Tag Archives: the guardian

Stephen Tall

Guardian verdict on voting reform: “Mr Clegg spoke for progress; Mr Straw for reaction.”

By Stephen Tall | Tue 7th September 2010 - 10:15 am

The Guardian has not always been kind to the Coalition since its formation; still less to the Lib Dems. But its stinging rebuke to Labour’s “opposition for opposition’s sake” — with its attempt last night cynically to torpedo the Lib/Con government’s electoral reform measures — might perhaps give the new party leader pause for thought.

In the topsy-turvy world of Coalition politics, two parties which do not support the alternative vote last night voted to endorse a referendum on it; while the party which pledged to introduce it in its manifesto decided to jettison that promise.

It was an irony …

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Mark Pack

Who is who behind the scenes in the coalition?

By Mark Pack | Wed 18th August 2010 - 11:07 pm

Today’s Guardian has a pretty decent go at covering who the key advisers are, on both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative side, how they are working together, who talks to who and so on.

The piece has been praised by others today, but I only say “pretty decent” because it doesn’t mention Alison Suttie. Talking about Lib Dem advisers without mentioning her is a bit like talking about Lib Dem MPs without mentioning Vince or my diet without mentioning chocolate. Previously for Ming Campbell and now for Nick Clegg she’s played an absolutely key role in a deputy chief of …

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Iain Roberts

Marks out of ten for the coalition?

By Iain Roberts | Tue 27th July 2010 - 11:20 am

The Guardian is running the latest ICM poll today.

The overall story is good for the Lib Dems – up three points to 19% (both Labour and the Tories are slightly down against the last ICM poll), and the Coalition remains stubbornly popular, still in the 55-60% range.

But this is just one poll (and there are others both significantly better and worse for the party), so let’s not worry too much about the headline figures.

More interesting is the line the Guardian takes and the “marks out of ten” for the Coalition Government.

First the line taken in the article. If …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

Guardian: Labour’s involvement in illegal abduction and torture of British citizens

By Stephen Tall | Thu 15th July 2010 - 10:00 am

Today’s Guardian reports the involvement of senior Labour figures, including Tony Blair and Jack Straw, in the illegal abduction and torture of British citizens by the secret services:

The true extent of the Labour government’s involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens after the al-Qaida attacks of September 2001 has been spelled out in stark detail with the disclosure during high court proceedings of a mass of highly classified documents.

Previously secret papers that have been disclosed include a number implicating Tony Blair’s office in many of the events that are to be the subject of the

…

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The Voice

Clegg’s verdict on Labour in opposition: “Collective bile is not a political strategy”

By The Voice | Fri 9th July 2010 - 11:45 pm

There’s an in-depth, wide-ranging and pretty frank interview with Nick Clegg in The Guardian today, in which he defends the coalition, assures those Lib Dem activists worried by the budget cuts that they are “not driven by some ideological zeal”, and attacks Labour for its failure to recognise that coalitions are here to stay: “Something very, very big is happening in politics.”

Here are some of the juiciest Clegg-bites:

On the coalition:

is not an aberration, but a natural consequence of what has been happening for years, which is a loosening of the old tribal ties between the old parties and

…

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Mark Pack

Two Lib Dem MPs rebel over VAT

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th June 2010 - 7:37 am

The Guardian:

The coalition faced its first rebellion last night when two Liberal Democrat MPs voted against a budget proposal to increase VAT to 20%.

Bob Russell and Mike Hancock voted with Labour to oppose the increase, which has alarmed many Lib Dems who warned during the election of a Tory VAT “bombshell”.

To shouts of “shame” from the Labour benches, the 2.5% increase in VAT from January was backed by 346 to 270, majority 76. Russell, MP for Colchester, and Hancock, MP for Porstmouth South, had earlier supported a backbench Lib Dem motion demanding a Treasury investigation into the impact on the

…

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Stephen Tall

A curate’s egg of an article – The Guardian asks, “Will the Liberal Democrats survive the coalition?”

By Stephen Tall | Wed 2nd June 2010 - 2:30 pm

There’s an interesting in-depth feature in today’s Guardian, focusing on the future prospects for the Lib Dems now the party is in government: Will the Liberal Democrats survive the coalition? (It’s a question I think we’ve all been asking ourselves for the last three weeks).

It’s a generally fair and balanced take – highlighting the many acknowledged threats to the party, recognising there are opportunities, too – with interviewees including Lord (David) Steel, Simon Hughes and James Graham.

However, it’s a little marred by some rather strange omissions by its author, Andy Beckett. For example, it seems odd to talk …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 19 Comments
Mark Pack

Postal ballots are not the same as postal vote application forms

By Mark Pack | Mon 3rd May 2010 - 2:20 pm

The Guardian today seems to confuse application forms for postal votes with the actual ballot papers that postal voters receive:

At the weekend David Monks, head of elections for the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, called for a ban on political parties handling postal votes amid fears that activists are collecting ballot papers before forwarding them on in order to record the results in their canvassing process. This breaches a national code of conduct, but is not illegal.

