London Lib Dems reveal Assembly shortlist

Those with connections to the more enterprising candidates may already have noticed this, but the party in London has released the shortlist of candidates to be London Assembly members in 2016.  Liberator understands this was due to a delay after one excluded candidate was reinstated on appeal.

The list is:

Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett

Annabel Mullin

Ben Mathis

Brian Haley

Caroline Pidgeon

Dawn Barnes

Duwayne Brooks

Emily Davey

Marisha Ray

Mark Platt

Merlene Emmerson

Pauline Pearce

Rob Blackie

Stephen Knight

Teena Lashmore

Zack Polanski

It includes at least 6 candidates from a BAME background and the gender split is 50/50: two encouraging signs.  Most of the names will come as no surprise including the two incumbent AMs.

Notable by their absence are libertarians who have been making a lot of noise about policy in the London Assembly about the stance to the taxi business Uber. It will be interesting to see whether this becomes an issue.

Guest post: How To Win The Fightback

What a depressing time for Liberalism Thursday night was. I believe strongly that we as a party should now all get behind Tim Farron to be the new leader and begin the fight back.

However, the first step must surely be to admit where we went wrong. Going into a coalition in itself was not a mistake as it showed we were prepared to put our money where our mouths were. But we voted through so many awful policies, such as tuition fees and secret courts that we should have blocked, while allowing the Tories to veto all the key reforms we proposed - electoral reform, Lords reform and minor changes to the treatment of drug users.

Giving up our historic position as a party on the centre left who back well-funded public services along with a strong commitment to individual freedom, and swapping it for a vague, mealy-mouthed, neither one thing nor the other approach was also intellectually weak and tactically inept. When I spoke to voters on the doorstep over the election period, many naturally Tory and Labour voters who had previously lent us their vote said they would be unable to this time for fear that we put the other ‘lot’ in. To regain the trust of voters we must be prepared to stand up for what we think and what we would achieve in Government, not just what we would try to block.

Our current obsession with cutting taxes must also surely now come to an end. Not only does it go against the fundamental principles of progressive liberalism to continually want shrink the state, it is economically illiterate. By continually ‘taking people out of tax altogether’, not only do we take away people’s stake in the public services they use, but we have also punched a huge hole in the UK’s income tax take, thus worsening the structural deficit that those supporting tax cuts claim to want to cure.  The misguided Tory pledge to enshrine 'no tax rises' in law naturally creates the space for this debate.

We must also reverse the process of watering down our policy commitments; if the swing to UKIP tells us anything, other than a huge dissatisfaction with modern politics, it is that voters like politicians who say what they think, rather than say what is acceptable to focus groups. The Liberal Democrats used to back the legalisation of prostitution and of soft drugs, for the obvious reasons that it is not the role of Government to ban personal activities, but merely to regulate them properly to reduce harm. But the former is now never mentioned at all and the latter has been replaced by a commitment to stop treating drug users as criminals and start treating them as patients.

The road back to relevance and power will clearly be a long one, but rediscovering our soul and purpose must be the first step. I dearly hope that under Tim's leadership, the points I make above can be addressed. If they are not, I fear for the future of our party.

Nic Bourgueil is a Lib Dem member and former member of staff in London, writing under a pseudonym for work reasons and expressing a personal view.

Nigeria 2015 Elections Postponement and its Effects by Donald Inwalomhe. Part 2.

Already attention has been shifted away from core economic programmes to politics and campaign, bad enough, the 2015 budget is yet to be considered and approved by the National Assembly as a result of these activities. We are faced with worst scenario especially if the legislature decides to politicize its legislative assignments. The budget might end up not being passed until after the May 29th transition period. It is not pleasing that the President is currently financing the 2015 budget outside appropriation, considering the fact that the current exchange rate of the naira would make such expenses risky. What is most worrisome is that if the budget is not timely passed so as to become law, it would pose a great challenge for the incoming government to reconcile expenditure already made outside the budget and those approved from the budget. The effect of the election postponement has already suggested uncertainty in the economy, it has lowered investors confidence in the nation’s stock exchange. Foreign investors are already withdrawing their investment from the Nigerian stock exchange.

The process of implementing economic growth policies would be slow; since the incoming government will not be known until after March 28th. In the face of dwindling oil funds, this is certainly not the time for Nigeria to toy with any activities that would revamp its revenue profile; not even the 2015elections. In a special report titled ‘Nigeria: Postponed Polls: Protracted Uncertainty Weighs on Naira’, the international investment and financial advisory firm, Renaissance Capital said by postponing the election, the authorities have further exposed the weakness of the local currency in the face of continued depletion of the nation’s foreign reserves.

