Author Archives: Caron Lindsay

Caron Lindsay

The Lib Dem connection to the Harry and Meghan Documentary

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 10th December 2022 - 3:43 pm

I was more surprised than I should have been when I watched the first episode of Harry and Meghan’s eponymous Netflix documentary. I jumped (and cheered a bit, not going to lie) when I saw someone I know being interviewed.

James Holt is now the Executive Director of Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation, which aims to “unleash the power of compassion to drive systemic cultural change.”

Liberal Democrats may remember him as the party’s former Head of Media and as a special adviser during the coalition years. He was always one of the most positive and hilarious people to work with. I knew he’d gone off to work in the office of Princes William and Harry but had missed that he had continued his work with Harry and Meghan when they moved abroad.

His old local paper, for which he once worked, the Shropshire Star, reported that he was “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new right hand man” last year:

He previously served as the couple’s UK spokesman, and has also worked with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

He also worked as head of communications for Sir Nick Clegg during his term as deputy prime minister.

The 38-year-old, who grew up in Shrewsbury, joined as a trainee reporter with the Shropshire Star in 2004, having graduated with a BA in Journalism at Lincoln University. He went on to write for the Star’s sister title, the Shrewsbury Chronicle, and during that time he spent six days embedded with the British Army in Basra.

Writing for both the Star and the Chronicle, he described coming under fire 10 times during his short stay, and learning about the deaths of two soldiers from Shropshire.

I wonder if James is the reason behind Meghan’s endorsement of Miriam Gonzalez Durantez’s brilliant charity Inspiring Girls on her Spotify podcast. . Back in August, Miriam expressed her gratitude to Meghan for doing so. Writing on Instagram, she talked about how difficult it could be to get much needed celebrity endorsements for the charity:

…publicity for the charity is enormously important for us to get as many (and especially as many diverse) role models as possible – and endorsements from famous women bring publicity that translates into many more role models for the girls. But I despair that if I ask a busy nurse or teacher for their support, they normally do it there and then, even though they have little time and resources – and yet if I ask a famous woman with huge teams and endless resources, I often need to beg them for it!

It is super-unusual in the world of social causes to find somebody with international projection who, as Meghan Markle did this week in her podcast website, will showcase a charity like Inspiring Girls without having even been asked for it. British newspapers have criticised her podcast as per usual. But I take my hat off to her for her generosity – if only other women at her level would act more like her on this!

I am sure it will surprise none of you that I have a lot of time for Meghan and Harry. What is not to love about a fellow liberal minded feminist? I think the way that Meghan in particular is being demonised in the press is disgraceful and rooted in misogyny and racism. Honestly, if you think that Meghan is our biggest problem at the moment and not the divisive, demonising, witch-hunting political culture stoked by the worst government we have had in our lifetimes then I seriously question your values and priorities.

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Caron Lindsay

186 days – my misadventures with Long Covid

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 3rd December 2022 - 11:47 am

186 days. Not far off half a year. That’s how long it’s been since I first had Covid symptoms.

We had tried very hard to avoid it for 26 months, but our son going to a Marina and Diamonds concert in Dublin at the end of May was always going to be a high risk endeavour. Within days we were all suffering. At first I was the best off of all of us so I was running round after everyone else. Then on 5th June, I could barely get up.

The salutary tale from my experience is that if you are election agent for multiple wards in your local area, get your expenses done immediately after the election. Mine were all done and signed by the candidates before I became ill. I just had to print off my declarations, sign and submit before the deadline on 10th June. I could, thankfully submit them online, but that simple task was herculean and broke me on several occasions before I finally managed it.

Since then, I haven’t got that much better. The cough may have disappeared after a month, but I have yet to manage to spend a whole day out of bed, and if I overdo it, the punishment is vicious. Eight days ago, I went out for a special family lunch. I did get home a couple of hours  later than I’d planned but I didn’t recover from that until midweek. I had a meeting to attend online on the day after but I couldn’t speak reliably. Words were getting lost somewhere between my brain and my mouth.  I had to message someone else and ask them to make the point I needed to make.

The crushing, all-encompassing fatigue is the absolute worst, but it has a backing chorus of pain, nausea, dizziness, breathlessness and gastric issues which, seemingly randomly, throw themselves into the spotlight on any given day.

I reckon that on a good day, I’m operating at about 25-35% of my pre Covid capacity. On a bad day, I am flat out.

Being able to do something one day is absolutely no guarantee that you will be able to do it the next. Some days I can write well in small bursts, but there was one day recently when it took me an hour to put up a relatively simple post on here.

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Caron Lindsay

Alex Cole-Hamilton presses Sturgeon for action on violence against women

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 29th November 2022 - 7:32 pm

On Sunday 20th November, Scottish newspaper the Sunday Post outlined the most horrific failures of several public services towards Adrienne McCartney, a victim of domestic abuse who died by suicide earlier this year.

The paper reports how the Police dismissed her calls for help and then arrested her, holding her in dreadful conditions, over a social media post.  Then prosecutors  did a deal with her husband to drop the most serious charges before failing to ask for a non harassment order. And then when she tried to get help for her deteriorating mental health,  the NHS could not provide it.

