Christine Jardine is heading to Elgin, a city about 40 miles south east of Inverness. It’s in the heart of the Moray constituency. Typically, the BBC, finds the most Brexity place in Scotland to go to. Remain squeaked home with 50.1% of the vote. Every constituency in Scotland voted to Remain, most of them by a much larger margin.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats are the only party in Scotland who want to keep Scotland in the UK and the EU.
You would not expect a Willie Rennie manifesto launch to be boring. Sadly, there were no farm animals, but he and Alex Cole-Hamilton had a race up a climbing wall in Ratho, near Edinburgh.
— Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP🔶🇺🇦 (@agcolehamilton) May 14, 2019
It’s a great picture!
The prospects for the Scottish Lib Dems have not looked this good in years. The field work from the ComRes poll at the weekend had us in joint second with the Brexit Party, which gives us a real chance of getting party legend Sheila sent to Brussels.
— Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP🔶🇺🇦 (@agcolehamilton) May 12, 2019
There is clearly everything to play for in the next 9 days. There are record numbers of doors being knocked the length of the country. My spies tell me that Borders candidate Jenny Marr’s local party is vying for the top spot in terms of doors knocked along with the Edinburgh West and East Dunbartonshire.
They work incredibly hard. Those who do get paid for it don’t get paid nearly enough for what is effectively a project management job. They have to herd the Lib Dem cats to deliver objectives on the way to electoral success.
They are so dedicated to their jobs, too. I will never forget the day one young organiser, who had been led astray by older and less wise party activists (for once, not me), turning up at the office about 3 hours after they went to bed a little green around the gills to spend the day in a room with a thumping risograph churning out thousands of leaflets.
If you are moaning about tiredness and sore feet as most of us are at this stage of an election, your organiser will have been up before you to make sure you have what you need to do your bit of the job and will be going to bed after you because they need to clear up and prepare for the next day. And, often, because the organiser is the one pulling everything together, they get caught in the crossfire of competing ideas and ambitions, so they require diplomatic skills of UN standard.
I am sure that many of you will have stories of appreciation to share about your organisers in the comments. Ours in Edinburgh West, Ed, is a total diamond who makes you want to get out there and knock on doors. He is efficient and calm and you just don’t want to let him down. At Conference, I found out from his university colleagues that he would have them out there canvassing no matter how hungover they were.
Twenty five years ago today, I was at work when someone came in and said that Labour leader John Smith had died. I was so shocked and sad at the loss of someone that, as far as I knew, everyone, no matter what party they were in, liked and respected.
He was a thoroughly decent man who, as Shadow Chancellor and Leader of the Opposition, handed the backsides of Tory ministers to them on a plate on a regular basis, but could also engage in constructive dialogue and had good relationships with them. I often wonder what would have happened if he had become Prime Minister, as he almost certainly would have in 1997. His administration may not have had the pizzazz of the Cool Britannia vibe, but I suspect it would have been very steady and not subject to the destructive factionalism that undermined Tony Blair.
The House of Commons held a debate to mark the 25th anniversary of his death. Our Christine Jardine spoke for us.
Twenty-five years ago, I was a young TV reporter standing in a car park in Aberdeen with a camera crew waiting to interview Tony Blair. We knew that John Smith had had a heart attack that morning and we hoped that Tony Blair’s delayed arrival would bring a statement that all was fine and that John Smith would recuperate and be back soon. Sadly, by the time Tony Blair did arrive, we knew he had a very different outcome to relay to us. My thoughts that day, as on this day, were not merely about politics. I come from a family of three girls who lost their dad to a sudden heart attack at 44, and my thoughts were, and still are, with his girls. I am sure that the hon. Member for Edinburgh South would agree that, wherever Scottish politicians gather, at some point we get to talking about John Smith and what might have been—the country that might have been, the Labour party that might have been, how devolution might have developed differently, how the Labour Government might have acted differently—but we must always remember those lives most closely affected by losing him.
