President of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron MP, has written to Lib Dem members today. Here’s his letter in full:-

Are two Eds better than one? I’m not sure – but the two Eds said something very interesting over the weekend: apparently they don’t have a ‘Plan B’ for the economy after all.

You’ll have heard Simon Hughes and I over the weekend rightly calling on the two Eds to apologise. We want them to apologise to the British public for deceiving them for 18 months. However, there is one apology we didn’t call for publicly, but which they still should make – that’s an apology to you.

Last May across the country, from Lancaster to Sheffield and Manchester to Newcastle, many of you lost your council seats to undeserving Labour candidates who were fighting their elections on a false platform with dishonest messages. They stood on a platform that the Eds now admit was wrong. Shame on them – but I’m proud of you.

In addition, Nick Clegg deserves an apology. Nick has been berated and abused by the Labour leadership for having the guts to stand up and work as part of the Coalition in the best interest of the country. Now Labour have admitted that their attacks were inaccurate – but there’s no hint of apology. They have gone from being in the wrong place, to all over the place.

That leaves the Liberal Democrats as the only political party with the backbone to tackle the country’s problems, but with the heart to do everything to ensure that fairness, compassion and justice are written through everything we do.

As this article from The Times recognises, the Liberal Democrats are a progressive force in Government. We are the Party delivering tax cuts for working people, we are the party investing in the poorest school pupils, we are the party delivering the largest ever state pension rise and importantly, we are the party prepared to take the tough decisions needed to get this country back on track.

So don’t hold your breath waiting for an apology from Labour – but rest assured you are most definitely owed one!

I have written more about this on Lib Dem Voice, and you can see my full article here.

Best wishes,

Tim Farron
President of the Liberal Democrats

Who could not be inspired by these words of encouragement from Jason Hunter:
“Liberal Democrats – In Government, On Your Side……20 months on from the creation of the coalition….

A labour supporter said about the LibDems:
“why would we want to be in a Coalition with a party who have been more than happy to ditch their principles just to get cabinet jobs.”

I’ll tell you why … its because you are simply wrong my friend.

The libdems went into coalition to implement libdem policy, and in this parliament they are implementing over 75% of their manifesto commitments (according to the BBC and University College London).

Taking millions of low earners out of income tax, and ensuring that all workers pay £700 less tax on the first £10,000 they earn.

Making sure that kids in school who need extra help can actually get it from the £2.5 billion in the pupil premium.

Ensuring that EVERY 18-24 year old can learn or earn with the Youth Contract starting this April.

Creating hundreds of thousands of apprenticeship places for the 55% of our 16-18 year olds that don’t go on to further education.

Creating the Green Investment Bank to create sustainable jobs for those youngsters when they finish their apprenticeships.

Triple locking pensions for the elderly to put an end to 75p increases that labour gave our elderly. It gave pensioners an extra £4.50 last year and another £5.50 this April.

Implementing a new team at HMRC to stop tax avoidance and evasion by the 350,000 wealthiest people in the nation…. not just the 5,000 that labour focussed on.

Clamping down on big business to make sure they pay taxes due in the UK… not letting them off £25 billion like Labour did with Goldman Sachs and Vodafone etc.

Breaking up the banks to ensure that if they want to gambling at the investment bank casino, they do it with their own money and not the taxpayers.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Have we done everything we wanted? No, of course not, we don’t have a majority government, we came third in GE2010 and have just 8.7% of seats in parliament.

Have we been able to stop the Tories doing everything we don’t like? No, we havnt, we are outnumbered 5 Tories to each LibDem in the coalition.

Have we influenced positive policies far beyond our expected ability? Definitely.

Have LibDem policies influenced the economy? Darn tootin they have.

Was borrowing lower last year than in 2010? Yes it was.

Have we been in recession in the last 20 months? No, we havnt. We have had consecutive growth figures every quarter.

In 2011 was the tax collected a record breaking year? Yes, it was.

When interest rates are going up around the world, ours has come down from the 4%+ that Labour left to just over 2% today, one of the lowest of all our peers.

Do we still have our triple A credit rating when those around us are losing theirs? Yes we do.

Labour say its not working, but with times around the world far worse now than during Labours governance, we are keeping our heads above water….. labour took us into two consecutive periods of recession in better times than this.

Is everything rosy? No, of course not, but are the libdems punching above their weight? Oh yeah baby, they sure are.”

After nearly two years of no fiscal policies whatsoever, current Labour leader Ed Miliband and Labour’s shadow chancellor Ed Balls have both made similar statements over the last 24 hours defending the coalition government’s public sector pay freeze. This is in stark contrast to just a few weeks ago when both were still spurting out their “too fast, too soon” narrative – however, following Labour peer Lord Glasman and Blackley & Broughton MP Graham Stringer’s criticism of Ed Miliband’s leadership they have now changed their tune completely.

Now, following a complete fiscal policy u-turn by Miliband and Balls, Labour support the cuts and agree that a 1% pay rise over the next couple of years for public sector workers is the right thing for our country. I am a public sector worker, I don’t want my pay to be capped, but I was smart enough to realise in 2010 that it was necessary. As a result, of the public sector pay freezes, I have had to forgoe certain luxuries (overseas holidays etc) – but I know that in the longer term, we’ll all be better off if we sort our finances out sooner rather than later.

The PCS and Unison unions disagree. They are now starting to distance themselves from Labour and following statements from both those unions over the last day, I suspect this is the beginning of the end for Labour. Certainly when unions that support Labour financially claim that the party is “emulating the Tories on many issues” and the BBC reports that PCS union leader Mark Serwotka has said Mr Balls’ comments were “hugely disappointing”, while the general secretary of the RMT rail union said he was signing “Labour’s electoral suicide note”.

Nobody can blame the unions for acting they way they do (and saying what they say), after all – they are simply protecting their own interests. But public service unions have no interest in anything outside their little “public sector” world and need to realise that we are all in this together. This country will be better off when everyone accepts that cuts to “nice to have” services rather than services we “need and can’t do without” have to happen.

The Tories and Liberal Democrats realised that in 2010 – it’s taken a further two years for Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to realise it. When are the rest of Labour going to catch up?