Activists taking postal ballot papers and then recording the voting intention from them would leave them open to legal action (e.g. undue …

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Posted in Election law | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Can you help Emily Thornberry?

By Mark Pack | Fri 30th April 2010 - 11:51 pm

Emily Thornberry, Labour MP for Islington South, has been on Newsnight repeatedly claiming there is nothing new in The Guardian’s support for the Liberal Democrats and that it’s just a repeat of what the paper said in 2005.

So perhaps you can help her by seeing if you can work out the difference?

The Guardian, 2005: “Voters should use their heads and hearts to re-elect Labour with an increased Liberal Democrat presence.”

The Guardian, 2010: “If the Guardian had a vote in the 2010 general election it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats.”

Re-elect Labour? Vote Liberal Democrat? It’s all …

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Alex Foster

+++ Holy crap, the Guardian endorses Lib Dems

By Alex Foster | Fri 30th April 2010 - 7:01 pm

Not content with publishing a letter from leading progressives, the Guardian tonight brings to an end its journey to a decision about which party to support.

The article is here.

General election 2010: The liberal moment has come
If the Guardian had a vote it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats. But under our discredited electoral system some people may – hopefully for the last time – be forced to vote tactically

We can certainly commend them on their decision, and my headline shows my surprise at them taking this bold step. I think many people were expecting …

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Posted in General Election | Also tagged , and | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

This is why the posters, avatars, status updates and more matter

By Mark Pack | Tue 27th April 2010 - 9:20 am

From The Guardian’s report on its latest ICM poll (which puts the Lib Dems in second once again*):

There is also evidence that the bandwagon effect is helping the pick up votes: 31% of all voters, including 26% of Labour supporters, say knowing that other people are switching to the Lib Dems encourages them to do the same.

That’s one of the reasons why posters in windows, avatars on Twitter, group membership on Facebook and so on all matter: they help persuade more people to vote Liberal Democrat.

* Although the spread from first place to third is within the margin …

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Stephen Tall

The Guardian asks, “What happens if Cameron loses?”

By Stephen Tall | Fri 26th March 2010 - 9:55 am

Here’s a bit of fun speculation, at least if you’re not a Tory. Let’s suppose most of the last 10 days’ polls are right, and David Cameron’s Tories are destined to have fewer MPs than Labour in the House of Commons (even if they win more votes) – what would the Tories do?

That’s the question Andy Beckett ponders in today’s Guardian.

Would David Cameron resign or be forced to quit? According to Tim Bale, author of The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron, he’d be safe if he chooses to be:

“You’ll get lots of huffing and puffing on

…

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Alex Foster

Guardian readers switching to Lib Dems in droves

By Alex Foster | Thu 25th March 2010 - 11:56 am

Wednesday’s editorial for the Guardian – which I found online here – is one of those pieces you see all too often in the Guardian, the time honoured preparation of the nose peg. Hold your nose, disregard the stench and put the cross by the rose.

It tries to find some vestige of hope in the Labour party, one thing remaining that is still worth voting for. But it’s the penultimate paragraph and not its conclusion that rings truest:

The party’s activists and MPs are so obviously convinced of their own decent intentions and past record that they fail to

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 11 Comments
NewsHound

Michael Moore live online at the Guardian at 11am

By NewsHound | Tue 16th March 2010 - 10:22 am

Over at The Guardian website, Michael Moore, Lib Dem spokesman on international development, will be live online and answering readers’ questions about aid and development from 11am today, Tuesday. Here’s how it’s being trailed:

Last year, the Liberal Democrats set out their thoughts on international development in a policy paper, which outlined support for the aid target of 0.7% of GDP, a call for renewed efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals and an acknowledgement that aid sometimes fails and that perhaps financial aid is not the most effective way of delivering support.

At 11am (GMT) on Tuesday, 16 March, the Lib

…

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NewsHound

Stephen Tall and Mark Pack on the launch of ‘How Liberal / Authoritarian is your MP?’ website

By NewsHound | Sat 13th March 2010 - 9:25 am

To co-incide with the launch yesterday by Lib Dem Voice of our new ‘How Liberal / Authoritarian is your MP?’ website – http://rank.libdemvoice.org – two articles apeared in the media …

Meanwhile Stephen Tall penned an article for The Guardian’s Comment Is …

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Stephen Tall

ICM: 59% of Lib Dem voters support marriage tax breaks … Or do they?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 26th January 2010 - 7:50 pm

The Guardian’s monthly ICM poll, published today, asks a couple of intriguing questions.

