Tag Archives: paddy ashdown

David Boyle

Conference policy motion: “Giving citizens a voice in parliament”

By David Boyle | Mon 1st September 2008 - 9:22 am

I was a local government reporter in Oxford in the dark days of the 1980s. No public question time. No scrutiny. No appeals of any kind.

I even remember one definitely old Labour councillor telling me that he screwed up and threw away letters from his constituents, without reading them, if they had the temerity to send them to his home address. Or, worse – address him in ways that seemed not to reflect the dignity of his position.

Liberals and SDP councillors around the country were then introducing the right of members of the public to address council meetings, or ask

…

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Posted in Conference | 6 Comments
The Voice

Tributes to Richard Holme

By The Voice | Tue 6th May 2008 - 5:38 pm

(From a party email)

Former Liberal Democrat Leaders Paddy Ashdown and Menzies Campbell have paid tribute to Liberal Democrat peer Richard Holme, who has died at the age of 71. Lord Holme, who was the party’s Northern Ireland spokesman during the 1990s, and a member of the joint consultative committee with the Government on constitutional issues, died at home in West Sussex after a long battle with cancer. Lord Ashdown described him as a “man of outstanding talent”. Sir Menzies said the late peer was “one of the most perceptive analysts of politics in this country”. Current leader Nick Clegg said

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Martin Kettle: why the Lib Dems matter

By Stephen Tall | Sat 8th March 2008 - 9:55 am

There is a pretty fair analysis of the last week for the Lib Dems by The Guardian’s Martin Kettle today – you can read it here. On the issue de jour – Europe and the Lisbon Treaty referendum vote:

To witness our one truly pro-European party abstaining and divided at the climax of the most important European vote in British politics for years this week was to witness a parliamentary shambles. No party can ever be satisfied with a shambles. Yet while acknowledging the damage, it is important also not to exaggerate it. The Lib Dems will recover. Nick Clegg’s fledgling leadership is not at risk.

Indeed Wednesday night’s abstention and pro-referendum rebellion was probably the least worst option for the party. The free vote that some of Clegg’s critics advocate on the Lisbon treaty referendum would have seen half of the party in the pro-referendum lobby and the other half, including Clegg himself, in the anti. The derision that would have greeted that damaging spectacle would easily have eclipsed the derision provoked by the abstention. And anyway, Europe isn’t a free-vote issue.

This slightly misses the point. Europe might not be a free vote issue, but a referendum on a treaty has been regarded as a free vote issue by the party in the past – most notably under Paddy Ashdown’s leadership during the Maastricht debates in 1993. This phase of the party’s policy on Europe is omitted by Mr Kettle. Nonetheless, it’s welcome to see a commentator retain a sense of perspective, something that’s been a tad lacking in other media analyses or in the blogosphere.

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Posted in Europe / International and News | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Paddy Ashdown: A strategy to save Afghanistan

By Mark Pack | Wed 13th February 2008 - 7:01 pm

Writing in the FT today, Paddy said:

With fighting in Afghanistan now entering its seventh year, no agreed international strategy, public support on both sides of the Atlantic crumbling, Nato in disarray and widening insecurity in Afghanistan, defeat is now a real possibility. The consequences for both Afghanistan and its allies would be appalling: global terrorism would have won back its old haven and created a new one over the border in a mortally weakened Pakistan; our domestic security threat would be gravely increased and a new instability would be added to the world’s most unstable region.

David Miliband, the British foreign

…

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The Voice

Paddy speaks out on vetoed Afghan role

By The Voice | Mon 28th January 2008 - 9:52 am

Here’s the text of the statement Paddy Ashdown issued yesterday, following news that Afghanistan’s government and its President, Hamid Karzai, had rejected the idea the former Lib Dem leader should become the UN’s special envoy:

Last night I informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations that I am withdrawing my name from consideration for the post of Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan.

I strongly believe that there is an urgent need for proper co-ordination of the international effort on the ground in Afghanistan if that effort – in which so much is being invested, and which is so vital

…

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Today’s moral compass update

By Mark Pack | Thu 17th January 2008 - 8:19 am
  1. Labour Minister Lord Digby Jones has been caught in a row over his shareholding in a firm set to benefit significantly from government plans for the NHS.
  2. Two Labour MPs have reported 80 Conservative MPs to the Electoral Commission over donations from unincorporated associations.
  3. Good news for Peter Hain: he has won the backing of his local constituency party. (Bad news: this is pretty much like the owner of a football club saying they have full confidence in their manager.)

