1. What’s your formative political memory?
The 2005 election was the one I was probably first properly aware of as a 15/16 year-old. I remember reading the Liberal Democrat manifesto and seeing posters up in my area (mainly Labour, though I’m pleased to say that’s no longer true, and orange diamonds are now far more pervasive during election campaigns).
2. When did you start blogging?
September 2009.
3. Why did you start blogging?
I’d been reading various blogs for a while, and had previously thought about starting my own, but the catalyst was probably chatting to a number of bloggers at Lib Dem Voice’s BOTY awards at the 2009 conference.
4. What five words would you use to describe your blog?
Straightforward, rational and occasionally random.
5. What five words would you use to describe your political views?
In every possible way: liberal.
6. Which post have you most liked writing in the last year (and why)?
Attending and blogging about the court case which ultimately led to Phil Woolas being kicked out of Parliament was obviously quite an experience, and I also particularly liked writing this post on a rather daft claim by Ed Balls, which was very short and simple but which, I think, demonstrates the value of blogging as a medium.
7. Which post have you most liked reading in the last year (and why)?
I hope the rules can be bent, as this was just over a year ago, but I found this post by Stephen here on Lib Dem Voice on why Clegg should rule out a coalition (!) extremely compelling. It was faultless in its logic, and I agreed with Stephen at the time, but its arguments were based on a number of assumptions which we all made but which ultimately proved to be false (particularly that the Conservatives would never give enough ground, including on electoral reform, to ever make a coalition even remotely possible). Speculating on what might have been had the Lib Dem leadership followed Stephen’s advice is an interesting game, and I can’t help coming to the conclusion that we would now be in a (perhaps significantly) worse position than that which we are currently in.
8. What’s your favourite YouTube clip?
My Twitter followers won’t be surprised that I’ve picked this clip from the magnificent West Wing, the script-writing and acting in which demonstrate just why the show is so brilliant.
With the AV referendum drawing closer – and postal votes hitting doormats this weekend – there’s plenty of coverage of it in today’s newspapers, including a rather excellent piece in The Observer by former Liberal Democrat Leader Paddy Ashdown. The majority of Paddy’s piece has its sights firmly set on the increasingly pernicious NO campaign, most pertinently on this week’s “bizarre” intervention into the debate by the chancellor George Osborne – which unsurprisingly makes it onto The Observer front page.
Here’s an extract of what Paddy has to say:
What I am perplexed and deeply disturbed by is that those
The latest edition of the New Statesman has an interview with Nick Clegg, which has mostly garnered attention for the shock news that Nick Clegg is a human being and has been known to cry to music:
He is besotted by his “three lovely boys” and is most proud “by a long shot” of the family life he has created with Miriam. They manage to lead a relatively normal life, “not in a bunker in Westminster”, and he tries to pick his children up from school and put them to bed at night at least two or three times a week.
Mark Pack reviewed Francis Beckett’s new counterfactual collection, The Prime Ministers Who Never Were, on the Voice earlier this week — 14 ‘Big Beasts’ who, had the chips fallen differently, might have become premiers.
The list is mostly inevitable with a couple of intriguing outsiders: Austen Chamberlain, J R Clynes, Lord Halifax, Oswald Mosley, Herbert Morrison, Hugh Gaitskell, Rab Butler, George Brown, Norman Tebbit, Michael Foot, Denis Healey, Neil Kinnock, John Smith and David Miliband.
Voice readers will notice one evident fact: there’s not a single Liberal (or SDP) name among them. In some ways it’s not that surprising. After …
Some good news from the government on the unfolding international crisis that almost no-one in Britain is interested in, namely the Ivory Coast. The Department for International Development (DfiD) is giving £16m in emergency aid to help deal with the large numbers of people fleeing the violence.
Many of them are crossing the border to Liberia, a country itself struggling to recover from its own violence. As The Guardian reported,
Last week the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres,visited Liberia and warned that the influx of refugees threatened the country’s eight years of peace, following a civil war that left
This is the second in our series, Why Vote Yes, where prominent Liberal Democrats explain the importance of voting Yes in May’s referendum on the UK Parliamentary voting system.
