Category Archives: Blog

Nick Clegg's conference speech

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So last night was a veritable blog-fest! And blogging is soooooo flavour of the moment. I went straight out after handing over the award to do Five Live with John Pienaar, who is himself today starting a blog for the first time! Good luck John!

This morning, Monday, the big event is my boss – otherwise known as Shadow Home Secretary or Nick Clegg’s keynote speech. I have just emerged from his bravura performance where Conference gave him a standing ovation. It was an excellent speech which really went for the shallowness of Labour’s rhetoric on crime, their obsession with new legislation (3,000 new offences since taking office) and their hideous illiberal approach to dealing with the new threats we face – which also won’t deliver. As Nick put it – they need to do less but do it better. He proposed a Great Repeal Act to take away the raft of useless laws that encroach on our British values and way of life. Read his speech – it is worth the time. It’ll appear shortly at http://www.libdems.org.uk/conference/conference.html

First day and a half at Brighton

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Arrived Recording my conference webcastin Brighton for conference on Saturday and rushed for briefing by Ming. Then walk out to seafront on Ming’s right arm to greet the media. The media are interested in tax – are we giving up our much loved 50p policy? – and Charles – how will his speech on Tuesday go? Ming gave a good answer – ‘there will be no clapometer’ and he robustly defended parties having real debates on substantive issues without them being “high noon” for the leadership. It’s obviously not a competition and Charles is one of our stars so I expect Charles will lay out some ideas – at least that is what I hope, as that is one of his great strengths.

And lastly – top of the pops for media questions – is this conference a test of Ming’s leadership?

Well – every conference is a test of leadership. Ming will do a good job. He is very charming, intelligent and oozes integrity from every pore – but there’s no doubt that all eyes will be upon him. That’s leadership!

Both Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning see me and the rest of the Home Affairs Team (Nick Clegg and Mark Hunter) holding special sessions. The one on the Saturday with us as a team being there for our party members to question, raise issues, tell us the party’s policies and issues that they feel need addressing and inform us what they think of how the Home Affairs Team is doing!

Today’s session was a more formal consultation on the consultation paper on crime produced by the crime working group chaired by Graham Tope – my former London Assembly and Metropolitan Police Authority colleague. Crime and anti-social behaviour remain the key issues – not Labour’s endless headlines and talk about being tough, but for Lib Dems it’s what works that matters. Rhetoric doesn’t make out streets safer.

First thing this morning I did my first webcast from conference. This is a new ‘feature’ during the Lib Dem conference with daily feeds from Ming, Duncan Brack (Chair of Conference) and myself each doing a minute or two filming to go up on the party website so that members can have a taste of what each of us makes of what’s going on.

Party conference

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Off to Liberal Democrat conference today! What do I expect – other than being very busy! Well – outside of the media terming us ‘economic’ or ‘social liberals’ – their favourite sport will be will Kennedy come back and will Ming be merciless, but what I hope is that we will debate and decide policies on a whole range of issues which really matter. And the Lib Dem conference debates are still real – speeches sway votes, decisions made are followed and outcomes aren’t fixed in advance.

The one that will hit the news is the tax debate. It will be termed as to whether we ‘lose’ our old plans for a 50p on higher taxes debate. As a long time fan of the 50p rate I have followed the plans pretty carefully that propose scrapping them. (There’s been a lively debate at the new LibDemVoice website which gives a good flavour of some of the issues).

First let it be said – that the new proposals and the old ones are both redistributive, fairer etc etc. But the new proposal lifts swathes of people out of tax altogether, is far more redistributive and begins the real shift from taxing good things (like work) to taxing bad things (like pollution).

We lose the totemic 50p higher rate – but we gain what I really want – which is a fairer system that without raising taxes redistributes the tax burden better and tackles climate change.

So I am intending to vote for the policy and against the amendment that proposes retention of another similar version of our 50p. Unless the debate changes my views: after all, I am a sentient human being and there would be no point in having the debate if one could not be persuaded by arguments as yet unthought of. I know – shock horror. Not rigid. Not whipped and capable of thinking for myself.