Milband and Balls may have signed Labour’s electoral suicide note, but it’ll be Labour’s grassroots activists that bury the corpse of the party if they continue down the old and tired “too fast, too soon” argument.

You may have seen or heard misleading news reports today suggesting that the UK Border Agency is breaking its pledge to end the detention of children.

UKBA has responsed to these misleading news reports and has emphasised the need to hold families at the border, while making clear the bold changes the agency has made to the way families already in the UK are managed and supported.

Brodie Clark, head of border force, said: ‘We have always been clear that we may need to hold some families at the border while enquiries are made to decide whether they can be admitted to the country or until the next available return flight if they are refused entry.

‘In the case of unaccompanied children, we may need to hold them until alternative accommodation is arranged, usually through social services. The number of passengers held is very small compared to the millions that we process and tens of thousands we refuse entry to at the border each year and it is always for the shortest possible period.

‘Not doing so would weaken border security by allowing people into the country who have no right to be here, and, equally, to release unaccompanied children before social workers have arrived to support them would put them at great risk.’

For those families already in the UK, but with no legal right to stay, the agency has introduced a completely new process for managing their return which encourages them to leave voluntarily, sometimes with financial assistance.

In cases, where return needs to be enforced, a new type of accommodation, Cedars, is used to hold families for a short period immediately prior to their departure from the UK.

Cedars has a completely different look and feel to an immigration removal centre and is only being used as a last resort. Families are referred there only after advice has been sought from the independent family returns panel which ensures that the welfare of the children is taken into account.

So far, fewer than ten families have been returned following a short period of stay in Cedars.

Tim Farron’s speech to Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference

Speaking at Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference on Sunday, Liberal Democrat Party President, Tim Farron said:

So, well done – you all got past security clearance!

Incidentally I’m very grateful to the police, they’ve now provided me with all the detailed personal information on party members that I need in order to conduct a Stalinist purge.

Basically anyone who actually passed security clearance without sign of being a subversive will be erased.

Its been a busy six months since Sheffield.

And I’m going to start where I should.

At the bottom.

And Mays elections really were the bottom – at least they flipping well better had be!

Ok, we got 16% of the vote and had some real successes around the country, but let’s not fool ourselves.

In much of the country we got slaughtered.

In Scotland, in many of our great cities, in shire districts Liberal Democrats who have served their communities and worked their backsides off for years, got their backsides kicked.

I want to say this to you now, if you lost your seat, I stand with you; I am angry on your behalf; I take the responsibility and I absolutely will not insult you by claiming that this was collateral damage, or an understandable mid term blip.

Frankly, as your President, I owe you an apology.

Politics is full of clichés.

Perhaps the worst, is that bit where you’re on telly having to pretend everything’s gone swimmingly on a bad election night.

I had that job, and I have to confess that I didn’t stick to the script.

I didn’t pretend it was alright really.

Cos it wasn’t.

I saw the stats piling up, the Lib Dem minus figure getting bigger, you know, I knew these were not statistics, these people are my friends.

People who didn’t deserve to lose.

But who lost.

I’m not going to explain them away, shrug and accept their defeat as an inevitable consequence.

Defeat is never inevitable or acceptable.

But sometimes it happens.

I remember 2001 when we should have won Westmorland and Lonsdale and didn’t.

The campaigns department sent us a pager during the campaign – cutting edge!

They included us in the messages they sent to sitting MPs.

After the election, they carried on sending us messages – assuming that we’d got elected.

I went back to work at Lancaster University on the Monday after I lost, and I kept getting messages telling me about photo calls for new MPs, swearing in and making maiden speeches.

It was a sickener.

I was pleased for those who’d won, but I was gutted, depressed, I took the whole thing personally.

I’d worked my socks off for 3 years, I’d done everything I thought I could to win, but I still lost by 3,000.

And I have to confess that after 2001 there were a few months where I thought, why don’t I just jack it in?

Do a 9-5, dig the garden, get a season ticket at the Rovers, you know, torture myself in a different way.

Then I changed my mind.

There were two things that did it if I recall.

First, England beat Germany 5-1 in Munich; which has no political significance whatsoever, it just massively cheered me up!

A few days later my daughter Gracie was born.

If that doesn’t make you take stock, nothing will.

I thought back to what had first politicised me, and if you’ve heard this one before – well, tough!

I was 14 I saw Cathy come home, it completely broke my heart and my reaction was to do something, to join Shelter and then the Liberals.

Because if homelessness, poverty and inequality are wrong, then not doing something to stop them is equally wrong.

I’d joined this party to make a better a world, and now in the maternity ward in Kendal I had this little ginger thing, someone to make the world better for.

I had no flaming right to walk away.

So I got re-selected and spent 4 years doing everything Hilary Stephenson told me to, and a bit more.

Because you can’t change the world if you come second.

That’s why I am here rather than watching Rovers put 4 past Arsenal, despite only having 3 shots on goal.

Tell me if I’ve got this wrong, but I think that you want me as President to sell the undiluted Liberal Democrat standpoint.

Not to be an apologist for everything the coalition does.

Committed to the Liberal Democrats in coalition, but more importantly, committed to the Liberal Democrats.

There’s wonderful freedom in this role and I’m determined to use it!

Unlike ministerial platform speeches at conference this year, I don’t have to show mine to Oliver Letwin in advance!

I didn’t have to.

But I sent him a copy anyway just to wind him up.

But there are 18 Liberal Democrats who don’t have the luxuries that I do.

They can’t just sound off if they don’t like government policy or trot through the no lobby on occasions – rare occasions – to demonstrate their disagreement.

They are our ministers.

And while I’m parading my conscience around the TV studios saying the right things, they are busy in their departments doing the right things.

On those very, very rare occasions when Michael Gove says or does something stupid or wrong, Sarah Teather doesn’t come out and slag him off. Instead she fixes it.

Free schools for example!

When the Tories showed hesitancy about committing to true and fair banking reforms, Vince Cable laid on the pressure and forced that commitment.

And when George Osborne flew the kite of cutting income tax for the wealthy, Danny Alexander cut the string, and stopped him.

Incidentally, those 20 economists – nearly all of them top rate tax payers by the way – who called for scrapping the 50p tax rate.

They have many supporters in the Conservative party.

But they are utterly wrong.

Are we all in this together?

Well not if we give tax cuts to the rich!

