This is more a note than a full explanation as yet (as I’m currently travelling around S E Asia). I’ve booked the 12th of June as the second Liberal Conspiracy ‘Blog Nation’ event date.

Held in central London (sorry out-of-towners, hence the advance notice) – this event will be a forum of sorts for lefties to discuss, strategise and debate how we can build and push the Left. By that time we may have a Tory government, and so the event will be even more important.

We have space for about 100-120 people. The event will be free to attend but invite only (due to limited space) and focus on lefties who want to build a new left movement. I haven’t sent out any invites yet or even made any concrete plans other than confirm a venue for that date. Hence, this note. More details when I get back at the end of March.

Hello all!
I’m heading to South East Asia tonight, with a plan to backpack around Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Burma.

No blogging or checking email for me in the meantime.

Don Paskini will be looking after LC while I’m away, please don’t harass him too much. Other bloggers will also try and help him (I hope!)

I’ll be back at the end of March.

In December last year Barclays Bank pledged to give £1 million to London Mayor Boris Johnson’s ‘Fund for London’, staggered over four years.

The Fund aims to “help London’s disadvantaged children towards better jobs”, according to its website.

Now the Mayor is coming under pressure to reveal the source of a seven-figure donation to the Fund.

While Boris is required to declare all donations to his political campaign, the same does not apply to the Mayor’s Fund.

So when the Libdem Assembly Member asked last year whether he would declare all donations to the Mayor’s Fund over £1,000, Boris declined.

He gave the reason as:

Among other things, naming donors might give rise to the suggestion that certain individuals expect something in return for their donations. For this reason, I have agreed that I should not be informed of the names of the individual donors.

Adam Bienkov at Tory Troll, who’s done the research on this, points out that Boris has also previously refused to release more general details about the fund’s supporters or funding partners.

Why? We were under the impression the Boris administration was all for transparency and accountability? Why not publish the details of the donors?

It now turns out that Boris “is aware” of the identity of who donated the seven-figure-sum, even though he said earlier this knowledge might jeopardise his impartiality.

Adam adds:

Boris has repeatedly described the Mayor’s Fund as an “independent non-political” charity.

However, far from being independent, it is actually based on the third floor of City Hall itself and has the Mayor as the sole patron.

And while he argues that “listing out individual donations might adversely impact on the level of donations” this does not alter the fact that the current set up is open to abuse.

What happened to that transparency Boris?

via North of Westminster

OVer 10,000 people have signed an online petition by the campaign group 38 Degrees over the last 48 hours.

The campaigns director confirmed to us that there was considerable anger online over plans to cut BBC 6Music and Asian Network.

The petition on 38 Degrees website reads:

This week, the BBC is expected to propose making massive cuts including closing two radio stations, and halving the size of its web site. It’s on the brink of surrendering to pressure from commercial rivals, who are lobbying politicians hard to impose even deeper cuts. According to The Times, the proposal is a bid to “shrink” in order to “appease the BBC’s rivals.”

The BBC may not have many friends in the rest of the media, but public pressure has saved it before, and can save it again. We’ll be delivering our petition against the cuts to the BBC Trust later this week – please sign it now.

It was launched only on Sunday night.

Already the BBC Trust and Conservative shadow culture minister seem to have had a change of heart over 6Music closing.

The Libdems Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Don Foster today said:

Today’s report signals the end of the BBC roaming wherever it fancied. The decision to focus on high quality UK content is welcome. However, I am not convinced that using 6 Music and the Asian Network as sacrificial lambs to pay for it is the right approach.

While the BBC has become overgrown in some areas and needs pruning, the Licence Fee payers must have their say about what’s to go.

An Early Day Motion has also been tabled in Parliament to protest against BBC cuts.

A new poll to be released by Comres / Independent tonight will continue talks of a hung-parliament scenario and put Nick Clegg in a potential kingmaker position.

Andrew Grice writes:

The Conservatives’ slide in the opinion polls continues in the latest survey by ComRes for The Independent. It shows the Tory lead down from seven points last month to five points, its lowest in our monthly series since December 2008.

Crucially, it suggests that Labour would be the biggest party in a hung parliament, with 17 more seats than the Tories.

That would give Nick Clegg a huge dilemma, since the Tories would have “won but lost” — won the battle for the popular vote but ended up with fewer seats than Labour because of our first-past-the-post system. The only deal in town would probably be a Lib-Lab agreement, with Clegg’s party supporting Labour in key Commons votes.

Our calculations suggest that even if the Tories and LibDems joined forces, they would be three seats short of an overall majority.

The other problem for Clegg is that Libdem voters themselves are more aligned with Labour voters by a two-to-one margin.

So any deal with the Tories would be hugely unpopular with the grassroots.

