Francis Maude has asked ConHome contributors for their input into by-election strategy.

This admirable attempt to engage activists has produced some real gems. Do some of the comments, like contributors asking for outside helpers to be given maps of the constituency, indicate that the Conservative campaign organisation was shambolic? Certainly Lib Dem campaigners seem to be very keen on their maps (there was a very nice multi-coloured one on the wall of the committee room I was in yesterday, for instance).

Another contributor says that "the organisation can be left to agents but we need a political brain to mastermind these campaigns". If Conservative party policy is to recruit people with no political skills as election agents, long may it continue.

The ConHomies also seem to be under the impression that their party only does positive campaigning. This might be a new Cameronite policy. People withe slightly longer memories will remember the sheer volume of negative material that arrrived in Conservative-Lib Dem marginals at the General Election, attacking us on tax, crime, drugs, tax again, and immigration.

They might also remember the Cheadle by-election - most people should probably know about the Conservatives' ill-judged crime attack leaflet (you know, the one implying our candidate was a rapist). However don't forget that the main thrust of the Conservative campaign in Cheadle was that Mark Hunter was a carpet-bagging career politician: "an unpopular Council leader from outside the area", as the Conservative leaflets put it. Exactly what the moral distinction between that and the Bromley "Three Jobs Bob" line is, please let me know.

(This post is by Paul LLoyd).

Cameron’s march towards the so called centre ground of politics suffered a severe blow yesterday, and the dilemma that has faced the Tory leader since he took over, and that he has never faced, remains.

And that dilemma is that the Conservative Party that was left over after the 1997 defeat represents the quarter to a third of Britain that is fundamentally opposed to progress in all of its forms. This was not the old One Nation Conservative Party that had gradually wrested power since the mid-Nineteenth Century - a broad church, fundamentally Christian Democrat, centre-right party of the establishment. This party represented the rump of the various factions that surrounded the Tories unleashed because of Margaret Thatcher’s personal foibles, beliefs and prejudices. As such the remains of the Conservative Party has been inhabited by rabid free marketeers, arch Europhobes and extreme social conservatives.

Cameron’s response to trying to keep these people on board whilst he tries to take his party towards the mythical centre ground has been his much discussed lack of policies. The strategy is obvious, by offering nothing substantial to anyone he hopes he can talk liberal and walk Conservative and no one will notice.

The result in Bromley shows that Cameron’s strategy has a flaw. With the Tories losing thousands of votes of both ends – to the Liberal Democrats on one side and UKIP on the other, it is becoming obvious that Cameron will have to come clean and give in concrete terms what the Conservative Party really is. Are they returning to the One Nation Tories, or are they hardcore Thatcherites and all that entails?

Paul Lloyd

The BBC has a quotes page on the by-election results.

Link to BBC round-up of reaction to the by-election results

The most interesting words come from a former Conservative Party chairman

"I am in complete agreement with the successful Independent candidate at Blaenau Gwent who said that the parties must listen to the people and if they don't it will be the worse for them. That comment applies to both by-elections. The Liberal Democrats must be congratulating themselves on selecting a leader of experience and maturity," Ex-Conservative chairman Lord Tebbit

So praise for Ming - but the real target of Tebbit's words are his tarnished leader.

Rob Knight has his take on the by-election result here

The BBC has a quotes page on the by-election results.

Link to BBC round-up of reaction to the by-election results

The most interesting words come from a former Conservative Party chairman

"I am in complete agreement with the successful Independent candidate at Blaenau Gwent who said that the parties must listen to the people and if they don't it will be the worse for them. That comment applies to both by-elections. The Liberal Democrats must be congratulating themselves on selecting a leader of experience and maturity," Ex-Conservative chairman Lord Tebbit

So praise for Ming - but the real target of Tebbit's words are his tarnished leader.

Rob Knight has his take on the by-election result here

Results are now in from the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election. The seat was won by Conservative candidate Bob Neill, but only by the narrowest of margins over the Lib Dem Ben Abbotts.

The previous majority of over 13,000 at the last general election has been slashed to less than 900, as both Labour and the Tories lost vote share to the Lib Dems. It's always agonising to see a narrow defeat, but to have come so close in one of the safest Conservative seats in the country is something that should give Ben Abbotts and everyone who took part in his campaign reason to be cheerful. For the Conservatives, it shows that they have not caught the imagination of the public and are not making the hoped-for advances against the Lib Dems. Indeed, in their first real contest head-on with the Lib Dems, the Tories were handed their worst by-election swing since John Major's time. And for Labour, falling to 4th place behind UKIP, there is scarcely more to cheer about.

