Politics

The agenda for this year’s Liberal Democrat Federal Spring Conference is now available online.

I won’t be going to Brighton in March for the conference, so this is largely of academic interest, but a brief glance at the agenda suggests I won’t be missing too much. I would highlight three things:

• The, rather silly, constitutional amendment that would make it easier for the party to chuck out its leader. I’d be very surprised if this was passed. One of the reasons why I am certain that Clegg will lead the Liberal Democrats into the next General Election is Lembit Opik plotting against him.
• The concentration on the economy. The formal business of the conference will be dominated by discussion of economic policy and ideas for achieving growth. This is as it should be.
• That writing the next manifesto has begun. With various sessions discussing broadly drawn consultation papers and a specific manifesto consultation session this conference marks the beginning of the writing process for the next General Election manifesto.  This is the real significance of the conference.

One disappointment — given the events in Northern Ireland over the last few months — I would have liked to have seen a slot given to the Alliance Party on the agenda as an expression of support. Although a chance for this remains with the slot for emergency motions.

That’s a question that many have asked. But what I am actually referring to is an online campaign that is being promoted today.

‘What The Hell Have The Lib Dems Done?‘ is an excellent website that acts as a showcase of what the party is doing in government.

It matches a list of achievements against commitments made in the General Election manifesto.

It was originally created by William Summers and has been recently updated by Mark Pack.

See if you can be convinced by visiting:

• www.WhatTheHellHaveTheLibDemsDone.com

As mentioned in my previous post I have finally got around to looking at the Boundary Commission’s revised proposals for their review of parliamentary constituencies for England. I appreciate that this is something of an academic exercise given that the row within the Coalition Government over House of Lords reform has resulted in a situation where Parliament is unlikely to approve these proposals. However, here are the details for the record.

The initial proposals for the Eastern Region, including the sub-region of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, where published in September 2011. You can read what I wrote about them at the time here:

• The proposed new parliamentary boundaries for Luton
• The proposed new Luton North and Dunstable constituency
• The proposed new Luton South constituency

After public consultation on these proposals the Commission published their revised recommendations in October 2012. These revised proposals do seem to me to be an improvement. Given the constraints that the Commission have had to work within, what they are now suggesting appears to work more coherently with the nature of Bedfordshire and so make better sense than the original.

The proposals

The proposals for changing Luton South and creating a new Luton North and Dunstable seat remain unchanged from the commission’s first report.

In the north Bedford would remain much as it is now with the addition of the Bromham ward to the West. The North Bedfordshire constituency becomes a do-nut around Bedford and takes in the whole of the northern end of the county — upwards from Potton and Biggleswade in the East and Ampthill in the west.

Despite its name returning in the revised proposals the old Mid Bedfordshire seat would still essentially disappear. Just under 30% of it go to make up the new North Beds seat and just under 40% of it, including Flitwick, Woburn and Harlington, go into a stretched South West Bedfordshire constituency. This seat loses Dunstable and is pulled northwards as far as Cranfield.

The remaining bits of the old Mid Beds seat (about 27% of it) as well as bits of the old North East Beds seat go to make up part of a new cross-county seat with parts of Hertfordshire. This includes the villages to north and north east of Luton (including Streatley, Barton-le-Clay, Silsoe, Shefford, Henlow, and Stotfold). This new Mid Bedfordshire and Harpenden constituency is made up of about 45% of the old Hitchin and Harpenden constituency. As well as containing Harpenden itself, it includes Wheathampstead, Kimpton, and the villages to the east of Luton. It also takes in the ward to the south of Luton and Dunstable, containing Caddington and Slip End, from the old South West Beds seat.

• Details of the proposals for the Eastern region (including Bedfordshire)
• Maps of the proposed constituencies for Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire

The rationale

It is the changes to Luton that are key to understanding the logic behind what the Commission has proposed for Bedfordshire, and they were also the most controversial.

The new tighter rules for how many voters a constituency has makes Luton too large to be a single constituency and too small to have two. So parts of of the town need to be combined with somewhere else to make the numbers work. The Commission have taken the view that the logical place to join with is the town of Dunstable.

