LibDem Blogs - Archived!

The Liberal Dissenter reminds me of a Mark Oaten quote in 2001: According to Oaten, the Lib Dems lack the symbolic dragons that Labour leaders have in the past found useful to slay… “We haven’t got a Clause Four, Militants or rot at the core of the party,” he says. “Oddly enough, if we did it might be [...]

Scotland on Sunday has an article on the tensions within the Menzies Campbell camp: "He's gone really, really strange in the last 10 days," a long-term associate told Scotland on Sunday. "He used to just be himself and know what to do, now he's surrounded by all these advisers telling him what to say and think." Those advisers take in representatives of the next generation, including Matthew Taylor and David Laws, and even more youthful MPs such as Nick Clegg and Sarah Teather - a coterie who lobbied hard behind the scenes for Kennedy's resignation last week.It also tells you ...

No, not a comment on the speeches yesterday, but news that my favorite Who monsters have been spotted in Cardiff.

This mornings Scotland on Sunday shows that there is doubt over Sir Menzies Campbell being the right leader from his colleagues in the Scottish Parliament. However, as none of the three MSPs quoted by the Scotsman on Sunday are prepared to be named it is hard to see how they can anonymously support another candidate. The lack of the support the caretaker leader showed for Charles Kennedy and the

We’ve added a downloadable nomination form to the site to make it as a easy as possible for supporters to put their nominations in for Ming. We are looking to collect as many nominations from party members from as many local parties as possible. Please feel free to download the nomination form and print [...]

I meant to blog this much earlier but I have spent the day wrestling with pagemaker and a temperamental risograph and time rather ran away with me. The Observer reports that Simon Hughes signalled yesterday that he was ready to ditch the party's proposal for a new 50p top band on income tax. Their view that this is a dramatic move towards the party's modernisers however, is a bit simplistic even for the media. The party is already carrying out a fundamental review of its economic and tax policies, nothing is sacrosanct and nor should it be. ...

Hello everyone. I'm Femme-de-Resistance's mysterious co-blogger whose delayed appearance has apparently invited comparison to Simon Hughes MP, and whose reassuringly deep (or was it deeply reassuring voice) is considered Chris Hughe-like. Many thanks to Femme-de-R for providing me with such a high-traffic platform for my rantings and ravings - and thanks to you for reading them. I hope not to

I’ve always considered myself a bit of a fan of Poliakoff. Based on Shooting the Past, which is very poignant, Perfect Strangers, which is rather uplifting, and most especially, Caught on a Train, which is brilliant. However. The endless of use of the ‘big houses and fireworks’ aesthetic, and the perpetuation of the idea that wealthy and obnoxious people are in reality misunderstood and whimsical, is rather wearisome. Whereas Stoppard can manage to paint such utopias without irritating us (Arcadia), making us feel it’s incidental to the extremely powerful narrative, Poliakoff seems determined to piss us off with his latest ...

Chapter 7: UK Health Services: a Liberal agenda for reform and renewal by David Laws. So far I have been more or less defending the Orange Book, chapter by chapter. Not so with chapter 7. I find it quite indefensible. Laws starts out with a reasonable enough analysis of the problems and challenges faced by the NHS. He then seems to pull out of a hat, the rabbit of a National Health Insurance

Tim Worstall has posted this week's selection of the best in British blogging. He writes: You can make your nominations for next week’s simply by sending the URL to britblog AT gmail DOT com. Any subject, any viewpoint and we most especially welcome entries from the areas we normally don’t see. That’s rather the point of this little exercise, getting us right-wing political bloggers that inhabit this space having a look around, seeing all the other delights out there. So come on you Liberals.

I’ve more or less given up on my attempt to blog the Meeting the Challenge paper - I found it too rigid a structure around which to frame my thoughts. But I did get stirred up by the plenary session at yesterday’s conference about narrative (more about which you can read here). In short, [...]

Nick’s going off on one about the eeevil liberal media again and their Galloway fellating ways. I’ve said this before and since he shows no sign of shutting up, I’m sure I’ll say it again, but who are all these people writing nice pieces about George Galloway? Sure, there is Tariq Ali and John Pilger [...]

