stephentall.org

A quick follow-up to our story, Jenny Tonge resigns…

Baroness (Jenny) Tonge has this afternoon resigned the Lib Dem whip after coming under intense pressure following the widespread reporting of remarks she made last week declaring that Israel “will reap what they have sown” once the USA gets “sick of giving £70bn a year to Israel to support what I call America’s aircraft carrier in the Middle East”.

It is by no means the first time Baroness Tonge has landed herself in hot water for her out-spoken views on Israel:

• She was sacked by then leader Charles Kennedy as the Lib Dem children’s spokeswoman in the Commons in 2004 after she suggested she could consider becoming a Palastinian suicide bomber.
• Two years later, Charles’s successor Ming Campbell rebuked her for comments that some regarded as anti-semitic when she said, “The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips.”
• In 2010, Ming’s successor Nick Clegg sacked Baroness Tonge as the Lib Dems’ health spokeswoman in the Lords after she apologised unreservedly for disseminating unsubstantiated claims that Israeli troops sent to Haiti after its earthquake were trafficking organs.

Her latest comments, made on a visit to Middlesex Univerity, were reported to be as follows:

“Beware Israel. Israel is not going to be there for ever in its present form. One day, the United States of America will get sick of giving £70bn a year to Israel to support what I call America’s aircraft carrier in the Middle East – that is Israel. One day, the American people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough. … Israel will lose support and then they will reap what they have sown.”

According to the Guardian, the party’s initial response was to disassociate the Lib Dems from Baroness Tonge’s remarks, but not ask her to withdraw them:

A spokesman said: “Jenny Tonge does not speak for the party on Israel and Palestine. Her presence and comments at this event were extremely ill-advised and ill-judged. The tone of the debate at this event was wholly unacceptable and adds nothing to the peace process. The Liberal Democrats are wholehearted supporters of a peaceful two state solution to the Israel- Palestine issue.”

However, in the afternoon it emerged Nick Clegg had delivered an ultimatum that either she should withdraw and apologise for her comments, or have the Lib Dem whip removed. Baroness Tonge decided she would not apologise, and so resigned the whip herself (and I understand may have resigned from the party itself, though I don’t know that for sure).

There’s a strong sense in the party’s highest echelons today that she has been given more than enough second chances, and that her repeated inflammatory interventions are damaging the party’s position on a highly sensitive issue.

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, was interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Neil at the weekend on some of the key issues currently facing the party and the Coalition. These included the Lib Dem push for tax-cuts for the low-paid, maintaining the 50p tax-rate for those earning more than £150,000, and the NHS reform bill.

Here’s what he had to say:

(Available on the BBC website here.)

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

It’s a month since Nick Clegg made a fresh bid to put the Lib Dems’ flagship 2010 manifesto policy once again front-and-centre: further tax-cuts for the lowest-paid to be funded by higher taxes for the wealthiest.

And today came news of what the public thinks of the Lib Dem approach to fairer taxes, with the Independent reporting the following ComRes poll results:

A majority of people want George Osborne to raise taxes for the rich in next month’s Budget in order to take more low paid workers out of tax, according to a ComRes survey for The Independent. Some 60 per cent of the public support the Liberal Democrats’ flagship policy and key Budget demand while 34 per cent disagree.

Here’s what ComRes asked: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? People on high incomes* should pay more in tax in order to take people on the lowest incomes out of tax altogether. There was majority support for the policy in every single demographic (bar one**), but it’s interesting to see the breakdown of who is most favourable to the policy:

At or above average (60%) support:

• Men (64%)
• Those aged 45 or over – 45-54 (63%), 55-64 (71%), 65+ (73%)
• C2s (62%) and DEs (68%)
• Those living in eastern England (65%), Yorkshire & Humberside (60%), north-west England (60%), south-west England (68%), Wales (61%) and Scotland (63%)
• Lib Dem (64%), Labour (69%), Green (87%) voters
• Lib Dem 2010 GE voters (70%) and Lab 2010 GE voters (69%)

Below average (60%) support:

• Females (55%)
• Those aged under 45 or under – 18-24 (45%), 25-34 (47%), 35-44 (52%)
• ABs (54%) and C1s (56%)
• Those living in north-east England (48%), east Midlands (51%), south-east England (57%), London (58%), west Midlands (58%)
• Conservative (51%), UKIP (56%), SNP (50%), PLaid Cymru (55%), BNP (40%) voters
• Conservative 2010 GE voters (53%)

* A pedantic (but important) note… the Lib Dems’ preferred approach is not simply to tax ‘people on high incomes’ to fund tax-cuts for the low-paid. The Lib Dem manifesto committed the party to raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 to be funded by a mix of tax-raising measures (including, for example, the ‘mansion tax’ and taxes on polluters), to ensure a fairer distribution of the tax burden between the wealthiest in society (who are not always the same as the highest earners) and the poorest.

** The only group of voters who, according to ComRes, are opposed to funding tax-cuts for the low-paid by increasing taxes on the richest are… BNP voters. (And note that the sample size of BNP voters in this survey is so small there will be a large margin of error.)

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

Here’s a clip of former Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Menzies Campbell declaring reform of the unelected upper house — that century-old piece of ‘unfinished business’ — is an innate part of what defines Liberal Democrats:

(Available on the BBC website here.)

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

The Coalition for Marriage was launched last week. And as many groups do to try and drum up some publicity announce themselves to the world, they commissioned an opinion poll of public attitudes to equal marriage.

Which is fair enough. But then, it appears, a thought struck them. The UK is, by and large, a tolerant nation, with the vast majority now accepting of gay and lesbian relationships being respected and recognised. So… how to pose an opinion poll question that could produce the result they wanted?

Thankfully, ComRes (a member of the British Polling Council) did them proud. You can read it here.

It is a brief masterclass in asking the right questions to produce the results you want.

First, the neutral question that comforts the respondent that the views they hold are eminently reasonable: ‘Please tell me the extent to which you agree or disagree with [this] statement about the definition of marriage… It is possible to be tolerant of the rights of others and protective of traditional marriage at the same time.’ Unsurprisingly, 86% of the public agrees with this beguilingly innocuous true-ism.

And so are we lined up for the clincher, the killer question, so loaded with intrinsic bias it is almost admirably breathtaking in its audacity:

‘Please tell me the extent to which you agree or disagree with [this] statement about the definition of marriage… Since gay and lesbian couples already have the same rights as married couples available to them under civil partnership, they should not be allowed to redefine marriage for everyone else.’

It’s a question which would have been only marginally less subtle if paraphrased as ‘Don’t you think those gays are getting a bit above themselves, eh?’

Given the brazen slant of the question, I was actually quite surprised to see that only 51% agreed with the statement, with 34% disagreeing.

I think the wording of this poll question tells us everything we need to know about the credibility of the Coalition for Marriage — and, perhaps more importantly, everything we need to know about the confidence they have in their own case that they should pray in aid such dubious tactics.

As Lib Dem equalities minister Lynne Featherstone noted here:

Marriage is a right of passage for couples who want to show they are in a committed relationship, for people who want to show they have found love and wish to remain together until death do them part. Why should we deny it to people who happen to be gay or lesbian who wish to show that commitment and share it with their family, friends and everybody else? We should be proud of couples who love each other and a society that recognises their love as equal.

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

There are many ways to live it large on a Friday night. Here’s what I did to get the weekend party started… grazed on the Electoral Commission’s website, looking at the data available of all declared donations by the Lib Dems, Labour and the Conservatives between 2001 and 2011.

Here are the results of my labours…

First, this blog-post from Saturday night (surely prime-time for data-geeks everywhere, no?), 10 things you might not have known about party political funding over the last decade.

Secondly, and far more excitingly, I’ve uploaded Google spreadsheets of the three main parties’ donations received between 2001 and 2011 (incl.):

• Liberal Democrat donations, 2001-11;
• Labour party donations, 2001-11;
• Conservative party donations, 2001-11.

To date, these have been accessed more than 200 times. You guys know how to roll almost as much as I do.

Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past week…

Provisional plans being drawn up by the BBC suggest giving the Lib Dems two party political broadcasts for the elections – the same as the Green party – rather than the three the Lib Dems enjoyed alongside Labour and the Conservatives in 2008. … A party source said the Lib Dems were confident the decision would be overturned, given that they have seven MPs in the capital, 246 councillors, and in light of the party’s vote share in London at the 2010 general election.

A former Liberal Democrat activist has admitted splattering Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg with blue paint. Stuart Rodger threw an egg containing the liquid as Mr Clegg made a visit to Glasgow to meet party representatives last August. The politics student later declared that Lib Dem leader Mr Clegg had “deserved it”. He was fined £200 at Glasgow Sheriff Court after admitting a breach of the peace.

Five years ago, ministers agreed to posthumously pardon soldiers who deserted while suffering shell shock – as their condition was not recognised at the time. Now Withington MP John Leech, who tabled a motion in the Commons calling for a pardon, hopes to apply the same theory to clear Turing’s name. … Mr Leech, who has also written to justice secretary Ken Clarke, said: “If people had been aware of shell shock those First World War soldiers would not have been convicted. I think a precedent has been set that where the law was wrong, it should be made right after the facts are known.

Deborah Orr has a must-read article in the Guardian highlighting the inverted absurdity of this week’s row about the Coalition’s workfare programme, The slanging match over workfare is getting us nowhere.

She points out that the very essence of workfare is government intervention in the workings of the free market, the state urging private companies to offer work experience placements to the unemployed:

For the right, such hapless, inefficient intervention by the state is anathema. When the private sector is left to make its own arrangements, neo-liberals never tire of pointing out, it functions better, to the advantage of all. The left? Well, the left is always keen to cheerlead for state intervention, no matter how perverse the outcome might be.

The fact that the opposite is happening during the rowdy debate over “workfare” is testament to just how dysfunctional the whole issue has become. In the case of the work programme, it is the right that, counterintuitively, is lining up to argue in favour of state involvement in the employment market. The left is rather less enthusiastic, to say the least. Suddenly, the Conservative party is not remotely interested in letting the market decide

The sterile ‘left/right’ debate on workfare

Much of the debate in the past week has been framed by personal/political prejudice.

Those on the ‘left’ appear to believe that every single private enterprise is on a mission to exploit the most vulnerable in society; the bigger it is the more evil it is, apparently. This ignores the fact that most large firms are — by nature of their scale and profits — much better equipped to offer decent pay, conditions and opportunities to their employees than most SMEs could dream of affording. And it assumes that firms are eager to take on so-called ‘slave labour’ when most are well-aware that taking on less-skilled workers can be disruptive and bad for productivity. (For a positive take on the scheme from an employer, see this comment on the Guardian website.

Those on the ‘right’ appear to believe that every single long-term unemployed is a feckless, work-shy benefit dependent who just needs to jolly well pull their socks up. But of course the unemployed are not a lumpen group. Many are readily employable, and quickly return to work. Some, either from specialised industries or in specific localities or with particular health issues, find it harder. To date the evidence suggests that ‘workfare’ is ineffective in helping people back into training or employment, most probably because it is not sufficiently tailored to the needs of its diverse audience.

Unfortunately, the last week’s debate has been a sterile one which has tended to betray the ignorance of those on the ‘left’ who think wealth-creation is for other people, and those on the ‘right’ who think poverty is a state of mind.

Searching for a liberal response to ‘workfare’

I’ve found the ‘liberal’ response to this debate so far uninspiring. Rebecca Tidy’s article here on LibDemVoice adopted the ‘left’ knee-jerk position of attacking the private companies who signed-up to participate in the ‘workfare’ programmes (though all credit to her for engaging fully with the subsequent comments). The Lib Dems and its blogosphere have been pretty much silent on the issue, as have been the party’s three newest policy groups, Social Liberal Forum, Liberal Left, Liberal Reform.

I’ve seen little sign of constructive, liberal policies to address the big issue of how best to help the long-term unemployed back to work. So far, by default I think, party members have settled for saying all such ‘workfare’ schemes should be optional, with no mandatory work programmes accompanied by the risk of losing benefits.

This may be the right approach, but I suspect we’ve chosen it because it’s the easy approach.