Meanwhile, in other news Paddy Ashdown is getting a new job – Afghanistan.

Posted in News | 5 Comments
Alex Foster

Telegraph has it both ways

By Alex Foster | Sun 13th January 2008 - 9:25 pm

Recent coverage of Nick Clegg in the Telegraph is trying to have its cake and eat it too.

Political Editor Patrick Hennessy thinks Clegg is lurching to the right

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Reshuffle reactions: your essential guide

By Stephen Tall | Fri 21st December 2007 - 8:50 am

Much reaction on the blogs and elsewhere to yesterday’s Lib Dem shadow cabinet announcements. Here are the links:

* Home Affairs for Huhne on Peter Welch’s Eastern/European blog.

* Clegg keeps Compo! on Martin Land’s New Model Army blog.

* Steve Webb given environment role on David Nikel’s The Golden Side of the Moon

* Great role for Chris Huhne on Paul Walter’s Liberal Burblings blog.

* A strong team astrologically on John’s Liberal Revolution blog.

* The New Shadow Cabinet – The Scottish Perspective on Stephen Glenn’s Linlithgow Journal

* All change please on The Bombastic Bedouin.

* …

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Posted in Best of the blogs and News | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
Lord Tom McNally

Leader article: Peer Pressure

By Lord Tom McNally | Sun 16th December 2007 - 9:55 am

A dozen years ago, when I first took my seat in the House of Lords, there were a number of self-deprecating jokes which summed up how the country saw the House of Lords and how it saw itself:

There was the Peer who dreamt he was speaking in the Lords, and when he woke up he was.

There was the Peer who read the Times Obituary column each morning to make sure his name was not there. If it wasn’t he went in.

Thus was this anachronistic, quaintly amusing arm of our governance seen by friend and foe alike. It survived, in …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 3 Comments

Opinion: What should the new leader do in his first 100 days? #3

By David Morton | Wed 12th December 2007 - 3:25 pm

In less than a week, the Lib Dems will have a new leader – either Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne will have succeeded Ming Campbell. Lib Dem Voice is inviting party members to tell us what you think should be his top priorities. Paul Walter and Linda Jack have both had a go. Today it’s David Morton’s turn…

Paddy Ashdown once said that the first thing a third party leader had to do in the morning “was get noticed.” The media’s love of the two party consensus is well known but very real. As it seems that one slip …

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Posted in Leadership Election and Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 6 Comments
Paul Walter

Opinion: What should the new leader do in his first 100 days?

By Paul Walter | Mon 10th December 2007 - 1:49 pm

In a week or so’s time, the Lib Dems will have a new leader – either Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne will have succeeded Ming Campbell. Lib Dem Voice is inviting party members to tell us what you think should be his top priorities. First up, is noted Lib Dem blogger, Paul Walter…

Without doubt, the priority for the new leader is to have an almighty media blitz in the first 100 days: Visits, interviews, tours, articles….you name it, the new leader should suddenly appear everywhere 24 hours a day for 100 days.

Can’t be done? Oh all right then, but it …

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Posted in Leadership Election and Op-eds | Also tagged and | 21 Comments
Stephen Tall

All hail ‘Vince the hegemon’?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 4th December 2007 - 2:50 pm

Anthony Barnett, over at the OurKingdom blog, is in super-optimistic mood about the current state of the Lib Dems:

For the first time since the First World War the Liberals are defining popular feeling thanks to Vince Cable. They have been hegemonic before (meaning dominating and setting the framework of thought rather than directing it) when two liberals, Keynes and Beveridge, set the terms though not the politics of the welfare state for post-war Britain. Since then they have striven to be popular and influential, usually by being earnest and worthy (and sometimes by being cheap, cheerful and inebriated). But

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

That YouGov poll in full

By Stephen Tall | Mon 3rd December 2007 - 9:09 pm

The full results of that YouGov / Sky News leadership poll are now available online here: these give the full breakdown of figures, together with the answers to questions which weren’t reported by the media at the weekend.