Interesting to see The Times writing about secret talks between Gordon Brown and Vince Cable. The two are old compatriots, so it is hardly surprising. What’s good news is that this is the first story in a while to imply a secret plot to form a coalition with Labour. Over the past six months, [...]

I spoke at a breakout session at yesterday’s Meeting the Challenge conference called “Generational Theft?” and organised by Liberator (or more precisely Simon Titley). I thought I’d put my own thoughts on how the debate went here, if for nothing else than to help Simon with his official report. The other speakers were Ed Vickers [...]

The blogosphere appears to have rechristened Gordon Brown today after his speech to the Fabians on Saturday as a jelly bellied flag flapper. Interestingly, this idea appears to have spontaneously come from both Jonathan Calder and Dave Langford. Needless to say, ultimate credit goes to Rudyard Kipling.

If you hadn’t noticed the Liberal Democrat party is holding a leadership election. There are four candidates and the members will cast their vote after 6 February. No doubt some have already made up their minds while others are still assessing the candidates. In making the choice, it seems to me, that one should ask the following questions: Which candidate is closest to my own view of

Ming’s campaign is online with an unspectacular but functional site at http://www.campbellcampaign.org. I have sent in my nominations bumph and will be registering my support; I hope other members will too.

The pre-arranged conference became the first official hustings for our 4 candidates. The BBC report says it all. Lib Dem contenders address party "All four Liberal Democrat leadership candidates have told party activists why they should get the job". Listen to what they have to say: Hughes launches leadership campaign 01:47 mins Oaten enters Lib Dem leader race ...

Yesterday's Meeting the Challenge Conference admittedly was supposed to be a meeting of minds but why can't some Lib Dems say things as they are and in simple modern English. The words used in the political arena are generally becoming so high-falutin and long-winded - for many people it's a real turn-off. There was a discussion yesterday on how to get the Lib Dem message across to the public and engage younger voters. We all know the 20 - 30 second soundbite or the headline and first few bullet-points of written text determines a person interest - feel some of ...

Belated congrats to Daniel for getting his stuff performed on the The Now Show . Friday’s show saw much deserved mickey-taking of the Lib Dems. Kennedy’s assassination and the nastiness of our party was characterised as: “shocking scenes of cardigan pulling and deliberate withholding of shortbread biscuits”… On the leadership election… not a great deal I can say that every other blogger hasn’t already. Oaten thinks he’s Cameron; nobody else does. Still happy to be backing Ming, though he seems to be flagging and needs a boost. Huhne is bright and impressive. He’s at least captured a little interest ...

Shock! Horror! Could this be true? But it was Mark Oaten who made arguably the greatest impact with an appeal to rank-and-file party members dismayed at the treatment of Mr Kennedy. The home affairs spokesman said MPs had “let down” ordinary Liberal Democrats and should apologise for their show of disunity. Strange, that was the complete opposite [...]

There’s an excellent article about the leadership election by Andrew Rawnsley in this Sunday’s Observer. The stability, authority and unity candidate is Sir Menzies Campbell. It is a testimony to the respect in which he is held that he enjoys the support of so many MPs as well as two former leaders. For a Conservative party trying [...]

When I started teaching we all knew about List 99, the list of banned teachers. We knew we would be put on it if we had been involved in any one of a range of serious crimes, not just child related ones. Long before the current obsession with sex abuse, the DfES recognised that anyone with a history of offences against the person should not be allowed to work in a school I have...

The New Statesman has introduced a 'backward glance' feature that reprints articles from its back catalogue. I suppose it is chepaer than paying contributors. This week's offering in an article 'On Spelling' by Hilaire Belloc. As one who consistently laments the poor standards of spelling and grammar among my fellow Focus editors, Belloc's article gives me pause for thought. He writes: 'What fun our posterity will have with our ridiculous worship of spelling!' He praises previous generations for whom: 'When they said of a man "I esteam hym ne moore than a pygge" one knows what they meant and ...