I do not claim to have known John Smith well, but when I was a young reporter he always gave me time and treated my often naive questions with respect, and he never ever patronised me—something we should all think about as Members. I particularly remember one evening when I was a reporter at Radio Clyde and had to phone him about the latest speculation about whether Neil, now Lord, Kinnock, was about to step down as Labour party leader. Once he had dismissed it as nonsense and said there was no way he would comment on such a ludicrous suggestion, he spent about 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, just chatting with me, putting me right about the situation and telling me what was actually going on in British politics and what I should be aware of. I came away from that conversation, which he did not have to have with me, better informed, and from then on in my career, I had much greater insight into and respect for British politics. I was not the only one, and I do not think it was just because I was a graduate of Glasgow University. I was not the only journalist in Scotland who had for John Smith the sort of respect and admiration the rest of us can often only aspire to. Other Members have spoken about the grief felt across Scotland among politicians. I cannot speak for the politicians of that time—I was not one of them, I was a journalist—but every single one of us felt that day that we had lost something that we perhaps had not valued enough. We saw him as a politician committed to an ideal but with a tolerance, understanding and commitment to people and communities that we would do well to emulate here.
I remember another occasion when I was sent to a pub in Airdrie—if memory serves—on the occasion of John Smith’s first response as shadow Chancellor. I was sent out to get public reaction to what the local MP was going to say, and I came away with a picture of a man regarded in his constituency as “one of us”, as somebody who understood his constituency and spoke for his constituency. He knew exactly what they wanted to hear and what they needed. I contrast that with the detached, two-dimensional picture that politicians often can project today. Maybe we need a little more of whatever it was that John Smith had, because he had something special that gave him a place in the hearts of journalists, politicians, the community and everybody in Scotland.
The first question from the audience in Cambridge was about climate change.
Former Conservative Brexit Minister Suella Braverman hailed her party’s action on this.
I thought when I listened to it that Ed’s reply was going to be interesting.
Well, it was pretty forensic. He highlighted how the Conservatives had undone so much of the good work he had done as Climate Change Secretary and how important it was that we remain at the European table to have global influence.
Welcome to the 1300 people who have joined the Liberal Democrats in the last day or so since our local election gains surpassed all our expectations.
It’s actually been really heartwarming to wake up every morning for the last few weeks and see a whole rush of “I just joined the Lib Dems” posts on Twitter.
Every so often I roll out this post, which is basically a rehash of an article that I first wrote in May 2015 when many joined the party in the wake of the General Election result. I thought it might be useful to tell you a little bit about how our party works and give you a bit of an idea of the opportunities open to you. If you are not yet a member, if you like what you read, sign up here.
What do we believe?
Before we get into the nitty gritty of organisation, the best statement of who we are and what we’re about can be found in the Preamble to our Constitution which underlines how we believe in freedom, opportunity, diversity, decentralisation and internationalism. Here’s a snippet:
The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives.
We look forward to a world in which all people share the same basic rights, in which they live together in peace and in which their different cultures will be able to develop freely. We believe that each generation is responsible for the fate of our planet and, by safeguarding the balance of nature and the environment, for the long term continuity of life in all its forms. Upholding these values of individual and social justice, we reject allprejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, sex or sexual orientation and oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality.
We have a fierce respect for individuality, with no expectation that fellow Liberal Democrats will agree with us on every issue. We expect our views to be challenged and feel free to challenge others without rancour. We can have a robust debate and head to the pub afterwards, the very best of friends.
Obviously, our priority at the moment is to stop Brexit, but there is so much more to us than that. That bit about no-one being enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity shapes everything that we do.
What could I talk about for 30 minutes with no prep
The energetic election campaigns of @joswinson What Doctor Who means to me – in fact I could easily do half an hour on Sarah Jane Smith My springer spaniel, Hazel Delia vs Nigella Brooklyn Nine Nine@miss_s_b being awesome https://t.co/yflW1Xq9DO
— Caron Lindsay 🔶 🇺🇦🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🇪🇺 (@caronmlindsay) May 9, 2019
Though I could add in things that Alex Cole-Hamilton has said that made me laugh, the amazing brilliance of the Lib Dems in coalition…. in Scotland 1999-2007, fighting Labour in Chesterfield 1992-2000, Willie Rennie, farm animals and all.