At a time when 90% of the country is struggling to pay the rent or the mortgage,
giving a 10p tax cut to those who need it the least, would not just be economically witless, it would be morally repugnant.

Now of course, all income tax is temporary!

Income tax was introduced as a temporary measure in 1798 during the Napoleonic wars.

So my solemn promise to you is that we will get rid of this temporary measure, as soon as we stopping falling out with the French.

Danny, Vince, Nick and I are absolutely clear – the wealthy will continue to pay the largest share of the cost of our recovery so that we can protect the least well off.

The principle that the rich pay more does not come from a desire to penalise the wealthy, but from a desire to ensure that our recovery must be a fair recovery.

Be absolutely sure of this. Liberal Democrat ministers are the guarantors of fairness in a government that would be an absolute nightmare without them.

And not only this.

Your average Tory minister, bless them, works hard in their department and is rarely seen anywhere near their constituency.

Our ministers are full-on committed constituency MPs as well as being tasked with the small responsibility of running the country.

Their commitment to Liberal Democrat principles and policies is immense and their workrate is phenomenal.

That goes for all our ministers, but goes for Nick in spades.

This summer, Nick hasn’t stopped. His schedule racing around the country meeting members, supporters and one or two former supporters, has been staggering.

Thick skinned, warm hearted, quick witted, occasionally paint-splattered, a Liberal to his fingertips – he leads the Lib Dems, runs the country and runs rings around the Tories.

If you listen to Nadine Dorries, Conservative home and the Daily Mail, then Nick Clegg is leading the government; but when it comes to the NHS, the Bankers and fair taxation, Nick seems to be leading the opposition too!

Ed Miliband, are you still on holiday?

Who is taking the Blairite nonsense out of the NHS bill?

Nick Clegg

Who put the bankers back in their boxes over financial restructuring?

Nick Clegg

Who stood up against reactionary Tory drivel after the riots?

Nick Clegg

We are a radical Liberal Party putting radical liberal politics into action and blocking Tory policies every day.

For how many decades have we dreamed of being able to say that?

I have always been proud to be a Liberal Democrat, I was proud of us when we called it right on Kosovo, when we called it right on Iraq, when we called it right on deregulation of the banks.

But I have never been more proud of my party than I am now.

British public opinion is a bit more mixed.

I mean we’ve endured decades where the public were utterly indifferent to our existence, then for 5 minutes they loved us intensely, followed by a lengthier period where they’ve actively disliked us.

I had a girlfriend like that once.

But no one can say we don’t matter anymore, as Oscar Wilde said there’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about!

Look we had three political options after the 2010 elections: we had to choose between the rather unpleasant, the completely impossible or the utterly appalling; but we only had two economic options between the horrible and the catastrophic.

Now my politics were formed in the 1980s amidst mass unemployment in the north of England.

At times more than half of my class at school were on free school meals, most of us – me included – had parents out of work.

That experience scarred me, and it scarred me all the more because those levels of unemployment in the 80s were avoidable – that government deliberately used unemployment as an economic tool to control spending and the unions.

And we are tackling the deficit today, making horrible decisions to avoid the catastrophic alternative of market meltdown and mass unemployment or, as Ed Balls calls it ‘plan B’.

If the Tories created mass unemployment in the 80s out of wickedness, Labour would create mass unemployment today out of witlessness.

This summer, the silly season got serious didn’t it?

No one saw the riots coming.

With the possible exception of the Kaiser Chiefs.

And I reckon that was just a lucky guess!

The riots were an outrage against peaceful communities, a tragedy for civil society, an affront to our identity and an absolute gift for every knee-jerk reactionary in the country.

Some who shall remain nameless, but for illustrative purposes lets call them David Starkey, saw the fires of discontent and thought it wise to pour petrol on them by invoking racial stereotypes.

Now David Starkey is one of Kendal’s favourite sons, and I know that he is absolutely not a fascist, but I also know that he is absolutely an intelligent person and intelligent enough to know that it is culpably reckless to play into the hands of those who are fascists.

And there’s been a hypocrisy in so much of the media – including from the apparently shameless Murdoch press – focusing their ire on what they call a feral underclass with a contempt for society.

Just an observation here:

The super rich don’t need to go down Ealing high street nicking tellies in order to demonstrate their contempt for society. They demonstrate their contempt by not paying taxes.

And lets be honest, we are sharing power with a bunch of people who think that this is OK!

If you care about communities, then you are an opponent of all those who undermine them.

That includes the looters. That includes those who benefit from our society but who do not pay the taxes that they should, and that includes politicians and newspaper editors who provide them with cover.

Before the summer recess, I spent June and July away from Parliament too after my wife had an operation.

She’s fine by the way, she spent 2 months effectively confined to home, not able to walk or drive so I was granted compassionate leave by the whips – who, lets be honest, didn’t owe me any favours!

So I got to look after the kids out of school hours and be a constituency MP the rest of the time.

Rosie meanwhile read lots of crime thrillers, got hooked on online shopping, but absolutely refused to get sucked into daytime TV.

She claims.

Interestingly enough some tickets arrived through the post the other day for a gentle discussion programme called the Jeremy Kyle show.

I assume its a bit like question time.

The title is ‘my husband forces me to deliver leaflets even when I’m on crutches’.

Which is intriguing.

I learnt a lot during that time away from Parliament: first, being a Mum is hard work; second being my wife is really hard work; and third, politics looks a heck of a lot different when you are not in the Westminster bubble.

You see I spent almost 2 months getting my news the same way everyone else does.

No briefings or nuanced explanations from ministers.

The Lib Dems achievements on the NHS bill, on reigning in the bankers on keeping profiteers out of our state schools – they either don’t get reported, or the Lib Demness of those successes is exquisitely camouflaged.

Think about it, we are the first government party in history that doesn’t have a single newspaper telling our side of the story.

But the fact that our excellent message wasn’t landing in the minds of the public
highlighted an obvious danger for all of us who hold elected office.

And this is the moment when I could offend just about all of you, but isn’t it so often the same old story, you’re a brilliant campaigner, you get elected, you get sucked into the council, you go to meetings, you spend lots of time with your very lovely and very bright officers, and you start listening to them intently even though they don’t actually care two hoots if you’re re-elected.