Fellow Liberal Democrats – I’ve been in politics for a long time. There’s nothing wrong with people of any age getting involved, from a teenager to a centenarian. We can all make a difference.
But when almost every politician at the top of the “No” campaign was already a dinosaur by the time I was first elected to Parliament in 1983, you have to wonder about the freshness of their arguments.
Think of the changes Britain has seen during my lifetime – and theirs:
We’ve joined the European Union. We’ve established a Parliament in Scotland and an Assembly for Wales. We’ve voted in proportional representation elections for both – a far bigger change than AV – and the sky hasn’t fallen in.
And government, always the last to change under Tory and Labour alike, has often been the last to wake up to the incredible social changes that have changed Britain for the better.
So when those old Labour and Tory hacks gang up to tell you to be afraid of a long-overdue but frankly much smaller change, it tells you far more about their fears than those of the British public. Of course they’re against change. They want to hang on to the present system because it makes life easier for politicians. Well I am more interested in a system that makes life better for the voters!
The Independent on Sunday carried an interview with former leader of the Liberal Democrats Paddy Ashdown. Among topics covered are his upcoming book on the Special Boat Service (in which he served), his 7oth birthday, the coalition, the MOD and the situation in Libya.
Here’s an extract from the piece:
“Being a party in government requires a completely different approach but I am astonished at the maturity that, by and large, the party has taken to that. There are some who still want to live in the cloud cuckoo, never-neverland of opposition. I have always said there is no point being
In the Financial Times, Paddy Ashdown (former High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and former Leader of the Liberal Democrats) calls for a no-fly zone in Libya:
It is difficult not to feel a wearisome sense of déjà vu watching European leaders on Friday saying something needed to be done in Libya, but failing completely to say what.
Libya is not our backyard. But what happens there and in the other countries of the Maghreb matters to us Europeans very much. If those who have overturned dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt (and hopefully Libya) in this “Arab spring” can create effective,
Nick Clegg often talks about social mobility, but is it the right focus for the party’s social efforts?
The day after he was elected Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg set up a commission to look at social mobility in the UK. In the two years since then, he has regularly returned to the topic, and it has become a priority of his for party and then government policy-making, alongside making frequent appearances in speeches, slogans and soundbites from leading party figures.
Yet it is a phrase that risks becoming over-used, for it fails to communicate effectively what makes us Liberal Democrats …
In today’s Times (£) Paddy Ashdown argues that the Ministry of Defence is “no longer fit for purpose.”
Ashdown says that the current government are not making enough progress with addressing the Ministry’s problems: the large annual deficit, bureaucratic blunders and project overruns and puts them down to a lack of political direction.
Here’s an excerpt:
The dust is now settling on the Strategic Defence and Security Review, published last October. And what it reveals is that the deeply painful cuts already announced are not going to be enough to balance the books. There will have to be more — there may
Back in 1995 the Liberal Democrats under Paddy Ashdown made a video explaining what the party stands for and why people should back it. If you’ve been around in the party a few years you can have some fun spotting familiar faces from 15 years ago (including a young Danny Alexander), and even if not it’s striking how well some of the points have aged:
There were only 103 votes in it back in May, a statistic the voters of Oldham East and Saddleworth may have noticed one or twice on Elwyn Watkins‘ Lib Dem by-election campaign literature.
But, according to bookmakers Paddy Power, the race is over. As The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow acerbically notes on his essential daily live-blog, “I’m normally reluctant to quote bookies, because their press releases are cheap bids for free publicity which normally don’t tell us anything very new” — before breaking his own rule to quote a press release from Paddy Power (also received by the Voice):
This is the final piece in a series of posts on the main Liberal Democrat challenges for 2011. You can find all the posts in the series here.
Having started this series with the economy and then moving on to more internal issue in latter posts, it seems fitting to return to economic issues for the final post in this series.