Dunstable and North Luton are both urban areas that are part of the same conurbation. The border between the two crosses a continuous built up area. A stranger who travels across that boundary would be unlikely to realise that they have just moved between towns. The two towns share a transport network and other services — not least the Luton and Dunstable Hospital.

The alternatives are also poorer. The best of these, and the one that I thought we might end up with when this process started, would be to combine parts of the north of Luton with the town of Houghton Regis, which is also part of the conurbation. However, Houghton Regis is smaller than Dunstable and so this change would also require bringing in some more rural bits of the county — those villages to north of the urban area. However, the Commission have sought to avoid making mixed urban and rural constituencies when they can.

The other alternatives would require crossing the county boundary into Hertfordshire — either to pick up the villages to the East or, as some have suggested, extend a Luton South constituency further south and combining with Harpenden. Both of this have significant drawbacks.

Once the decision to combine Dunstable with north Luton has been made, alongside the approach to the north of the County, the knock on effects on the other constituencies are largely unavoidable. The Commission has adjusted, and I believe improved, the proposals but the essential impact on the centre and south west of Bedfordshire remains largely the same.

I had meant to post some more stuff here over the last couple of weeks but the reason why I have failed, other than being generally busy, was that I decided to write a quick post about the Boundary Commission’s revised recommendations for changing the parliamentary boundaries for Luton and the rest of Bedfordshire.

This was not a quick post.

In researching and writing it up I rather got lost in the subject. Which is a bit silly given the vote in parliament last week means that they are even less likely to be put in place than they were when the House of Lords reforms collapsed.

It is not so much the proposed boundaries themselves that I have got lost in, which are pretty straightforward once you’ve got your head around them, but the story that the report, the written submissions, and the transcript of the two days of public evidence, tells about how the different communities in southern Bedfordshire (or at least their elected representatives) see themselves and each other. It is a tale of identity, different ideas of urban and rural, party politics, misconceptions, genuine fears, and sadly I suspect lurking at the back of it is different forms of prejudice. It also provides evidence for the motivations behind many of the decisions that have taken place in local politics over recent years — much of them deeply irrational when looked at objectively. Most of this I was vaguely aware of — but now feel I should have understood better — and reading this has helped bring some clarity.

What I am talking about here, if you hadn’t already guessed, is how Luton is mistrusted — indeed to some extent feared — by its near neighbour Dunstable and the rural communities of south Bedfordshire. How important being “rural” is to those communities. And why the quite logical proposal to create a parliamentary constituency that combined Dunstable with the north of Luton generated such an extreme reaction from some.

This at least is the picture that the background papers to the Boundary Commission’s report gives us as presented at least by members of the local political class. How deeply this picture accurately reflects the views of the local population is an open question. Perhaps the controversy over the new boundaries might have given us some clues to this if it hadn’t been cut short by the bigger national controversy at Westminster.

As you can tell I have ended up with a much wider subject to talk about than the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies! A subject that may take me a while to do proper justice to.

But first the boundary proposals themselves…

My political activity during 2012 was very limited but one of the few things that I had made a commitment to do was serve on the Liberal Democrats’ English Council for the year.

The English Council is the governing body of the Liberal Democrats in England. It meets twice a year to consider matters of importance to the English Party.

My motivation for becoming a member of this somewhat obscure body was partly to find out just what it does and to see if I could do something to raise awareness of it’s activities amongst the wider party. This led to me also making a commitment to regularly report on the work of the English Council for Liberal Democrat Voice. I hoped that this would be a modest but useful contribution to the Party and a commitment I felt I was able to make.

So during the year I attended both meetings of the English Council and wrote six articles for Liberal Democrat Voice highlighting relevant issues. I believe this has helped make the English Council’s work more visible and there was some lively discussion in the comments to my articles.

Given that I had managed to make good on this commitment — and with a gentle feeling of satisfaction as a result — in November I chose to stand again as a representative of the East of England region on the English Council. Because the English Council had decided to increase the number of representatives from each region that make up its members — which meant that there were more places than nominations — I was again elected without having to go to bother of asking anyone for their vote.