I thought about adding in “Amazing Women in the Lib Dems” but I only have 30 minutes, not 30 days. And if you added in awesome women from other parties – Kezia Dugdale, Alison Thewliss, Caroline Lucas, Stella Creasy and Harriet Harman just for starters – then the whole enterprise would take a lot longer.
And my god I want to her Jennie do 30 minutes on Tom and Jerry. Can we please start crowdfunding for the fringe meeting at Bournemouth now?
This morning, my family’s postal votes arrived. I’ve had a postal vote ever since I didn’t vote in the 1997 election because I was too busy helping in a target seat. I suspect Mrs Pankhurst would have approved, but I was determined that I would never again fail to have my say.
Never has that vote felt more precious. I want this country to say very clearly on 23 May that we want to stop Brexit, that we want to stay part of the remarkable institution which champions peace, human rights and democracy.
Many other postal votes will have landed on doormats today. So it’s pretty convenient that the Lib Dems kicked off their European campaign with a staggering display of both passion and competence.
Buoyed by strong results in last week’s local council elections, and unencumbered by the nuance of Labour’s position, Cable insisted the Lib Dems were the best-equipped party to challenge the message of Nigel Farage at the poll later this month.
“We are clearly the best organised, we have been leading the People’s Vote argument for three years and we’ve been the pro-Europe party for 50 years. We are credible and people recognise our unwavering clarity and commitment.
“We are taking it very seriously, we have a high-pressure social media campaign where we are doing more than Farage’s people,” he said, adding, “we are out of the traps early, and expect to do well.
And he outlined why we are the best place to deliver the maximum remain vote.
He has faced criticism for failing to make the media impact of his predecessor, or improve the Lib Dems’ poll ratings. But he hailed last week’s strong local election results as evidence that a steady approach of rebuilding the party from the bottom up is finally paying dividends.
“Infrastructure and organisation really does matter,” he said. “The lesson for other parties is you can’t function without that. There is no future sitting in London sending out messages.”
The manifesto launch tonight was brilliant. Four speeches. All passionate and delivered with heart. Sal Brinton talking about how the Lib Dems had stopped the Tories using Brexit legislation to undermine the NHS.
Ed Davey talking about the importance of stopping Brexit so that Britain can be a powerful force in the EU in the fight against climate change. I actually got a bit sad when he was speaking because he did so much to combat climate change in government and then the Conservatives, left to themselves, have unravelled so much of it.
He also spoke about the importance of co-operation across the EU to tackle crime. Why, he said, do Brexiteers like criminals so much.
Jo Swinson gave a totally heartfelt speech about a visit to Bucharest. Her wonderful dad, Peter, was there to help the Romanians prepare for EU membership. She told how he had taken her to the People’s House, an outrageous structure built as a vanity project by Romania’s dictator while so many of his people lived in destitution and absolute poverty. She talked about the role of the EU in bringing peace across Europe, in Northern Ireland, bringing former enemies together.
The EU has been at the forefront of promoting human rights, liberal values and democracy, she said. The EU is the hope that made once warring countries work together and which is the cornerstone of the Good Friday Agreement. In a time of “strong men” leaders, now is not the time to be turning our back on European leaders who share our liberal values.
There are more relaxing ways to spend your 76th birthday. I thought Vince was actually going to cry when the audience sang Happy Birthday to him, but he went on to deliver a fantastic speech highlighting the clear Stop Brexit message that is driving the Lib Dem campaign. He said that nobody, not even the most ardent Brexiteers, were doubting that we would be worse off if we left the EU. The only thing is that these Brexiteers weren’t going to be the people who paid the price. It would be people much poorer and more vulnerable than they were.
The Lib Dems, he said, will be unapologetic about backing the four freedoms. The right we have to work and live across Europe was championed by Mrs Thatcher. The current Conservative Party has moved so far to the right that they are disowning the single market Thatcher created.
He said that while the Lib Dems will campaign to stop Brexit, this election is about returning a group of Liberal politicians from across Europe who will lead the fight against populism.
He highlighted the crucial EU role in making the likes of Google pay their taxes.