And your diary gets a bit too full to go out knocking on doors, so not only are you now listening to officials but you have stopped listening to normal people and so you forget what they sound like, what angers them, what impresses them, what they elected you to do in the first place so you make daft decisions and you get slaughtered in the local press and then you lose.

That can happen in Whitehall as well as the town hall!

It can be a slippery slope.

So what’s the answer?

I’ll tell you what:

A full blooded return to the principles and the practice of community politics.

And it needs to start now.

In many of the mets, with elections in thirds, the same seats that we lost this year, are up again next year.

There may be a sense of inevitability that if we lost this year, we’re bound to lose next year too.

Well I am absolutely not having that!

This conference must mark a renewal of the theory and practice of community politics – and a belligerent determination to make our own luck.

I don’t underestimate the task ahead, but we have been through far worse and come out smiling on the other side.

The Thorpe scandal, the merger debacle; you know, if our poll rating is currently 13%, I can tell you that that’s about 14 times better than it was in 1989.

You know, I reckon if either of the other parties saw their poll ratings dip into single figures, they would implode and cease to be.

They couldn’t hack it mentally or emotionally, and the vested interests that they serve would abandon them.

Not with us. We’ve got nerves of steel. Survival is what we do.

A bit like cockroaches after a nuclear war, just a bit less smelly, we are made of sterner stuff.

And we are not the vehicle of any vested interest.

We are the vehicle for a radical, green, tolerant, internationalist, progressive form of politics and if we did not exist then there’s hundreds of people here today who’d rush out and invent us!

Going into coalition was absolutely the right thing for the country, but costly for the party.

I’m in no doubt that being in coalition with the Tories has tainted us, our identity is blurred, many who support us are confused. They say: “We thought you were against the Tories, why are you shacked up with them now?”

The picture of the coalition being a marriage is a depressing one isn’t it?

It’s enough to put you off your tea!

If it’s a marriage, well its a good natured one, but I’m afraid its temporary.

We’re staying together for the sake of the kids, or the Special Advisors as we call them.

So look, I don’t want to upset you and its not going to happen for 3 or 4 years but I’m afraid divorce is inevitable.

So, as your president I took the liberty of seeking some legal advice about how we stand in the event of a divorce.

There’s good news and bad news. Good news: we might get half of Ashcroft’s money.

Bad news: we have to have Pickles at the weekends!

Well over the last few months, there’s been a new spikiness and effectiveness about the Liberal Democrats.

We fought against the bankers, we stood up against the witless kneejerk populism of the Tories after the riots, we’ve fought against tax cuts for the rich and we came out fighting on the NHS, and I’ll tell you what, we will continue the fight for our NHS.

And since then, we’ve started winning by-elections, including gaining a seat off Labour for the first time since the general election, our membership has risen, donations have increased and our poll ratings have shot up from absolutely diabolical to just slightly depressing.

Now there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned.

I was sort of thinking of leaving it out but that would be cowardly.

The AV referendum.

That went well didn’t it?

Electoral reform was within our grasp for the first time in our lifetimes, but was it for the last time?

Don’t even think it.

Two things I have got doggedly used to in the 25 years since I joined this party: one is losing, the other is never, ever flaming giving up!

We have a corrupt electoral system, it needs modernising and transforming.

We will democratise the House of Lords and we will bring in proportional representation for the upper house.

PR for parliament.

Unlike the NHS bill, it is in the coalition agreement, I don’t care how many Tories or Lib Dems don’t like it, it is not an optional part of the programme. It’s a red line.

It’s not a sexy doorstep issue, its not going in my focus leaflets, but it is vital if we are to ensure that our democracy emerges from the 19 century.

When we go to the polls in 2015, we must be electing a part of the upper house for the first time ever, by proper PR.

Not a miserable little compromise!

The AV referendum is salutary.

It reminds us what we are up against in general.

A Tory party owned and directed by the impossibly rich, a Labour party which may be led by a progressive but which is owned by the forces of conservatism and a media owned by a handful of powerful individuals with antidemocratic axes that they grind very effectively.

How do we compete against that? Isn’t it impossible?

David Penhaligon said “I only got elected because I was too naive to realise it was impossible”.

We must fight every day to ensure that we never become part of the establishment, but we should fight hard to prove that we are worthy of power.

David Penhaligon, Roy Jenkins, Jo Grimond and all the legions of others who brought us from the depths for such a time as this.

They’d have killed to see the day we were in government, and they’d have killed us for complaining about it.

There’s a true story about President Kennedy visiting a NASA warehouse used for storing fuel cylinders for the Apollo programme.

He met the janitor and asked him ‘what do you do?’ the janitor replied, ‘I’m putting a man on the Moon’. That is the spirit.

As Liberal Democrats, we are all in this together whether you are the Deputy Prime Minister or a Focus deliverer, or indeed both.

No one will sell our story if we don’t, no one will believe our message if we don’t, no one will fight our battles if we don’t.

We’ve spent years trying to qualify for the premier league of politics, now we are here – lets waste no time looking into the stands for reactions, let’s look at each other, look to each other, focus on the goal, tackle our opponents and stuff them.

Get on with it!

I was reading today on Richard Baum’s blog (Bury Lib Dem campaigner) how following the change in political leadership on Bury Council (from Tory to Labour, decided by the draw of a short straw) that the new leader of Bury Council has started a “leader’s blog“.

This is very similar to Sir Richard Leese’s leader’s blog over on the Manchester City Council website.

Bury campaigner Richard Baum makes a good point when he states that while it could do with opening up comments, it’s a step in the right direction and should be applauded.

So, I ask, when will Salford’s Council leader start his blog? He’s already on Twitter, commenting on local politics as @JohnDMerry and is well known for frequenting the comment threads on this blog, Joe O’Neil’s “cut and paste” website, Steve Cooke’s blog and Iain Lindley’s site so he’s clearly not a “technophobe” by any means.

I think a leader’s blog would be a great way to engage Salfordians and would be saying this no matter who the leader of Salford Council was (or whichever party they represented). Come on John, engage your public, what do you say?