Adrienne’s lawyer told the paper:

“In all my years working in the field of domestic abuse, this case is the worst. Adrienne was let down by every agency she turned to. It is unforgivable.

“She should be here today and the fact that she is not is an indictment of the system and how it addresses domestic abuse. What happened to Adrienne keeps me awake at night but tragically she is not the first and, unless there is dramatic change, she will not be the last.”

He also described his frustration on the night Adrienne was arrested:

“She eventually ­managed to get a phone call to me. When I told officers that I would happily bring Adrienne to the police station myself to answer any questions they had, I was told to ‘f*** off’. That is also currently the subject of an official complaint.

“So a young mother is taken from her home late at night, in front of her children, handcuffed, only to be released after several hours without any charge and this, it has to be stressed, is a ­documented victim of domestic abuse.”

This week’s Sunday Post had details of a letter Scottish Lib Dem Leader Alex Cole-Hamilton wrote to the First Minister after reading Adrienne’s story, alongside calls for action from MSPs from all parties. Alex repeated our call for a Commission to look at ways of ending men’s violence against women in all its forms:

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems mark Transgender Day of Remembrance

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 20th November 2022 - 6:30 pm

Today we join organisations around the world in honouring those trans and gender diverse people who have lost their lives in the past year as a result of violence on Transgender Day of Remembrance.

327 trans people murdered. Most of them from marginalised groups. You can read their names and some details about their lives and what happened to them here. Half came from just three countries, Mexico, the US and Brazil. Read each one of their names and think of that life needlessly lost and then go and do your bit to create a world where this doesn’t happen, where trans people can live without fear.

Each one of these names was a human being with hopes, interests, emotions, ambitions. All they wanted to do was get on with their lives in peace.

There are very few names from Europe on this list and none from the UK. However, this does not mean that we are off the hook. Figures released last month showed that hate crimes against transgender people recorded by Police in England and Wales had soared by 56% in the past year.  It’s hardly surprising in a toxic atmosphere where here are daily anti trans stories in the media.  Then we had the revolting spectacle this Summer of Conservative leadership candidates falling over themselves to be the loudest anti trans voice.

Here’s how some Liberal Democrats have marked the day, starting with our official group for LGBT+ people:

(Photo of lit candles with liberal democrat bird in trans colours with text:
Today marks Trans Day of Remembrance, a deeply poignant observance for the LGBTQ+ community as we recognise, reflect and honour the lives of our trans siblings who were sadly taken from us too soon, particularly the 390 recorded lives lost since last year.

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Caron Lindsay

It’s Equal Pay Day – the financial double whammy facing women

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 20th November 2022 - 2:30 pm

Today is the year when, because of the gender pay gap, women are effectively working for free for the rest of the year. Data from the Fawcett Society shows that the gender pay gap this year is 11.3%, slightly down on last year.

This arises for several reasons. Despite legislation outlawing this being passed more than half a century ago. women are often paid less than men for work of equal value.

Women also suffer from unfair barriers to career advancement because they are more likely to have caring responsibilities. This could be addressed by requiring employers to allow more flexible ways of working.

The Fawcett Society has produced a briefing which outlines the extent of the gender pay gap and makes recommendations to reduce it. They call for:

Improve pay gap reporting by:
Introducing mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting for employers
Requiring employers to publish action plans to tackle their pay gaps, so that
real action is taken toreduce pay inequality with accountability and
transparency built in

Lowering the threshold for pay gap reporting to 100 employees, bringing the UK closer to the standards set by other countries

Require employers to offer flexible work arrangements as default and advertise jobs with flexibility built-in

Reform the childcare system to increase affordability whilst ensuring our children get the best start in life

Ban questions about salary history during recruitment and require salary bands to be displayed on job advertisements

Introduce a free standing and legally enforceable ‘Right to Know’ what a male colleague is paid for equal work

Not only are women at the sharp end of the Gender Pay Gap, but they are also being disproportionately affected by the cost of living crisis. Scottish feminist organisation Engender has produced a report on this, calling for targeted support for women on low incomes, particularly those with caring responsibilities who are likely to have higher energy needs. They explain why this contributes to greater inequality between men and women:

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Caron Lindsay

Gavin Esler and Dominic Grieve at Unlock Democracy AGM

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 19th November 2022 - 2:30 pm

Unlock Democracy is an organisation which has many of the same aims on reforming our political system as we do. In fact there are some familiar faces in high positions in the organisation. Tom Brake, former Lib Dem MP for Carshalton and Wallington, is their Chief Executive and our former Director of Campaigns Shaun Roberts, is their Head of Campaigns and Digital.

Today they held their AGM which was opened with a session on the dire state of our democracy and the future of Britain with former Conservative MP Dominic Grieve and former BBC journalist Gavin Esler. IF you take nothing else away from this article, remember this from Dominic Grieve:

Lib Dems were an important moderating factor during the coalition. Civil servants were saying that this was the first time in years there had been evidence based decision making.

In his opening remarks, Dominic Grieve concentrated on how we had got to the mess we are in, saying that the fundamental irrationality of current state of politics is depressing.