Because the plain fact is that we know if such schemes are entirely voluntary, many of those who could benefit from them, and who might as a result be assisted on the path back to work, will opt not to undertake them. Some of those who decline such work experience opportunities are already, or are likely to become, part of the persisten multi-generational unemployed, where whole families — spanning grandparents to teenagers — have no knowledge of the world of work but know every possible twist-and-turn of the benefits system. What is our liberal response to that social problem?

To be clear, I’m not advocating the ‘workfare’ programme in its current form. Nor am I saying that liberals should be supporting wholesale mandatory ‘workfare’ programmes. The evidence to date is far too weak for us cheerfully to approve compulsion of citizens to take on unpaid work ‘for their own good’.

But I would not be against pilot programmes to test and properly evaluate different initiatives, including those which do require mandatory, time-limited work placements for those whose CVs otherwise makes them unemployable. We would then have a much better idea of what is most likely to work. Such evidence might, however, end up taking liberals to some uncomfortable places.

Conclusion

What I certainly think we need is a greater quality of debate on the tricky issues raised by ‘workfare’, both at a national level, but also among Lib Dems. That debate needs to extend much further than the simple and simplistic ‘left/right’ attitudes currently on display, and start grappling with how best we can empower the individual to make the best of their own lives — including, and especially, those who appear to have settled for a life on benefits, and reject all other offers of help.

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

The Electoral Commission website is a data-mine of information for those interested in all aspects of party political funding.

For those who’d rather not get their hands dirty doing the mining themselves, below you’ll find 10 interesting (in my opinion) facts I discovered there.

But for those of you interested in excavating further, I’ve uploaded Google spreadsheets of the three main parties’ donations received between 2001 and 2011 (incl.):

• Liberal Democrat donations, 2001-11;
• Labour party donations, 2001-11;
• Conservative party donations, 2001-11.

And here are those 10 interesting facts I promised you…

1)

In total, the Lib Dems raised £33,742,984 in donations from 2001-11. This compares with £173,742,956 for the Labour Party, and £182,418,146 for the Conservatives.

2)

The Lib Dems received £19,906,609 (59% of total donations) from 373 gifts in excess of £10,000.

3)

In comparison, the Conservatives received £149,834,472 (82%) from 2,632 gifts in excess of £10,000; and the Labour party £156,991,215 (90%) from 1,330 gifts in excess of £10,000.

4)

£27,877,979 (83%) of the Lib Dem total was received from 4,325 individuals and 701 corporates by the Lib Dems.

5)

In comparison, the Labour Party received £56,556,081 (32% of total donations) from 1,750 individuals and 1,041 corporates; while the Conservatives received £166,052,423 (91%) from 6,798 individuals and 2,938 corporates.

6)

The Labour party received £110,087,436 (63% of total donations) from the trade unions between 2001-11. The Conservative party received £53,003,532 (29%) from corporates.

7)

Michael Brown’s five donations (totalling £2.45m) via 5th Avenue Partners in March 2005 accounted for 7% of the party’s total donations in this period.

The single biggest gift, other than Michael Brown’s was £418,700, donated by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust in November 2006.

9)

The biggest individual donor is Lord (David) Alliance, who’s given c.£695k, with Lord (Paul) Strasburger (c.£645k) not far behind.

10)

The Lib Dems received a total of £15,859,758 from public funds. This compares with £14,048,629 for Labour (which was in government for most of this period), and £44,263,521 for the Tories.

NB: all figures are based on declarable donations counted by the Electoral Commission, the definition of which has changed has changed over the years, and which does not include all donations given to parties.

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader…

Here’s the Coalition’s Work & Pensions team — former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and Lib Dem pensions minister Steve Webb — enjoying the sight of fully-stacked shelves at a supermarket. What do you think might be being said or thought by or about them?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Ed Miliband “Basking in The Sun” Edition.

The winner, according to The Voice’s judging panel of one, was this one by Cheltenham Robin: ‘Ed looks in the ‘Dear Deidre’ column to see if she’s answered his letter about sibling rivalry.’

Got a photo of a prominent Lib Dem you think would work well for a future caption competition? Then please email us at .

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.