey “I’ve got Energy” Edition.

Posted in Caption Comp | Also tagged andrew lansley, david cameron and NHS | 29 Comments

What Lib Dem members think about Europe, Cameron’s ‘veto’, and the Eurozone

By Stephen Tall | Sat 11th February 2012 - 7:55 am

Party members split over the future of Europe

LDV asked: Which of the following options would be your ideal future for the UK and the European Union?

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Posted in Europe / International and LDV Members poll | Also tagged david cameron and european union | 11 Comments

97% of Lib Dem members back Nick’s call for raising income tax allowance to £10k as immediate priority

By Stephen Tall | Fri 10th February 2012 - 7:55 am

Overwhelming support for ‘further and faster’ tax-cuts for low-paid

LDV asked: The Coalition is committed to increasing the level at which income tax becomes payable, from its current £7,475 to £10,000 by 2015. The tax-free threshold was expected to rise by about £630 annually. However, in a recent speech Nick Clegg said, “I want the Coalition to go further and faster in delivering the …

Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged tax and tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 4 Comments

Clegg signals new approach to individual voter registration in evidence to Parliamentary committee

By Nick T | Thu 9th February 2012 - 11:28 am

Last Wednesday saw Nick Clegg return for his annual appearance before the House of Lords Constitution Committee. As one might expect, a whole range of political reform and constitutional issues were covered in the 90 minute evidence session.

One interesting answer by the Deputy Prime Minister which caught my attention was on the topic of individual voter registration. Asked by Liberal Democrat peer Lord (Chris) Rennard whether there would be changes to the government approach as set out in the earlier White Paper when we see legislation on the issue soon, Clegg had the following to say:

The short answer is ‘yes’….We

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Posted in Election law and News | Also tagged chris rennard, constitutional reform, electoral registration and political and constitutional reform committee | 7 Comments

The fallout from Chris Huhne’s resignation

By Mark Pack | Sat 4th February 2012 - 6:10 pm

I’ve been busy with the media yesterday and today giving my take on Chris Huhne’s resignation, so here are the two main highlights if you missed them:

Posted in News | Also tagged chris huhne, diversity, ed davey, gender balance, jenny willott and Jo Swinson | 2 Comments

EXCLUSIVE: 72% of Lib Dem members backed reshuffle return for David Laws. (But it wasn’t to be.)

By Stephen Tall | Sat 4th February 2012 - 2:45 pm

Earlier this week, LibDemVoice started asking party members signed up to our discussion forum a range of questions — the survey is still live, but one of the questions is already a little previous so we’re reporting it early…

We asked: Would you support or oppose David Laws making a return to government at the next reshuffle?

Yes – to a cabinet post 58%
Yes – but only to a non-cabinet post in government 14%
No – he should not return to the government at the next reshuffle 21%
Don’t know / No opinion 7%

In total, then, 72% of Lib Dem members in our sample wanted to see David Laws return to a ministerial post in the Coalition government, with most wanting to see him return to the cabinet 18 months after he was forced to resign.

Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged david laws and paul waugh | 1 Comment

Nick Clegg on being Nick Clegg in The House magazine

By Prateek Buch | Fri 3rd February 2012 - 3:00 pm

Deputy Prime Minister gave a wide-ranging interview to The House magazine, in which he discusses how it’s right for the two coalition parties to differentiate themselves once a stable government was formed:

In the run-up to the general election, you may remember, the tabloids were screaming, saying that if there was a hung Parliament locusts would descend from the sky and the sun would be blotted out, you know… so we needed for those first few months to show the most important thing of all, which is this is a government that works, and actually works rather well.

Of course,

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Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged coalition and lords reform | 1 Comment

E-petition backing up Nick Clegg’s wish to raise tax threshold

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 1st February 2012 - 8:55 am

Readers may be interested in an e-petition on the HM Government website which calls on the Government to implement the tax cuts for the people on low and middle incomes which Nick Clegg called for last week. It says:

Please sign this to persuade George Osborne to fast track the Lib Dem policy to increase the income tax threshold to £10,000 in the next budget, and hence take thousands more people out of tax and put £700 back in people’s pockets. There are measures that can be taken to pay for this including the clamp down on tax avoidance and

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Posted in News | Also tagged e-petitions and tax | Leave a comment

