Are there no depths to which opponents of Lords reform will not sink?

This - in today's Telegraph. They even manage to link it to Nick. For goodness sake

I guess a taste of the campaign to come...

OMG: They have made a whole new West Wing scene for charity.

How totally wonderful.



h/t to @politico

Vote for Vince to be chancellor - NOW

Huffington Post is running a survey to see how many people think Vince should replace Osborne as Chancellor.

Do click on this link to express your opinion. Thanks!!

Update.

It's going well. When it opened it was 32:67. Now look...

Let's keep up the pressure everyone!!

Obama at White House Correspondents dinner..

The great tradition in the US of the President making a very funny and risque speech at the White House Correspondent's dinner was upheld in fine style on Saturday evening. It's worth watching (embedded below). And the perfect excuse for me to put up my favourite ever such speech - which, unlikely as it may seem, was made from George W Bush... who could certainly laugh at himself.

Obama 2012





Bush 2007 - starts slow, but then from 45 seconds in...

Nick Clegg is Killing the Tory Party

Just in case you missed this brilliant and insightful piece in The Express yesterday...:-)

Hooray for Nick!

Be careful what you wish for...

Here's my piece from Lib dem Voice yesterday. The headline on the piece isn't mine ('I don't think Jeremy Hunt should resign') - the above headline reflects more what I think. I was a little worried that the post would be misunderstood as an attack on Vince, when I intended the opposite, to defend his position - but in fact most people seem to have understood my point of view (although many are disagreeing - it's a cracking comments thread). Anyway, here's the piece or pop over to LDV to see the comments...

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a post I really wanted to write. But I don’t think Jeremy Hunt should resign over the Murdoch affair. Lord, I hate myself.

Anyway, ‘why so?’, you’re all bellowing at the screen. Let me explain

As of now, Jeremy Hunt has not been shown to have done anything wrong, and he maintains he has been whiter than white. The blame has been laid firmly at the door of his SpAd, Adam Smith, who has dutifully fallen his sword. Innocent until proven guilty and all that, so no reason for Hunt to go as yet.

Hence the calls for an independent inquiry to get to the bottom of all this. Leveson doesn’t have the mandate to judge if Ministerial conduct has been appropriate or not – as Tory Minsters who said there was no need for separate investigation knew full well (and Leveson himself has now made clear). So moves are afoot to get the full facts from a proper inquiry– and deal a knockout blow to Hunt’s position.

But here’s the rub. Lets presume for a moment that we get an independent inquiry. That it rules that Hunt has behaved inappropriately, and concludes that rather than adopting an independent quasi judicial role, he is seen to have done all he can to swing things in the Murdoch’s favour.

Well, there is a tariff in place for the appropriate punishment for a Minister seen to have been less than impartial on a matter like this. And strangely, it’s been established over the same case – the proposed News Corp takeover of BSkyB.

Because as we all know, Vince was shown to perhaps be less than impartial in this matter. And he wasn’t asked to resign, nor was he fired. He had responsibility for the deal taken away from him. Nothing more.

Now, I’m pretty sure we all see Vince has being firmly on the side of the angels in all this – as the unfolding events of the last 18 months have so clearly demonstrated.

But – and I take no pleasure in this – the issue here is not whether the Minister’s personal judgement is seen to be right or not, it’s not ‘which side of the fence did he jump to?’ It’s jumping off the fence at all that’s the problem – and the punishment isn’t resignation. It’s a minor reduction in your workload.

‘Aha’, others have cried when I have ventured this view, ‘there is a difference. Vince merely expressed an opinion about the Murdoch’s – he didn’t actually do anything. Hunt is alleged to have actively aided and abetted the News Corp bid – that’s much more serious.’

Which may be so. But I suspect politically it won’t be seen to be so. I can almost see Cameron now sorrowfully shaking his head as he announces that ‘ every aspect of and every Minister involved in this whole sorry affair will be investigated.’

I suspect Vince knows this. Which is why he said of Hunt,

I think he needs to be given time to defend himself and until then he remains a good colleague. I myself will explain my role in the process to the Leveson Inquiry.

We may suspect Jeremy Hunt of all sorts of nefarious wrongdoing. We’re convinced Vince has been shown to have been an astute judge of character in dealing with the Murdochs.

But we may be sensible to content ourselves with some very loud and vociferous cries of ‘Vince was right’ and leave things there.

FCC Response to Comments on Accreditation

FCC has issued the response below to all those who replied to the call for comments on Accreditation at Conference.. My summary - they have listened (good). Its difficult (I concur). There is more work to do (agreed).

In short - I think FCC are doing their best. But we're not there yet.

Many thanks for responding to the consultation by FCC. Apologies for the 'standard' response but as you will appreciate we had a lot of replies and I wanted to advise everyone that responded of where we have got to.

Federal Conference Committee met on Monday to consider the question of conference security. As we said in our article of 14th April 2012, the police have requested that we adopt a similar system of accreditation for conference that was used for Birmingham last Autumn.   That system would involve conference attendees submitting certain pieces of information at the time of registration, such as their past addresses and passport number.  That information would be used to assess whether the person registering is who they say they are and whether they pose a serious security threat to conference.  If so, the person concerned would not be accredited.  The vast majority, however, would be.  Those who were accredited for attendance in Birmingham would be recognised by the system, unless they had asked for their data from last time to be deleted, and minimal checks would be required. As before, safeguards would be put in place were accreditation to be adopted.  These include an appeals procedure whereby the final decision as to whether someone could attend conference or not would be taken by the Party and not the police.  It would also include the facility for the data to be deleted in respect of anyone who wanted it.   What data remained would be held on a standalone system, not linked to the main police computer system.  People who have changed identity would be able to apply for accreditation under their current identity and would not need to reveal their former one. The FCC recognises that accreditation is highly controversial within the Party.  A motion was submitted about it to Birmingham Conference and, whilst an amendment that would have refused to adopt accreditation in the future failed, conference did ‘condemn’ the system that was in use at that time. When we called for views on the accreditation proposal for Brighton, many responses were received.  We would like to thank everyone who took the time and trouble to send us their opinions.  Many were in favour of accreditation but many were vehemently opposed to it. At our meeting on Monday, representatives of LGBT+ attended to tell us about the particular problems with accreditation that face people with previous identities.  We are very grateful for the time they took to do that.  Senior members of Party staff also attended.  Over the past two weeks, they have talked extensively to the Party insurers and to staff at the conference venue in Brighton. Following careful consideration, FCC does not think that the case for accreditation of party members is presently made out, but recognises that there are other complex issues around it that need to be addressed.  We are committed to holding conference without it if we possibly can.   We have therefore decided to delay opening registration for Party members (and only Party members) whilst further negotiation takes place with the police, other Party Committees, the owners of the conference venue and our insurers.  If we possibly can avoid using accreditation though, we will.  We will provide further information as soon as we are able to do so.

Regards

Andrew Wiseman

Chair, Federal Conference Committee