PS I am being one of the “guinea pigs” for a set of video diaries during conference, along with Ming Campbell and Conference Committee Chair, Duncan Brack. Will be interesting to see how this works – so watch this space!

Hornsey Central Hospital: meeting report

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So the people did come. Having put out hundreds of postcards to ramp up public pressure – the people did come.

The Labour government policy on health means that there is only one game in town – a LIFT project, which will require winning bids and selling off land to fund it.

But it’s very risky. There are absolutely no guarantees that we won’t just see the land being sold off, the old hospital building being demolished – but then the bid for funding doesn’t win and we’re left with absolutely sweet FA.

I remain open to listening to anyone who can come up with a viable alternative, but so far there appears to really only be one game in town.

Against that background however, is the genuine commitment of the Primary Care Trust’s team to get this through, the backing and interest from the local commissioning west Haringey doctors. So on balance I would rather put pressure on this to make sure something happens than not.

So what I would like to do is get everyone in the area to support the bid (to be in by the end of September) with a letter-writing lobbying campaign to up the odds of getting the bid for funding. Am currently investigating who best to lobby.

I am also going to try and get to see the new Chief Executive of the London-wide Health Authority to argue for a guarantee that if the land is sold the money comes back to that site. This is against the policy of the Health Trust who say that it will go in a pot and is LIKELY to come back. Likely isn’t good enough for those of us who have campaigned for ever for this. So I will try and get a meeting to ask for a cast iron guarantee and if necessary will campaign for that too.

If we can get the bid and ring-fence the proceeds of any sale then perhaps we can succeed.

This is all dicey. But the fight has to be to get proper health facilities here for us, after years of promises.

Guardian Public Services Awards

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Have to miss the launch of Britain after Blair as am judging the Guardian Public Service Awards. Started three years ago – these are awards for a whole range of public services. I was sent the judging long list some weeks ago and given criteria. Today it is the judging lunch where the scores we sent in from our first round of judging are haggled over between those on my panel.

We meet for drinks in the bar before moving onto the restaurant. I’m told it is THE bar, the ‘in’ bar and that if I want to hobnob with celebs like Posh – this is where to come. Hmmmmm. It’s in the Metropolitan Hotel in Old Park Lane which meant I staggered around a variety of badly signed exits at Hyde Park Corner for a while before finding he right one. Such a hostile traffic junction for human beings.

Anyway – to the point. At the lunch, each table comprised the six or so judges, a scribe and someone from the Guardian to guide us through the judging. As I am forbidden to reveal anything about the judging – I will simply relate the tittle tattle.

I was sitting next to Michael White of the Guardian on one side and Charlotte (the scribe – actually event manager from the Guardian) on the other. Michael gave me a piece of advice just after I was elected and met him at some do or other – that the less he wrote about me the better I was doing. What I took that to mean was that my priority was local activity and local papers. We had all done our judging seriously – and you could tell – as each member of the panel talked pretty fluently about what they did or did not think. Michael too – which I thought was impressive. It is a serious business.

Judging and lunch finished. Really interesting process – and very enjoyable.

Why I blog

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I have written a short piece for Iain Dale’s new publication on the top Lib Dem, Tory and Labour blogs.

You can read my piece here.

I’ll also be saying a bit more on the subject at Lib Dem conference on Sunday night at the bloggers’ reception. So if you’re a Lib Dem blogger reading this – see you there!

Meanwhile it’s busy, busy – with speeches to prepare for next week on top of all the other usual work.

Lib Dem blog of the year shortlist

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Blog of the yearHave been judging the Lib Dem bloggers awards. Lots of nominations – lots of excellent sites nominated. I have been disqualified – in the sense that despite being nominated I am a judge so can’t win. They didn’t tell me that when I agreed to be one of the judges! Blogging is high profile at the moment – and Lib Dems really have been right in there at the forefront of the genre. The results will be announced at the Lib Dem Bloggers Reception to be held on Sunday at the LibDem conference.