A few observations from my reading of the data (which I am taking at face value while recognising it might be wildly inaccurate):

Leadership election turnout

According to the poll, a full 93% of members seem likely to vote – just 7% responded saying they didn’t know if they’d vote at all, and 1% declaring they would not vote at all. This points either to a remarkably high turnout – in the 2006 contest, just over 70% of members voted – or suggests the YouGov sample includes a high level of motivated Lib Dems (not that that necessarily matters. After all, the poll is meant to try and predict what those who actually vote will do).

Nick v. Chris

If the poll is right – and Chris Huhne’s campaign website is currently citing some of the figures on his website – it suggests Chris has a huge uphill task ahead: those who have voted have split 58:42 in Nick Clegg’s favour; while those who have yet to vote are also breaking in Nick’s favour by 31:26. It is true, of course, that 44% of those who intend to vote still don’t know who for… Chris will need them to flock to him in droves.

It is clear that one quality Chris’s supporters appreciate about their candidate more than any other is competency: 50% believe he is more competent than Nick Clegg. Rather astonishingly, not one single Chris supporter thinks Nick is the more competent of the two; though, to be fair, only 2% of Nick’s supporters say that Chris is more competent. Overall, 61% say there’s not much difference in competency between the two candidates.

Clearly the make or break question for many is voter appeal, and it is here that Nick bests Chris: only 9% of those polled say Chris has significantly more, while 53% say Nick does. Among Nick’s supporters, fully 86% identify this quality with their guy; only one-quarter of Chris’s supporters think he has the most voter appeal.

However, Chris’s supporters – 64% of them – are much more likely to say that their candidate has the best policy programme, compared with 39% of Nick’s supporters who think Nick comes up trumps. Overall, by 28:19, Lib Dems favour Chris’s policies, though almost half say there’s “not much difference” between the two.

Focusing on the negative, the poll finds that:
– 33% of Chris’s supporters believe Nick will “make a poor leader because he has changed his mind too often on important policy issues”; and
– 66% of Nick’s supporters believe Chris will “make a poor leader because he failed to prevent his campaign team publishing a leaflet entitled, ‘Calamity Clegg’”.

If not Nick or Chris, who?

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Posted in News and Polls | Also tagged and | 17 Comments

Leadership Platform 3: Nick Clegg – Richard Allan writes…

By Nick Clegg Campaign Team | Sat 17th November 2007 - 6:52 pm

We all know from experience that election campaigns are 90% perspiration and 10% Riso ink, and this one is no exception. Bu there are always things that keep you going during these marathon efforts.

In Nick’s campaign this has been the endorsements that people have been pouring in on the website. So for today’s campaign update, I thought I’d share what people are saying about Nick – you can add your own endorsement here!

As for what I think about Nick – and why his nickname used to be Grizzly Fish – you can find out in this video by …

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Posted in Leadership Election | Also tagged , and | 18 Comments

Leadership Platform 1: Nick Clegg – ‘Clegg so far’

By Nick Clegg Campaign Team | Sun 11th November 2007 - 7:23 pm

The Campaign Team has set out a “Clegg So Far” briefing to be circulated on Monday to journalists – but Lib Dem Voice is getting a first look.

Manufacturing
In a Radio 5 Live hustings where Nick was the favourite candidate for all four callers he championed the cause of British manufacturing. Listen again.
Affordable Housing
Speaking at a Cumbrian hill farm, Nick outlined proposals to use vacant buildings in rural areas, especially on farms, to develop new affordable housing.
Ambition
Having challenged the party to be bold and ambitious in his declaration statement, Nick went further, pledging to …

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Posted in Leadership Election | Also tagged | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

Preview of Huhne’s interview with GMTV

By Stephen Tall | Fri 2nd November 2007 - 2:41 pm

An email from GMTV’s Sunday Programme pings into my inbox with the transcript of Steve Richards’ interview with Lib Dem leadership contender, Chris Huhne. Here’s a few snippets to whet your appetites. (The full interview will be broadcast this Sunday morning).