We won’t solve the Trump problem, he said, by grovelling to him and throwing him lavish state visits, but by standing up to him as part of the EU.
He set out our unique pitch – as the biggest and best organised of the Remain parties who has been fighting for for EU values for 50 years.
The very first line of the Liberal Democrats’ European election manifesto says exactly what we want to do:
Every vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to stop Brexit and stay in the European Union.
For the first time in a long time, we are off the leash. We are fighting an election saying exactly what we want and not dressing it up in nuance and equivocation.
We’ll look at each section of the manifesto in more detail over the next few days. It looks at what our MEPs will do if we succeed in stopping Brexit. Which is a good idea, because if we do manage to stop this nonsense, we’ll need to get a lot better at communicating what they are doing and how that benefits all of us.
The introductory section packs a punch, setting out our internationalist values:
The Liberal Democrats’ vision for Britain is a country that has remained at the heartof a dynamic European Union. A country where everyone can afford somewhere tolive, in a safe, clean and friendly neighbourhood. A country where high-quality health and social care, good-quality childcare, lifelong education, reliable transport and clean air are all part of a contract between government and citizens. A country with a new politics – taking on entrenched power and privilege and delivering a fair deal for everyone.
I like the use of the word friendly, there. It’s a very warm, active word. It conjures up images of people talking to each other, helping each other out, of kindness. It’s a powerful concept and so much better than the horrible politics of “it’s their fault you haven’t got.”
Turning to the Government and official opposition, the manifesto does not mince its words:
Theresa May doesn’t care about Remainers – and doesn’t care about those who voted leave either. For almost three years she has been obsessed with trying to buyoff the right wing of the Conservative party…
…The deal she has put on the table shows just how damaging and costly Brexit will be, in contrast to the lies peddled by the Leave campaign. It is also clear that many of the reasons driving people to vote leave – worries about funding of the health service, anger at rising inequalities across the country, the feeling of being left behind – will not be solved by Brexit; indeed, they will all be worsened.
The Conservatives have spent half a decade trying to please UKIP and Nigel Farage. Jeremy Corbyn has his own Brexit vision: instead of opposing it, he wants to deliver it. The fact is that whether Labour Red or Tory Blue, Brexit is bad for the UK.
The manifesto goes on to set out what would happen if we did manage to stop Brexit. It includes calls for Europe to adopt a net zero greenhouse gas emissions target by 2050, for an emergency £7.5 billion Support Fund for those affected by Brexit uncertainty and the extensions of rights for EU citizens in the UK including the ability to stand and vote in elections.
Coming to a Lib Dem risograph near you very soon, I would imagine.
Seriously, Labour’s shadow international trade minister told Tory James Cleverly ON LIVE TV that “We are in there trying to bail you guys out” on Brexit.
.@BarryGardiner admission on BBC1 that @UKLabour are trying to bail the Tories out to deliver Brexit will go down like a lead balloon with Labour voters… looks like we are seeing that tonight #LocalElections2019
You could not make it up. No wonder reports from the talks earlier this week made them sound like a love in. And here is the moment where he actually says it:
Welcome to the 1300 people who have joined the Liberal Democrats in the last day or so since our local election gains surpassed all our expectations.
It’s actually been really heartwarming to wake up every morning for the last few weeks and see a whole rush of “I just joined the Lib Dems” posts on Twitter.
Every so often I roll out this post, which is basically a rehash of an article that I first wrote in May 2015 when many joined the party in the wake of the General Election result. I thought it might be useful to tell you a little bit about how our party works and give you a bit of an idea of the opportunities open to you. If you are not yet a member, if you like what you read, sign up here.
What do we believe?
Before we get into the nitty gritty of organisation, the best statement of who we are and what we’re about can be found in the Preamble to our Constitution which underlines how we believe in freedom, opportunity, diversity, decentralisation and internationalism. Here’s a snippet:
The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives.
We look forward to a world in which all people share the same basic rights, in which they live together in peace and in which their different cultures will be able to develop freely. We believe that each generation is responsible for the fate of our planet and, by safeguarding the balance of nature and the environment, for the long term continuity of life in all its forms. Upholding these values of individual and social justice, we reject allprejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, sex or sexual orientation and oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality.
