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Tag: nick-clegg

  • Whatever happened to the Lib Dem interim peers list?

    I was intrigued by last week’s list of 10 new Lib Dem appointments to the House of Lords. As longstanding readers of this blog will know, I was one of the people who helped develop the Lib Dem system of electing an “interim peers panel” from which the party leader gets to choose the majority…

  • Lib Dems, welfare and the art of negotiation

    As former, disgruntled party members go, I think it is fair to say that I’ve been remarkably discreet and reasonable. I’m not a huge believer in trashing my former colleagues (and still, in many cases, current friends) in some vanity exercise designed to justify my resignation ex post facto, and tend to distrust the judgement…

  • Three thoughts about Police and Crime Commissioner elections…

    You can’t politicise the police any more than they have politicised themselves Every time the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Police Federation or someone like Lord Blair complains about the “politicisation” of the police, the Baby Jesus cries. The police have always been political, and over the last decade have become quite shameless about…

  • Clegg and coalition six months on

    The fact that Lib Dem conference is rapidly approaching means that I have a semi-anniversary of my own to mark. It’s now been just over six months since I left the Lib Dems. Life after party politics How do I feel? I’ve had a tough, and at times frustrating half year: negotiating the fineries of…

  • Why Charlotte Henry’s purity test of “real” liberalism is misguided

    Charlotte Henry has a curious article on the Total Politics blog, suggesting that Clegg’s speech on a more participatory form of industrial democracy will help us to seperate the “real liberals” from the “SDP-statist-sandal wearers”. There are several problems with this diagnosis. For one thing, the famed “sandal wearers” and the SDP members are very…