If Bromley was a sign that people have not yet forgotten what a Tory government would be like, Bob Neill's acceptance speech did little to help them in that end. Gripping the podium he began with snide remarks during the thanks to other candidates, and proceeded to snarl his way through a denunciation of his main opponent. With the condescending drone so beloved of Tories of old as they rode their moral high horses, he can't help but have given David Cameron's modernisers the thought that perhaps they might have been better off without another turbulent priest of Old Conservatism on the back benches. It's a clip that will doubtless be replayed tomorrow.

In contrast, Ben Abbotts seemed cheerful and pleased with a good result - as well he might be in such a Tory stronghold. It reminds us that, whatever the media narrative or even the opinion polls say, Cameron's Conservatives have a patchy record against the real electorate, whilst the Lib Dems exceeded expectations.

It took a while for this story to make its way from the blogs to the newspapers.

And then the local paper, only distributed on a Thursday, had to choose for its headline the news that no voter in a by-election wants to hear (I sympathise with these people): it might all happen again.

VOTERS MAY FACE SECOND BY-ELECTION
Voters could be set for ANOTHER by-election if Conservative Bob Neill is elected today, following claims his candidacy is invalid.

After weeks of campaigning by the 11 Bromley and Chislehurst by-election candidates, legal challenges may force the contest to be repeated this autumn.

Problems arose after Mr Neill signed a by-election nomination form while he was a £5,000-a-year member of the North-East London Strategic Health Authority. The high-profile job barred him from becoming an MP.

Yet on the form the barrister claimed he was NOT prohibited from standing.

This leaves him open to possible legal action should he win the vote...

Bob Neill's legal problems have caught up with him. UKIP are threatening to challenge him if he wins - meaning another by-election in the autumn. The voters might just decide that it is better that he doesn't.

If you can get to Bromley tomorrow to help the Lib Dem campaign - go!

In news that is likely to raise the ire of the Daily Mail, a judge has ruled that Control Orders are illegal, citing incompatibility with Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights (click here for Article 5).

I haven't read the judge's decision yet, and nor am I a legal scholar of any kind, but it seems self-evident that Control Orders violate one or both of these clauses:

3. Everyone arrested or detained in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1(c) of this article shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial. Release may be conditioned by guarantees to appear for trial.

4. Everyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful.

Control Orders are orders issued by the Home Secretary for the indefinite detention without trial of those people that the Home Secretary regards as potential security threats.

Doubtless this case will provoke further tabloid outcry, and much of it will focus on the 'foreign' nature of the ECHR and its 'interference' with traditional British law, as though these rights were invented by meddlesome Europeans in order to change the course of British legal tradition.

This is utter nonsense. The ECHR is a document steeped in British traditions of liberty, rights to fair trial and many more things besides. Without wishing to sound excessively nationalistic, it could be said that the document has far more of a British character than a European one; it could also be said that it embodies legal traditions that go back longer in Britain than they do in the rest of Europe.

How long? How about nearly 800 years? Compare, if you will, the above quotation from the ECHR with this, from Magna Carta:

[29] No Freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful Judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.

In this, it is the government which stands against centuries of English and British legal tradition, and the ECHR which firmly defends the best of those traditions. Next time the Daily Mail, David Cameron or Tony Blair himself try to say otherwise, they will be lying through their teeth. There is nothing more foreign to British traditions of liberty than the idea that a politician should be able to detain or imprison 'enemies of the state' without presenting any evidence for doing so and without any right for the detainee to challenge their status. That is a concept which belongs in an authoritarian state, not in a liberal democracy.

Can we recommend this discussion forum for Liberals and the liberal diaspora wherever you are?

There is the usual excellent article from Martin Wolf in today's FT. Sadly most of it is behind the firewall - but the crux of his argument is that economic development - as we have known it over the last century has essentially been about increasing energy use. Between 1900 and 2000 energy use increased eighteen fold, and gross global product and purchasing power parity nineteen-fold.

The prospects are for a continued rise in energy use - on some predictions five-fold over the course of the next century.

So the world economy is going to hit energy constaints in the next few decades.

In terms of energy intensity (the ratio of GDP/energy consumption) the UK is already more efficient than most of the world. This is essentially a result of the move from industry to services that happens in mature economies, and partly because of the way we have priced energy in the UK.

This does not necessarily protect us from an energy shock (where do all those manufactured goods come from?)

Wolf promises to come back to this topic: but his initial conclusion is the title to this piece.

There is a dilemma here for us. Unilateralism on energy use will achieve nothing - and yet a significant part of the electorate want to see at least symbolic action.

My guess is that the focus will shift to security of supply quite rapidly over the next decade. We will need to be ready for a shift in the terms of the argument.

Ed Vaizey complains about Lib Dem election tactics in today's Guardian:

What, you may ask, is on the front page? Naturally, you would think, the main policies upon which the Lib Dems are campaigning, locally and nationally. No. Instead, a straightforward and highly personal attack on the excellent Conservative candidate, Bob Neill. The nature of the attack is pretty crude.

