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30 Most Recent Press Articles
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Written by Stephen Tall and published in BBC2's Newsnight blog [unpublished] on Tue 16th Oct 2007
In truth, no one is that surprised Ming Campbell chose to fall on his sword last night. What has shocked many in the party, as well as outside, is the timing. By deciding to go voluntarily and with dignity Ming rather stole the thunder of those newspapers which had been gleefully slavering for his decapitation in the past few months.
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Read "Ming's resignation: the media should take a long hard look in the mirror" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall and published in Liberal Democrat Voice website on Thu 4th Oct 2007
100 days in power, and the toughest decision yet faces the Prime Minister: does he seek a mandate, or does he delay calling an election?
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Read "So what would you do if you were Gordon?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Sat 29th Sep 2007
It's certainly looking like the cautiously prudent ex-Chancellor is about to prove what a reckless gambler he is now he's made it to the top, and become Prime Minister.
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Read "Will the Brown backlash start here?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Sat 22nd Sep 2007
The Lib Dem conference felt united this year. I'm not talking about our policies - heaven forfend. No, we were united against the media's reporting of our conference, which was, almost without exception, drearily inane, pathetically irrelevant and lazily inaccurate.
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Read "Is political journalism broken?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Tue 4th Sep 2007
Two quick questions, prompted by a couple of the results from Ipsos-Mori's latest survey of political opinion, published yesterday:
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Read "Cameron's leadership deficit" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Tue 4th Sep 2007
Has David Cameron fallen into his last three predecessors' trap - start off promising to be a fluffy moderniser, end up losing as a shrill reactionary? That's the charge from both the Lib Dems and Labour in the wake of Mr Cameron's recent focus on the so-called core-vote issues of crime, Europe and immigration.
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Read "A lurch to the right? More like drift into desperation" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Wed 29th Aug 2007
I'm not much of a one for havering on the big issues of the day, and still less for then writing about my havering. But the rights and wrongs of whether the Lib Dems should back Tory and Labour-rebel calls for a referendum on the EU reform treaty - the mini-me successor to the defunct EU constitution - leaves my precariously perched on the fence.
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Read " The EU Treaty: should we play the Yes/No game?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Tue 24th Jul 2007
** WATCH OUT, SOME SPOILERS AHEAD. DON'T READ ON, UNLESS YOU'RE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO READS THE LAST CHAPTER FIRST. **
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Read "HP Source" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall and published in Comment Is Free, GuardianUnlimited website on Fri 20th Jul 2007
It's the morning after the night before, and those of us who are political junkies are now blearily assessing who were the winners and who were the losers of yesterday's by-elections.
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Read "Why did the Tories do so badly?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Wed 11th Jul 2007
Sometimes I despair of MPs. Today, the Culture, Media and Sport select committee published a highly self-serving report accusing the Press Complaints Commission of failing to protect Kate Middleton (Prince William's current/former girl-friend, M'Lud) from harassment by paparazzi photographers:
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Read "Haven't they got anything useful to do?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Mon 25th Jun 2007
For the last few months, no opinion poll of voting intentions worthy of the name has been complete without the inevitable tagged-on question, 'And how would you vote if Gordon Brown were Labour leader?' To which the answer of Labour-inclined voters has invariably been: less likely than if Tony Blair were still Labour leader.
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Read "When opinion polls go bad" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Thu 21st Jun 2007
I have to admit my first reaction to yesterday's Guardian story - reporting that Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell had discussed Lib Dems taking up cabinet positions in Mr Brown's first cabinet - was horror. Nor was I as convinced as fellow Lib Dem bloggers appeared to be that the story was nonsense peddled by shit-stirring Guardianistas.
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Read "What should Ming have done?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall and published in Lib Dem Voice on Wed 13th Jun 2007
It's a no-brainer question, isn't it? Our residents, our voters, our punters - call them what you will, they are our bosses, we answer to them. So why ask the question?
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Read "Who do councillors represent?" in full
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Published on Tue 12th Jun 2007
I'm usually a fan of Tony Blair's speeches. They combine rhetorical, oratorical oomph with persuasive, linear logic. So his speech today to the Reuters Institute on 'the media and public life' was a disappointment.
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Read "Fisking Tony Blair" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Wed 30th May 2007
In less than a month, there will be a new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who will re-cast the Cabinet to reflect his ambitions. The posts of chancellor and of home secretary will, we know, become simultaneously vacant.
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Read "What would a Lib Dem reshuffle bring?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Thu 24th May 2007
Even before Big Brother 8 starts, its shallow spin-off Celebrity Big Brother is again hitting the headlines, following media regulator Ofcom's decision to order Channel 4 to apologise three times for showing footage of Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty being taunted by fellow contestants Jade Goody, Jack Tweedy and Jo O'Meara.
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Read "Ofcom: interfering busybodies or upholding standards" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Wed 23rd May 2007
Our current Prime Minister has long revelled in the soubriquet, 'Lucky Tony'. The BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, today suggests that this mantle has now been passed to his successor, Gordon Brown.
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Read "Lucky, lucky Gordon" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Wed 9th May 2007
Actually, I have a lot of time for him: an excellent and genuinely rounded polemicist, he writes like a dream, and has long championed decentralisation as vital to the restoration of civic life to our communities.
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Read "What is Simon Jenkins for?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Thu 3rd May 2007
Exactly a month ago, I made my prediction for the projected national share of the vote for today's set of Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and local council elections based on ICM's polling data:
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Read "Nailing my colours to the mast" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Wed 2nd May 2007
To sympathise, or not, with Lord Browne, until yesterday Chairman of BP - a real liberal dilemma.
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Read "Browned off" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Mon 30th Apr 2007
The question - how much should councillors be paid? - is prompted by the figures released by the Taxpayers' Alliance showing the average councillor allowance is now £9,300. As always, this mean hides extremes. Putting to one side the Greater London Assembly, the most lucrative place to serve your community on the council is Croydon, where you would earn £22,142 a year. By contrast, a place on Corby council was rewarded with £2,964.
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Read "Councillors' pay: a proposal" in full
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Published on Thu 26th Apr 2007
All good things must, so the cliché tells us, come to an end. And so it is with my year's tenure on Oxford City Council's Executive Board - what some places, with more pretensions to grandeur than us, call a cabinet - as portfolio holder for Better Finances.
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Read "Good-bye, or is it au revoir?" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Fri 20th Apr 2007
If Norman Baker did not exist, we would need to invent him. Today, the Lib Dems' very own Stormin' Norman is battling Tory MP David Maclean's attempts, via a private member's bill, to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act (2000).
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Read "Let's hear it for Norman" in full
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Written by Stephen Tall on Thu 19th Apr 2007
Just a few days to go before the French presidential election's first round, time for a couple of new polls, I think. (See the right-hand column of my home page.) The first tests your political philosophy: who do you want to win? The second tests your political realism: who do you think actually will win? My answer to both questions? Nicolas Sarkozy, faute de mieux. None of the candidates has inspired.
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Read "Oui to Sarko" in full
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 Press Article Feed(v1.0).
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