For a start, we discover where Lib Dem supporters perceive they sit within the class system (however self-defined) – 50% say they are middle-class, and 48% that they are working-class. This compares with 38% middle-class to 61% working class for Labour; and 56% to 39% for the Tories.

(Slightly bizarrely, it turns out the Lib Dems have more supporters who identify themselves as upper-class (2%) than the Tories do (1%); the poll’s margin of error may explain that finding.)

But the ICM/Guardian question which interested me most …

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Stephen Tall

Why I’m sticking up for the Taxpayers’ Alliance. Sort of.

By Stephen Tall | Mon 21st December 2009 - 2:35 pm

Today’s Guardian is full of righteous indignation about the allegation that the Taxpayers’ Alliance has set up a charitable arm to claim Gift Aid on donations from wealthy backers, Tory tax allies ‘subsidised’ by the taxpayer:

A campaign group which claims to represent the interests of ordinary taxpayers is using a charitable arm which gives it access to tax relief on donations from wealthy backers, the Guardian has learned.

The Conservative-linked Taxpayers’ Alliance, which campaigns against the misuse of public funds, has set up a charity under a different name which can secure subsidies from the taxman worth up to 40%

…

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Alex Foster

More Hansard quotes about #Trafigura

By Alex Foster | Thu 15th October 2009 - 4:55 pm

Yesterday we brought you links to discussion in Parliament about disreputable oil company Trafigura’s legal shenanigans to prevent discussion of their activities on the Côte d’Ivoire.

Today here’s a little more, courtesy of Private Eye’s blog. Ian Hislop, the editor of the magazine, appeared with Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger at a select committee hearing discussing the damage injunctions can do to real, investigative journalism. An unedited verbatim transcript can be found here, with the juicy bits starting around Q850, about halfway down the very long page.

In it, Hislop talks candidly about a number of incidences where …

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Stephen Tall

Let’s all say “Thank you” to #Trafigura with a postcard

By Stephen Tall | Tue 13th October 2009 - 6:58 pm

As Helen Duffett already blogged earlier today on Lib Dem Voice, a combination of the Guardian’s legal team and Twitter users worldwide combined today to restore some element of common-sense to the law – allowing the media to report a Parliamentary question tabled by Paul Farrelly asking about the publication of the Minton Report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

LDV trafigura TYIn one sense, Trafigura and its lawyers Carter Ruck behaved shamefully in attempting to gag newspapers from reporting on Parliamentary proceedings. But in another, more profound, sense we should be grateful. As a result of their cack-handed attempts to silence The Guardian, hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people now know about the serious allegations against Trafigura. Quite simply, this would not have been possible without the active role played by Trafigura and Carter Ruck.

It seems entirely appropriate, therefore, to say thank you to Trafigura for its role in exposing the company to far greater reputational risk than could have ever been achieved by one article published in a single newspaper.

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Helen Duffett

The net is mightier than the gag #trafigura

By Helen Duffett | Tue 13th October 2009 - 1:35 pm

Breaking news from the Guardian :

The existence of a previously-secret injunction against the media by oil traders Trafigura can now be revealed.

Within the last hour, Trafigura’s lawyers Carter-Ruck, abandoned an attempt to prevent the Guardian from reporting proceedings in parliament which revealed its existence.

Labour MP Paul Farrelly put down a question yesterday to the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw. It asked about the injunction obtained by “Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton Report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura”.

The past 16 hours have …

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Guardian asks Lib Dems, “When did you stop beating your wife?”

By Stephen Tall | Sat 12th September 2009 - 12:40 pm

The Grauniad, bastion of liberal values. But also a newspaper which today gives vent to a number of unsubstantiated smears against the Lib Dems in an article by Steven Morris – Liberal Democrats accused of dog whistle politics over Gypsy claims – which buys hook, line and sinker into the spin from Labour and Tory HQs.

The Grauniad’s story focuses on Islington (though cheerfully throws a few other snide half-truths into the mix to legitimise turning a local issue into a story for a national newspaper – of which more later), and the recent proposal by Islington Labour party to consider locating a site for travellers and gypsies in Highbury Fields, the borough’s premier open space. The Lib Dems in the area have campaigned against the idea, arguing that Highbury Fields is unsuitable as a location for any development, including new travellers’ sites. Agree or disagree with the local party’s position, but it’s an entirely consistent view.

What’s most definitely not consistent is Islington Labour leader Catherine West’s spin. Here’s how the Grauniad presents it:

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Stephen Tall

Time to stop wasting money on “frigging ridiculous” health authorities, says Clegg

By Stephen Tall | Fri 28th August 2009 - 7:45 pm

The Guardian big-ups Nick Clegg’s plans to cut waste in the public services, specifically by trying to rein-in hospital trusts using their monopoly position to drive up costs. The paper bills it as “one of the most radical ideas of any of the main political parties to save money”:

Under the Lib Dem plan, hospital trusts would be forced to charge the same rate for operations as the cheapest and most efficient hospitals in the country.