Now, we know for a fact that the Conservatives would never stooop this low. Crude personal attacks are most certainly not for them. For example in their Cheadle by-election literature their leaflet was not headlined "We don't want an unpopular outsider". Nor did it have a strapline "Mark Hunter is an unpopular outsider." And it never had these five points:

- He tried, and failed, to become the MP in Ashton-under-Lyne
- He even stood for election in a completely different council area
- He tried, and failed, to become the MP in Stockport
- He lives miles from most of Cheadle
- He came third in his own council ward election last year

As we thought, the Tories would never engage in "this sort of negative campaigning". Oh no.

Stephen Tall started the ball rolling with this post. In his judgement, "[Supermarkets] are a creation of society’s aspirations to have a choice of quality foodstuffs available at reasonable cost whenever we need them." and, as such, are a good thing. Richard Huzzey disagrees, on the basis that he believes that supermarkets are in a near-monopoly position which places them at odds with consumer interests.

Edis Bevan takes a different tack, arguing that the problem with supermarkets is their relationship with their suppliers, the farmers, quoting from a Women's Institute report which claims that supermarkets are "destroying farming" in Britain with aggressive bargaining techniques. Joe Otten agrees that supermarkets may be bad for farmers, but offers a number of important caveats.

Personally, I think that not all of these arguments can be true. It cannot be true that supermarkets are a monopoly and competition between them is driving prices down to their lowest-ever levels. Monopolies only exist when there is no competition, either because there is only a single company operating in the market or because there is a cartel. The supermarket sector has been repeatedly investigated over the last decade and no evidence of a cartel has been found. If anything, competition is now fiercer than ever.

As consumers, we benefit from this. A family can now afford to feed itself for less than ever before and as basic food prices come down, a wider variety of food becomes more affordable too. The level of choice and affordability of food in a modern supermarket is unparalleled and is something that I think should be celebrated rather than lamented. It is important to recognise that it is the competetive process that has brought this situation about.

But if supermarkets do not present a monopoly to consumers, what about suppliers? This is an argument that puzzles me somewhat; there are a whole range of food outlets across the country which source their produce from British farmers. Any use of the term 'monopoly' is a red herring in this argument. I could simply say "there is no monopoly so there is no problem", but the fact remains that farmers are protesting about something.

The gist of the complaints appear to be that prices are being driven down to very low levels and that these price levels are making life difficult for farmers. I must admit, my initial reaction is one of little sympathy; nobody has a God-given right to be able to sell their goods and services at a price they like. Anyone who has ever been made redundant will know this, and any business which has had to cut prices and costs to stay competetive will know that asking the government to force their customers to pay more is not a case worth pursuing. Yet, when coming from farmers, this argument is taken seriously. Why? I could hazard some guesses, but I'd like to hear from people who know more about this, particularly those who support the farmers' case.

A final point: as a liberal, I believe very much in a decentralised economy with vigorous competition between as many different competitors as possible. For this reason, I think it's important that small shops do survive and compete with the big chains. It's also why I think regulation may do more harm than good. One of the bugbears of anti-supermarket campaigners is the ability of supermarkets to throw vast resources at solving problems like gaining planning permission. They complain of local councils being 'overwhelmed' by the legal efforts of supermarkets to gain permission to build. Often they call for planning permission to be made more difficult to acquire, more complex to complete and more costly.

Yet this ignores the realities of competition; the advantage supermarkets have in the field of regulation is that they can afford to deal with costly, lengthy and complex legal processes in a way that small shops can't. The big chains can afford to maintain teams of lawyers on permanent standby to fight their case wherever necessary, something unaffordable to a local shop. Raising the bar will simply mean that only the biggest chains can afford to jump over it. As is often the case, Big Government goes hand-in-hand with Big Business, to the detriment of the independent small business. We should be extremely wary of proposing any kind of regulation which may harm small businesses more than large; indeed, if we want to help small businesses the answer may be to regulate less.

The dictionary definition of "cranky" is as follows:

1) Having a bad disposition; peevish.
2) Having eccentric ways; odd.
3) Full of bends and turns; crooked.
4) Working unpredictably; erratic.
5) Rickety; loose.

We've already had a few examples of David Cameron exhibiting the first behaviour. Now, it seems, traits 2) and 4) are coming to the fore. According to Rachel Sylvester in the Daily Telegraph, Cameron has been making up policy on the hoof, much to the chagrin of the head of his "Democracy Task Force":

Kenneth Clarke, the task force chairman, knew nothing of the [Bill of Rights] proposal until he heard about it on the BBC. He was not impressed. "Xenophobic and legal nonsense," he fumed when I rang him about it yesterday. So much for the Conservative Party's open and democratic policy-making process.

This is distinctly worrying behaviour for someone seeking to put their finger on the nuclear button ...