In his day, he said, the Conservatives used to anchor on principles of rationality but have abandoned that over the past 6 years, leading to Liz Truss fantasy economics.

He looked back over the past three decades and argued that when things have gone wrong it’s when politicians have done things which in hindsight look irrational

Thatcher started to undermine our role in EU and opened door to brexiteers to persuade us to vote to leave – a massively irrational decision.

He said that the SNP’s commitment to independence is similarly irrational and will not deliver what they aim for.

Politicians, society, media engage in displacement activity rather than tackle the real issues. Neither Government nor opposition can properly articulate the underlying problems that need to be fixed, crucially around the mess of Brexit.

He now favours PR, but says that electoral reform needs a culture change. People accept that politics is about compromise and adjustment rather than delivering set out programmes

He concluded that the current situation is making us poorer, threatening our future and our ability to influence the world in a positive way

Gavin Esler broadly agreed with this analysis. He compared UK failure to face up to Brexit by using distraction to Trumpism.

He looked at how clearly incapable people thrived in our system How do you get to be Gavin Williamson, forced to resign by 3 Prime ministers in 4 years.

He quoted our Layla Moran, saying that Williamson was the 80th minister to resign or be sacked in 2022 and if this was a school it would be in special measures.

He argued for systemic change to stop the situation where in his home county of Kent it takes 33,000 votes to get a Conservative MP, and 250,000 to get a Labour one.

They were asked how to bring about change.

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Caron Lindsay

Caroline Pidgeon to step down as London Assembly Member in 2024

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 12th November 2022 - 7:34 pm

Lib Dem London Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon announced today at the London Regional Conference that she will not stand for re-election in 2024. Later she tweeted:

Caroline will be greatly missed by colleagues from all parties, including London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, whom she stood against when he was first elected in 2016:

Similar praise came from Conservative and Green Assembly members;

And Liberal Democrats were keen to thank her for all she has done over the years:

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Caron Lindsay

Hamilton highlights – reflections on a much needed in-person Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 2nd November 2022 - 9:56 am

For the first time since Spring 2019, the Scottish Liberal Democrats had a proper Conference where we all met in person.  The snap General Election put paid to our Autumn Conference that year.

It was indescribably brilliant to see everyone. I feel a million years older than I did in 2019,  but nobody else seems to have aged at all.

The party was in incredibly good form. The Council elections saw us gain twenty councillors, with 255,000 new people represented by a Liberal Democrat. On Friday, four of them, Sally Pattle, our first ever councillor in West Lothian, Aude Boubaker-Calder from Fife, Desmond Bouse from Aberdeen and the irrepressible Jack Caldwell from Edinburgh Leith Walk gave presentations about their first five months in the job.

Here are some of the highlights from BBC’s Reporting Scotland

Alex Cole-Hamilton, in his first Conference as leader, pushed his plan to get us 150 councillors in the 2027 council elections, 150 rising, in a take on Liam Neeson’s speech from the film taken:

I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. I will look for you, I will find you and I will make you into a Liberal Democrat Councillor.

The first debate was on giving children in poverty a fairer start in life and eradicate the feeling of exclusion many feel. The motion included a wide range of measures from providing study space in libraries to a voucher scheme to give them access to the extra curricular activities which build skills and improve wellbeing.  Usually the chairs of the early debates frantically descend on the cafe and exhibition to try to dragoon people into speaking in them, but this time they were all over-subscribed.

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Caron Lindsay

Boris Johnson’s statement is full of poison

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 23rd October 2022 - 10:10 pm

If I were Rishi Sunak, I wouldn’t feel too happy about Boris Johnson’s statement tonight. The disgraced former PM said that he had 102 MPs willing to nominate him, though only a few shy of 60 have been willing to own that publicly. However, he said that he was not going to submit his nomination because:

You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament.

There’s an undercurrent of “and neither can you, Rishi.”

He is showing the likely soon to be PM that he is going to have some shenanigans to deal with in the parliamentary party.

And look how he puts in people’s minds that Rishi is a wee bit short of democratic legitimacy:

I have been attracted because I led our party into a massive election victory less than three years ago – and I believe I am therefore uniquely placed to avert a general election now.

A general election would be a further disastrous distraction just when the government must focus on the economic pressures faced by families across the country.

Whether his group of acolytes would actually force a general election remains to be seen, but he’s making sure that Rishi knows that he could if we wanted to.

Some will think that this was his cunning plan all along – to show off his own power.

This way he gets to lie on Caribbean beaches when he should be in Parliament, and make a fortune on the speaking circuit in the States, while being a thorn in the side of his successor. He might consider that a good position to be in.

For the rest of us, it signals more political chaos and distraction from what the people of this country need.

Our Deputy Leader, Daisy Cooper, has repeated our call for a General Election now, calling the Tory leadership contest a farce:

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Caron Lindsay

David Gauke suggests cross-party action to force a General Election

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 22nd October 2022 - 10:55 am

Until the 2019 General Election, David Gauke had been Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire for 14 years. One of the voices of reason on Brexit, he ended up losing the Conservative whip just before Boris Johnson’s illegal prorogation of Parliament when the opposition seized control of the parliamentary timetable to pass Hilary Benn’s Act aimed at preventing a no deal Brexit.

