…I don’t like it.  By it, I of course mean the new Liberal Democrat main party site.

(Pic from Paul Walter)

Like Paul, I have had a little sneaky.  Unlike Paul, and it seems others, I don’t like it.  I had written why I don’t like it but thought I would wait for it to go ‘live’ first and allow everyone to see it before I slagged it off, so as not to prejudice you all.

I hope people do like it and I am wrong.

UPDATE:  James Graham makes a fair point in the comments:  If I am not going to say what I think the problem is, then why say anything at all?

I think it looks cheap.  That is the first word that came to mind when I opened it up.  It is just not a very good design.  I think they have added some very good features, but have pulled the whole thing down by not making it very good looking.  It may not seem much, but with all the other websites out there vying for attention, ours will still be a small voice in the wilderness.

Like most, I have been massively impressed with Millenium’s blogger interviews.  The chance for us hoi-polloi to go and talk face-to-face with the top people in one of the main parties in British politics is pretty cool.

However, living on the continent I am not best placed to sign up for these.  Although the next one is going to be in the great northern enclave of Sheffield (where all the best people go to university) I doubt the shores of Lake Geneva are going to be on the interviewing schedule anytime soon.  Pity.  It is very nice this time of year.  But, when there was some hoohah about these interviews a few months ago then Alex Wilcock rightly suggested ‘if you want something done, do it yourself’.  So that is what I am thinking of doing.

Via the magic-inty-web.

In a nutshell, coveritlive is a real-time chat platform.  If you want to host a chat all you have to do is go to the website and fill in the relevant information and then all you do is paste the bit of code they give you into a post on your blog.  The main plus-points for coveritlive are:

1. Fully moderated:  the ‘producer’ (in coveritlive parlance the person who’s blog it is on) has the choice whether or not to publish comments.
2. Easy for commentators: It runs through a normal blog post so individual commentators don’t have to do anything special to join in, no extra software* or registration, they should just be able to go to the particular post on the blog and can join in straight away.
3. Easy for ‘panelists’: Whoever it is you want to chat to doesn’t have to make any special arrangements either, all they need to do is find an hour or so to sit in front of a computer one evening - not necessarily easy for busy people but not impossible either.
4. Global: The guy in the next room can join in, or the girl on the other side of the world.
5. You can add lots of extra bits in: Embed the party’s videos from youtube, or links to policy documents to back up the argument you are making.  It also allows you to host quick polls to get an idea of what the commentators/readers think about particular topics.

*perhaps a flash plugin, but most people will have that kind of thing already.

If you want to see what they look like, post-interview, go either here, where Iain Dale hosted one with the Tory Chris Rennard, Eric Pickle, or go here, where Sky hosted one with the C&N candidates. Or better still, go to the coveritlive website, sign up and then play around with their practice platform.

Over on Libdemvoice at the moment there is a short discussion about whether we should always be chatting about our strategy/policy/woe in public.  Thinking about this, it would also be possible to password-protect the individual post that the chat was in, and then invite people individually to the chat and give them the password.  This might be best if it were possible to get people from the internal party machine to come and chat.  For MP’s, Lords, PPC’s etc. it might be better to leave it open so they can tell constituents or other interested bodies about it. As I said, the chat is fully moderated so trolls could be ignored.

So, I would welcome any feedback as to whether people think this might be a good idea? Or whether I should just shut my cake-hole?

“Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has a real problem. Last week one of his MPs tabled a bill in Parliament to force pubs and bars to sell wine in small measures only, while one of his party’s MEPs called for a ban on patio heaters.

Greg Mulholland, Lib-Dem health spokesman, wants to make it illegal for bars and pubs to sell wine in anything other than the little 125ml size popular over a decade ago. These were the tiny little glass bowls that didn’t allow the wine’s aromas to develop in the glass. His excuse is that “people don’t realize how much they’re drinking.”

Meanwhile Fiona Hall, Liberal Democrat MEP for the North East, called for the EU Parliament to urge the Commission to ban patio heaters on the grounds that they contribute to global warming. Of course they have a negligible impact; it’s just one of those gesture politics tricks to create whipping boys. The surge in the sale of them is probably down to the government’s ill-conceived smoking ban anyway.