Daniel Hannan MEP

He claims “the argument” is the same between the UK and the US Tea Party movement.

Here are some of the popular posters at US Tea Party events.

We welcome the UK’s version of Sarah Palin’s movement with open arms!

In my sporadic LC Mission Series, I’m trying to lay out some thoughts on what I think the Left’s approach should be to political parties as well as politics in general. As well as have a discussion around the point of political blogging and online activism of course. As always – you are all welcome to chip in with your thoughts.

In the first part I talked about the need for infrastructure. In the second, a need for taking a different approach to politics – more like that of an outside insurgency.

I want to press home the first point again and explain what I mean. Sometimes there’s no point just saying something – you just have to do it and see how it works out.

The point of blogging
I’m sick of opinion blogging. Everyone has an opinion and frankly it all gets very repetitive eventually. Plus, lefties love writing long articles when a short, punchy one-liner will do.
continue reading… »

The big news today, that the Tory lead is down to 2%, is obviously a joy to the ears of lefties. Who can actually want a massive Conservative landslide? That said, I still think this is still an election for the Tories to lose – their strength in marginal seats and the willingness of Tory voters to turn out on election day remains.

But why the continued fall? Lack of clarity, narratives that have no real resonance (’Broken Britain’, ‘We can’t go on like this!!?!‘) and a complete lack of coherent policy are obvious points to make.

And to that I’d add another point: the Conservative party has been influenced far too much by the attack-dog politics of right-wing blogs, who are intent on winning the news cycle and simply trashing their opponents. Don’t get me wrong – that’s the job of right-wing blogs. But as I said earlier, their influence on the actual voting public is minuscule.

And so every time Cameron stands up and says: We can’t go on like this, a whole group of people seem to think – that’s true, I can’t go on hearing your crap. Every time Cameron says, We can’t have 4 more years of Gordon Brown, a group of voters seem to say – oh yes we can!.

Every time Guido Fawkes puts up another picture of the PM in the hope that he attracts more ridicule – the Labour Party’s poll ratings go up.
continue reading… »

In an interview last week on Radio 4’s Women’s Hour, David Cameron insulted his own party. Bizarrely enough, not many in the media picked up on it.

The discussion took place on 18th February on Women’s Hour, which you can listen to from here.

A proportion of the interview with Cameron revolved around better representation in Parliament.

At one point Cameron states: “The point is, you need to be more representative to be more effective”

There is also discussion on the controversies around women candidates Liz Truss and Joanne Cash.

Cameron then goes on to point out that imposing All Women Shortlists from Conservative Central Office was the only option open to him since change was not taking fast enough.

At this point interviewer (at around 22 min in) Jenni Murray says:

This would make Margaret Thatcher’s heart go cold. The party has always argued you should get there on merit than because of your gender.

To which Cameron replies:

I have a lot of sympathy with that view BUT, and it’s a really big but, we tried that for years and the fact is the rate of change was just to slow. And if we just carried on as we were I think in the end we would have… some very talented women would have gotten through but they were having to jump barriers far higher than any of the men.

I mean I’ve said this, half-jokingly to some in my party, and they sort of laugh because they know it’s true that sometimes in a selection meeting there can be as if they’re looking for the perfect son-in-law rather than the perfect candidate [laughs].

And you have to recognise the rate of change wasn’t faster we weren’t going to be representative enough as a party so I took the view that we had to give things a big shift.. a bit of a shock, and that’s what I’ve done.

I heartily commend David Cameron on his honesty. But will Conservative Associations around the country take that remark so lightly?

It all started with a phone call by writer Robert Popper.

At the height of bullygate’, he thought he’d play a prank on the media by inventing a story about Gordon Brown throwing a tantrum and chucking a tangerine at a factory machine that ends up breaking it.

Here is the phone-call to LBC Radio

That story then took a life of it’s own. The FT’s Jim Pickard blogged it.

The Telegraph then turned it into a story and the Sun also mentioned it.

And then, inevitably, came the animation by a Taiwanese station

Meanwhile, Robert Popper can’t stop laughing. Don’t believe all you read in the media.

The new edition of the New Statesman has this cringingly bad attempt by London’s occasional Mayor Boris Johnson to sound hip and cool:

There are some parts of the economy that have proved astonishingly resilient, and I am completely confident that things will pick up strongly by the back end of this year. We are one of the only European cities to have a young and growing population.

We are going through a neo-Victorian age of transport investment – the Tube upgrades, the Thames Tideway tunnel – and my job as mayor is to keep blapping ministers between the eyes until they understand that it would be utter madness to cut infrastructure projects that will increase com petitiveness. So the plan is simple: lengthen London’s lead as the best big city on earth.