On Chris’s comment that the Lib Dems mustn’t become a third Tory party:

CH: What I see in British politics, which I think is very disappointing to a lot of people, is a sudden Gaderene rush towards the same solutions being offered by all of the different political parties, and there will not be a future for the Liberal Democrats unless we’re prepared to stand outside that consensus and say where it’s failing and why the political process is held in such disrespect and disillusion, frankly, by so many people, and I think we’ve got to re-inject into our message that sense of being the anti-establishment party that actually wants to change the whole system, not just change the ministerial faces on the back seat of the limousine, and if we are there as just seen as another potential participant in another consensus government of blancmange, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, we’re not going to make any progress.

On what distinguishes his candidacy from Nick Clegg’s:

CH: Well, I just think that from that point of view we’re both energetic, we’ve both got a lot of verve and vigour, and I think that if you look at the track record, and I think that many, many people have said that the party could do well with either of us, and I certainly think that Nick would make an excellent leader. My position is simply, not this time. So I think that we’ve got great opportunities, but I think that we need to have clear dividing lines from the Tories, clear dividing lines from Labour, and not get sucked into a cosy consensus on things for example like use of market solutions, where they don’t work in public services.

On whether he’s the ‘left-wing’ leadership candidate:

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Posted in Leadership Election | Also tagged and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

It’s one ex-leader apiece for Chris and Nick

By Stephen Tall | Fri 26th October 2007 - 3:15 pm

Last week, Paddy Ashdown endorsed Nick Clegg as leader, both in The Guardian and on YouTube.

Today, it’s the turn of David Steel to endorse a candidate – and he’s plumping for Chris Huhne. The full story is on Chris’s campaign website. Here’s Lord Steel’s quote, which also seeks to re-open the Trident debate:

“I have known Chris Huhne for 25 years, and worked last year with him on the Steel Commission. I therefore enthusiastically endorse him. He is a man of great ability and experience.

“Having enjoyed a talk with both candidates there is also one policy matter which

…

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Posted in Leadership Election and News | Also tagged and | 10 Comments
Geoffrey Payne

Opinion: My conference awards

By Geoffrey Payne | Sat 22nd September 2007 - 12:24 pm

Best Fringe meeting:

The Liberator/ Lib Dem peace group “War on Terror”, with Craig Murray, former ambassador to Uzbekistan. There were some terrific fringe meetings this year, but this one was breathtaking.

Craig Murray was sacked from his position in Uzbekistan because he was determined to speak out against the appalling abuses of human rights in this country.

Uzbekistan is an “ally” in the war “against” terror and an important strategic country for the mining and transportation of important natural resources. It is also a totalitarian state with an appalling human rights record that easily compares with Iraq under Saddam Hussein or North Korea.

Craig spoke of how the government there claims that the opposition is part of Al-Qaeda. The government uses torture to force alleged opponents to admit they know a list of people they have never heard of before, and this “intelligence” is used by western intelligence agencies to “prove” that Al Qaeda is operating in Uzbekistan, and hence we support the government there. The “intelligence” services even know this is the case – because Craig told them – but they prefer the narrative to the truth.

The words “45 minutes” spring to mind.

I would like to write more, but it is best to read his own words in his book.

The meeting was at times very funny, and at other time horrific.

Most Important Fringe meeting:

Reinventing the State book launch – since the publication of the Orange Book, some Lib Dem members have got over-excited and started proclaiming the Lib Dems as a doctrinaire free market party. David Laws himself has claimed that his controversial chapter was misunderstood, and this fringe meeting proved to be an important correction. The anti-state rhetoric of both the Tories and the Lib Dems may sound similar at times, but the Conservative preference for a small state is very different from the Lib Dem preference for a decentralised state.

It was good to see such a wide range of speakers including Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg. And now I sense the party is a left-of-centre party again, as Ming said it would be under his leadership.

This fringe meeting was a book launch so here is the link.

Best speeches:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Duncan Brack

In search of the Great Liberals

By Duncan Brack | Fri 14th September 2007 - 9:30 am

William Ewart Gladstone, David Lloyd George, John Maynard Keynes, John Stuart Mill – who is the greatest Liberal of all time? All Lib Dems coming to the autumn party conference will be able to cast a vote.

The poll for the greatest British Liberal in history is being run by the Liberal Democrat History Group. In the first stage, in July, readers of the Journal of Liberal History voted between 15 potential candidates (plus an eclectic collection of write-ins).