We have a fierce respect for individuality, with no expectation that fellow Liberal Democrats will agree with us on every issue. We expect our views to be challenged and feel free to challenge others without rancour. We can have a robust debate and head to the pub afterwards, the very best of friends.
Obviously, our priority at the moment is to stop Brexit, but there is so much more to us than that. That bit about no-one being enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity shapes everything that we do.
It’s 40 years today since Margaret Thatcher walked into Downing Street as Prime Minister.
There was an 11 year old girl in Inverness who was really excited by this – especially by the notion that a woman could become Prime Minister was a very powerful one.
Ten years ago, for the 30th anniversary, I wrote this post describing my shame. I suppose, in my defence, I have spent most of my time since fighting the forces of small state, selfish conservatism.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but thirty years ago tonight, I, a fairly innocent 11 year old, went to bed and prayed for Mrs Thatcher to win the 1979 election.
I really didn’t understand much about politics then – the geekery and obsession didn’t take hold until about a year and a half later, when I had had enough time to rue my earlier enthusiasm. I did know that I wasn’t keen on Labour – there seemed to be nothing but strikes, and my dad hadn’t had a properly stable job for a good couple of years. My parents and Grandma were all enthusiastic Tories and it seemed that life would get better with a new Government.
I quite liked the Liberal Party. The MP for Inverness, Russell Johnston, seemed to me to be a good man and the fact that a primary school child like me knew who he was was quite positive. He was also in favour of home rule for Scotland, which I always thought was a good thing. However, my staunch Catholic grandfather had told me time and time again, from the moment David Steel became Liberal leader, that he didn’t want babies to be born, so he had the same appeal for me as the Daleks. I literally would watch him on tv from behind a cushion. When I grew up and understood the issues involved, he became a lot less scary, but I actually thought he would pass a law forbidding people to have babies. Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but in my defence, I had heard that in China you were only allowed to have one child, and I was only 11.
There are two elements of the BBC’s coverage of the local elections that are simply ridiculous and need to be complained about.
The first is their oft expressed line that the message the voters were giving to the Conservative and Labour parties is that they wanted them to get on with Brexit.
So that would be why they voted in huge numbers for the party whose aim is to stop Brexit, then, is it?
The Liberal Democrats gained over 700 seats, a spectacular feat by any standards. We put in our best ever performance in terms of seat gain in a local election. The message is clear – a significant proportion of the electorate want this Brexit nonsense to be stopped.
There was a moment that I feared that we would end up gaining 666 councillors.
It happened.
Briefly.
But it quickly passed.
And the final total topped 700.
The Tories briefed the papers last weekend that they could lose 1000 seats. This, we all thought, was expectation management. We thought that our own 500 gains briefing to the press was about as good as it could get. And we were wildly pessimistic in the end.
I was thrilled to see my old mate and former Chesterfield Lib Dem MP Paul Holmes re-elected to the Council. And regular Lib Dem Voice contributor Ed Fordham elected as Councillor for Brockwell along with two ward colleagues.
Moor ward in that town has a history of close elections. I remember missing out on winning a seat from Labour in a by-election there in about 1994 by 17ish votes.
Look at how close we were to 9 gains there:
It’s a long time since we had a night like this.
But let’s just enjoy it as a stage on the journey. It’s not the end in itself. We need all Remainers to swing behind us on May 23rd to send a very clear message that Brexit can and must be stopped.
Coming to a Lib Dem risograph near you very soon, I would imagine.
Seriously, Labour’s shadow international trade minister told Tory James Cleverly ON LIVE TV that “We are in there trying to bail you guys out” on Brexit.
.@BarryGardiner admission on BBC1 that @UKLabour are trying to bail the Tories out to deliver Brexit will go down like a lead balloon with Labour voters… looks like we are seeing that tonight #LocalElections2019
You could not make it up. No wonder reports from the talks earlier this week made them sound like a love in. And here is the moment where he actually says it:
Four years ago, I was utterly heartbroken at this time in the morning. Not only had we lost almost all our MPs, but we’d suffered heavy losses in the council election.