Like most of the country, he recognises the dangers of allowing Boris Johnson to return to Number 10 and has come up with an idea. He wants Ed Davey and Keir Starmer to invite Johnson’s opponents amongst Conservative MPs to force a General Election. In return, Labour and the Lib Dems would not oppose those Conservative MPs with majorities over 10,000 in that election if they stood as Independents against new Conservative candidates.

Mr Gauke set out his thinking in a Twitter thread:

If Boris Johnson became PM again, given the views of many Tory MPs, this is what I’d be tempted to say if I was Keir Starmer or Ed Davey: “The PM is not fit for office. Nor is the Tory Party. We know that many honourable Tory MPs feel the same way. Now is the time for all MPs who put the national interest first to come together & force a General Election. It is a lot to ask Tory MPs to do this but, because this is a national emergency, we are prepared to make a bold & generous offer. We say to those Tory MPs with majorities bigger than , who are motivated by national interest & not just saving their seat, that if they vote with us in supporting a GE, we will not stand against them in their seats if they run as independents.

This offer might just persuade a sufficient number of Conservative MPs – who cannot face being led by Johnson again – to leave the party & back a GE. The other parties might be foregoing some seats they’d win but they’d get their GE (and plenty more seats).

I get where he is coming from.   Between us, Lib Dems, Labour and Greens took over 14,900 votes in South West Herts in 2019. Gauke, standing as an Independent, was beaten by the Conservative by 14,200. We are agreed that we must have a General Election now, but Lib Dems would argue that  whoever is the Conservative leader, not just Boris.

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Caron Lindsay

Ed Davey: Country wants a General Election

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 20th October 2022 - 7:23 pm

“I have just publicly congratulated a lettuce.” Now there’s a sentence I never thought I would write. But after six weeks in which the Government had descended into a destructive and self-destructive parody, it seemed appropriate. The Daily Star’s “Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce” livestream was childish, but appealed to our sense of the ridiculous as our politics became more absurd.

My plan for yesterday evening was to watch the Doctor Who Easter special. I knew it would shred my emotions, so I’d been putting it off, but the thirteenth Doctor’s tenure ends on Sunday so I’d better get on with it.  Anyway, Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon started to explain the bizarre events in the Commons voting lobbies and I ended up binging on the news channels until I fell asleep.

Of all the weird things about last night, the strangest was that the vote didn’t even matter. It was on an opposition motion, which the Government usually just ignores. What on earth possessed them to make such a big deal out of it when the Parliamentary Party was already in a highly sensitive state? Apparently making it an issue of confidence would nullify any of the rebels’ letters, but chucking them out of the parliamentary party would surely reduce the threshold and invite more letters from disgruntled MPs.

Not content with crashing the economy with the binfire budget, they turned in on themselves.

The Conservative Party is in so much pain that it is not capable of governing. It really needs to go and lie down in a darkened room for a few generations until it sorts itself out. Yet they are about to inflict their third PM in three years on to us.

I am not convinced that the 1922 Committee has thought through its high nomination requirement, which has presumably been set to keep out Boris Johnson. There is every possibility that you have one person with the backing of 100 MPs, and two others just short of that. They will be just as split as ever and we have seen how they behave when they all hate each other.

The country shouldn’t have to deal with this. Every household in the country on low and middle incomes will be paying more for borrowing, energy, basic costs of living because of Liz Truss’s folly. And the folly of MPs who allowed her to go forward to the members.

Ed Davey, Daisy Cooper and Christine Jardine have been commenting on various aspects of the Conservative chaos

Ed  has been doing the media rounds this afternoon making the case for a general election so that the country can finally get some decent government. Here he is on the BBC, Sky and ITV:

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Caron Lindsay

Happy 100th Birthday to the BBC

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 18th October 2022 - 7:24 pm

The BBC turns 100 today. We’ll all have our special memories of it. For me, my first ever favourite tv programme was Play School which I wanted to watch every single day. One of my favourite presenters was Floella Benjamin, now of course a Lib Dem peer. The BBC shared a video of her singing Happy Birthday with Hamble, my favourite of the toys

Blue Peter was such a big part of my life as a child, and particularly the annual appeals which gave everyone a chance to help others.

It was watching Roots in 1976 and seeing the appalling depiction of slavery that started me off on the journey to being a Liberal. The Doctor encouraged me along that road with his curiosity, respect for others and eccentricity.

The BBC World Service has kept people informed in good times and bad.

It is revered across the world, for the quality and range of its programmes. We need to protect its funding model and status as a unique public service broadcaster.

Senior Lib Dems have marked the centenary.

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Caron Lindsay

Olney: PM’s apology brings nothing but cold comfort

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 18th October 2022 - 9:38 am

Yesterday afternoon, Penny Mordaunt was given an impossible job – defending the indefensible. She was asked to deputise for the Prime Minister in the Commons for Labour’s urgent question on the sacking of the Chancellor.

Mordaunt did much better than Truss ever could have done. She had a reasonable balance of “**** you”, humility, and even a bit of sincerity in the face of quite an onslaught from opposition MPs. It is hard to imagine anyone having a go at the opposition when they were part of a government that had made a crap economic situation much worse.

