House of Comments

37 – The End of the Party

This week sees the final episode of The House of Comments podcast, in which we chat with Labour blogger Antony Painter, and Mark Wallace of Crash Bang Wallace about recent events in UK politics.

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We chatted about:

• Matthew Elliot, CEO of the TaxPayers Alliance, will be running the anti-AV campaign for the forthcoming referendum on changing the voting system. We discussed the different approaches of the pro- and anti-AV campaigns and which is currently in the strongest position. We also asked whether it is, as some have suggested, ‘unfair’ that Matthew Elliot also owns the internet domain name ‘yes2av.org’.
• The Coalition has received much criticism from members of the Labour party for their recent announcement that the new ‘NHS111′ non-emergency telephone service will eventually replace NHS Direct. Is the ‘Save NHS Direct’ petition a great example of social media campaigning from John Prescott, or merely ‘bandwagon jumping’ and ‘crying wolf’?
• Tony Blair’s memoirs will be published in the very near future. We discuss political autobiographies, the Blair years of Labour, and the ‘end of the party’, as documented in Andrew Rawnsely’s book of the same name.
• We also discus recent developments in the Labour leadership contest, and whether they’re in danger of finding themselves in the same position as the post-Thatcher Conservative Party.
• Tory minister Crispin Blunt has recently come out as gay and announced that he is separating from his wife of twenty years. Rumours have been swirling around the blogosphere about another Conservative minister. We ask if it’s right for the press OR the blogosphere to ‘out’ people against their will.

Finally, we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who’s listened to the podcast over the last year, and especially those people who’ve been kind enough to appear as guests on the show. It’s been a blast.

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32 – The Cracks in the Coalition

This week we’re joined by Richard Angell, the Deputy Director of Progress, and James O’Malley of the Pod Delusion podcast.

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• 2 Liberal Democrat MPs voted against the VAT rise in the budget, could we be seeing trouble within the government, or is this just far for the course in a coalition?
• Labour Leadership candidate Diane Abbot had an ‘absolute meltdown’ on the This Week sofa at the hands of Andrew Neil. What was she thinking?
• This week sees a cabinet meeting taking place in Bradford. We ask whether cabinet meetings should be sent around the country, or if that’s just a waste of money
• Freelance photographer Jules Mattsson claims he was harassed and mistreated by policemen who seized his camera and pushed him down some stairs.

28 – The Breaking of Laws

This week we’re joined by Stephen Tall of Lib Dem Voice and Emma Burnell of Scarlett Standard to talk about the events of the last week, which have focused on the resignation of David Laws following revelations about his expenses in the Telegraph over the weekends.

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27 – The Queen’s Speech

We’re joined by Tracey Cheetham of A View From the Public Gallery, Darren Bridgeman of the Lib Dem Bracknell Blog, and Conservative activist and blogger Walaa Idris, to talk about the week’s events in politics.

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22: The Lib Dem Surge

This week Conor Pope of the Audacity of Pope, and Chris Mounsey of the reborn Devil’s Knife join regulars Mark Thompson and Stuart Sharpe to talk about this week’s political events through the prism of the UK political blogosphere.

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We chatted about:

• Following Nick Clegg’s performance at the Leaders Debates, the Liberal Democrats have broken past Labour in the polls, and some polls are even putting them ahead of the Tories. Is this ‘surge’ a flash-in-the-pan that will be gone by next week, or could it be sustained all the way up to election day?
• Electoral mathematics make it unlikely the Lib Dems could win an election outright, but the political system is being given a shake up. With predictions that Labour could end up the party with the most seats but the smallest number of votes, will we soon be seeing electoral reforms come to pass?
• The other parties seem unable to figure out a good line of attack against this third party uprising. We discussed some of the tactics they appear to be trying, and whether any of these have worked at all.
• Chris was interviewed by Andrew Neil for The Daily Politics recently in his capacity as leader of the UK Libertarian Party, but by most accounts did not come off very well from the interview. We asked for his side of the story, and whether writing a blog under such an aggressive persona as Devil’s Kitchen is compatible with holding ambitions in the ‘respectable’ world of politics?

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20: It’s The Economy, Stupid.

This week we’re joined by Alex Massie of The Spectator, and by Alex Smith, editor of LabourList and Islington council candidate.

