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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 [...]

It’s exactly 15 years ago today that Tony Blair led New Labour to a landslide general election victory over John Major’s Tories, and Paddy Ashdown saw the Lib Dems secure the largest third party representation in the House of Commons since 1929. Here are three videos to remind you of a quite extraordinary night… The [...]

Thursday, 9th April, 1992 — the first election for the newly-formed Liberal Democrats, and the last election when the Tories won a parliamentary majority. Here’s a video trip down memory lane… Andrew Marr on John Major’s biggest popular mandate in electoral history Paddy Ashdown on the campaign trail Charles Kennedy and Don Foster interviewed on [...]

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 570 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results. 59% of Lib Dem members back benefits cap at £26,000 or lower LDV asked: Under the Coalition government’s [...]

“An avoidable disaster”: that is the verdict of the Financial Times’s Philip Stephens in a must-read article examining what went on behind the scenes of the Coalition’s strategy for approaching last week’s failed European summit. And his verdict on the Prime Minister and his advisers could scarcely be more scathing: There was no great plan [...]

Welcome to the fourth instalment of our scavenge through the video archives for footage from bygone elections. We’ve trawled the 1960-70s, 1980s, and 1992 — which can only mean that today’s the turn of the 1997 landslide general election… That Lib Dem Punch & Judy show (Available on YouTube here.) Paddy Ashdown: the Movie (Available [...]

Last weekend — in a desperate attempt to offer our readers an alternative to The X-Factor — we highlighted some clips from elections of yesteryear: first, the 1960-70s, then the 1980s. Today, we’re scrolling forward to the video footage of the 1992 general election… Paddy Ashdown on the campaign trail (Available on YouTube here.) Don [...]

It’s been a frenzied week in British politics, with attention for once focused less on the mis-deeds of politicans than the criminality practised by many journalists, both at the News of the World and beyond. Here’s a brief round-up of what the Lib Dems have been saying… BSkyB takeover: Lib Dems hint at backing Labour [...]

Mark Pack reviewed Francis Beckett’s new counterfactual collection, The Prime Ministers Who Never Were, on the Voice earlier this week — 14 ‘Big Beasts’ who, had the chips fallen differently, might have become premiers. The list is mostly inevitable with a couple of intriguing outsiders: Austen Chamberlain, J R Clynes, Lord Halifax, Oswald Mosley, Herbert [...]