Labour missed a trick …

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Caron Lindsay

Olney: Jeremy Hunt expects people to pay for Conservative mistakes

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 15th October 2022 - 12:15 pm

Jeremy Hunt’s media round this morning was sobering stuff. Tax rises and public spending cuts seem to be the order of the day.  While he might talk about protecting the most vulnerable, Conservatives have never been good at understanding how to do that.

Our Treasury spokesperson Sarah Olney had this to say:

This may be a new Chancellor but it’s still the same old Conservative party whose failed economic experiment has cost this country billions.  Now Jeremy Hunt expects struggling families and pensioners to pay the price for those mistakes.

Thousands of families are facing increased mortgage costs and rising prices at the checkouts while our struggling public services will have their spending slashed.

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Caron Lindsay

Ed Davey calls for General Election after Chancellor leaves office

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 14th October 2022 - 12:48 pm

We know now that Kwasi Kwarteng is out as Chancellor just hours after Downing Street told the BBC’s Chris Mason that he and Liz Truss were “in lockstep.” Whether he jumped or was pushed is for the journalists to work out.

I would be very surprised if we see them leaving Government in lockstep together, which seems unfair given that he was basically implementing the policies she put forward during her leadership campaign. In fact, he blinked first when the markets first went wild, putting out a statement after what was described at the time as a heated row between him and Truss.

It’s going to be interesting to see who she appoints as Chancellor – and who would be willing to do the job. Could we see Penny Mordaunt in No 11, or some  have suggested Jeremy Hunt.

We just have to wait to see what Liz Truss says at the press conference later this afternoon. She’s not a great one for humility and if there was ever an occasion that called for that in huge amounts, this is it.

While a u-turn, or partial u-turn (a j-turn?) on the Budget of Chaos will likely calm down the markets, the damage has been done to people’s mortgages and they will be feeling that for years to come.

Ed Davey has called for a General Election to get this lot out of office:

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Caron Lindsay

Liam McArthur wins right to bring forward Assisted Dying Bill to Scottish Parliament

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 11th October 2022 - 10:45 am

Orkney MSP Liam McArthur has earned the right to introduce a Members’ Bill to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill people in the Scottish Parliament.

His proposal is supported by 36 out of the 129 MSPs.

Last month Liam  published the outcome of his public consultation on the proposals.  Out of 14,038 responses, 76% of individuals who responded expressed full support with a further 2% partially supporting a change in the law.

Mr McArthur will now work with the Scottish Parliament’s Non-Governmental Bills Unit to draft the actual bill which he hopes to introduce in Parliament next year.

Liam said:

“I would like to offer my sincere thanks to all MSPs who have put their names behind my proposed change in the law. The support among colleagues has been deeply heartening, and demonstrates the growing recognition that there is a need to end the ban on assisted dying in Scotland.

“The Scottish public has long been ahead of the parliament on this issue. The public consultation on these proposals, published last month, demonstrated that there is strong and passionate support for offering people more choice at the end of their life.

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Cabinet Minister suggests tax cuts for women who have more children

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 9th October 2022 - 8:13 pm

One thing that we have all learned in recent years is to be wary of saying that the Conservatives have jumped the shark because they will likely do something even worse the next day.

However today’s Sun report, that an actual current Cabinet Minister has suggested that women be given tax cuts to persuade them to have more children in order to “wean the country off its addiction to immigration” is a definite contender for the shark jumping accolade. This is an idea that comes from Orban’s Hungary, where women with more than four children don’t have to pay any tax for the rest of their lives.

Where do you begin with this one?

Let’s start with the fact that a series of unfortunate  Conservative Government actions,  culminating in the recent crashing of the economy, has made it increasingly difficult for any young person contemplating having a family to either buy a house or rent one that is suitable for a family. I was talking to a family member who had been hoping to buy a house next year. Their predicted mortgage payments had almost doubled, making the prospect impossible.

This also from a Government whose actions have ensured that 27% of children in the UK are living in poverty – and that was before the cost of living crisis. Three quarters of those children have parents who are in work. A perfect storm of benefit cuts (including the despicable removal of benefits for third and subsequent children), soaring childcare food and energy costs are about to make their completely preventable suffering much worse.

Not only that, but women already pay most of the price for having children in terms of lost earnings over their working life and pensions after as well as facing maternity discrimination in the workplace.

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Caron Lindsay

Just deserts at Conservative Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 4th October 2022 - 7:30 am

Last week Ed Davey called on the Conservatives to cancel their Conference and sort out the economic mess they had created.

After days of rebellion, doom and u-turns, I bet they wish they had listened to him.

They aren’t getting the best press, that’s for sure, but then they don’t deserve it.

Kwasi Kwarteng’s feeble attempts at humour in his speech belie any contrition. And I doubt many of those who are now condemned to years of high mortgage payments will feel that either he or Liz Truss truly do get it.

The u-turns on the 45p tax rate and the publication of the OBR forecasts, although major events, are not the only things that need to change.