Besides, the postponement is in line with the provision in section 26 sub section one of the electoral act 2010 amended. Basically, the insecurity occasioned by the Boko Haram insurgents in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno States were among reasons why the security agents advised INEC for the postponement, saying that it cannot guarantee the security of voters, personnel and materials for the elections under the circumstance.

According to Prof. Jega under such circumstances, INEC had no option than to postpone the elections. However, INEC had been contending with the distribution of the Permanent Voter Cards (PVC), as millions of registered voters have been unable to collect their PVC as at the time of the announcement of the postponement by INEC Chairman, despite the extension of the collection exercise.

With the postponement of the elections due to insecurity in parts of the country, it therefore means that the Boko Haram insurgency which has been treated as a non issue by the military and Federal government has become a serious issue over night.

The postponement reminds Nigerians of the thankless role of the judiciary in the annulment of the 1993 general elections must necessarily become a warning in the light of the myriads of pre-election lawsuits currently pending in court ahead of the March 28 and April 11 polls. There are no fewer than five lawsuits seeking declaration that President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party is ineligible to stand re-election. As many as 10 separate suits are pending, wherein the court has been urged to disqualify the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) from the election.

Nigeria deserves this democracy, which, in the words of a prominent professor of Law and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Itse Sagay, has become the minimum standard for a civilised existence. Indeed, democracy has been equated to the most basic fundamental human right of a people.

Inwalomhe Donald, Researcher, Benin City, Nigeria. inwalomhe.donald@yahoo.com

Nigeria 2015 Elections Postponement and its Effects by Donald Inwalomhe. Part 1.

The Nigerian Presidential election rescheduled to 28 March has been beset by controversy. This special report for the Liberator blog is by Donald Inwalomhe, a journalists for several national Nigerian newspapers, who works with a network to monitor the elections, and has been warning for several years of the threat in the north posed by Boko Haram.

THE general election earlier scheduled in February, 2015 has been postponed by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC to March 28 (Presidential and national assembly) and April 11, (governorship and state assemblies) 2015, Announcing the postponement on Saturday 7th February, 2015 in a press briefing, the INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega told Nigerians that the postponement was due to security report by the Service chiefs of the security agencies in Nigeria. The postponement is already having some cost implications on Nigerians. If not well managed, we might lose much of our economic projections for 2015 and further plunged into more hardship. With the postponement, various stakeholders have incurred several forms of loses.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has vowed to disrupt Nigeria’s general election in a new video released recently, after several suicide attacks in the northeast blamed on the Islamists killed many people. In the ninth minutes of the video which lasted for 11 minutes 57 seconds, Shekau began to talk about Nigeria’s 2015 election, stating that, it will not hold in peace. “This election will not be held even if we are dead. Even if we are not alive Allah will never allow you to do it,” Shekau said in the Hausa language, presumably referring to the polls scheduled for March 28. The video appeared to be the first message released by the group on Twitter, a sign of its changing media tactics after previous messages were distributed to journalists on DVD. Shekau was shown in unusual clarity in front of a solid blue background, dressed in black and with an automatic weapon resting to his right.

The international and local observers had already counted their losses. The apprehension which might arise from the outcome of the February 14, 2015 elections also made companies to suspend major profitable ventures during the election period. Some traders closed their shops or rather refused to replace their stocks thereby recording low turnover. The political parties have deployed massive funds in all of the 36 states. However, with the six weeks extension, the political parties would need to continue the engagement process with their supporters in various cost-driven activities. More town hall meetings, rallies and air time would be paid as adverts in the electronic and print media. This extension would definitely be a cost burden on the small parties. The economy also has its own share in the cost of election postponement.

Election Preparations

The extraordinary public attack on Tim Farron and his judgment by the Liberal Democrats' General Election Chair Paddy Ashdown was viewed with raised eyebrows by those who remembered his desperate attempts to pursue "The Project" with Tony Blair in 1997-8.

This has quickly been followed by an orchestrated attack on Farron in today's Times [paywalled] after a pretty innocuous piece in the Mail on Sunday.  Meanwhile a lot of people have been working to generate publicity for Norman Lamb after the intrusive tabloid piece about his family members yesterday.

Lamb appears to have handled this very well, gaining momentum for his work to transform mental health care.  What Tim Farron hasn't said so far (but others can) is that perhaps Lord Ashdown's focus should be on voters in key areas, as Tim's is on his constituents; and that winning as many seats as possible on 7 May is perhaps more important.

After all, it does rather seem that the election preparations going on in some places are not being made with the General Election in mind.

Whoever authored the attack on the handling of the foreign affairs brief was not thinking of the leadership's judgment in staying almost entirely silent on international issues this Parliament; in forsaking Ministerial roles at the FCO and MOD; or indeed in appointing Tim Farron to the foreign affairs role.