Gordon Brown’s speech advocating a revival of Britishness and a Union Jack is an attempt to demonstrate that he too has a vision for the country that goes beyond number-cruching and partisan politics. Unfortunately, it feels contrived and vulgar. It brings to mind John Major’s cones hotline and citizen’s charter. Like Major, Brown is trying to escape from the shadow of his predecessor without being overtly disloyal. The only time I have ever seen Union Jacks displayed prominently in front gardens was in a protestant district of Belfast on the day of a Rebublican-organised march. It made me feel distinctly ...

I was down at the Meeting the Challenge event at the London School of Economics yesterday. I was too busy kipling last night to write about it, but both James at Quequam Blog! and Richard at Militant Moderate judged the hustings much as I did. They also reflect the broad view amongst the journalists. This was that Simon Hughes had been the best performer, followed by Chris Huhne, Ming Campbell and Mark Oaten in that order.

I'm not going to nail my colours to the mast at this early stage - declare in haste, repent at leisure (just ask David Willetts) - but Andrew Rawnsley's analysis in today's Observer is extremely persuasive: The stability, authority and unity candidate is Sir Menzies Campbell. It is a testimony to the respect in which he is held that he enjoys the support of so many MPs as well as two former

Judging the dynamics of the Lib Dem leadership election is a rather difficult affair. The 70,000 members are rather hard to poll, as only the central party has definitive membership records, so it is hard for the pollsters to reach us. Even YouGov relies on what their voluntary sample claim, meaning that many alleged Lib Dem members they quiz may not be-- indeed, UKIP are known in the past to have instructed their members to sign up in order to schew the surveys. That's not to say, they aren't the best way of judging momentum, but they're probably more important ...

On Tuesday I went to the M6 Stakeholder meeting at Penkridge. This had been lamentably badly organised by the Highways Agency. Their invitation list omitted lots of groups and individuals who might reasonably have expected to be invited. The CPRE was invited as a 'major stakeholder' but only our regional office; I had to ask for an invitation. Other groups were refused invitations altogether, yet on the day half the seats were not filled. I attended with our regional policy officer Gerald Kells and CPRE member Roger Oldfield. The HA had produced three maps: two showing the ...

by Peter As I did not attend the hustings yesterday, I have been greedily reading the opinions of those who did. The general view seems to be that Huhne was rather heavy and humourless, and that Oaten was rather light. People seem to think that Campbell or Hughes had the better content. Views differ radically on how well they spoke. John Hemming has the text of Ming's speech. As usual with Ming, it has some good soundbites (I particularly like "Our liberalism is not a struggle between those who wish to modernise andthose who do not. To be ...

The front page of today's Observer features a picture of my favourite bay, Three Cliffs on Gower. Country Life magazine has voted it the best place in Britain to watch a sunset. I would wholeheartedly endorse that, but don't take my word for it, come and see for yourself.

Apparently Bill Clinton thinks that Tony Blair would make an ideal secretary general of the United Nations. The term of Kofi Annan ends at the end of this year. No let me get this straight. People are talking about putting a man in charge of the UN who has actually gone to war without the backing of UN resolutions. A man who is a close ally of hte biggest and most powerful bully in the

Just an addendum. This morning's Observer (15/01/06) reports that: "Simon Hughes signalled... that he was ready to ditch the party's proposal for a new 50p top band on income tax... rather than focus on raising the top level of personal income tax, his main aim would be to remove the poorest people from paying the tax altogether. There were areas where additional revenue might be raised,

by Robin. Well I've said it before on this blog numerous times and I will say it again I'm a lucky, lucky man. The face recognition software on www.myheritage.com said my wife's beautiful features were a 71% match for Jennifer Lopez - especially as before meeting Leah I had a bit of a thing for J-Lo. My wife is gorgeous and I always knew it - it's why her nickname from me (that I also use in

On the recommendation of James of Quaequem blog, Robin and I tired the face recognition software on photos of ourselves. I am delighted to find that my closest matches are Sophie Coppola (77%), Jennifer Lopez (71%) - yes! - and Mariah Carey (71%)- huzzah! -as well as those gorgeous glamour girls of old Rita Hayworth and Grace Kelly. How cool is that!! So on that basis will those who have been

Ming: good content, below par delivery. This election is Ming’s to lose. We know that when he is good he is very, very good, but it has been disappointing that he has been so tepid so far. Someone in his team needs to read him the riot act. Simon: if I didn’t have [...]