So I get to have another (thrilling and exciting) year as a member of the English Council. What should I do with it?

Well obviously I will continue to raise awareness of the work of the English Council by reporting on its activities through Liberal Democrat Voice.

However, so far in the meetings of the Council themselves I have been nothing much more than an observer. I ought to try to make more of a contribution this year. While I don’t have a particular agenda in mind I would be willing to act as conduit for those who want questions asked or issues raised. In particular I would be happy to highlight the concerns of grassroot campaigners or those who wish to see improvements to how the Party is run and organised.

• Read my posts about the English Council on Liberal Democrat Voice
• Read my posts about the English Council on Strange Thoughts

Liberal Democrat Voice’s annual poll to find the Liberal Voice of the Year is a strange beast.

Ostensibly it is a search:

“to find the individual or group which has had the biggest impact on liberalism in the past 12 months…looking beyond the ranks of the Lib Dems to find the greatest liberal who’s *not* a member of our party.”

In reality it is a very odd beauty contest between a disparate range of contestants most of whom aren’t liberals in any sensible use of that term. Voting in it becomes more a reflection of what issues the voter sees as most important rather than a true choice between the merits of the candidates.

Last year it became a rather odd venue for an ideological battle as some libertarians made a successful attempt to get Mark Littlewood chosen as the winner. It seems there will be another attempt at this this year with the inclusion of the policy director of the thatcherite Adam Smith Institute on the short-list.

I was one of those to nominate Lord Justice Leveson this year. If at the heart of our liberalism is the imperative to oppose the concentration of power in unaccountable bodies — then the political battle to get the recommendations of the Leveson Report implemented and so bring some accountability to the distorting and destructive power of elements of the British press is a struggle for liberty. I have found the attempt to paint Leveson’s modest proposal for a degree of statutory underpinning for a new regulator as some kind of move towards authoritarian state censorship as ridiculous. It is also very disappointing when this has been argued by liberals who should really know better. So I thought it was important that Leveson was on the short-list. In fact he has also been joined by the Hacked Off campaign, which is pleasing.

However, when it actually came to vote I decided that those who have continued to fight for human rights and democracy in the face of violence and intimidation where more deserving of my support. So this is how I voted:

Fresh from sorting out the internal election rules of Unlock Democracy Mark Pack has again turned his attention to the internal rules of the Liberal Democrats and has come up with a new proposal for change. This time he’s looking at the qualification period that applies before someone can vote in the party’s candidate selections.

The issue here is that the current rules prevents newly joined up members from voting in candidate selections until they’ve been members for a certain period of time, usually one year. This rule was introduced to prevent individuals gaming the system by signing up lots of new members – who weren’t necessarily genuine supporters of the Liberal Democrats – so that they could vote for a particular candidate in the selection process. The party had experienced a few cases where this was suspected of happening. The theory behind the rule is that if you stay committed long enough to renew your membership then the chances are that you are genuine and so deserve a vote.

The problem is that this rule applies not only to new members – but also to lapsed members, those who have failed to renew their membership but later seek to rejoin. This has the potential to exclude from a particular candidate selection some long-standing and committed members who, for one reason or another, simply forgot to ensure that their membership was up-to-date. Actually, in one of the reports to last Saturday’s English Council I heard some evidence that this very situation has occurred in relation to the recent selection process for Euro candidates.

In short, Mark’s proposal is to keep the qualifying period rule for new members but to get rid of it for those who have lapsed.

Generally speaking I am supportive of this proposal – instinctively I would want to get rid of anything that prevents genuine members taking part in the party’s democratic processes – but I think Mark may be confusing the issue a bit in the way that he is advocating for this change. The idea that this opens up the possibility that potential candidates will make an effort to go around and renew lapsed members, and so provide a bonus for the party, is I think a bit of a red herring.

For me the issue is one of fairness and openness in our democratic processes. While it does seem odd to me that someone who has been a member of the Party for over ten years, but whose membership has lapsed for six months, gets treated the same as someone who has never been a member at all. But I’m doubtful whether the ability to recruit lapsed members, although a useful skill, should be considered as something that carries that much weight in choosing a candidate for elected office.