We chose not to define what we meant by ‘great’ – leaving that up to our voters – but our criteria for candidates were that they must have been active in the Liberal Democrats, or its predecessors, or influential on Liberal thinking; they must have been British, or active in Britain; and they must be dead.

The final four to emerge were:

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Posted in Conference and News | Also tagged | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

Paddy was a spy, says Ming

By Stephen Tall | Thu 13th September 2007 - 8:28 am

According to the Glasgow Daily Record, anyway:

Ex-Lib Dem leader Lord Paddy Ashdown has been outed as a spy by successor Sir Menzies Campbell. Ashdown, a former Royal Marine who served with the elite Special Boat Service, was long suspected to have been a real life James Bond. Now Sir Menzies has confirmed he worked for MI6.

The North East Fife MP revealed: “Put it this way, when he was in the Foreign Office, I think he was in the more shadowy side of Foreign Office activity.”

And, indeed, the resemblance between Paddy and Daniel Craig is uncanny.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Preston’s dead end?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 30th July 2007 - 9:35 am

I think it’s safe to say that former Guardian editor Peter Preston ain’t too enamoured of the Lib Dems, or of our leader, Ming Campbell:

The only certainty confirmed through the political ides of July is that Sir Menzies Campbell will lead the Liberal Democrats into the next election. Gordon Brown has to choose when to hold it; the Conservative party, chuntering over David Cameron, has to decide whether to commit suicide now or later. But, whenever it comes, featuring whoever’s still left at whichever helm, Ming will be there. The latest ICM polls may say that 41% of his own supporters aren’t keen on him, but those unexciting second places in Ealing and Sedgefield have made him unshiftable. No new faces, no new ideas. He’s staying.

At a national level, it puts the Lib Dems on the back foot, struggling to hold on rather than advance. Maybe the old dislocation of an equation – Labour losing ground in the cities of the north, the Tories still failing to make ground in the suburbs of the south – will come to their rescue: but don’t bank on it. Brown sets a formidable pace. Cameron is young enough to find a second wind. Only the old sprinter can’t raise a canter.

Mr Preston’s piece is worth reading in full.

There is a recitation of some tired old clichés which only a state-centrist Guardianista would make space for – “how difficult it is for Lib Dems to define consistent national policies. What plays well in Sheffield is a bum note in Tiverton, and vice versa.”

Well, I’m not sure how true that is…

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Ashdown on Afghanistan

By Stephen Tall | Thu 19th July 2007 - 2:16 pm

A sober assessment of the current situation from former Lib Dem leader, Lord Paddy Ashdown, in today’s Guardian. Here’s how it starts:

In July 2006, Britain’s highly respected commander of international forces in Afghanistan, General David Richards, issued a stark warning: “Afghanistan is a good and winnable war but, at the pace we are proceeding, we need to realise that we could actually fail here.” A year on, as yesterday’s defence committee report indicates, we are indeed beginning to fail in Afghanistan.

Failure is not yet inevitable. But it is now likely, and will remain likely until we increase resources and redress

…

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Posted in News | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Paddy on the ’97 Lib-Lab ‘Project’

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th July 2007 - 2:42 pm

Former Lib Dem leader, Paddy Ashdown, was interviewed by Iain Dale last night on Internet TV politics channel, 18 Doughty Street.

Here’s a clip in which Paddy talks about his ‘Project’ negotiations with Tony Blair before the ’97 election, as well as his views on the current state of the party.

http://www.18doughtystreet.com/on_demand/597

The full interview is available via the 18 Doughty Street website here.

Lib Dem bloggers Gavin Whenman and Paul Walter have posted their thoughts on the interview here and here.

Posted in Lib Dem TV and News | Also tagged and | Leave a comment
Richard Huzzey

Ed Davey slams Guardian smears

By Richard Huzzey | Wed 20th June 2007 - 11:06 am

In a comment on Lib Dem Voice, Ed Davey has quashed the Guardian’s far-fetched reports of Lib Dems joining a Labour government. Ed is Ming’s chief of staff and chair of the party’s Campaigns and Communications committee. The story was mentioned by Stephen this morning, but Ed replied:

For the record, there is no prospect of any Liberal Democrat joining the Brown Government.