Today, after spending most of yesterday in a darkened room whimpering in pain, I wake to absolutely brilliant results. Already we are up (at the time of writing) 271 councillors and most of the results aren’t in yet.
It’s not surprising that Ed Davey described the results on BBC Breakfast as the best local elections for the Lib Dems in a generation.
Some more of the highlights:
We seem to have surprised the BBC’s political editor:
— Wera Hobhouse MP 🔶 🇺🇦 (@Wera_Hobhouse) May 3, 2019
Yvette Cooper’s backyard now contains Liberal Democrat Councillor Tom Gordon stormed to victory from a standing start in his home ward after moving down from Newcastle.
Here are the results in full and my latest interview with BBC Radio Leeds will be up at some point tomorrow I believe! pic.twitter.com/hrHTVdxTGI
Three times the vote of the Labour Party. 9 times the vote of the Conservatives and Greens. And all that in just a few months’ spirited and energetic campaigning.
His former colleagues in Newcastle were delighted.
We knew Tom was good, and we were sorry a new job forced him to move away, but Manor Park's loss is definitely Knottingley's gain! He has pulled off an electoral sensation in a matter of weeks! https://t.co/IcR95LnXe8
— Manor Park Lib Dems 🔶 (@ManorParkLD) May 3, 2019
And here is Councillor Gordon:
Chelmsford’s result was simply outstanding – from 5 councillors to 31 and the Conservatives falling from 52 seats to just 21.
I have never been more glad to be proved wrong as far as Hinckley and Bosworth were concerned. They thought they might pull off overall control, but I thought that was a tiny bit ambitious, even with their ace team which has been honed to perfection over the years by former Lib Dem MP for Chesterfield, Paul Holmes. But they did it. It’s a fantastic result for Michael Mullaney and the team there.
As this post goes live, indefatigable Liberal Democrats the length of England will have been up for hours delivering last minute leaflets in the local elections.
They have a tough day of more leafletting and knocking up (which is nowhere near as exciting as it sounds) ahead of them.
One of the best smells in the world is the breakfast roll cooking when you come in from your good morning leaflets.
But after that, there’s still a good 12 hours of work left.
And usually after the local elections, you can put your feet up for a week or so. Well, that didn’t happen in 2017 because some woman had a rush of blood to the head on a walking holiday in Wales and called a general election. It’s not going to happen now either because of the impending European elections.
The polling day operation is a crucial part of the campaign. Voters in local elections aren’t always inclined to go to the polls – the turnout is usually pretty small compared to a general election. Getting more of ours out than the opposition gets of theirs is crucial.
However tired you may feel, hold on to the idea of how brilliant it will feel if we win these elections. It will give us huge momentum going in to the Euros.
Keep going up until 10pm tonight. I’ll be on the phones for candidates across the country this evening.
Special good luck to our regular contributor Ed Fordham who is seeking elected office for himself for a change in the Brockwell ward in Chesterfield, to the North Devon team led by our Kirsten Johnson, to April Preston in Manchester Withington and Tom Gordon in Wakefield’s Knottingley and Ferrybridge ward.
April has the support of Jo Swinson in this video recorded a couple of months ago.
Yesterday’s news that victims of rape and sexual assault in England and Wales are among those who could be required to hand over their phones for scrutiny as a precondition for getting justice is a very worrying development.
It is hardly going to encourage people to come forward if they have to allow Police to trawl through their entire public and private social media and many will fear that material which is entirely unrelated to the offence could be used in evidence. You also need to take into consideration that messages sent could be used to imply consent that simply was not there at the time the offence was committed.
Victims fear that giving defence lawyers access to their data will simply mean that they will face the sort of character assassinations in court that women who dared to wear short skirts in public used to get.
There is nothing about a person’s clothing or behaviour that ever justifies rape. End of.
What has been interesting is that many of the usual media suspects have published articles opposing this policy.
An anonymous writer int he Guardian describe her experience.
Nine years ago, I blogged about the awful gendered marketing of children’s fancy dress outfits by the Early Learning Centre. At that time, they did doctors’ outfits for boys and nurses’ outfits for girls.