I was watching the BBC’s Politics Show on Sunday and there was a very interesting feature about how much of the Liberal Democrat and Conservative manifest promises had become reality. Lib Dem blogger Mark Pack wrote a brilliant and succinct blog post about the BBC segment and I shamelessly reproduce it here:

Sunday’s Politics Show featured the results of research by independent academics into how each party in the Coalition Government is doing at getting its polices enacted.

The conclusion? Three-quarters (75%) of the Liberal Democrat manifesto is being turned into government policy, compared to noticeably less (60%) of the Conservative manifesto, as illustrated in this screenshot:

(For a sample of those Lib Dem policies being put into action see the excellent site What The Hell Have The Lib Dems Done?)

Conservative blogger Tim Montgomerie and Lib Dem blogger and Federal Policy Committee (FPC) member Linda Jack were both interviewed to discuss these results and other aspects of the coalition’s future.

Politicians get a lot of grief – in many cases, because they have said one thing and then done another. The Lib Dems, in particular, got into sticky water with the electorate over Tuition Fees (which we still want to get rid of as a party, but it is just not affordable at the moment).

However, when a politician engages in downright deception – as was the case yesterday of Derby Conservative council  candidate Ashley Waterhouse, it is understandable when the electorate refuses to engage in the democratic process. I have lost count of the number of times someone has said to me “You politicians are all the same”, despite me never having been elected to a political position!

Ashley Waterhouse’s deception has been publicly uncovered in the worst possible way, on BBC Radio Derby, when he tried to participate in a telephone phone in during the station’s breakfast show. You can listen here. His voice and phone number were recognised by the BBC and it was put to him he was, in fact, not “Paul from Normanton” but a local election candidate representing the Derby South Conservative Association. He repeatedly denied who he was, on air.

Mr Waterhouse has now recorded an embarrassing interview, which I believe all politicians and budding/future elected members should listen to.

If you lie, you will be found out by the electorate. You will be embarrassed, you will damage your party and worst of all you risk turning voters away from the democratic process.

Honesty IS the best policy and that’s why you will only ever get the truth from me and my colleagues in Salford Liberal Democrats. Sometimes, it will hurt to tell the truth (see my earlier paragraph about tuition fees!) but when we are asking our neighbours to vote for us, it’s the right thing to do.

Is it right that governments can be formed by a political party with three out of five voters preferring its opponents ? That’s exactly what happened, for example, in 1974 when Labour won an absolute parliamentary majority with less than forty per cent of the vote.

Our outdated "first past the post" voting system consistently produces governments that are supported by only a minority of voters.  No wonder people feel that their votes don’t count. It must be time for us to have a fair proportional voting system, as already exists in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

At the last general election here’s how many votes it took to elect an MP:

Labour 27,000
Conservative 44,000
Liberal Democrat 96,000

This is why on May 5th it is perfectly possible for Labour to win more council seats than any other party and still be the biggest group on Salford City Council, in spite of its unpopularity.

Out of almost 200 worldwide countries, only around 40 use our "first past the post" voting system. Most of them being our former colonies.

Critics of proportional representation never point to the success and stability of countries like Germany, Finland, Sweden, Austria, New Zealand  and so many others who use a fair voting method and which operate on cooperation and consensus among politicians.

That’s why I’m voting Yes! to AV on Thursday 5th May.

New research reveals that many voters think that the Lib Dems joining the Coalition Government showed that the party was “prepared to take real responsibility, not just oppose from the sidelines.”

And 64 per cent of voters who considered voting Lib Dem, but actually decided not to, think that the party is “making an important contribution to the government of Britain”

The detailed private research was commissioned by political enthusiast and lifelong Conservative Lord Ashcroft, former treasurer of the party, who poured huge sums into the Tory general election campaign, so his personal comments are particularly interesting.

He writes: ” Before May, the Lib Dems were held back by two common views: that they were a wasted vote because they would never win, and that although they seemed terribly nice people their policies probably didn’t really add up.  The party’s presence in government therefore offers at least the chance to overcome both of these barriers.

“At the same time, it could retain its two biggest strengths: the reputation of Lib Dem MPs as local champions, and the perception that they seemed more reasonable, and less inclined to indulge in partisan sniping, than the other two parties.”

Lord Ashcroft says that his research aimed to look deeply into the opportunities and threats facing the Liberal Democrats now in coalition. It also found that a “large bloc” of people voted for the party on the basis of local issues or candidates.

Liberal Democrat Councillors in Salford were today welcoming the news that due to changes in the national tax system, implemented by Liberal Democrats in the Coalition Government, 3,290 of Salford’s poorest residents have been lifted out of the personal income tax band altogether.

A further 91,000 residents will also find themselves better off when the changes are implemented in April this year – paying up to £200 less per year in income tax.

When the coalition was formed the two parties agreed to implement a key Liberal Democrat policy that the personal allowance for income tax should be increased in order to help lower and middle-income earners.

The change is being funded with the money that would have been used to pay for the increase in Employee National Insurance thresholds proposed by the Conservatives, as well as revenues from increases in Capital Gains Tax rates for non-business assets.

After pressure from the Liberal Democrats the two parties also agreed to a longer-term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real terms steps each year towards this objective. Achieving this would provide much more tax fairness towards the poorest in our society, something Liberal Democrats are committed to.

Speaking about the great news Councillor Norman Owen, Leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Salford Council said,

“This is great news for thousands of Salford’s residents, especially for the 3,290 residents who are being lifted out of the threshold for paying income tax. This will be a really positive bit of news for those people, who are amongst the poorest in our communities, at a time when many are struggling. Liberal Democrats are continuing to push for yearly increases to the allowance until we reach £10,000 as the threshold. This would provide much more tax fairness towards the poorest in our society.”

Figures just released by Salford Council show that last year, two events they hosted and paid for “on behalf of the city”, lost almost £400,000 of taxpayer’s money. The Proms in the Park which was held in Buile Hill Park and broadcast live by the BBC lost £199,500 in 2010 and The Ice Rink (which was moved to The Quays last Christmas in a last ditch, desperate attempt to stem the losses of previous years), lost £154,300.

Neither the Proms in the Park nor the Ice Rink has ever made a profit for Salford Council and the cumulative losses for both make difficult reading.

The Proms has now been running for 3 years in Salford (televised twice) and the cumulative losses for 2008-2010 are £486,400 and the Ice Rink’s cumulative losses for 2007-2010 are £470,400.

