Tag Archives: the house magazine

LibLink: Wendy Chamberlain on need to tackle “serious and systemic” police failings

In an article for The House, Wendy Chamberlain, the only woman former Police officer in the Commons, says that the murder of Sarah Everard is a watershed moment to tackle serious and systemic failings at the heart of the Police. It’s a great follow-up to her interview on Sky News on Friday.

She describes how the abuse of power of Sarah’s murderer has led to a loss of trust in not just the Met, but Police across the country:

As a former police officer myself, I still carry the responsibility of my service with me long after I stopped wearing the uniform. Having served as a police officer does shape people’s opinions of you. At the time of my election in 2019, I viewed it as a way of demonstrating that I was someone to be trusted.

Couzens used and abused not only his position of power, but the notion of trust that Sarah placed in him as someone who wears the uniform with a duty to safeguard and protect.

That trust has been seriously eroded and damaged by this terrible crime. It is a shattering of trust that goes beyond the Metropolitan Police and applies to police services as a whole across the country.

So how is this to be fixed?

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , , and | 2 Comments

Sarah Olney: Richmond Park By-Election was one of the best experiences of my life

Our newest MP has been talking to The House magazine, along with other recent by-election winners, about the Liberal Democrats’ winning campaign in Richmond Park. She described it as one of the best experiences of her life:

Running in a by-election was one of the best experiences of my life. I am very new to politics, I’ve never been involved in a parliamentary campaign of any kind, I’ve never been a candidate in any election before, so I had no idea what to expect. It was quite a high profile campaign, right from the beginning I was right in the

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 10 Comments

Congratulations, Jo Baker: Lib Dem Researcher of the Year!

Huge congrats to Jo Baker – researcher for Mark Williams, Lib Dem MP for Ceredigion – for winning The House Magazine and PoliticsHome.com’s Liberal Democrat Researcher of the Year!

Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , and | 1 Comment

LibLink: Lorely Burt – “Then I went to Holloway”

lorely-outside-parliament-1

Yesterday, Lorely Burt was beaten by Sir Malcolm Bruce (some say closely) to the Deputy Leadership of the Parliamentary Party.

A few days ago The House Magazine interviewed her. In the article headlined Wouldn’t it be Lorely?, Lorely explains how her  “imaginative parents” chose her unusual name.

There was another child who was named Lorely and as far as I know there has only ever been two of us. They heard about this other child and thought ‘ooohhh that’s a nice name.’

She makes a number of comments relating to women in politics including the “very chauvinistic environment” in the Commons.

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged | 6 Comments

LibLink: Danny Alexander – The Highlander

house danny alexanderThe House magazine features a smiling Danny Alexander on the cover, and a lengthy interview inside.

On the Comprehensive Spending Review:

Now that the dust has settled on the Spending Round, he has a rare moment to catch his breath and reflect on how it went. He says things went “more smoothly than many people outside this room thought when we started out on it”, but admits it was at times not easy.

“You are dealing with finding £11.5bn of savings. Of course those discussions are going to be difficult, they

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged | 19 Comments

LibLink: Mark Pack – Parliamentary predictions on the Queen’s Speech

Over at The House Magazine, Mark Pack (formerly of this parish) previews the upcoming Queen’s Speech — and applauds the fact that it may be rather thinner than we’ve grown used to:

Far too often ministers have confused volume of legislation sent through Parliament with being a good minister. It is an oh-so-tempting trap to fall into, as shown by some of the daft criticisms of the last Queen’s Speech – seeking to equate the Government’s seriousness about economic policies with the number of Bills on the subject.

Thankfully, however, at least the Liberal Democrat part of the Government is sticking to

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Tim Farron in outspoken and honest interview shock!

Tim Farron speaking - Some rights reserved by Liberal DemocratsAn interview with Tim Farron is never a dull one, that’s for sure. I found that out when I spoke to him for the party magazine, Ad Lib, last month — prompting the headline, Lib Dem brand ‘tainted by Tories’ (£), in The Sunday Times.

Today’s he’s in the headlines for an interview in The House magazione with Paul Waugh and Sam MacRory in which he likens Lib Dem MPs to ‘cockroaches’ (hard to get rid of) and ‘nutters’ (because of …

Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 15 Comments

5 points on Clegg’s admission that Coalition was wrong to cut capital spending

Nick Clegg in DublinNick Clegg has sparked a flurry of excitement with his admission in an interview for The House magazine that the Coalition cut capital spending ‘too far, too fast’ to coin a phrase. Here’s what he said to Paul Waugh and Sam Macrory:

“If I’m going to be sort of self-critical, there was this reduction in capital spending when we came into the Coalition Government. I think we comforted ourselves at the time that it was actually no more than what Alistair Darling spelt out

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , , and | 45 Comments

Jeremy Browne writes … My liberalism has a simple objective: to promote the freedom and ambitions of every individual.

Jeremy Browne writes in The House magazine:

My liberalism has a simple objective: to promote the freedom and ambitions of every individual.

Their freedom from persecution, from fear, from ignorance and from enforced conformity. And their ambition to reach their full potential.

Personal freedom requires the state to be the servant of the people; never their master. But that does not automatically mean that liberalism always benefits from having a small state.

With the reflex authoritarianism of the Blair/Brown years, liberals have often become accustomed to regarding the state as a threat to liberty. Under Labour we saw a steady erosion of freedom: …

Posted in Op-eds | 4 Comments

What should the Liberal Democrats focus on in the next year? (Stephen Tall)

That was the question House Magazine asked me for its Lib Dem Conference Special Edition, and here’s what I told them:

Forget Nick Clegg’s leadership. There is one issue and one issue alone that the Lib Dems need to focus on in the year ahead: the economy.

There are many reasons for the party’s dip in the polls since the heady heights of ‘Cleggmania’ – allying with the Tories, U-turning over tuition fees – but the single biggest reason for the Coalition Government’s fading fortunes …

Posted in Op-eds | 12 Comments

LibLink: Long reach of the Laws

David Laws may have resigned from the Coalition’s cabinet two years ago, but (after an initial period of wondering whether to quit politics altogether) his influence hasn’t actually waned much. His interests range across economic and social policy: though he was the party’s education spokesman in opposition, he was a natural fit as chief secretary to the treasury in government, however briefly. He is widely expected to make a return to government at the next reshuffle, …

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 8 Comments
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