The Conservatives are showing themselves up as way nastier than they were when Theresa May gave her warning to Conservative Conference a whole twenty years ago.  This generation of leaders seem to have taken it as encouragement to become even worse.

For example, party Chairman Jake Berry had this to say to people struggling to pay their bills this Winter:

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Caron Lindsay

Day 1 as lab rats: some views of the Budget

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 24th September 2022 - 11:55 am

We knew yesterday’s budget was coming. Most of its measures had been trailed. Gone are the days when MPs find out what the Government is doing actually in the Chamber, even though that is what is supposed to happen.

The reality still came as a shock, though. You would expect me as a good old fashioned tax and spend liberal to be horrified by a reckless spending spree that made the rich richer and some of the poor very much poorer. I lived through the 80s when the last iteration of trickle down economics failed miserably. Mary Reid looked at the theory yesterday and found no evidence that it has ever worked.

This budget is exactly the last thing you want to see when we are on the precipice of recession. I believe in a state that uses its power to ensure that everyone’s basic needs to shelter, food, healthcare at the very least are met. We should not be tolerating hunger and poverty in this day and age and the measures announced yesterday will make life much harder for those on low incomes, particularly if they are working part time and are on Universal Credit.

But don’t just take my word for it. The way the markets tumbled and the pound crashed to its lowest level against the dollar for nearly three decades showed that they had no confidence in this either. The Guardian reports Paul Johnson from the Institute of Fiscal Studies as saying that the Chancellor was betting the house:

Today, the chancellor announced the biggest package of tax cuts in 50 years without even a semblance of an effort to make the public finance numbers add up. Instead, the plan seems to be to borrow large sums at increasingly expensive rates, put government debt on an unsustainable rising path and hope that we get better growth.

Former Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, who first joined the Treasury in 1979 said the budget was “not ideal.”

And Conservative columnist Tim Montgomerie welcomed us to our new lives as lab rats:

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Caron Lindsay

Scottish Conference to debate a 4 day working week and nuclear power

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 20th September 2022 - 1:30 pm

Regional and national conferences will give Liberal Democrat members a much needed chance to get together over the next couple of months.

Last week, the preliminary agenda for Scottish Conference was published. The three day event will take place in Hamilton between 28 and 30 October.

There are going to be some controversial debates.  Proposals to reverse our long standing opposition to new nuclear power stations,  backing a 4 day working week, and a new model requiring local authorities to provide new homes for social buy sit alongside  more classical liberal fare on restricting employers rights to snoop on employees working at home and giving more powers to local government.

Conference will also debate a constitutional amendment, proposed by current leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, that future Scottish leaders should be allowed to be either an MP or MSP and future deputy leaders could be councillors as well as parliamentarians.

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Caron Lindsay

Life resumes…..

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 20th September 2022 - 6:57 am

It’s been an intense 11 days  since the Queen died.

For many people, a national bereavement takes a similar pattern to any other. The adrenaline gets you through to the funeral and it’s only afterwards that you have to adjust to the loss and its consequences. However we may feel about Queen Elizabeth’s legacy or, indeed, the institution of monarchy itself, it will take some time to get used to the new normal, not least because we have a brand new monarch and a brand new Government.

Anyone under the age of about 75 will not be able to remember having any other monarch than Queen Elizabeth. It’s  astonishing that we have had two Queens, covering 134 of the last 185 years. Both reigned during periods of intense social and economic change. I was thinking about this yesterday  as I woke up and looked up exactly how long they had been on the throne. Victoria had been on the throne for 63 years, 7 months and 2 days – and Elizabeth for 70 years, 7 months and 2 days. In all the wall to wall coverage I’ve absorbed since 8th September, I hadn’t heard that mentioned. Or maybe I’m the only one that finds it worthy of note.

We haven’t in any sort of memory had a new Head of State and Prime Minister in such quick succession. Elizabeth had wartime giant Winston Churchill as her first PM. When George V died, Stanley Baldwin was on his third prime ministerial stint. The last liberal Prime Minister, Asquith, had a couple of years under his belt before Edward VII died and Viscount Melbourne was extremely experienced when the 19 year old Victoria acceded.

The new King Charles has had decades to learn his trade and he has acknowledged that he can’t be as vocal on issues close to his heart as he was as Prince of Wales. A climate change denying Government is bound to be a test.

The cost of living emergency has not gone away. It is biting the most vulnerable every single day.  Inflation may have dipped a tiny bit down to 9.9% in August but households are still finding that the basics in life are a lot more expensive than they were last year before you even think about heating your house.

The last big political announcement was Liz Truss’s plan to deal with meteoric energy price rises. She intends to limit price rise so that the average household will pay no more than £2500. It’s likely you will pay more if you live in an energy inefficient, damp house. That includes many people on low incomes in private lets and social housing.

Ed Davey called Truss’s plan a “phony freeze” saying:

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Caron Lindsay

Martin Thomas reflects on Royal Deeside

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 18th September 2022 - 4:45 pm

When I was a student, my Summer job was as a youth hostel warden in Braemar. In July, I wandered round the gardens of Balmoral when they were open to the public. In August, if I was off on a Sunday morning, I’d take the bus to Crathie Kirk to see the Royal Family go to Church and was actually able to attend the service myself.

