Nick Clegg Storms First Ever Party Leaders Debate

The polls following the first ever Party Leaders General Election debate on ITV are showing that Nick Clegg has won a convincing victory over David Cameron and Gordon Brown. The debate was the first ever Leaders debate during a UK General Election campaign, and the pollsters are giving it as a big victory for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats.

The ITV / COMRES poll held by ITV and announced shortly after the debate gave Nick Clegg as the winner by a huge margin:

Nick Clegg 43%
David Cameron 26%
Gordon Brown 20%

YouGov, Channel 4, Guardian, Daily Mail, The Times and Angus Reid polls following the debate also scored Nick Clegg as the clear winner of the first Leaders debate. Angus Reid said that 42% of voters were more likely to vote for the Liberal Democrats as a result of the debate.

The Daily Telegraph’s headline following the debate said “Clegg’s star rises in great TV showdown”.

The Times comment “Enter the Outsider: Nick Clegg seizes his moment in historic TV debate”.

Even Conservative commentator and blogger Iain Dale said “I think Nick Clegg won the day”.

In summing up the debate, Nick Clegg said Labour and the Tories have made the “same old mistakes over and over again. Despite all the problems and challenges we have, we can be hopeful about the future if we chose something different.”

First Party Leaders’ TV debate: Domestic Affairs

Tonight on ITV, Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown and David Cameron will be going head to head in a TV debate. This is the first of three debates that will be taking place in the run up to the General Election on May 6th.

These are the first of this kind of televised Party Leader debates in the UK. The first debate comes from Manchester, will chaired by Alistair Stewart and the first speaker will be Nick Clegg. Each leader gets a one-minute opening statement and a 90-second closing one.

The first half of the 90 minute Election Debate will be devoted to domestic affairs, with the rest on any topic. ITV are inviting questions before the debate, with more information on their special debate website at http://www.itv.com/electiondebate/

If you have a question for the first half of the debate on issues such as the NHS, Education, Immigration, Law and Order, the Family, the Constitution, Trust in Politics or Political Reform you can email them to [email protected]. You can also send a question for the second half of the debate on other election issues.

The second debate will take place on Sky on 22nd April at 8pm focusing on Foreign Affairs, and the third on the BBC on 29th April at 8.30pm on the Economy.

Fairness – The Liberal Democrat Manifesto Launch

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg MP

Nick Clegg has launched the Liberal Democrat General Election manifesto. The manifesto sets out four clear priorities of fair taxes, a fair chance for every child, a fair economy, and a fair deal by cleaning up politics.

At the launch, Nick Clegg said:

“Every manifesto needs to have an idea at its heart. The basic idea that animates this manifesto is something I have always believed. I believe every single person is extraordinary.

“The tragedy is that we have a society where too many people never get to fulfil that extraordinary potential.

“My view – the liberal view – is that government’s job is to help them to do it. Not to tell people how to live their lives. But to make their choices possible, to release their potential, no matter who they are.

“The way to do that is to take power away from those who hoard it. To challenge vested interests. To break down privilege. To clear out the bottlenecks in our society that block opportunity and block progress. And so give everyone a chance to live the life they want.

“There’s a simple word for those ideas, and it’s a word this manifesto is built on: fairness.”

The Liberal Democrat manifesto outlines 4 steps to a fairer Britain:

Fair taxes that put money back in your pocket

The first £10,000 you earn tax-free: a tax cut of £700 for most people
3.6 million low earners and pensioners freed from income tax completely
Paid for in full by closing loopholes that unfairly benefit the wealthy and polluters

A fair future creating jobs by making Britain greener

Break up the banks and get them lending again to protect real businesses
Honesty about the tough choices needed to cut the deficit
Green growth and jobs that last by investing in infrastructure

A fair chance for every child

Ensure children get the individual attention they need by cutting class sizes
Made possible by investing £2.5 billion in schools targeted to help struggling pupils
Give schools the freedom to make the right choices for their pupils

A fair deal by cleaning up politics

Put trust back into politics by giving you the right to sack corrupt MPs
Restore and protect hard-won British civil liberties with a Freedom Bill
Overhaul Westminster completely: fair votes, an elected House of Lords, all politicians to pay full British taxes

You can download the Liberal Democrat manifesto at http://www.libdems.org.uk/our_manifesto.aspx along with summary documents and videos for each of the key areas, order a paper copy and find audio and easy read text versions.

Apply for a Postal Vote Now: Deadline 20th April

With the General Election on 6th May, there is still time to arrange a postal vote. Voting by post is an easy and convenient way of voting if you are unable to get to the polling station on polling day – for any reason.

Applications to vote by post must also be received no later than 11 working days before Polling Day. With the General Election taking place on Thursday 6 May the deadline to apply for a postal vote, or to amend or cancel existing postal or proxy voting arrangements, will be 5pm on Tuesday 20 April.

All eligible electors have the right to organise to vote by post rather than attend their allocated Polling Station.

A postal vote can be sent to your home address or to any other address that you give. Postal votes can be sent overseas, but you need to consider whether there will be enough time to receive and return your ballot paper by election day.

Postal votes are usually sent out about a week before election day (the exact date will vary depending on your local Council), to give you time to complete it and send it back so that it arrives by close of poll (10pm on May 6th).

The Liberal Democrats have created a tool to make registering for a postal vote easy. Available online now at https://www.libdems.org.uk/vote_by_post.aspx all you need to do is:

Complete all the fields marked with an asterisk (*)
Print, sign and date the form generated
Send the application form to the address provided on the form

Make sure of your vote

If you aren’t registered to vote, you have just two weeks left to make sure you have your say. The last day to register to vote is 20 April – and that’s also the deadline to get a postal vote or assign someone to vote as your proxy.

