Archive for Op-eds
The pointlessness of political opinion polls
Leo Barasi’s piece over on Liberal Conspiracy raises an interesting point about the frequency of political opinion polling in the UK. We now have far more polls than before giving national voting intention figures (this Parliament so far: 878, 2001-5 312 in total, 1987-92 548 in total – to give some examples). But do we have [...]
The European Union deserves the Nobel Peace Prize
Something I wrote back last autumn is rather applicable to my views of the Nobel Peace Prize going to the European Union: Sat on a shelf a few metres away from me is a box containing the various military medals won by my relatives over previous generations. The medals criss-cross Europe, coming from different countries, [...]
At this rate, I’m going to be launching the Save Andrew Mitchell Fan Club
The Andrew Mitchell Gate-Gate story started off simply enough: politician does stupid thing, bungles apology and faces heavy pressure to quit. Add to that what I’ve heard from people who have worked with him, and it all seemed a straight forward story of a person with an unpleasant streak getting found out. But you know [...]
Are you a member of Unlock Democracy? Please help improve it
In the spring and summer I blogged about how underwhelmed I was by the exceptionally tight campaigning restrictions for Unlock Democracy’s internal elections which blocked contact between candidates and voters (the irony given the organisation’s name!), leaving just a fairly uninformative booklet to guide my votes: Now having the ballot mailing for the council and for [...]
A graph, a dip, a policy: why the nursery premium is so important
Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton saw the a motion passed calling for the party to investigate the practicalities of introducing a ‘nursery premium’. At first glance this sounds like an obvious extension of the party’s existing pupil premium policy. Delving more closely into the data, however, shows that it is more than simply an obvious [...]
It’s not Vince you should be texting Ed
Ed Miliband’s text messages to Vince Cable may have got him in trouble with his own political party and even resulted in party officials taking away his mobile phone. They also have been text messages sent to the wrong person if Ed Miliband’s serious about preparing the ground for future Labour-Liberal Democrat cooperation. That’s not [...]
A public service announcement from the Committee for Political Consistency
It is extremely important that documents from the police security team at high-risk terrorist targets are kept fully confidential, unless they are about an MP you do not like, in which case they must be leaked in full to the press, no questions asked. * Mark Pack has written 101 Ways To Win An Election [...]
What should the Liberal Democrats focus on in the next year?
That was the question House Magazine asked me for its Lib Dem Conference Special Edition, and here’s what I told them: Only rarely does it make sense for a political party to concentrate on something other than what the public says is the most important issue facing them and their families. Now it not one [...]
In conversation with Tim Leunig… Sunday opening
Welcome to another experiment with our ‘in discussion’ style blog posts, which today features myself and the CentreForum’s Tim Leunig looking at Sunday opening. Mark: In the recent debate about Sunday opening hours, many people were doubtful that longer opening hours would boost the economy, making comments such as “Would you really buy more things [...]
Reshuffle thoughts: how does it score against my four criteria?
Ahead of the reshuffle, I posted four criteria against which the Liberal Democrat part of the shuffling should be judged. Now nearly all the details are in, how does it look? Most importantly, have people been put in jobs they’ve got a decent chance of doing well? It’s hard enough being a minister in [...]