Each year since the “Pink Rink” first started in 2007 (the Proms event was first held in 2008), Salford Liberal Democrats made it clear to our Labour-controlled Council that we did not believe these events provided value for money for our taxpayers. Each year we were ignored and the losses increased.

Finally, Salford Labour have seen sense and neither event will be held in 2011 but the total losses to date speak for themselves. Almost £1 million pounds lost by the Council on efforts to make Salford look good on the BBC and provide some subsidised ice skating for children.

What could that £1 million pounds have paid for if not frittered away by Salford Labour? Council jobs saved? Charlestown, Irlam & Cadishead Libraries prevented from closing? Stopped the now-planned increase in car parking charges across the city? Paid for full staffing for Salford’s Citizens Advice Bureaux for the next 3 years? No cuts in Graffiti or street cleaning?

The list is endless, that £1 million pounds would have gone a long way to saving essential services instead it was frittered away by a Labour council that has got it’s priorities all wrong and is content to blame the coalition government for everything.

It’s time for a change on Salford Council. In approximately 2 months time we go to the polls again in the local elections and you can rid this city of the wasting, whinging Labour and elect a Liberal Democrat councillor who will work hard for YOU!

Vote Liberal Democrat on May 5th.

Ed Balls, the man who is responsible for Britain’s economic mess, is back in the Labour shadow cabinet. Ed Balls isn’t just a deficit denier; he’s a deficit enthusiast.

It was Ed Balls who decided to let the bankers run riot and it was Ed Balls who ensured that our economy was unable to deal with any economic downturn.
Despite that he still refuses to accept that Labour made any mistakes on the economy. He’s not a deficit denier, he’s a deficit enthusiast.

Ed Balls on banks:

• ‘Nothing should be done to put at risk a light-touch, risk-based regulatory regime’ (Bloomberg Speech, 14 June 2006).
• ‘I believe we are right to avoid prescriptive, heavy-handed regulation in Britain’ (Balls, ibid.).
• ‘In my first speech as City Minister at Bloomberg in London, I argued that London’s success has been based on… light-touch principle-based regulation’ (Speech to The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce and The British Chamber of Commerce, 13 September 2006).
• ‘It is important that the FSA continues to deliver a light-touch and risk-based regulatory approach’ (14 June 2006).
• ‘[The Labour government] will outlaw the imposition of any rules that might endanger the light-touch, risk-based regulatory regime that underpins London’s success.’ (13 September 2006).

But now:

• We should have ignored Tory and City claims that we were being too tough on financial regulation and been much tougher still. (Independent, 24 January 2011)

Blogging has been thin on the ground these last few months (a new year’s resolution may be in order to rectify that), but it seems that a new year has not brought a ‘new’ Labour. In fact, quite the opposite.

Nationally, we see Labour claiming the VAT rise is “the wrong tax at the wrong time” – and while I’m no fan of the VAT rise, I do remember Alistair Darling publicly discussing the need to bring in a rise of 19%. Just what would Labour have done if they’d won the election (or, god forbid participated in a coalition)? We’ll never know, Labour’s blank page is still waiting for a drop of ink.

Locally, Salford’s Labour are no better. The end of the year saw disaster after disaster: Salford Childrens Services being rated poor (the lowest possible rating), the previously excellent Adult Care suffered badly under the new stewardship of Langworthy Councillor John Warmisham and a dodgy land deal was done with Tesco.

The £4m under-the-counter “deposit” by Tesco as part-payment for land in Pendleton adjacent to the Precinct could be tantamount to a bribe, but to subsequently discover the land itself has probably been undervalued by possibly a further £10m suggests a return to the sinister and backhanded corruption that I personally always thought was the writings of  TV fiction.

I’ve submitted a Freedom of Information Request to attempt to find out which officers knew about the £4m payment and, if it’s even suggested anyone on the planning panel knew about this, I intend to report this whole sorry saga to the Council’s Standards Board.

Don’t for a minute think I am against the new Tesco at Pendleton, I’m not. But I am against council corruption.

This year, I’ll be standing as the Liberal Democrat candidate in May’s Salford Local Elections – where it’ll be my intention to route out corruption like this and expose the guilty. With more opposition councillors on the council, I’ll have more chance to reduce Labour’s waste and ensure we return our Adult Care & Childrens Services to the effective departments they have the potential to be.

Every single member of Ed Miliband’s new shadow cabinet served in Gordon Brown’s government.

Of the 19 members of the new shadow cabinet, 11 served as cabinet ministers under Brown, while the other eight held ministerial posts.

Every member of the new shadow cabinet voted for ID cards. Of the 14 who were MPs at the time, 12 voted for the invasion of Iraq.

Miliband himself was a key adviser to Brown in the Treasury, including chairing his Council of Economic Advisers, responsible for long-term economic planning. He was then parachuted into a safe seat and fast-tracked into the cabinet before writing Brown’s election manifesto.

Miliband claimed his election heralded a new generation in Labour politics, but his shadow cabinet is made of the same New Labour politicians that spent recklessly and left the economy in tatters, stole our freedoms, left our political system in disgrace and failed to close the huge gap between the richest and the poorest.

The Daily Telegraph has analysed the background of all the new Shadow Cabinet members and has found that they are overwhelmingly white, privileged and heterosexual. Social diversity was delivered a blow with Diane Abbott, Ben Bradshaw and Chris Bryant not getting a place.

The full list of the new Shadow Cabinet can be found here.

On May 5th 2011, there will be a referendum on whether to adopt the Alternative Vote. The First Past The Post system hands power to the lucky few who live in marginal constituencies and sucks it away from the vast majority of us who do not. So over the next eight months the Liberal Democrats will be fighting hard, with others, for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum.

I’ve pledged to vote YES to fairer votes on May 5th 2011.

We’ve seen the results of the current voting system from the War in Iraq to the MPs’ expenses scandals. The problem is that too many MPs do not answer to the voters because they are in a ‘safe seat’. Other MPs can get elected even though more than two thirds of people vote against them. Many votes are ‘wasted’.

It’s time to change this in Britain.

On May 5th 2011 millions of people across Britain will vote on how we elect our MPs. But it is about more than just changing the way we vote, it’s about giving power back to the voters and getting MPs and a Government that works for you. Already people are lining up to stop this change, to keep the current, broken system.

