LibDem Blogs - Archived!

The first feedback is coming in, and it is showing a picture which the polls seem to be catching only intermittently- Labour are in deep trouble. Our team is Wycombe is picking up a consistent picture of Labour voters swinging behind the Liberal Democrats. It is much stronger than I thought. Meanwhile what the polls story is not emphasizing is that fact that the "Don't Knows"- at 41%- are at the highest level that they have ever been at this stage in the election. Clearly the small minded policies of the Tories are not winning them support outside their box. ...

Tonight I received a phone call to confirm that the last of our candidates for the forthcoming County Council elections on May 5th had handed in his nomination papers. So we have a full slate across the constituency and everyone is looking forward to an active few weeks ahead. The County Council group have produced the County Manifesto and I've received an email tonight inviting me to the

The Evening Standard reports: A Labour MP has been accused for the second time in a week of using schoolchildren to distribute "party" propaganda. Ann Keen, MP for Brentford and Isleworth, sent a letter to secondary schools highlighting Government moves to encourage students to stay on after 16. Some headteachers refused to send the letter on to parents on the grounds that it would be inappropriate while at those schools that did get involved, parents complained about their children arriving home with the letter. A few days ago she was accused of using a primary school and nursery in ...

Paul Marsden's announcement on this morning's Radio 4 Today programme that he was defecting back to the Labour Party was quite bizarre (a view shared by James Oates in his posting earlier today). You can listen to the interview online here (which the BBC amusingly prefaced with an archive recording of the interview Marsden originally gave when he left Labour). You may recall that, when Marsden

Over at Liberal Dissenter Simon Titley has been seeking his readers help in choosing a campaign tune for the 2005 general election. By a happy chance his final choice is the song that was my very favourite when I was four years old or so. Read his choice and the reasoning behind it here.

Tony Blair made an immediate bid for the Daily Mail vote yesterday by having himself photographed in front of the last boys in Britain still to wear sailor suits.

We have just had the first day of the election campaign proper. One of the differences about parliamentary elections is that the Royal Mail will deliver leaflets. We have stuck stickers on thousands of leaflets with people's addresses (a technique to get more than one leaflet to each household) and this morning were sorting out the leaflets with the right number of elastic bands around them. I

I have tried to find this on the DCA website. I cannot easily do that so I have uploaded it to the savedemocracy email list files section. Anyone can now download the full judgment. It is half a megabyte. From the Judgment Afterword In this judgment I have set out at length what has clearly been shown to be the weakness of the current law relating to postal votes. As some parts of this

Lots of proposals for the Liberal Democrats' campaign tune (following my posting last week requesting suggestions). I haven't yet heard what the official song is - can anyone enlighten me? Whatever it is, any of the following ideas are bound to be better. Lyn-Su Floodgate says "How about Morrissey's Irish Blood, English heart?". Much as I endorse the lyrical sentiments, we want to attract

Well, I've not done too much today other than work. I think our campaign's going to take off properly next week. I'm moving house this weekend, so that's going to take up a lot of my time unfortunately. I tried sending our Freepost to Royal Mail last night, but the file was too big, which means it can't be vetted yet. Calmed down after the football last night too ... I went to watch Leicester

Today the Liberal Democrats unveiled their family oriented policies. Increasing maternity benefits makes a great deal of sense, given what we now know of the importance of the first six months of life to the future progress of the child. Paul Boateng- who I think is leaving the House of Commons anyway to become High Commissioner in South Africa (what the professional diplomats think about that, I can only imagine) then says that abolishing the Child Trust Fund "discourages saving". I am afraid I greeted that with a hollow laugh. Government policies NOW discourage saving and the Child Trust ...

So it has started. I hope to really put the liberal argument stronger than ever before in Enfield North and give residents a meaningful choice rather than 'Coke vs. Diet Coke'. To do this I need all the help I can get- I have had so many volunteers and I am always grateful- but we don't have the big money that the other two parties have. Click on the link to Enfield Liberal Democrats (on the right -> )to get in touch. My worry with the national campaign is that it is going to be very negative. ...

Radio 4 have a piece about disgruntled Labour activists - and they pick a group of Labour members from Hornsey and Wood Green. Some of the comments from the Labour members: "There's so many things the Labour government does that I am in total, complete disagreement with. And it's not just Iraq, it is the rightwards drift, it's the attack on local authorities, it's the attack on social housing.

I have started the process (A letter before action sent to the Treasury Solicitors) of judicially reviewing the Prime Minister's decision to call a General Election without anti-fraud procedures. The ECHR includes the following: ARTICLE 3 RIGHT TO FREE ELECTIONS The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will

Another day, another defection, it seems. However it is not a complete disaster to say farewell to the rather strange Paul Marsden- his cringingly embarassing poetry for a start! Also I think it reminds people how strong feelings have been over the issue of the war. Listening to Marsden this morning I felt fairly sanguine- a rather immature personality is my overall verdict. Meanwhile the polls currently appear to show a dead heat. Yet even on such numbers it would still be impossible for Michael Howard to even come close to winning- it just underlines the absurd nature of our ...

Yesterday was the first day of the election campaign - at last we have started in earnest! My first leaflet has begun going out across the constituency and the posters have started to spring up. I am really pleased to have had lots of messages of support already from locals hoping that we will do well. It's a slightly strange feeling sitting here with only 29 days to go after four years of

I thought I had better mention the election :D I'm doing a delivery of the 'start of campaign' newsletters this lunchtime, canvassing tonight (although it's raining so it's going to be very pleasant :( I had an easy time campaigning last week - about 17 degrees C leafletting all morning Saturday in a nice suburban area) and doing a youth activism event tomorrow lunchtime. I probably need the distraction this week - my conscious mind is focused on my thesis but my unconscious mind is in turmoil. I'm a dreamer in the literal sense - most of my important thinking ...

If the only thing to write about each day is the General Election then even I will start to get bored. Fortunately, the Welsh Assembly resumes sittings next week. No doubt Plenary Sessions will be even more lively than usual as the various parties seek to use the opportunity it presents to campaign and try to gain electoral advantage. At least things will be more straightforward for the Welsh Liberal Democrats this time around. In 2001 we were still shackled to Labour in the Partnership Government and spent most of our time agonising about what we could and could not ...