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We chatted about:

• The last week has been dominated by the economy, with the budget speech last Wednesday and Channel 4′s ‘Ask The Chancellors’ debate the night before our recording. How did the performances of Alistair Darling, George Osborne and Vince Cable stack up in the Channel 4 debate, and will it have any overall effect on the election outcome?
• Tony Blair has recently returned to the UK political scene, giving a speech in support of Gordon Brown. Is his return a good thing for the Labour Party, or does it smack of desperation?
• While Labour have been closing on the Conservatives in polls recently, it still seems fairly unclear what they would actually do with another term in Parliament. Could we see, as Alex Smith suggests, a surprisingly radical manifesto from Labour?
• At the same time, the Tories have not successfully gained control of the ‘media agenda’ from Labour. Are the suffering from a lack of campaign experience compared to Labour?
• Both Alexes were in the USA during the run up to last year’s presidential election, and Alex Smith worked for the Obama Campaign from 2007. We took the opportunity to ask them about that campaign and whether British political parties can take anything from that campaign.

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19: Lobbying Scandals, US Healthcare Reform and #CashGordon

This week Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone, and Sara Scarlett of Liberal Vision, joined regulars Mark Thompson and Stuart Sharpe to talk about the events of the week in politics.

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Topics covered include (but are not limited to):

• A joint investigation by the Sunday Times and Channel 4′s Dispatches exposed a number of MPs apparently offering to lobby the Government for cash. We discuss the scandal, and whether this is reminiscent of the sleaze which marred the final days of John Major’s government.
• President Obama has passed his landmark healthcare reform bill after a political skirmish that has lasted many months. Is this a symbol of his tenacity and negotiating skill, or is the bill too much of a compromise? Also, there’s been some suggestion that the bill is unconstitutional and may need to be revised.
• The Tories #cashgordon campaign website included an unmoderated Twitter feed, leading to the site being exploited first by Labour activists keen to spread messages opposing the campaign. The Twitter feed also contained a major security flaw which hackers and other ‘online mischief makers’ could use to maliciously redirect visitors to other sites. We discussed whether presenting user-generated content unmoderated shows bravery on the part of the Tory web team, or naïvety.

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18: Unite Against Ashcroft

Labour blogger Emma Burnell and libertarian Old Holborn join regulars Mark Thompson and Stuart Sharpe to talk about the political news of the week.

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In this episode, we chatted about:

• Unite, the UK’s largest public sector union, have donated some £11m to the Labour party, and the Conservatives have said this gives them undue influence over the government – is this equivalent to accusations Labour made over Lord Ashcroft’s donations to the Conservative Party?
• With British Airways workers represented by Unite threatening to strike, could there be a political motivation behind the action? Some bloggers have suggested there may be a conspiracy in the works.
• Nick Hogan, a landlord who was imprisoned after failing to pay fines for allowing allowed people to smoke in his pub, has been released after the fines were paid by bloggers and readers from all around the world. Old Holborn organised this campaign, and told us a little about what happened.
• A number of deaths have been linked to mephadrome, a legal substitute for amphetamines. This has lead to calls for the drug to be banned – but how effective is drug prohibition?
• Lastly, Gordon Brown has stated that even if Labour were to lose the next election, he intends to go on as the party leader. Is this likely to happen, and is it the message the electorate want to hear?

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#LDConf Special

We went to the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference to chat with Mark Pack, Alex Foster and Sara Bedford from the LibDemVoice.org team about how the conference has been going and what’s been happening. We talked about the Digital Economy Bill, the ‘defection’ to the Lib Dems of former Conservative MEP Edward MacMillan-Scott, and the new ‘Liberal Vs Authoritarian’ MP ranking system at ‘rank dot libdemvoice dot org’.

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17: Piracy and the Digital Economy Bill

Lib Dem PPC Bridget Fox, fellow podcaster Jonathan Sheppard, and David Weber, editor of the group blog The Daily Soapbox, joined us to talk about the week’s events in politics.

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We chatted about:

• The Digital Economy Bill is currently being debated in the Lords, but many Lib Dems are unhappy with an amendment put forward by Lib Dem Lords Tim Clement-Jones and Tim Razzall. Bridget Fox explains the bill, and her opposition to the amendment.
• With the polls tightening, talk of the possibility of a hung parliament is growing in volume. Would this be a crisis for the economy, as some have suggested, or could it be a triumph for democracy?
• Postal strikes have been called off after the announcement of a pay deal which will give postal workers a 6.9% pay rise over three years. But can Royal Mail carry on in its current form, or does it need a major shakeup?

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