We cannot let them win. Join our campaign!

Register here to become part of the Liberal Democrats’ Fairer Votes Campaign and we’ll stay in touch as the campaign develops to let you know how to get involved and help shape a fairer future.

While I’m generally supportive of the coalition government’s attempts to fix the problems that 13yrs of Labour mismanagement have left us, let me make it clear – I am a Liberal Democrat. There are many Conservative activists, councillors and MPs I can converse with (even if I don’t necessarily agree with their politics), Nadine Dorries is certainly not one of them!

Nadine Dorries has been in the news again this week. On Friday Lucy Glennon wrote in The Guardian that the Tory Bedfordshire MP had blogged about one of her disabled constituents’ frequent tweeting. Dorries assumed that someone who could tweet so much was obviously not disabled enough to be claiming benefits and suggested the person in question should get a job, or she would “inform the authorities”.

While that was a terrible generalisation from Dorries (and without foundation I might add), perhaps her far worse accusation that the constituent continued to “…work for the Labour party and write porn at the same time as claiming your disability benefit”  I would think be worthy of complaint and, if it was me, would certainly see libel proceedings begin forthwith.

So then why did Tory Nadine Dorries pick on this unsuspecting constituent? Was this a personal vendetta or a response to an attack from the disabled constituent? It would appear not. It seems apparant that Nadine Dorries has a hatred for disabled people (certainly a misunderstanding of the limitations some disabled people have), but far more concerning is the fact that Dorries thinks disabled people can’t have a social life or political views. Dorries belives that the disabled can’t partake in any physical activities at all (otherwise she believes they aren’t truly disabled). How short sighted for anyone in Britain today, never mind an MP.

So, why is Nadine Dorries so belligerant?

One only has to look at her Wikipedia entry for answers. She has made it her business to “attack” people, either for no good reason or perhaps because it’ll look good as a “campaign” on her next constituency communication.

Dorries served as a member of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee. During her time on this committee, she only attended 2% of sessions. Refusing to sit on the committee due to the manner in which the committee was chaired claiming that the Chairman, Lib Dem Phil Wiullis was acting as a puppet for another Lib Dem committee member, Dr Evan Harris. The committee then reformed as the Science and Technology Select Committee, she did not attend a single session in protest.

When accused by the Daily Telegraph in 2009 that she claimed £24,222 Additional Costs Allowance (for ‘secondary’ housing costs), Dorries counter-attacked on her blog, alleging lack of good faith on the part of the paper. On 22 May she went on BBC Radio 4 to draw parallels between the McCarthy ‘Witch-Hunts’ and the press’ revelation of MP’s expenses. She claimed everyone was fearing a ‘suicide’, and colleagues were constantly checking up on each other. Later in the day her blog was taken down. It transpired that Withers, lawyers acting for the Barclay Brothers, the owners of the Daily Telegraph, had required the removal of the blog, on threat of libel action against the service provider.

From her ridiculous campaign against a “proposal to ban the wearing of high heels in the office” through to her less than parliamentary behaviour towards the Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, who she plotted to have removed from the speaker’s chair accusing him of opportunism and disloyalty. After Bercow’s wife, Sally, was approved as a Labour parliamentary candidate and gave an interview about her personal life, Dorries argued that the Bercows were damaging the historic respect the office of Speaker had. In January 2010, she refused to honour the tradition of MPs of standing still and allowing the Speaker to pass them in the corridors of Parliament in protest to Bercow’s decision not to wear the Speaker’s traditional uniform.

Perhaps all this explains why Nadine Dorries was defeated so easily by Hazel Grove Lib Dem MP Andrew Stunnel in the 2001 general election by a superb 8,435 majority.

Northerners are glad that Nadine Dorries moved away from our area, but it’s very sad that she was parachuted into a safe seat in Mid Bedfordshire in 2005. She should move out of politics altogether after this latest fiasco, as she has proven just how out of touch with the 21st century she really is.

Today, Ed Miliband tried to rewrite history by putting distance between himself and New Labour and presenting himself as part of a new generation of Labour politicians.

The truth is Ed Miliband spent the last 13 years at the heart of the New Labour project. He was an adviser in Gordon Brown’s Treasury from 1997 and went on to chair the Council of Economic Advisers, responsible for long-term economic planning, in 2004.

He was then parachuted into a safe seat and quickly appointed as a minister in Brown’s cabinet before writing his 2010 election manifesto. He was an integral part of the Labour Government that left the economy in tatters, faced allegations of complicity in torture, stole our freedoms, left our political system in disgrace and failed to close the huge gap between the richest and the poorest.

In the Treasury he was reckless with our money. When he was in charge of environment policy he was timid and weak.

Ed Miliband’s voting record shows that he was fully signed up to New Labour’s assault on civil liberties and voted against an investigation into the Iraq war. He was also weak on tackling climate change and bringing greater transparency to Parliament.

Voted for:

* Control orders
* Identity Cards
* Reducing parliamentary scrutiny (eg. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act)
* All the Terrorism Bill’s clauses including 42 and 90 day detention
* Trident replacement

Voted against:

* Introducing Parliamentary approval to be required for deployment of the Armed Forces
* An investigation into the Iraq war

Patchy record on:

Climate Change – He introduced legislation which included a pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 (Miliband’s 60% target was only increased after pressure by the Liberal Democrats) but:

* Voted against a 2007 Liberal Democrat motion calling on the Government to do significantly more on climate change
* Was absent in 2008 on a vote to allow consumers to be paid renewable energy feed-in tariffs
* Was absent in 2008 on a Planning Bill amendment to consider climate change in applications
* Voted against a clause in the Climate Change Bill allowing the Secretary of State to set a maximum level of carbon emissions for energy plants in 2008
* Voted against the 2009 Lib Dem 10:10 motion calling on the House to reduce energy usage by 10% during 2010

Transparency of Parliament:

* Voted for MPs’ expenses and financial interests to be made public in 2009 but was absent on all other Freedom of Information amendments relating to making Parliament more transparent (most notably the 2008 vote on the report from the Members Estimate Committee which recommended external audits of the Additional Costs Allowance).

