Archive for chris rennard
The four things the new party Chief Executive must prioritise
Dear Tim, Congratulations on your appointment as Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats. You take up the post in tough but exciting times. Even if you were not one person but a superhuman army of fifty you would not be able to do all the things party members and staff are saying they want from [...]
Was there a Clegg coup? Review of The Clegg Coup – Britain’s First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George by Jasper Gerard
Many book titles reveal little about what their book contains, either providing but a banal name for its contents or a clever, clever name which obscures rather than reveals. However, The Clegg Coup – Britain’s First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George by Jasper Gerard has a title which is revealing in two aspects. First, the [...]
Nearly three years on, how does the Bones Report look?
Back in 2008 the Report of the Party Reform Commission to the Federal Executive was published, more commonly known as the Bones Report after its Chair, Chris Bones. Both the process for drawing up the report and the report itself was not without its critics at the time (e.g. see here and here) but since [...]
Political Communication in Britain: the latest 2010 election book
Political Communication in Britain, edited by Dominic Wring, Roger Mortimore and Simon Atkinson, joins a long list of books already published on the 2010 general election. As with others it also faces the tough task of finding a niche between the burgeoning coverage of politics in the media, especially online, and the revitalised Nuffield general [...]
What do the academics say? The science of bar charts
Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. Today – bar charts. Or, more precisely: why bar charts? Not, why push tactical voting and ‘we can win here’ messages, but why bar charts rather than pie charts, line graphs, scatter graphs or any of the myriad of other graphical [...]
Lord Rennard on the Big Society: “It’s actually quite an old concept”
In February we carried the news that Liberal Democrat peer Lord (Chris) Rennard is chairing the Commission on the Big Society, set up by Acevo, the umbrella body for chief executives. Now he’s been interviewed by Civil Society about this work: Q: I want to talk to you about your role not just chairing the [...]
Forgotten Liberal heroes: Pratap Chitnis
Listen to Liberal Democrats make speeches and there are frequent references to historical figures, but drawn from a small cast. Just the quartet of John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, David Penhaligon corner almost all of the market, especially since Bob Maclennan stopped making speeches to party conference. Some of the forgotten figures [...]
Weekend voting: not ruled in, not ruled out
As part of Parliament's deliberations over the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, this week the House of Lords debated the possibility of moving to weekend voting.