I was used to seeing members of the Royal Family in the village. Locals were keen to give them privacy on their much needed break.

Martin writes of his own love of Royal Deeside. He’s felt the benefit of its restorative qualities for decades, in good times and bad. I have my own reasons to be grateful to this beautiful part of the world. I met my husband there. He walked into the hostel for a night, stayed for a week and a half and left with a lot more than he had bargained for.

Anyway, back to Martin’s tribute:

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Caron Lindsay

Dick Newby: The Queen championed community, generosity, kindness and service to others

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 11th September 2022 - 2:30 pm

The next in our series of tributes to the Queen comes from our Leader in the Lords, Dick Newby. He talked of her serenity in times of trauma and the values of

My Lords, it is only a matter of weeks since your Lordships’ House met to pay tribute to the Queen on the occasion of her Platinum Jubilee. On that occasion, we knew that the Queen was already in frail health, but nobody contemplated that her reign had such a short period ahead of it. Because the Queen is the only monarch most people have known and was a permanent, reassuring presence in a challenging and rapidly changing world, her death has clearly come to millions as a great shock. For all but the oldest among us, a hitherto ever-present feature of British life has been removed and a deep sense of loss is felt not just by my generation, but by many of our children and grandchildren, for whom one might have thought that the Queen was a distant and possibly irrelevant figure.

What was the basis of this universal appeal? I suggest that it is because she demonstrated qualities that appeal across and down the ages. She was constant. As the world changed, as Prime Ministers and Presidents came and went, she exuded a sense of serenity and calm and, in times of national trauma and tragedy, a sense that these difficulties were surmountable, that they should be met with fortitude and that they would pass. She was unwavering in her commitment to the service of the nation and to her duty to represent its traditions and values, but she was sensitive to changing times, realising that the monarchy too had to change—had to be more open, more accessible and more accountable for everything it did. She was empathetic. For someone whose daily life was as different as it is possible to be from that of the vast majority of her subjects, she had an ability to communicate with them as individuals, to put them at ease and to make them feel truly special.

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Caron Lindsay

Autumn Conference is cancelled

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 10th September 2022 - 7:46 pm

This afternoon, Federal Board met to discuss a recommendation from Federal Conference Committee that our  Autumn Conference should be cancelled. It was due to take place in Brighton from 17-20 September. The sad death of the Queen, and her funeral on 19th September, on the penultimate day, meant that  FCC had to think about what to do. They spent a lot of time looking at all sorts of options, working with party staff.

Both Federal Board and Federal Conference Committee are made up of people who love going to Conference. It’s one of the great loves of my life. There is nothing like the joy of being amongst the Lib Dem family. It’s not something I would take away from anyone lightly. And that is exactly the same for everyone else involved in the decision.

At the heart of our discussions was the impact on members, emotional and financial and the Conference Access Fund will be pressed into operation to help those with unrefundable costs. The more donations it gets, the more people it can help. Had I been going, I’d have been going out for dinner and drinking in the bar, so I will certainly be donating some of that money that I would have spent anyway to help others.

Nick Da Costa, the Chair of FCC, sent this email to members registered for Conference earlier. The text is below.

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Caron Lindsay

Layla Moran’ shares constituents’ memories of the Queen

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 10th September 2022 - 2:30 pm

Next up in our parliamentarians’ tributes to the Queen is Layla Moran. She shared some memories of the Queen sent to her by constituents, including her response to a wee girl who asked her why she wasn’t wearing a crown.

 

The full text is below:

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Caron Lindsay

“Phony Freeze” – Ed Davey calls out Government as bills double from last year

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 8th September 2022 - 12:59 pm

Ed Davey has accused the Conservatives of bringing in a “phony freeze” on energy bills, after it emerged the average family will see their heating costs almost double this winter compared to last year.

Here he is challenging the Prime Minister:

Under the plans set out by Liz Truss today, energy costs will be capped at £2,500 a year for the average home, almost double the £1,277 the cap was set at last October. It is also an increase of over £500 on the current price cap.

Liberal Democrats were the first to call for energy bills to be properly frozen by keeping the current cap in place, funded by a tougher windfall tax on the record profits of oil and gas companies.

Ed said:

This phony freeze will still leave struggling families and pensioners facing impossible choices this winter as energy bills almost double.

Liz Truss and the Conservatives are choosing to allow this huge hike to people’s heating costs, while refusing to properly tax the eye-watering profits of oil and gas companies.

This is a deliberate choice and it is the wrong one. People are furious that once again the Conservatives are on the side of oil and gas giants making record profits rather than families struggling to make ends meet.

The point about a cap being funded at least in part by a windfall tax is an important one. Why should huge energy companies get an unexpected £170 billion bonanza and not have to contribute at all, yet a household on the average wage gets a huge hike in their bills this Winter?

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Caron Lindsay

Lord help us all….Lib Dems react to new Cabinet

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 6th September 2022 - 9:39 pm

So Liz Truss is now ensconced in Downing Street appointing her new Cabinet. And it looks like it is going to be one of the most socially as well as economically conservative governments in over quarter of a century. This is somewhat surprising given that she is the first Prime Minister of my lifetime who is younger than me.

