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Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past few days… Lord Ashdown and Lord Phillips in Lords reform clash (BBC News) Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown has clashed with one of his party colleagues during a debate on government plans to reform the House of Lords. [...]

That’s Paddy’s view, as reported in the Independent’s diary here: Paddy Ashdown, the first leader of the Liberal Democrat party, has remarked on how politics has been taken over by people who have never had a job anywhere else but in politics, giving the strong impression that he does not approve. “The difference with politics [...]

Writing in the Financial Times, former Lib Dem leader Ming Campbell has urged Britain to drop the so-called ‘Moscow criterion’ — which commits us to maintaining an independent nuclear deterrent capable of obliterating the Russian capital — in order to open up the possibilities of a more targeted, and cheaper, nuclear alternative to the renewal [...]

Just a few weeks after the fierce battle for the London mayoralty concluded, a very different election is due to take place — an election which hasn’t even been contested for more than a century. But now London Lib Dem member Patrick Streeter is standing for the post of City Auditor, and promising to ask [...]

If, like me, you were one of the 12,000 people who was a candidate in 2012′s local elections you may have received a letter recently from Plymouth University’s Elections Centre, run by Professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, inviting you to take part in an online questionnaire: This year the centre has ran its seventh [...]

Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past few days… Lord Owen attacks coalition over Lords reform ‘farce’ (Telegraph) Lord Owen was one of 43 of the peers polled who said the Upper House needs to be reformed, even though he disagreed with the changes devised by [...]

At this rate the Daily Mail will soon become Lib Dems’ favourite reading… A few days after its front page proclaiming David Cameron’s lament ‘I’d govern like a true Tory if it wasn’t for the Lib Dems’, the paper reports: Tory Minister is slapped down by Lib Dems after criticising gay marriage Two Ministers in [...]

From all the debate and angst within the Tory party over the issue of House of Lords reform you’d imagine the plan to inject an element of democracy into the UK parliament had been foisted on David Cameron by sneakily obsessive Liberal Democrats. Yet the reality is somewhat different. The Coalition Government’s pledge to overhaul [...]

Results are still coming in, but the overall picture of this year’s local elections is clear: this has been a second successive disappointing result for the Lib Dems. Here’s a topline summary: National vote share: The projected currently projected share of the national Lib Dem vote is 16%, with Labour on 39% and the Tories [...]

David Cameron, it became clear today, was not impressed by Commons Speaker John Bercow’s decision to grant Labour leader Ed Miliband an urgent question on the subject of Jeremy Hunt’s hanging-by-a-thread career as culture secretary. His not-impressedness manifested itself as indignant anger — it was “spectacularly ill-judged” according to the Telegraph’s Iain Martin: From the [...]