The latest news has been reported by the Wolverhampton Express & Star:

A register containing the names and addresses of hundreds of Wolverhampton voters has gone missing…

It contains names and addresses of up to 500 voters along with a mark to say whether or not they received a ballot paper.
Park ward falls in the same Wolverhampton South West constituency, where it appears more than 200 extra people voted than ballot papers were issued.

That discrepancy is still unexplained more than three months since the elections. It emerged today the register was revealed to be missing after Liberal Democrat campaigners asked to inspect it.

Colin Ross, the Lib Dem candidate in Wolverhampton North East, said: “We asked to see it so we could get a picture of which areas had voted.

“I am not suggesting that it is connected with the discrepancy in the number of votes compared to ballot papers, but I am concerned that it is missing and would like it to be found as soon as possible.”

Although marked registers should provide an important safeguard against electoral fraud and the law lays down specific rules for their safekeeping, the 2005 general election saw many marked register problems and during the last Parliament the complete Glentrothes by-election marked register went missing. For more on both of those see my post from 2009.

Spray on history now seems to be the order of the day in much political punditry with the futures of the coalition, Liberal Democrats and Labour often talked about with several nods towards the past. A powerful example of this is the use of recent political history to justify views about what Labour should do next. It usually takes the form of, ‘Well look how the Tories got it all wrong after 1997. If Labour want to win again they can’t just sink into their comfort zone. They’ll only win again once they return to the centre ground’.

As far as it goes, that’s a compelling argument. But only as far as it goes. Because if you move beyond the spay on history and look more consistently at the past, it tells a rather different story.

Labour governments have previously been voted out of office at four general elections: in 1924, 1951, 1970 and in 1979. On two occasions (1929 and February 1974) Labour went on to return to power at the next election. On the other two occasions Labour went on to lose two or three further general elections.

What do the two immediate returns to power have in common? Labour kept its defeated leader and didn’t change much in the way of policy or approach. What did the other two have in common? Labour went in for a long-period of soul-searching and made major shifts in policy.

So there you have it. The verdict from history: bring back Gordon Brown and his policies.

Or rather the verdict from history is: beware those who cull one convenient example and pass it off as history’s lesson.

Full details of this survey and all the previous ones are over on Liberal Democrat Voice.

The FT's story will at some point move behind its paywall, but here are the views Stephen and I express in the piece about the survey's findings:

Mark Pack, co-editor of the Liberal Democrat Voice website, said he thought the party leadership was “pleasantly relieved” at the findings. He added: “It will make [Mr Clegg’s] speech to conference even more important than usual.”...

Stephen Tall, co-editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, called it a “warning sign” for the party leadership. He said: “The message from Lib Dem members seems clear. They support the coalition, but want to see Nick Clegg and his fellow ministers trumpeting those achievements which are the result of the Lib Dems being in government.”

He called on the party to be more willing to criticise its Tory partners, saying the leadership needed to be “more upfront about where we continue to disagree with the Conservatives”.

So if Labour MPs and members were saying how the government must publish the KPMG report right away to see if it justifies the plans to migrate NHS Direct over to the planned 111 service, fair enough.

But for many in Labour to be demanding that the NHS Direct plans be abandoned without knowing the outcome of the KPMG report is tantamount to saying, “Who cares what that report the Labour government commissioned says? I’ve got my entrenched view and there’s no point looking at any evidence because my mind is firmly made up.” In which case, why bother with commissioning that KPMG report in the first place?

Bit of a waste of money really if you’ve decided you don’t care what it says. And the government could do itself some favours by publishing the report for us all to see.

(By an odd coincidence, by the way, being called “Tom” seems to be the main criteria for saner views on this issue from Labour as it’s Tom Harris MP who blogged this thoughtful piece and Tom Watson MP who has been digging trying to get to see the KPMG report.)

Reading the coverage today closely, it does seem as if the extent to which he has changed his views has been rather over-stated. His views do seem to have clearly changed, but more as a case of a few steps one way rather than a huge leap. Whether the Guardian’s front page splash and banner headline were driven by their desire to make the story as big as possible or Lomborg’s desire to get publicity for his forthcoming new book I don’t know, though I suspect there may have been a bit of both at work in talking up the extent of his change of view.

Regardless of the details of this mix, the basic principle of someone saying ‘the evidence on which I previously based my views has changed, so now I’ve changed my views’ is a very welcome one.

And that’s why the language of “flip-flops” and “u-turns” (such as over on Left Foot Forward) leaves me cold. The negative connotations of those terms are misplaced because we should be welcoming people who say they have looked again at evidence or seen how the evidence has changed. Perhaps especially on a blog that talks about being evidence-based It also strikes me as tactically naive, because what better way to put people off re-evaluating evidence than to respond with such negative terms if they come to a different conclusion?

The Lib Dem MEP is a hugely powerful and yet virtually unknown British politician. She has had far more impact on our legislation than your average Westminster politician…

Although she claims to be “in favour of a healthy, vibrant City,” Bowles uses uncompromising language for bankers. She does not have much time for complaints about traders moving their businesses to other, less tightly-regulated locations. “I don’t actually believe there are only one or two great traders. There are a handful of people in the right place at the right time. There are plenty more intelligent people that could equally do the job and it’s about time that they woke up and smelt the coffee instead of perpetuating this notion that the talent will go. If they want to go and play poker with the Swiss, or go to Abu Dhabi then so be it. But they may find they don’t like it as much as living in London.”

You can read the full piece here.

• Tamil Ceasefire protests – estimated total policing cost of £12.8m
• G20 Summit – estimated total policing cost of £7.4m
• Notting Hill Carnival – estimated total policing cost of £6.6m
• Summer Climate Camp – estimated total policing cost of £2.3m

Some of those seem pretty good value for money such as the Notting Hill Carnival, bearing in mind the enjoyment so many people get from the event. Looking at some of the other costs, perhaps in future the police should offer to fund TV advertisements in return for protest not happening: could save money and make for more effective communication of protestors’ message

As I blogged previously on the following day, Wednesday, I'm chairing one of the Lib Dem Voice fringe meetings, Lessons for future campaigning from the 2010 general election; more details of that meeting here.

If you are following an event live, following a hashtag can be a great way of getting an extra feel for what people are thinking and doing. It's a bit like the difference between watching a sports event with or without the colour and noise of the crowd.

However, if you're wanting to look back and see how people reacted - for example, seeing which bits of a speech got the best or worst responses - Twitter's archives can be rather clunky and limited, especially for events a few days old.

Therefore I've tried setting up an archive of all #ldconf tweets using Twapper Keeper. You can peruse the archive here.