Iain Dale has also thrown scepticism on the story, noting that no member of the Grauniad’s political team had wanted to put their name to the article.

Update: The Daily Mail’s Ben Brogan suggests that the …

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 13 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dems to join Brown cabinet?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 20th June 2007 - 8:41 am

That’s the startling story in today’s Guardian, which reports:

Gordon Brown and Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, have held private discussions in recent days about a plan for one or two senior Lib Dems to join Mr Brown’s first cabinet, the Guardian has been told by a well-placed source. It is being emphasised that the discussions have not been about a coalition and may not have been conclusive.

The comments of the quoted party spokesmen do not refute the story, which by implication suggests there’s something to it:

One of Sir Menzies’s closest aides, Lord Kirkwood, issued a qualified

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 12 Comments
Kerry Hutchinson

Opinion: Two cheers for our foreign policy?

By Kerry Hutchinson | Thu 10th May 2007 - 7:49 am

On a recent visit to Jerusalem I was given a history lesson by a Palestinian shopkeeper that was the more blistering for his quiet humility in delivering it. He did not blame the US or even the Israelis, he said, for the situation his people had been enduring for nearly 40 years.

No, it was all firmly down to you British (pointing at me). To its policy failures and double-dealing in selling out on the Arabs post World war 1 and again in 1948 in abandoning the mandate of Palestine to the UN and doing a runner. What could I say?

Are we doing it again? Last September saw the launch at Conference of a foreign policy document that was informative, not so much by what it said, but by what it didn’t say. Iraq featured highly, as did global corporate responsibility. But were there missing components?

How clear and instantly recitable by us, is, for example, the Party’s position on Lebanon, Iran, and that ‘burning coal’ as Paddy Ashdown recently put it, of the Israel/Palestine problem? Personally, I’d be struggling, if challenged, to come up with the key messages on the Middle East outside of Iraq. So what?

Well, the issues of freedom of speech, freedom of movement and freedom to dissent – bedrock principles of any liberal democracy – matter. Because these core pillars are not just issues relevant to Iraq. They count throughout the whole of the Middle East. And supporting these liberal democratic principles must surely be the guiding direction across the board – an ‘a la carte’ approach might be criticised as failing the peoples of Palestine, the Lebanon and the other Middle East nations, nearly all of whom are sovereign States, if we major solely on Iraq alone.

This is one of the reasons why the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine is being launched at the 2007 Brighton Conference – to highlight the lack of the three basic core liberal democratic principles that many in the Middle East, especially the Palestinian electorate, do not yet have. To add to our Party’s foreign policy debate to help it address that ‘burning coal’ and help it back onto an agenda that oft overlooks the issue in the pursuit of easier political point-scoring ‘wins’.

At the same time and for similar reasons, revitalising the hitherto quiescent Lib Dem Middle East Council (MEC) may go a long way in stimulating policy debate within the Party, by beefing up the foreign policy debate and present a more inclusive and robust approach to all the regional components – not just Iraq.

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Posted in News | 1 Comment

50p on the road to defeat

By the founding editor | Tue 19th September 2006 - 11:45 am

I’m in the hall – the clapometer is clearly going in favour of the motion unamended – if that translates in to votes, the 50p top rate is on the way out.

UPDATE: after a series of good temperered speeches for and against, with standing room only in the hall to watch the result (both Ming and Paddy Ashdown were on the stage to applaud the unamended motion), the 50p rate is dropped in a 65/35 vote.

Lib Dem blogger of the year (keep saying it – he blushes) Stephen Tall has more. 

That’s the leadership’s first headache of the day …

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Posted in News | 8 Comments

Paddy running for President?

By the founding editor | Thu 14th September 2006 - 4:04 pm

Lib Dem voice was launched last Sunday, and thanks to you the site hits have far exceeded my expectations for the first week:

Graph

We’ve even generated our first ‘story’ in the press, and (somewhat sickeningly!) it’s in the Daily Express diary column.

In full, it reads:

He stood down as Lib Dem Leader in 1999 but it seems party members still pine for the days of Paddy Ashdown. A new poll by party website, Lib Dem Voice, shows Paddy, now Lord Ashdown, as by far the most popular choice to be the party’s president, the post occupied by …

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Posted in News | 4 Comments
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