Norman Lamb confirms he is standing

The only runner so far

Without wanting to sound too much like Middle England at Wimbledon - Come on Tim.

In the Lib Dems, we recycle everything

The countdown to the election screen in HQ has a new Purpose...

There are many fine Liberal Democrats who cannot lead the party. Time for a change?

Our constitution is very clear - the party leader must come from the massed ranks of our representatives in the House of Commons. So there are just 8 names in the frame. And in reality probably 3 - Tim, Alistair or Norman (I had heard Alistair had ruled himself out but cannot now find the article I thought informed me of this - so I may be wrong).

This makes perfect sense when you have 50, 60 or more MPs to choose from - and indeed even now we are fortunate that with just 8 MPs ,we still find ourselves with excellent candidates who will do a fine job.

But I wonder if this is a moment when we should consider if the leadership of the party as a whole should extend beyond the Commons - not on this occasion but for future campaigns; perhaps even a rule that this is the case if our numbers in The Commons fall beneath a certain threshold? Would anyone really begrudge the chance for Kirsty Williams or Willie Rennie to run? Some of our representatives in the House of Lords - with some more big beats of the party apparently likely to join their ranks soon? Our one current or many former MEPs? Caroline Pidgeon?

Other parties  - for different reasons - seem to cope admirably with a leader who doesn't grace the green benches; SNP, Greens, UKIP.

Perhaps next time we should widen the leadership net a little further

New Leader by end of July

Hearing from Twitter that Federal Exec have just agreed to accelerate the leadership selection process and a new leader will be in place by end July.

Blimey.

10 ideas to help us back on the road to recovery

I’ve seen a few posts have been put up on this theme – but I’ve not read any of them. I wanted to put my own up and then read them, to see the much better ideas I expect everyone else will have had.

So. How to get back on track. Here are 10 thoughts.

Maybe this should be 9 ideas or 11 ideas but still. People like round numbers. For example I prefer ‘10’ to ‘8’. Although I liked the number 57 more than both of them.

Anyway…

1.Stand for things. Not general platitudes – ‘cradle to grave educational reforms’ isn’t really a thing. It’s an aspiration that every politician in every party can say. Stand for proper things that people can grasp and hold you to account over. A policy of being kind to kittens isn’t going to help anybody.

2.Accept that if they are any good they will be nicked. Good. At least they have more chance of happening then and the world will be a little more liberal. The Tories nicked raising the income tax threshold. It’s REALLY annoying. But at least the world is better for it. Or will be so long as they raise it to £12500.

3.Keep thinking of new radical things ready for when the good one’s have been nicked. Then we’ll still have something to talk about.

4.Make one of those radical things : PR . Not pretend PR (like AV). Don’t call it ‘constitutional reform’. Go for it. There’s never been a better time

5.Lords reform. Til we’re blue in the face.

6.Raising the National Insurance threshold. It’s more progressive than raising the tax threshold. I know it doesn’t win Middle Class Middle England alarm clock Britain voters. I don’t care.

7.Votes for 16 and 17 year olds.

8.Tories will almost certainly go backwards at GE2020. They broke the mould this time for many reasons – but not least because they were part of a coalition, not majority government. Its v. unlikely they can go forward next time.  Let’s target winning those seats back now. They'll be easier to win than Labour facing seats I'll wager.

9.Yes, I know point 6 is a progressive point that contradicts point 8. Again I don’t care. I’m not going to be constrained by left or right. I’m only going to be constrained by the filter of ‘is it liberal’

10.The Snoopers Charter. Oh dear me no. Man the barricades

There’s of course a lot more to say. But this would be a start.

Is this the perfect time to start again?

And so…

I’m firing up the blog once again.

It’s been a year (save for one blog post in January when I was fit to burst). I’ve started a new business, and something had to give. But that’s now fully up  (here's a link if you're interested) and running and so here we are.

Given the General Election result – and similar results in local elections for 4 years in a row, London Elections, Holyrood elections, Welsh Assembly elections and the, ahem,  triumph of the European elections – it seems a good time to start again.

Wish me luck and enjoy

R

Julian Huppert. Ask the PM this.

Julian Huppert, the Lib Dem MP for Cambridge has a slot at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) on Wednesday and he’s looking for suggestions about what he should ask.  Well Julian, here’s mine:

“Does the Prime Minister think that a Government security organisation which gives out its Chief Executive’s mobile phone number to a stranger who calls up their switchboard shouldn’t, on the whole, be given free access to every citizen’s e mail and internet records for the past year and trusted not to use that data inappropriately?”

I ask this, because while you and I might think the answer to that question is self evidently ‘no’, 4 members of the House of Lords think it’s a resounding yes. And for that reason Lords Blair, King, West and (unlikely though it seems given his recent pronouncements, the Lib Dem) Lord Carlile are this evening proposing a series of amendments in the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill, which will result in the Snoopers Charter becoming law.

Their justification for this being because… the police and security forces have asked for it. To quote Lord Carlile:

“We have taken the view that if the head of the security service and the current Metropolitan police commissioner argue that these powers are needed urgently to retain communications data due to changes in technology, then we needed to act now rather than wait for reports that we do not know when they will be completed. We have got to give parliament an opportunity to provide these powers without delay and before the general election”.

Which is strange because I’m pretty sure Parliament has had the chance to review this since the last general election. That a Parliamentary Committee found the proposed bill wanting. Indeed the Chair of the joint Parliamentary Committee that reviewed the original Bill has written to Lord King stating

“My committee savaged the draft bill and we found fault with nearly just about every component of it”.

… yet these  members of the House of Lords thought fit to effectively cut and paste large chunks or the original Snoopers Charter into the Bill. And never mind the fact that no majority in favour of these proposals exists in the (democratically elected) Commons. Because these 4 unelected Lords (including of course, a former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police) want the powers that be to have them.

Which makes me wonder if Julian Huppert doesn’t like my first suggestion for his PMQ slot, perhaps he should be asking the Prime Minister when the Upper House will consist of a democratically elected reforming and reviewing body, rather than a collection of establishment figures who think they know best?