Getting the substance on economic fairness right is and should continue to be a top priority for the party. In addition, getting the messaging right will help differentiate not only the Liberal Democrat contribution to the coalition from that of …
The crucial test for wavering Liberal Democrat MPs this week should be: is what has now been negotiated fairer and more progressive than the system Labour left behind? If it is, and I believe that it is, then I believe they should vote for it. For me, there is a simpler test. Under these new proposals, I know that an 18-year-old like me who had no parental income would
Conservative MP Rob Wilson’s book on the formation of a coalition government in May 2010, 5 Days to Power: The Journey to Coalition Britain, plays up the drama of the events, talking of how “Gordon Brown and David Cameron were both determined to do whatever was necessary to secure the position of Prime Minister” as if the story is one of a cliff-hanging drama which could have gone either way.
Whilst the outcome is certainly significant for British political history, what the book is far less convincing on is that there was really any serious chance of a Labour – …
Many insider accounts have already appeared of the events retold in David Laws’s book 22 Days in May: The Birth of the Lib Dem-Conservative Coalition. It is therefore one of the book’s strengths that not only is it written in a lively style which gives some freshness to the now familiar sequence of events but it also adds many new insights.
Although only briefly mentioned by Laws himself, perhaps the most important is how much the Liberal Democrats owe to Chris Huhne. In April, just before the second TV debate, I wrote,
Hopi Sen has blogged thoughtfully several times recently about the risk to Labour of slipping into focusing on the tactics without getting the strategy right. In Labour’s case that means, for example, an undue focus on how to next best shout – “those cuts are awful!” rather than working out how to deal with the public mostly blaming Labour for the need to cut in the first place. Tactical triumphs at PMQs only gets you so far; rebuilding a reputation for economic competence is what is needed to win – as William Hague found in his time as Conservative …
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 11th September 2010 - 6:50 pm
Ros Scott’s announcement that she is standing down from the position of party president has come as a surprise to Lib Dem members.
First, because it has become almost traditional for party presidents to serve two terms — Ros’s three predecessors, Simon Hughes, Lord Dholakia and Lord Maclennan all served two terms each, unchallenged. Secondly, because Ros herself is popular among the party’s grassroots. Though her authority took something of a knock during the MPs’ expenses scandal, the Voice’s most recent survey of party members showed she had a very good net effectiveness rating of +30%.
A review of how the Government responds to disasters such as the Haiti earthquake will be led by former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown, it was announced today.
Lord Ashdown will lead a taskforce of humanitarian experts from inside and outside Government to review all aspects of how the UK Government responds to disasters and work with the international community to speed up the delivery of aid.
The review will also look at how the UK can best work with international bodies and UN agencies in emergency situations and to ensure that the global response to
In the Guardian last week, Timothy Garton-Ash argued that the Liberal Democrats’ distinctive identity is being lost both by coalition with the Conservatives and by other parties’ appropriation of the “liberal” label:
The Liberal Democrats should change their name to the Liberals. Here’s why. First of all, Liberal Democrats is a pretty meaningless name. That’s liberal democrats as opposed to illiberal democrats, is it? Or as opposed to liberal anti-democrats?
Lib Dems, to which they are usually abridged, is even emptier. The name sounds like the product of an awkward compromise, which is exactly what it is. When the Liberal party,
We were conscious this was a much more expensive way of managing our lives than if we had just been honest about our relationship, because if we had, we could have claimed a significantly greater amount of money than we did.
We would often say to ourselves ‘this is ridiculous’, as a consequence of having this bizarre private life, we are costing ourselves far more than if we had just been honest about things.
To me in particular it seemed that was a price worth paying to protect our privacy.
To me, what is really important for people to understand is that none of the things that we did were done to make financial gain. They were done to protect our privacy.
I guess it was pretty stupid really, because all of the people I have spoken to since have accepted it without hesitation: my parents, family and friends. Not being honest with them has meant a huge price over recent years.
David Laws also said that he used the money from his City career to fund his political one:
For many of us in the Liberal Democrats, this is a rather unexpected moment. And a somewhat nerve-racking one, too.