After a 1000 mile round trip to see the Queen, she went  to her private Commons office  to send Rishi Sunak supporters Grant Shapps, Steve Barclay and Dominic Raab packing.

Every time a new Conservative PM announces their top team, you think it couldn’t get any worse. Remember when Theresa May appointed Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary? And then when Boris in turn made Priti Patel Home Secretary.

So far, Liz Truss has made some very worrying appointments.

First of all, someone who opposes abortion and same sex marriage to health:

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Caron Lindsay

Another day, another new Conservative Prime Minister to muck up our lives

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 6th September 2022 - 9:15 am

Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are in for an absolute treat today. It’s more of a faff to get to Balmoral than a quick spin up the Mall to Buckingham Palace, but the journey from Aberdeen through Royal Deeside is absolutely gorgeous. The heather in the hills round about Aboyne is particularly stunning, even if it is, as forecast, tipping it down.

I am so glad that they are going north to see the Queen. The 96 year old monarch has earned the right to say that they should come to her.

I wonder what arrangements have been made for Boris and Carrie to get back from Balmoral. Normally the outgoing PM gets a taxi from Buckingham Palace. Will the estate manager drop them in Ballater so they can get the bus back to Aberdeen to catch the Easyjet back down south? Probably not, but it’s an amusing thought.

Much has been said about the new Prime Minister’s bulging in tray. Competing economic, energy, international and health crises require urgent action. I don’t think we are emphasising enough, though, the extent to which all these issues have been made worse by the foolish actions of the Conservative Party in Government since 2015.  From David Cameron’s ill-advised pledge to hold a referendum on our EU membership, to Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s choice to pursue the most extreme form of Brexit, they have helped create much tougher economic circumstances than in similar economies.

Sectors like social care are falling apart because of their anti-immigrant ethos. As care workers went back to the EU, our disabled and elderly friends and family found that the help that they relied on disappeared.

Boris Johnson’s boasterish farewell speech this morning didn’t mention this. He didn’t get Brexit done. He left a predictably impossible situation in Northern Ireland and the new PM intends to take the nuclear option of breaking international law rather than find a more pragmatic solution.  Deaths from Covid in the UK are the highest in Europe and the long term consequences of their pretence that the pandemic is over are being felt by too many people.

It takes some brass neck to deliver such a bullish speech when you have been forced from office in disgrace after the resignation of half of your government. Tim Farron summed it up this morning:

Jo Swinson said back in 2019 that the worst thing about Boris Johnson was that he just didn’t care. He simply couldn’t be bothered to understand how his Government’s actions affected people. Liz Truss, similarly, shows no sign of giving a damn and she doesn’t have anything like the charisma of her predecessor.

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Caron Lindsay

Your last chance to put in a question for Party Leaders at Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 4th September 2022 - 7:44 pm

Do you fancy putting Party President Mark Pack on the spot? Or any other party committee chair?

Or asking Ed Davey something important to you in his leader’s question and answer session?

Maybe you want to ask Federal Conference Committee about making Conference more accessible, or affordable.. Maybe you want more information about the party’s diversity strategy from the Federal People Development Committee. Or perhaps you want to ask Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain about what MPs are doing on a particular issue.

You only have until 1pm tomorrow to submit your question. Do so here.

One of the advantages of asking a question is that you get the chance to do a follow-up actually in the Conference hall. This can be a really good way of getting the feel of speaking at Conference.

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Caron Lindsay

Tributes to paid to former Brentwood Councillor Karen Chilvers

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 3rd September 2022 - 10:54 am

The world has lost another brilliant liberal. Former Brentwood Lib Dem Councillor and Parliamentary candidate Karen Chilvers died on Wednesday at just 51 years old. She had a stroke at the end of July and subsequent complications were just too much for her body to deal with.

We never met in real life, but for over a decade she has been a cheerful, supportive, friendly presence on Facebook and I loved reading about her adventures with her dogs Louis, Bailey and Tiffany.

Karen had had many health issues over the years and she would often talk about her frustrations about trying to get round an inaccessible world.

Karen was a much-loved Councillor in Brentwood between 2007 and 2021. I remember how devastated she was when she lost her seat in 2011, but she won it back the following year.

Her colleague David Kendall paid tribute to her in The Echo

Karen was a driving force of energy in the Brentwood Liberal Democrats over many years and encouraged a number of people to stand for the Council and helped to get them elected.

She was a champion for many vulnerable people in our community particularly on disability and equality issues.

She also helped many people on planning, housing and environmental matters.

“She led the campaign with residents to stop the housing development in Honeypot Lane and was a key figure in the campaign to stop “Go Ape” from changing the face of Thorndon Country Park.

Back in 2012, she appeared on ITV quiz show The Chase, as I wrote here:

Karen, pictured here with her dog Louis, was incredibly calm and cool as she answered the quick-fire questions. I was very impressed with her performance. She has written about her experience here.

She wrote for us back in 2013 when the BBC discovered her dog Bailey’s Twitter account. For Karen, her beloved dogs helped her become closer to her constituents. Being an approachable councillor was incredibly important to her.

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