LibLink: Mr Clegg Goes to Peterbrook

By NewsHound | Sun 29th January 2012 - 5:55 pm

We’ve not often LibLinked through to the ‘Breaking News’ section of Peterbrook Primary School’s website. In fact we never have before. But their report of Nick Clegg’s visit, alongside local Solihull MP Lorely Burt, deserves a wide audience, and here’s a snippet:

Together with Solihull M.P Lorely Burt and an entourage of press and media broadcasters, Mr. Clegg came from London to see us so that we could share with him our curriculum developments using ‘Pupil Premium’ funding to support the learning and personal development needs of all pupils, with a specific focus at times, on those pupils who are eligible

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged lorely burt, pupil premium, schools and solihull | 3 Comments

In other news…

By Stephen Tall | Sun 29th January 2012 - 4:45 pm

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

Lib Dem MP Tessa Munt is taking on sexism in the BBC: ‘The BBC must ensure there are more women presenters and executives working on its radio network if it is to justify its licence fee, MP Tessa Munt said today after she found that in some cases there were fewer female voices than 25 years ago.’

The FT reports how Danny Alexander, Lib Dem Treasury chief secretary, has highlighted a crackdown on high pay in the public sector: Danny has

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Posted in News | Also tagged andrew stunell, chris huhne, Danny Alexander and tessa munt | Leave a comment

LDVideo: Clegg on RBS Hester’s pay – “these figures seem like they’re from another planet”

By Stephen Tall | Sun 29th January 2012 - 9:40 am

The debate reverberated here on LibDemVoice yesterday: Should Stephen Hester accept his bonus? Here’s what Nick Clegg had to say about it all yesterday:

Posted in YouTube | Also tagged jeremy browne and stephen hester | 10 Comments

Cam’s Euro U-turn – this is what happens when you fail to negotiate

By Stephen Tall | Sat 28th January 2012 - 5:50 pm

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth today on the right as evidence emerges that David Cameron is backsliding on his ‘veto’ preventing the European Union from enforcing fiscal integration among the Eurozone countries. Here’s how The Guardian reports it:

Ahead of Monday’s summit of EU leaders, which is due to finalise “political agreement” on the fiscal compact treaty, the government signalled that it would not challenge a role for the European commission and, more sensitively, would also allow resort to the European court of justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg to enforce new debt ceilings and fines for fiscal miscreants in

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Also tagged david cameron | 9 Comments

The weekend debate: Should Stephen Hester accept his bonus?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 28th January 2012 - 9:25 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

Since the £963, 000 shares bonus for RBS Chief Executive Stephen Hester has been revealed there have been opinions pouring out from across the political spectrum.

When Ed Miliband accused David Cameron of a “failure of leadership” over it, Cameron promptly distanced himself from the process altogether, with George Osborne claiming it was due to rules put in place by Labour.

Boris Johnson seems to be against it, as is our usually economically …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged boris johnson, ed miliband, george osborne, jeremy browne, stephen hester and weekend debate | 28 Comments

LDVideo: Clegg – “the Coalition is calling time on our unfair and out-of-whack tax system”

By Stephen Tall | Fri 27th January 2012 - 7:45 am

Nick Clegg’s tax cut speech dominated the political headlines yesterday — you can watch a 4-minute snippet below:

Posted in YouTube | Also tagged tax | Leave a comment

Clegg’s call for income tax cuts for the low paid is welcome, but will the Tories back him?

By Nick T | Thu 26th January 2012 - 6:54 pm

It’s no secret that Nick Clegg is personally very committed to the Lib Dem – and now coalition – policy of raising the threshold at which people begin to pay income tax. It was one of the first big policies he argued for at conference after becoming leader, and was a key message during the 2010 election campaign. Clegg returned to the theme this morning, though, to call for the implementation of the policy to be speeded up.

Personally I think this intervention is very welcome, not only because the policy is a good and liberal thing in itself, but …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged income tax and tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 7 Comments

LibLink: Mark Pack – Nick Clegg turns media weakness into media strength

By Nick T | Thu 26th January 2012 - 4:23 pm

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

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged Mark Pack, media, neil stockley, tax and tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 2 Comments

Nick Clegg returns to income tax

By Mark Pack | Thu 26th January 2012 - 7:34 am

Later this morning, Nick Clegg will be giving a speech to the Resolution Foundation (word cloud here) in which, after recent talk about wealth taxes, he is returning to the topic of income tax cuts. More specifically, speeding up the progress towards a basic income tax allowance of £10,000 whilst keeping the 50p rate.

