Archive for john prescott

John Prescott: a Liberal Democrat role model?

21 September 2011 ,
Tuesday lunchtime at Liberal Democrat conference saw me speaking at an IPPR fringe meeting on what the Liberal Democrat future strategy should be. Reaching for a striking, memorable way to make my comments stick in people’s minds in amongst the excellent other speakers at the event such as Simon Hughes, I revived a parallel that [...]
John Prescott

John Prescott and me

20 September 2011 , ,
This lunchtime I was one of the speakers for an IPPR fringe meeting at Liberal Democrat conference, and in my opening remarks repeated a previously blogged observation about how the Liberal Democrats could learn something from John Prescott about how to be in power but anti-establishment and how to be in power but mobilise public [...]
Camden Liberal Democrats

The future of the coalition

During the week I spoke at a Camden Liberal Democrats event along with London Assembly candidate Bridget Fox about the future of the coalition. The three main points I made were that: As with the NHS reforms, the Liberal Democrats need to carefully pick issues that matter to the public and on which there is [...]

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Nancy Seear

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 [...]

The Liberal Democrat challenges for 2011: using members and supporters as a campaigning resource

Looking back through the emails I have received from the party centrally since the formation of the coalition, very few have asked me to do anything.

Party finances in the news

For the Conservatives it’s the quitting of their next treasurer, David Rowland, whilst for Labour it’s John Prescott warning of the Labour facing bankrupcy (the context for which you can see in these graphs).

John Prescott illustrates Labour's progressive problem

21 June 2010 , , ,
Many Liberal Democrats become very suspicious when they hear Labour members talk about the need for a broad progressive coalition, suspecting that for many of them the definition of progressive is really “agreeing with Labour”. Labour’s reaction since the general election has done little to assuage such fears, with a sequence of policies that were [...]

Missteps on the online campaign trail

Although I’m an enthusiast for the possibilities for sensible use of the online world in political campaigning, it doesn’t always go right for people: John Prescott’s botched attempt to encourage ‘click fraud’ on Conservative adverts – unlikely to have cost the Conservatives much, if any, money but certainly earned him a round of bad publicity for [...]

How YouTube is being used on the ground in the general election

Richard Osley as an entertaining piece on his blog titled, “The You Tube War: Hornsey and Wood Green”. I’m not quite sure what Lynne Featherstone will make of the description of her as an “old aunt” Not very gallant of you Richard, but the full description is friendly: One of the reasons, Featherstone has been [...]

What does the future hold for British political blogging?

Mark Pack poses the question ... Predictions that the next general election will be the one in which the internet will make a huge impact have regularly come and gone. Post-Obama ready yourself for another such clutch of predictions, but underneath this punditry froth the internet has got on with quietly shifting the way politics works. It’s been more at the unglamorous organisational end (imagine trying to organise a campaign without email) than at the eye-catching systems-shattering dramatic end beloved of pundits, but it’s been a major change nonetheless.