Keep ‘blapping’ ministers between the eyes? Whatever could he mean?

Thankfully the Urban Dictionary provides the answer:

Blap : The act of slapping someone across the face with your penis. They then become your property

Tom at Boriswatch adds:

‘neo-Victorian’ is pushing it – the Tube was mostly Edwardian, extended by Keynesian counter-recessionary spending in the 30s, while the Tideway Tunnel is a giant sewer, as we pointed out when he mistakenly included it in his list of transport projects at State of London last year.

Yeah but who cares about these details?

If Boris could actually get some work done, who are we to complain if he is taking his member out and slapping other ministers across the face with it.

Kit Malthouse better stay on message.
[via @SianBerry]

A Conservative MP is trying to stop changes at the Houses of Parliament that would make it easier for MPs to bring their children, and create a more family-friendly atmosphere.

The House of Commons, in spite of trying to be more inclusive, has no creche or facilitie. It does however diligently provide said ladies a place to hang their sword as soon as they are returned as Member of a constituency.

The MP, Christopher Chope, was earlier behind attempts to water down the Minimum Wage.

Today he sent around the email below. LibCon has managed to get a copy:

From: CHOPE, Christopher
Sent: 26 February 2010 09:57
Subject: Bellamy’s Bar

As you will know, the House of Commons Commission has decided to close Bellamy’s Bar, The Astor Suite and Bellamy’s Club Room in order to convert them into a nursery/crèche. The bar was recently refurbished at a cost of £480,000 and the cost of the conversion to the nursery will be in excess of £500,000.

Neither the fire service nor the Administration Committee where consulted as to the sighting of the crèche before the House of Commons Commission made its decision.

On Monday night, I am presenting a Petition to the House of Commons objecting to this work given that Bellamy’s Bar is the only one available, without membership, for staff on the House of Commons Estate and that other locations are available now.

If you would like to add your name to this Petition, would you please email me back to say ‘Yes’.

With best wishes.

Yours sincerely,
Christopher Chope MP

The change is being led by Speaker John Bercow. Wonder if that has anything to do with it.

UKIP MEP Nigel Farage thought he needed to drum up some publicity to win John Bercow’s seat and prop up his sagging campaign. So he made a speech.

In response the Belgians offered a stern response:

His comments provoked a letter of complaint from Belgium’s Prime Minister, Yves Leterme, to the president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek.

“As a Belgian politician, I must react against this damaging intervention… and the impolite comments about Belgium,” Mr Leterme protested. He called on Mr Buzek to end “these kinds of incidents” in a bid to protect “the interests of my citizens, which cannot be underestimated”.

Belgian citizens on the other thought a more direct and fitting response was needed:

Who would have thought the Belgians could be so rude?

But then, who are we to complain?

Twenty per cent of likely Tory PPCs seek the return of the death penalty.

That was the finding of a New Statesman / ComRes poll out today of the incoming batch of Tory PPCs.

Andrew Hawkins, chairman of ComRes, said:

Conservative candidates are a combination of traditional Tory values and modern Cameroon Conservatism. The old tribal loyalties are there all right – witness the primacy of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair over Hitler and Stalin as political villains [in our poll].

Three-quarters of Conservative prospective parliamentary candidates also want to renegotiate the UK’s relationship with the EU as a matter of priority.

The poll also found that six in ten want the Tories’ inheritance-tax cut (which gifts £1.2bn to the top 2 per cent of wealthiest estates) raised immediately.

The poll of 101 Tory hopefuls shows that nine in ten want to tackle the Budget deficit with cuts in public spending rather than increases in taxation.

More at the Staggers blog

Anthony Painter said this on Twitter in the morning:

Spectator reports Tory campaign off the rails. Then a couple of hours later we get the dog whistle. http://bit.ly/9hAltY

And he’s spot on. The morning’s Spectator magazine front-cover article won’t make comfortable reading for the Tories:

The Tory situation is now verging on critical

Why has the Tory lead halved since December? James Forsyth says that Cameron and his four top men — Osborne, Hilton, Coulson and Bridges — must take the blame for the party’s dismal performance and its lack of message and purpose.

But they had to regain the agenda somehow, so Damian Green was dispatched:

Mr Green said immigration is “out of control”, despite today’s figures showing there has been a 30% drop in asylum seekers entering the UK in the second quarter.
…
Mr Green said the amount of people from Eastern Europe claiming benefits in Britain had doubled. He added: “It’s really worrying that despite high unemployment we still seem to be getting in foreign workers.”

The typical Tory dog-whistle has come out again.

Not only has the number of immigrants and asylum seekers fallen massively over the last few years, Conservative party policy is highly disingenuous on the issue.

