House of Comments - Episode 75 - The End of her Teather

Episode 75 of the House of Comments podcast "The End of her Teather" is out. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by Nick Denys from Platform 10 to discuss the Lobbying Bill, the Universal Credit debacle, further Falkirk fallout and Sarah Teather's decision to stand down from parliament.

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listen to ‘Episode 75 - The End of her Teather’ on Audioboo

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PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us. We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

What a turnaround!

It was fascinating listening to "Any Questions" on Radio 4 yesterday.

Sarah Teather was batting for the Lib Dems and the mellifluously toned Emily Thornberry was doing likewise for Labour.

During the course of the programme, Thornberry repeatedly tried to turn every question into one about the "harsh cuts" being imposed by the government. At no point of course did she make any attempt to highlight what she and Labour would have cut instead as indeed they would have had to have done.

In the end Teather called her on this pointing out that Labour continually attack every single cut without having a credible alternative plan for what they would have done instead (see Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer today for more on this theme). It is opportunism of the highest order.

But how strange that we find ourselves at the start of 2011 in a political world where a Lib Dem MP (and government minister to boot) is lecturing one of Labour's rising stars who only just missed election to the shadow cabinet by one vote on realistic politics and government! For decades we have heard Labour (and Tory) ministers claim high-handedly that a vote for the Lib Dems is a waste of time because they are not a realistic party of government and will never be in a position of power. They cannot credibly make this claim in the future.

As an aside, I also just wanted to draw attention to something else Thornberry said during the programme. At one point she claimed: "Being in coalition is not an excuse to break your promises". This garnered a fair bit of applause from the audience. However it is an easy line that like her claims about the economy does not stand up to scrutiny. As I have said time and again, coalition is about compromise and by definition it is impossible for two parties to come together and for both of their programmes/manifestos to be implemented in full. Some policies and ideas from both parties will have to be modified or dropped for it to work at all. So it is another example of Labour being totally unrealistic about the realities of coalition governing.

Emily Thornberry gets added to the ever growing list of Labour spokespeople and activists who by their words are effectively ruling out their own party from ever governing in a coalition at Westminster.

Clegg does very well at #LibDems manifesto launch

Well I just watched the whole of the manifesto launch online. I have not had time to go through all the detail yet but its headlines are to focus on the 4 key themes which I think is the right way to go.

There were brief contributions from Sarah Teather, Danny Alexander and Vince Cable (who did well as always) but Nick Clegg's speech about the manifesto and then the way he handled questions from the media afterwards was very good. He was solid on the details, able to go in depth into ways in which savings could be made and nothing phased him. He even came across as quite statesman like at some points suggesting that irrespective of whoever wins the election, all parties will need to come together to be honest about the scale of the deficit and what needs to be done about it.

Even some non-Lib Dems on Twitter seemed to be impressed with Clegg, many of them the sort of people who would normally not hesitate to criticise which I think shows it is not just my party bias coming through here.

I live-tweeted the whole thing. Here are a few of my thoughts as I tweeted them:

Cable raises the issue of the structural deficit which is at about £70 billion and how #LibDems will tackle it.

Cable states there is no need for tax rises apart from £2 billion levy on banks. #LibDems

Cable: Society needs solidarity to get through difficult times + this is achieved by fairness in tax system. #LibDems

Nick Clegg: We should take power away from those vested interests who hoard it. #LibDems

#LibDems manifesto would hard-wire fairness into British society: Clegg

We will change the voting system so that every vote matters #LibDems - Oh yeah! Tickle my political erogenous zones Cleggy!

Clegg: Two other parties are conspiring to airbrush the recession out of the election campaign #LibDems

Clegg sounding really passionate now as he talks about fairness and potential for people #'LibDems

Good to hear Clegg describing no overall majority as a "balanced parliament". Hope that catches on more. #LibDems

Clegg is very on top of the detail of this manifesto. Bodes well for the leaders debate tomorrow #LibDems

Well I know I'm biased but overall a very impressive performance from Nick Clegg at the manifesto launch. #LibDems

Finally, just one thought to end on for now. Crispian Jago on Twitter drew my attention to one specific part of the manifesto: "Here's a novel idea from the lib dem manifesto: "Always base drugs policy on independent scientific advice" #scivote". Great stuff!

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 9th July 2009 - #bbcqt

It's BBC Question Time day again - schools edition special where the audience is made up of school children and the Live Chat on this blog will start at 10:30pm. I am aware that tonight's edition in addition to being broadcast in its usual slot on BBC1 at 10:35, will also be broadcast live on BBC3 at 8:00pm (presumably because it is the schools edition) but I am not around this evening at that point so I can only cover the usual BBC1 broadcast from 10:30pm.

The panel will include Secretary of State for Health Andy Burnham, the Conservative shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport Jeremy Hunt, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on housing Sarah Teather, the director of the human rights organisation Liberty Shami Chakrabarti, and a fifth people's panellist to be announced on the night.

You can also follow people's comments on Twitter via the #bbcqt hashtag (you can also follow me here on Twitter by the way).

Liberal Democrat Voice also always have an open thread for BBC Question Time which is usually posted just before the start of the programme.

Last week's chat was the best attended ever and very lively with almost 40 people (including lurkers!) attending according to the stats with many of them joining in.

As I said above, the chat starts from 10:30pm this evening:

Lib Dems lead on second homes!

It's great to see that we are taking to lead on the second homes issue. Peter Hoskin has reported this today on the Spectator Coffee House blog.

Sarah Teather has released a statement that says:


"It is completely unacceptable that London MPs living within commuting distance of Westminster are allowed to claim money for a second home. Thousands of Londoners travel to work in Central London every single day, so why on earth shouldn’t their MPs?

The London second homes scandal doesn’t just damage individual MPs, it damages Parliament and our democracy.

It’s time that Parliament cleaned up its act. A full inquiry would be welcome, but unless Labour and Conservative MPs are prepared to vote for change it will continue to be business as usual at Westminster."


I am 100% behind this. It is exactly what we should be doing. As Irfan Ahmed posted a couple of weeks ago, Lib Dem MPs score higher than all the other parties in every catergory when constituents have been surveyed. We are clearly trusted by people and I would argue it is our duty to tackle this sort of behaviour as the two main parties clearly will not.

What I don't want to happen however is for the instances involving Jacqui Smith and Tony McNulty to get completely lost in these calls for change. I still feel that they have a moral duty to accept they have strayed well outside the bounds of acceptable conduct, even if what they did is not strictly against the rules as they are currently constituted.

UPDATE: Alix has just posted a good article on this subject on LDV here.