Today, Labour’s new leader promised a ‘New Generation” of Labour and claimed the party would be different, but with Ed Miliband at the helm, surely all he can deliver is more of the same.

Myview is Labour will spend decades in the wilderness and Ed Miliband will never be Prime Minister.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a letter to the Salford Advertiser’s “readers’ viewpoint” page in reponse to Blackley & Broughton MP Graham Stringer’s column. It was printed in this week’s edition (albeit edited down to the required 300 words), but unfortunately the Editor has decided not to attribute the letter to me, even though I provided my name, address and permission to print both.

Here is the complete unexpurgated response to Graham Stringer’s column on the Alternative Vote:

I was astonished to read Graham Stringer’s column in last week’s Advertiser (Thursday 29^th July) where he announced he would be voting against the introduction of the Alternative Vote (AV) in next year’s referendum.

In this year’s general election, Mr Stringer’s party campaigned on a manifesto pledge to introduce AV immediately and then later to hold a referendum on Proportional Representation. Clearly, this promise was an act of political opportunism, designed to facilitate a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats in the event of a hung Parliament. No wonder Mr Stringer’s party are so bitter about the outcome.

Labour was the only party to make such a pledge yet, as a party, they are now vehemently against the policy. Then again, the Labour Party has never been particularly fastidious about observing manifesto pledges. One example was its promise at the 2005 general election to hold a national referendum on the new EU constitution, only to abandon the idea once safely re-elected. That act of calculated cynicism is about to be replicated, once again on a major constitutional issue.

Mr Stringer and his party accuse the coalition of ‘gerrymandering’, a word which in the past has been used to describe how the voting system has been used to exclude Catholics in Northern Ireland, or black and poor people in the United States, from exercising their rights. The accusation is one of the most serious any party can make as it is tantamount to an accusation of electoral corruption.

AV is not wrong or illegal nor is it less proportionate than our current first past the post system. Indeed AV is used all over the world in such countries as Australia, Ireland, Scotland and even some American Mayoral elections use the AV system. Nor is it wrong to adjust constituency boundaries which, at present, only benefit Labour (possibly to the tune of an extra 5-7% of votes). The truth of the matter is that Labour is keen to protect an electoral system that favours large parties and disenfranchises voters, they are also keen to protect the current constitutional boundaries that favour Labour.

In trying to explain his position Mr Stringer has taken Winston Churchill’s comments about democracy and misused them, I believe because he did not understand what Churchill was saying: progress is good and if you don’t change or develop then you’ll never have a better system of democracy. Churchill did not say that what comes later is worse; he said that whatever comes after is an improvement.

Finally, in his column, Mr Stringer drew attention to some 3.5 million potential voters that are unregistered in this country and stated that some of those people are unlikely to vote Conservative, implying some sort of conspiracy. Two things occurred to me when I read this most ridiculous comment: firstly, unless Mr Stringer has developed telepathic powers, he has no idea how those 3.5 million people would be likely to vote; secondly, if those 3.5 million people are so unlikely to vote Conservative why, after thirteen years of government, didn’t Mr Stringer’s party do more to ensure that they were registered to vote? Furthermore, none of the proposed changes will prevent these 3.5 million people from registering to vote in the future, making Mr Stringer’s comments all the more ridiculous.

But why would I expect a fair debate and accurate information from someone who denies the existence of dyslexia, a condition which is very real to the 6m dyslexia sufferers in the UK today? That Mr Stringer denies the existence of dyslexia, which affects 10% of his constituents, is not that surprising when you consider he denies that AV and PR are fairer voting systems that would ensure more electors’ votes count in an election.

I have written to my own MP, Hazel Blears, asking her to support AV in next year’s referendum and urge Mr Stringer to stop thinking about himself and vote with his conscience, for the benefit of those he claims to represent.

Updates to my blog have been a bit thin on the ground lately, but the campaigning has not stopped! In between bunches of 11 hour shifts at work (including a night shift that screwed my body clock up for days after), leafletting/canvassing and attending the various hustings/debates with General Election candidates there has been little time for blogging.

Last night I set the Sky+ to record the Leader’s Debates and headed off to Irlam to lend my support to Richard Gadsden, the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Worsley & Eccles South. Since most of our efforts are going into the Salford & Eccles campaign, where Norman Owen is likely to oust Hazel Blears – Richard hasn’t had the benefit of much support from the local party. In fact, Richard was leafletting in Swinton South yesterday morning! Therefore, I felt it only right that a couple of Lib Dem members stopped by to say hello and listen to the debate.

It was good to chat with Jackie Anderson and Pamela Welsh prior to the debate – both are to be applauded for their respective organisation and participation in the Irlam & Cadishead Question Time (which Jackie admits was inspired by the recent Seedley & Langworthy Question Time debates in Langworthy).

The subjects were varied and wide-ranging, from the obvious local environment issues, war in Iraq/Afghanistan, interational aid and even a question about “the 3 pillars of sustainability” (to which I admit, I had no idea what they were until I Googled them).

Richard showed he had a sound knowledge of Lib Dem policy and was able to articulate that into well spoken answers that I’m sure the audience could relate to, although I was dissapointed that Tory candidate Iain Lindley and Sale-based Worsley MP Barbara Keeley argued about leaflet lies and I still don’t know which of them is telling the truth about SureStart centres!

In any event, it was a good night for democracy and it was therefore fitting that Kat and I returned home to watch the Sky News Leaders Debate, which we had earlier set to record. One thing struck me as we watched, how similar the pre-prepared answers were of Iain Lindley and David Cameron. I was hoping that, like Richard Gadsden and Nick Clegg, politicians vying to be our future leaders would understand their party policies and articulate them in language that the audience could understand. But no, David Cameron and Iain Lindley had learned their manifestos parrot-fashion and felt it acceptable to reel it off, page by page.

Of course, at least Lindley, Gadsden and Keeley knew what their manifestos contained, unlike the UKIP candidate who, at times, seemed to desperately search his notes for answers (they weren’t there). The English Democrat representative was not much better – they were easily the poorest on the panel and well out of their depth.

Once again, a big thank you to Jackie Anderson for organising the Irlam & Cadishead Question Time and Salford Advertiser reporter Pamela Welsh for chairing the hustings. Next time Pamela, be more assertive