The Tories do not and can not, unless they pull out of the EU entirely, restrict Europeans from coming into the UK to work. So how will they change things? By limiting the relatively insignificant number of non-EU people coming into the UK? Most of them aren’t even workers.

No doubt Chris Grayling will be trotted out next to say how much crime has risen under Labour.

More
Slugger o’Toole: The Tories: “It’s their strategy that’s failing… half-baked renewal…”

An amusing activity to do while watching the Tory lead dive over the past few months is to read the comments over at ConHome. The sight of activists panicking and subjecting Cameron to angry tirades is a joy to behold.

But there seems to be very little discussion on why they’ve dropped like lead balloons. It’s not like New Labour has announced any major new policies, found a coherent narrative, got the press on side or even escaped bad news. Cameron just ain’t getting a luck break. What gives? Here’s some thoughts.

1) Bad policies.
The rollout hasn’t gone too well has it? The education policy meant that Carol Voderman was excluded from their own ideas, the crime policy lead to Chris Grayling being publicly humiliated and the ‘broken society’ narrative got punctured by a few misplaced decimal points. All in all, Cameron was doing much better when he was vague. The public either don’t like their big ideas or don’t like the incompetent way they’ve been presented.
continue reading… »

The second Abortion Support Network ‘Pro Choice Happy Hour’ will be:
Monday 1 March
7-10 pm

This is a great opportunity to socialise and network with other pro-choice people, from long-term campaigners to pro-choice ‘civilians’.

Unlike our well-attended first Happy Hour in December, we will not be asking for a suggested donation.

Please RSVP to: info@abortionsupport.org.uk. RSVP preferred but not required.
Come along! Bring friends!

Abortion Support Network (ASN) is a volunteer-run organisation in London that provides accommodation for women living in Ireland who need to stay overnight when travelling to London for an abortion.

ASN also fundraises in order to give grants to help women cover the cost of paying privately for an abortion.

While other organisations campaign for law reform in both Ireland (Eire) and Northern Ireland, ASN is the only group on record providing women travelling for abortions with the thing they need the most: money.

The Old Bank of England
194 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2 LT
Map here

abortionsupport.org.uk

The Conservative party’s lead in the polls is narrowing day by day despite (or perhaps due to) unveiling a raft of policies.

A new poll published today by the Sun newspaper shows both Conservatives and Labour falling by 1pt. More worryingly for CCHQ however, their lead stays at a paltry 6pts.

Conservative – 38 per cent (down 1)
Labour – 32 per cent (down 1)
Lib Dem – 17 per cent (no change)
Other – 12 per cent (up 1)

The change is within the margin of error.

However, a raft of polls show that the Conservative edge has narrowed massively from the 14pts – 17pts they were at recently. Yesterday a Guardian/ICM poll put the difference at 7pts.

YouGov also polled top voter concerns and found:

Which two or three issues will be most important to you in deciding who you vote for in the coming election?

1. The economy – 56 per cent
2. Immigration & Asylum – 43 per cent
3. Health – 34 per cent
4. Crime – 30 per cent
5. Tax – 27 per cent

… to which ConservativeHome suggested that immigration should be played up as an issue.

Perhaps they could unveil the ‘Are You Thinking What We’re Thinking?‘ poster campaign again.

A former deputy of London’s occasional mayor Boris Johnson has launched a ferocious attack on his former boss, branding him “arrogant”.

In an interview with the Daily Mirror he said Boris believes he has a “divine right to rule the country”.

I was at a dinner function with David Cameron shortly after the May 2008 mayoral elections when he leaned towards me, sort of winked and said, ‘Boris is a loose cannon. You are the man who is going to keep him in check’.” Meanwhile Boris bragged to Mr Clement – who was forced to stand down as deputy mayor in an expenses scandal last year – “I could do his job. I could even be Prime Minister.

The paper goes on to quote him as saying:

Boris thought the fact Cameron called himself ‘Dave’ was hilarious. He would always make a point of calling him ‘Dave’ and then rolling his eyes when he called. People know Boris as Boris and Cameron was always jealous of his popularity, so it was funny that David Cameron seemed to be trying to emulate him.

Boris is arrogant. He thinks, ‘I’m more intelligent than Dave, I’m more popular than Dave, I’d do a better job than Dave’.

He thinks he has a divine right to rule the country. Boris isn’t a team player, he only wants to be the captain.

In the extraordinary interview, he goes on to say:

After his many dressing-downs Boris became frustrated and would stomp about, slamming doors and going into an incoherent rant muttering words like ‘c***’ and ‘f***’ and banging his fist on the table. His frustration came from the view that he could do Dave’s job better.

The personal rivalry is likely to become more intense after the General Election if Cameron becomes PM.

Read the full interview here.
via Dave Hill

via MyDavidCameron