For decades, our party worked towards a realignment of the Left; an alliance with Labour that would reshape politics and bring in a new and more modern form of government. Now we find ourselves in coalition not with the centre-Left, but with the centre-Right. What happened? And can it work?…
A deal with the Labour Party would have been easier, more comfortable and far more consistent with our strategy of realignment – and it was
Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown united today in condemning three retired members of the defence establishment who have a letter published in today’s Times attempting to frighten voters away from voting Lib Dem with crude warnings what perils await Britain if the party gains power.
The letter has just three signatories: Peter Clarke, Sir Richard Dearlove, and Lord Guthrie. Former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown issued a masterly put-down of the trio in the Times:
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, the former Lib Dem leader who helped to draw up the party’s defence and national security policies, responded to today’s letter, saying:
It will be almost like old times for the Lib Dems, with former leader Charles Kennedy joining Nick Clegg to launch the Lib Dems’ Scottish campaign – as CK himself tweeted earlier today. Here’s how the BBC reports it:
Mr Clegg will get the Scottish campaign under way in Glasgow along with Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott and senior party figures, including Charles Kennedy.
The party – Scotland’s second biggest in Westminster terms –
A good conference rally is fun to attend and tricky to report on, simply because there should be nothing new. The audience ideally leaves reminded of the key messages and enthused to fight the good fight – there’s plenty of time for controversy over the rest of the weekend.
As in Bournemouth, the rally took on a glitzy feel: dry ice, bright lights, (relatively) slick presentation.
Lorely Burt opened procedings with a few jokes, and promise of holding her seat in Solihull, where the Lib Dems overturned a 9,400 Tory majority last time round.
The Liberal Democrats will centre their campaign on joint appearances by Nick Clegg, leader, and Vince Cable, Treasury spokesman, in an attempt to project a blend of youth and experience.
A clutch of former Lib Dem leaders will be deployed in the regions. Paddy Ashdown is taking a hands-on role directing the Lib Dem’s defence of the south-west heartlands. Sir Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy will be touring seats in Scotland and the north.
The article also lists Chris Huhne (“pugnacious, quick-footed”) and Lynne Featherstone (“sound media performer”) as ones to watch in the Liberal Democrat campaign.
Over in The Times, former Lib Dem leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown argues that though there are reasons to be cheerful in the latest news from Afghanistan, battlefield success alone won’t win the war. Here’s an excerpt:
… we do, at last, seem to be getting our act together on the battlefield. We are now following the right military strategy — protecting the people, not chasing the enemy. We have limited our aims to the achievable and matched our resources to our objectives. … it is now possible to turn the momentum on the battlefield in our favour in the next few
Over at The Times today, former Lib Dem leader Lord (Paddy) Ashdown has an article arguing that the the Ministry of Defence is not fit for purpose, branding it sclerotic, inefficient, hamstrung by inter-service rivalry, and resistant to change. Here’s an excerpt:
While the American Army under General Petraeus has developed a culture of listening, and learning, to troops, whatever their rank or experience, the culture in the MoD is that you don’t take lessons from junior officers. The ministry needs to become a learning institution if it is to become effective.
The adaptation to counter- insurgency operations seems to have been
Nigel Jones @Mick Taylor, I agree we must be concerned about income inequality in current circumstances, though overcoming this is about taxing the rich, better public serv...
Nigel Jones @Mick Taylor, you are right to focus on strategy since we have plenty of policy, but i think we also need a vision and better messaging. It is easy to have stro...
Nigel Jones The New Deal graphic is very helpful but of course not perfect. As to preventing Reform from winning, we need to be an anti-establishment party as Chris Bowers ...
Nigel Jones It is certainly true that community politics is insufficient for long term gain. That was my experience in 13 yrs as a councillor and still active locally; at o...
Katharine Pindar Splendid stuff, well done Yorkists! 'The New Deal' seems a great idea in itself. Your graphic shows, however, how much work will need to be done to assert ourse...
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Raising a flap about letterboxes
Arriving at one of East Finchley's ghost platforms
Restrained
Chase Park fair photos
A swamp of lies and disinformation
Nigel Jones 
Katharine Pindar 