The result is that poor Nick Clegg has seen his party made to look stupid yet again. He needs to take a lesson from Peter Mandelson, who introduced tight controls over what initiatives individual Labour politicians might launch or pontificate about. It made him unpopular, but it made his party able to control its image. Nick Clegg will have to do something similar or risk seeing idiots and charlatans make his party a laughing stock week after week. “

Beyond what you may think of the individual items (Madsen Pirie seems to have misinterpreted Greg Mulholland’s idea - I don’t think he wanted to ban larger glasses, did he? - and I can almost see his point although I still think it too much and I wholly fail to see the point in banning patio heaters beyond simple gesture) I think Madsen Pirie really has a point here. The public perception of the party is that we just want to get in the way, that we are no different from Labour in our approach to state interference. If we are serious about doubling the number of MP’s within 10 years and after that government then we have to decide now what is the right course to achieve our aim.

Are we truly liberal? If so then we have to come to terms with the fact that people are free to make their own mistakes. We can produce policy that gives people incentives to behave in a certain way but beyond that surely the vote winner principle for out party should be that we are happy to leave people alone to pursue their own lives - that we will be the only party to admit individuals know better how to live their lives than the state. Conservatives want to tell you what to think, Labour want to tell you what to do, Liberal Democrats want you to think and do for yourself.

“A few CoffeeHousers have teased me for having a love-in with Clegg. So in my defence – my suspicion is that he, personally, is committed to small government, classic liberalism and it would be churlish not to applaud him when he says the right things. But I reckon his party are still big-government leftists, and he’ll buckle under their weight.” Fraser Nelson (Spectator)

My connection with the party has been nearly entirely electronic and therefore maybe the average “street” member is some 60 year-old rabid communist but I don’t think I have seen many posts from Lib Dem bloggers that have decided that the state is really the answer to anything.  Most seem more rabid than the parliamentary party for small government.  James Graham posted a couple of points similar to this a while back, essentially that the party is not as backward as the media/parliamentary party (delete as applicable) make us out to be. 

Is this true, is our party really a statist machine? If so, where do I send the pieces of my membership card back?  If, as I suspect, not, why do people think this, and how can we change their perception to win over true liberals who aren’t at home in the Tory party?

It could be the tasty wife.

It could be the tousled locks.

It could even be because he went to Cambridge.

But its actually just because he sounds like such a f***ing decent guy and is definitely who we need to lead the party TO VICTORY!!!!!!!

Update: Matthew’s comment below is of course completely valid. I meant this as a bit tongue in cheek but I will make it more serious and elaborate as to why I think Nick Clegg will make the better leader for the Lib Dems.

The choice of leader for the group you think represents you best is a big decision. The next leader of the LDs may well make or break the party. As we languish in the polls the next person has to revive the party and present us in such a way as to garner the most votes - essentially they have to start making everyone else believe in what we already believe in. They also have to guide the party in a specific direction, in unity (which is currently probably the difficult bit), as a single entity for liberalism and for democracy.

I believe in the policies of the liberal democrats (well, most of them - more about that in a later blog) - that is why I am member, and why I have chosen to espouse my views in this blog. For me, and I understand that others will think differently, the problem with the party is one of presentation. A case in point - the recent bump for the Tories was ascribed in part to their policy of IHT abolition and new-found love of green taxation, policies that Labour have also claimed in the last few weeks. Yet, they are LD policies. Whether you support them or not, how did they only become news when the other two main parties presented them. The answer is we didn’t get the message across. We have the best policies on the environment and on crime. We were on the popular side of the consensus on a deeply unpopular war. We are the only party willing to come up with workable ways forward on crime, immigration and health, the only people willing to give the British people want they constantly ask for - a change. New ideas on stale problems. Yet barely one-in-ten would vote for us today. The problem is not policy, it is presenting those policies in way that can understand how they will effect their lives for the better. Another case - an immigrant amnesty. I think this is one of the most beautiful and humane ideas that has come from politics in the last five years. I am proud to be a member of the party that espoused it. It is a tough sell. But we must sell it.

I want somebody who can get the message across. Damn it, I need somebody who can get the message across. We are a party that deserves to be listened to, but nobody does. That is what I am looking for in my leader, and for me, Nick Clegg does this job better. For others the choice will be decided by different parameters. For me, we are not lacking in policy, we are not lacking in passion, but we are lacking a voice.

Beyond the leadership, there will still be the much greater problem of unity. A leadership contest is inherently divisive. When you think that the Conservative party have had five leaders in the time that Labour had one, you can see that the internal politics of a party do a detriment to its external politics. Whether Huhne or Clegg win, it will then be up to the party to put the differences to one side and start singing in harmony. I believe a Liberal government is the best thing for Britain, but that will only come about if the party gets behind either Huhne or Clegg. To quote Mr Pacino in Any Given Sunday:

“Either we heal now as a team, or we will die, as individuals”

I hope this makes it slightly clearer why I support Nick.