Clegg said: “It is a very specific but rather radical idea, of saying that all hospital tariffs under the ‘payment by results’ system should match the most efficient tariffs in the hospital system. We think that would save about £2bn a year.”

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Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Alex Foster

Guardian publishes full list of Euro election results

By Alex Foster | Tue 9th June 2009 - 4:41 pm

Kudos to the Guardian which has obtained council-level euro results and munged them together into one giant spreadsheet with click-sort columns, over on its datablog.

The hook the Guardian are using is that it allows you see just how well the BNP did in your area, but anyone with a political hat will want to play with the data and slice it in numerous different ways.

Congratulations, then, to South Lakeland, for the highest Lib Dem Euro score anywhere in the country; commiserations to Barking and Dagenham where we polled under 5%… and ooh – is that a weak correlation …

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Helen Duffett

Daily View 2×2: 9 June 2009

By Helen Duffett | Tue 9th June 2009 - 8:22 am

2 Big Stories

From the Guardian, Gordon Brown’s great escape:

A chastened Gordon Brown yesterday promised his backbench critics that he would learn from his mistakes, as he survived Labour’s worst national election results since 1918 and some of the most personal attacks ever mounted on his governing style.

At a private inquest staged only hours after the party came third in the European parliamentary elections, with less than 16% of the vote, a rebel attempt to call for a secret ballot on his leadership was seen off by party loyalists.

Speaking to a packed meeting of Labour MPs and peers,

…

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Stephen Tall

Guardian endorses Lib Dems in Euro elections (more or less)

By Stephen Tall | Tue 2nd June 2009 - 9:54 am

Following the endorsement of its sister paper the Observer and its leading columnist Polly Toynbee, the Guardian editorial today all-but formally recommends its readers vote for the Lib Dems in this Thursday’s Euro polls:

The case for supporting the Liberal Democrats is now very strong. Anyone who believes Britain should be an engaged member of the European Union – who does not believe scare stories about the Lisbon treaty and who wants to back a party that campaigns on this – should vote Lib Dem. So should anyone who cares about constitutional renewal. Nick Clegg’s party has ancestral

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 11 Comments
Helen Duffett

Nick Clegg: at home in more ways than one

By Helen Duffett | Mon 1st June 2009 - 1:57 pm

More positive press for the Liberal Democrats today: following yesterday’s Observer editorial, sister paper the Guardian today has an interview with Nick Clegg.

His first interview in his family home, with his wife and children around, the G2 piece is a mix of lifestyle and political issues.

Clegg had never allowed access to his family home before, but from what I saw he could give WebCameron a run for its money when it comes to cuteness. Deep in leafy Putney, the front door opened on to a vision of middle-class domesticity – a newborn baby dozing in a basket, and

…

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Mark Pack

What’s the significance of today’s Observer editorial?

By Mark Pack | Sun 31st May 2009 - 6:07 pm

The Observer coming out today and urging a vote for the Liberal Democrats will have put a spring in the step of many deliverers, canvassers and poster teams around the country, especially when combined with the news of the Telegraph ICM poll putting the Liberal Democrats in second place.

In the past both the sister papers – Guardian and Observer – have toyed with urging Liberal Democrat votes, saying nice things about the party and urging tactical voting whilst falling short of the sort of clear support for Lib Dem votes that today’s Observer has. Indeed, it’s easy to joke …

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 21 Comments
Mark Pack

Guardian mostly apologises to Jo Swinson

By Mark Pack | Wed 27th May 2009 - 9:57 am

From today’s Corrections and Clarifications column in the Guardian:

A further correction to our graphic surveying the expenses of certain MPs: In the category Cheapest claims, we stated without qualification that cosmetics were included in receipts submitted by Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire (23 May, page 6). Jo Swinson has denied claiming for these makeup items, telling the Telegraph, which originally reproduced one of her receipts, that the cosmetics appeared on a Boots receipt for other items she was claiming.

(More on this story in James Graham’s weekend post – including his request that you send an …

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Stephen Tall

This is what happens when journalists lower their standards #mpsexpenses

By Stephen Tall | Sat 23rd May 2009 - 3:45 pm

A week ago, I wrote an article attacking the Telegraph’s coverage of the MPs’ expenses row under the deliberately provocative headline, What has the Telegraph done for the reputation of journalism? Amidst all the outrageous abuses by MPs that the newspaper has reported, I said, it’s also been guilty of some shoddy reporting, giving equal prominence to stories which simply do not stand up to scrutiny, and deliberately omitting facts which do not fit with its headline allegations.

The main point of the article, though, was to challenge how the rest of the news media was responding to the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 20 Comments
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