You may register to vote if you are:

living at an address in Tameside
18 years old or over (but you can register when you are 17 to make sure you get a vote as soon as you are entitled)
a British or Commonwealth citizen
a citizen of the Irish Republic or other European Union state not otherwise disqualified from registration

If you are unsure as to whether you are registered please ring Tameside town hall elections office on 0161 342 3036.

It’s official: 6th May

The General Election has been called for just over four weeks’ time on May 6th. At the party’s headquarters, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg MP said, “It is a very exciting opportunity for everyone in Britain who wants fairness and real change, who wants something different. This isn’t the old politics of a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservative Party. The real choice is between the old politics of Labour and Conservatives and something different, something new and that is what we offer.”

Across Tameside the Lib Dems will be fighting to do even better than in 2005, where we gained support in all three constituencies – Ashton-under-Lyne, Denton & Reddish, and Stalybridge & Hyde – while Labour support dropped and the Tories hardly moved.

Victory Vince: Cable Wins Channel 4 Chancellors Debate

The first ever TV debate between the three candidates to be the next Chancellor has seen Lib Dem Vince Cable win a clear victory. In a Channel 4 on-line poll carried out immediately after the debate, Vince out-polled both Alistair Darling and George Osborne.

The Channel 4 vote results are at http://tinyurl.com/yza4m6a and place Vince Cable as clearly ahead of both the Labour and Conservative contenders:

36% Vince Cable
32% Alistair Darling
32% George Osborne

BBC Commentator Nick Robinson said on the 10 o’clock news that “it was Vince Cable who generated the most applause.”

A separate Yougov / Channel 4 poll carried out on the eve of tonight’s “Ask The Chancellors” debate on asked voters of all parties which of the three men would be best for the job. 26 per cent picked Mr Cable, against 17 per cent for the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, with just 12 per cent opting for the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne. You can read more at http://tinyurl.com/yks5lza

The Guardian’s “Wiintour and Watt” blog at http://tinyurl.com/yl9rf3r said that “The consensus tonight, at Westminster and in the Twittersphere, is that ‘King Vince’ was the runaway winner of the first major televised debate of the general election campaign.”

You can watch Vince Cable‘s closing statement again online at http://j.mp/cyxywl

You can join the Liberal Democrats at www.libdems.org.uk/join_us.aspx

Ask the Chancellors: Live debate on Channel 4

At 8pm on Monday 29th March, Channel 4 will stage a live debate between the would-be Chancellors, Liberal Democrat Vince Cable, Labour’s Alistair Darling and Conservative George Osborne. Krishnan Guru-Murthy will be asking the questions.

From 7pm on the night, Channel 4 will be hosting a discussion of the debate. You can send questions and comment to [email protected] and follow the debate and comment at http://www.channel4.com/microsites/A/askthechancellors/

You can also get involved on Twitter by “tagging” your Twitter messages “#askthechancellors”.

Vince Cable is the Liberal Democrats’ Deputy Leader and Shadow Chancellor and one of the most popular current politicians. A 22/23 March poll by YouGov showed more people thought he would make the best Chancellor than either Alistair Darling or George Osborne.

Local MEP angered by tuna decision

Tameside’s Lib Dem Euro-MP has spoken of his anger at the decision not to ban the trade in the world’s most valuable fish. Liberal Democrat Chris Davies says that the Mediterranean bluefin tuna is likely to become extinct as a result of the decision by governments represented at a world conference on trade in endangered species.

European Union proposals for a complete ban to allow stocks of the fish to recover were rejected by a coalition of countries led by Japan. Bluefin tuna is prized as a delicacy, and individual fish can command prices of up to £100,000.

But with organised criminals ignoring all restrictions stocks in the Mediterranean are said to be at less than 8% of the levels of 20 years ago.

Chris said he was shocked and angered at the failure of so many governments to recognise the folly of continuing the trade.

The Liberal Democrat strongly supported efforts by WWF, the world’s largest environmental charity, to secure a total ban. He said: “Governments must recognise that if we carry on like this there will be no fish left in the seas and no jobs for fishermen.”

Election an opportunity to win back privacy

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg will today say this election is ‘an opportunity for the British people to vote to take their privacy back’.

In his speech to Privacy International to mark their 20th Anniversary, Nick Clegg will say: “Labour has spent 13 years trampling over people’s privacy. From allowing children’s fingerprints to be taken at school without their parents’ consent; to making us a world leader in CCTV; to wasting vast sums of taxpayers’ money on giant databases that hoard our personal details. And now we hear that ministers want pensioners to swap their bus passes for ID cards.

“The Government’s staggering record on losing private data – leaving it in pub car parks and on commuter trains – just makes matters worse.

“And there’s an even bigger issue at stake: Labour’s flagrant disregard for our privacy flies in the face of hard won British liberty. It betrays a deep distrust of the British people, as well as an obsession with controlling every aspect of everyday life from Whitehall.

“Those same reflexes underpin this Government’s obsession with law-making. Since 1997 they have flooded the statute books with nearly 4,300 new ways of making us criminals. Some of them are completely bizarre, like ‘disturbing a pack of eggs when directed not to by an authorised officer’, and ‘causing a nuclear explosion’, as if we needed a new law for that.

“And where do all these new laws get us? Only one in a hundred crimes ends in a conviction in court.

“The Conservatives talk a good game on privacy, but scratch beneath the surface and it’s clear they can’t be trusted to roll back Labour’s surveillance state. Just look at their plans to make it even easier for the police to watch and record people getting on with their daily lives, all in the name of cutting red tape.

“Only the Liberal Democrats will bring an end to the endless snooping on innocent people.”