But it is a proposed change that is worth considering and I’m grateful for Mark for asking me to comment.

As it happens I’ve been thinking a fair bit lately about what membership of a political party actually means. A person can be a strong advocate of certain political objectives or an active volunteer in a specific election campaign without being a member of a political party. So why be a member? Part of my answer to that question centres around participation internal democracy and things like candidate selection.

What I hadn’t really focussed on, until Mark asked me to comment on this, was that parties – implicitly at least – require individuals to meet certain qualifications before they can become members. Paying the membership fee is an obvious one. And in the Liberal Democrats, as things currently stand, you have to serve a “probationary period” before can get “full” membership with entitlement to take part in all the Party’s selection processes. Thinking about it further it is also implicit in my reaction to Mark’s proposal that I see a lapsed member as “more qualified”, and perhaps deserving of different treatment, than someone who has never been a member. Whether this should be the case is open to question.

Looking wider than the specific rule under discussion, I wonder whether a useful reform would be to make more explicit the “qualifications for membership” that the Liberal Democrats expect those who become its members should have?

• You can read Mark Pack’s original proposal here;  ’A simple way to improve party selection rules‘.
• See also ‘Dr Pack has an idea. Is it one of his better ones?‘ for a different take on this.

My report on the November meeting of the Liberal Democrat’s English Council is now up on Liberal Democrat Voice.

The English Council is the governing body of the Liberal Democrats in England and meets twice a year to consider matters of importance to the English Party. This post is part of a series of posts I’ve been writing for Liberal Democrat Voice this year reporting on the activities of the English Party.

The main issue I have highlighted in the report is the decision of the English Party to carry out a review of the organisational arrangements made for the recent Police and Crime Commissioner Elections.

The only thing I would want to add here was how impressed I was by the keynote speech from Stephen Lloyd the MP for Eastbourne. I’ve not really come across him much before, and can’t remember having seen him speak, so I was very pleased to find him an extremely effective and engaging speaker. He is a very different kind of Liberal Democrat to me, and I didn’t agree with everything he said, but his energy, obvious commitment, and clear headed thinking was impressive and left me feeling more than a little inspired.

• Read ‘Reporting back from English Council’s 17 November meeting‘

One of the things that I have regularly featured on this blog over the years is the disgrace of former Luton South MP Margaret Moran whose political career went up in flames when she was accused of a wholesale fiddling of her expenses.

That accusation finally went to trail last week at Southwark Crown Court. Although it is a pretty unusual trail.

Moran cannot be found guilty as she has been declared ‘unfit to plead’ due to mental illness. The jury will still have to decide whether or not the expense fiddling took place — but if the case is proven — no punishment will be given out. The Telegraph has a good explanation of this odd legal situation.

The trail should resume this morning.

More from me on Margaret Moran can be found here.

I wrote last month that given how I had expressed my dissatisfaction with the process used by Unlock Democracy, the constitutional reform campaigning organisation, to elect members to its governing council the least I could do was to turn up at their AGM to support those who trying to do something about it.

So yesterday I spent a more enjoyable day than expected at Unlock Democracy’s AGM held at the NCVO HQ near King’s Cross. While the debates on the motions were a bit scrappy, the atmosphere was friendly, the issues important, and the keynote speakers — we had contributions from the slightly odd pairing of Andreas Whittam-Smith and Vince Cable — interesting. I’ve always found it fascinating to see how different organisations work and it was instructive to watch the different dynamics at work within an organisation that draws its members from as diverse a range of traditions as Unlock Democracy does.

I’ve come away a little bit reassured at the possibilities of cooperation in pursuit of a common purpose.

However, the important news for those concerned with the health of internal democracy within organisations is that the motions proposed by Chris Carrigan and Mark Pack, which became known for some reason during the meeting as the Carrigan-Pack motions, were passed — after a little bit of procedural argy-bargy. When proxy votes were taken into account the constitutional amendment was passed with a su