This is of course closely linked to wealth taxes as they are a way to raise the funds to pay for the income tax cuts.

Posted in News | Also tagged resolution foundation, tax, tax cuts (Lib Dem) and vince cable | 2 Comments

Opinion: Nick Clegg’s remarks inch the UK towards recognition of Palestine

By John McHugo | Wed 25th January 2012 - 1:54 pm

It is now over a week since Nick Clegg held his joint press conference with President Abbas of Palestine in which he referred to Israeli settlement construction as “vandalism”. Before his comments fade out of the news altogether, it is worth thinking through the implications of what he said – and thanking him for his courage in making them. Could they have come from the mouth of a Conservative minister?

By calling the settlement building “an act of deliberate vandalism to the basic premise on which negotiations have taken place for years and years and years”, Nick hit two important nails …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged palestine | 17 Comments

Opinion: Clegg should look to Gladstone and Grimond, not John Lewis

By Nigel Lindsay | Wed 25th January 2012 - 12:56 pm

Nick Clegg’s Mansion House speech on “a more responsible capitalism” gathered publicity, particularly for his widely-reported call for employees to be given the right to ask for shares in the company they work for. I am still puzzling over how people can be given a right they already have. Anyone can ask for shares at present, of course, but with no guarantee of an answer.

It would be meant something if Nick had called for employees to have the right to be given shares in their companies when they asked. It would have meant even more if he could have …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged employee ownership, jo grimond, responsible capitalism and william gladstone | 5 Comments

Nick Clegg needs cutting down to size – Tebbit

By Paul Walter | Mon 23rd January 2012 - 8:02 pm

It is always good fun when right-wing Tories get all het up about Nick Clegg, fulminating that David Cameron should jolly well do something about it.

Norman Tebbit provides today’s entertainment along these lines under the headline: Nick Clegg needs cutting down to size. If only the Prime Minister was brave enough to do the job.

He is specifically exercised about immigration and the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights. Employing all his skills as “the Chingford Skinhead” he culminates with this:

It seems that Mr Cameron is prevented from doing anything to bring the nonsense to an end – and the repeal

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Posted in News | Also tagged norman tebbit | 17 Comments

LDVideo: Nick Clegg on the benefits cap – “Work should always pay”

By Stephen Tall | Sun 22nd January 2012 - 12:45 pm

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg appeared on BBC1’s Andrew Marr show this morning, and stuck up for the Coalition policy that there should be a £500 a week benefit cap:

“It surely can’t be fair, can’t be right, that you can be earning more on benefits than someone going out and earning £35,000, which is the equivalent if you were to go out and work.”

You can watch an excerpt below:

Posted in YouTube | Also tagged andrew marr, benefits and welfare reform | 24 Comments

Andrew Marr bids for record-breaking number of different topics in one interview

By Mark Pack | Sun 22nd January 2012 - 11:15 am

I wonder if somewhere deep in the BBC there is a target for how many different topics must be asked about in political interviews each month and someone woke up this morning to realise that January’s quota is about to be missed. Or perhaps there was a typo in Andrew Marr’s contract and his BBC salary is based on number of topics covered rather than number of minutes of screentime filled.

Whatever the reason, this morning’s interview with Nick Clegg saw a helter skelter tour around a huge number of topics, making for a comprehensive tour of current political issues but …

Posted in News | Also tagged andrew marr, david laws and economy | 4 Comments

Opinion: Is a “John Lewis economy” a liberal economy?

By Chris Nicholson | Sun 22nd January 2012 - 10:50 am

Nick Clegg hit the headlines last Monday in a speech at a CentreForum/City of London event calling for a “John Lewis economy” . John Lewis is employee owned where employees get a bonus each year depending on the performance of the group. Last year this led to every employee getting an 18% bonus on their salary. But they do not hold individual shares in the company and so do not have the associated direct potential of building up substantial asset ownership .

I, along with most liberals judging by the reaction on Lib Dem Voice, warmly welcomed the substance …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged economy, employee ownership and john lewis | 8 Comments

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Tag Archives: nick clegg

70% say Lib Dems on right course, highest figure since July 2010

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Party members split over the future of Europe

Overwhelming support for ‘further and faster’ tax-cuts for low-paid

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