Almost a decade further on, it’s frankly not much better. Try searching fancy dress for girls and boys. Boys get the superhero stuff – very active and history changing. Girls get mostly pretty dresses and uncomfortable and impractical shoes. Have you ever tried climbing a tree in a Belle costume? It’s not easy. The more recent Disney Princesses have a bit more agency than they used to, but the Early Learning Centre seems to still concentrate on the ones with long dresses.
A poll carried out by the Fawcett Society shows that I’m not alone in my concerns. It found ‘widespread concern’ about ‘pink for girls, blue for boys’ advertising by manufacturers and retailers.
63% of mothers and 60% of fathers agreed that product marketing reinforces gender stereotypes. Fawcett says these misgivings are not limited to parents, ‘as over half of men and women who do not have children also agreed’.
Earlier this year, Christine Jardine brought in a bill to prohibit the differential pricing of products and services that are substantially similar other than being intended for, or marketed to, a particular gender. She expressed her concern about gender stereotyping in marketing.
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 547th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (21-27 April, 2019), together with a hand-picked seven from the last two weeks you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
Just after Jo was on Marr this morning, Vince popped up on Pienaar’s Politics.
He used the opportunity to say, unsurprisingly, that a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote to stop Brexit. Finally, we have a slogan that means something and is in keeping with the zeitgeist. Once we are all sick to the back teeth of hearing it, it will just be starting to cut through to the general public, so prepare to hear it a great deal.
In fact, if any Lib Dem fails to say that within 5 seconds of opening their mouth at the moment, they are not doing their jobs properly.
It was the main theme of our launch the other day – and the New Statesman even described that event as “slick.” It’s a long time since anything we did has been called that.
Vince added that with our campaign infrastructure and momentum from the local elections, we have a big advantage over Change UK.
On that Change UK memo earlier in the week in which they set out their mission to crush us, he said that we have good working relations with them at informal levels, but he reckons that they will see the advantage of working together when they hit the realities of our electoral system.
As that New Statesman article said:
It (the timing of the Change UK launch in Bristol on a day Parliament was sitting) demonstrates one of the implicit arguments that the Liberal Democrats will make as to why they are the best vehicle for Remainer outrage – because they have the know-how and experience to actually get MEPs elected and to make a splash in a way that Change UK do not.
But they also have another ace in the hole – the looming local elections this Thursday. These were seats last contested in 2015, a disastrous night for the Liberal Democrats on which they lost 51 MPs; but more importantly for our purposes they also lost 658 councillors and control of four councils.
They are not going to make those losses up overnight: the difficulty minor parties have is what takes years of work to acquire can be lost in the time it takes to say “rose garden”. But frankly they will be doing pretty poorly if they can’t at least make enough of those losses back that they won’t be able to declare themselves the winners of the local elections and the most well-placed pro-Remain party to give the big two a fright.
Now the Labour-supporting New Statesman is hardly likely to want to up the prospects of Change UK, but even taking that into consideration, they’ve added weight to the point that Vince was making about our expertise and experience making us better placed for success.
Vince also told Pienaar that his decision on whether to stand again for his Twickenham seat would depend on when the General Election was. If it was on its scheduled timetable for 2022, he wouldn’t fight the seat again. If he did, he’d be 84 at the end of that Parliament.
She also said that it was a shame that pro Remain parties weren’t voting together in the European elections, but she emphasised that they would continue to work together in Parliament for a People’s Vote to ensure we could stay in the EU.
Jo faced some challenging questions from Mishal Hussein. The very first one was about austerity and its effect on local government and how that squared with our local elections campaign.
Jo answered that one as well as she could, pointing out the effectiveness of Liberal Democrat councils and councillors in delivering for their communities but acknowledging the cuts and the economic crisis at the time when the Coalition Government came to power and highlighting how much worse the Conservatives got when we left Government.
While I was away, I kept my eye on what was going on in the world. It was good for me to have a few days when I didn’t even open my laptop to write about it, though.
But now I’m back, I want to highlight some of this week’s key events.
One which caught my eye was the launch of the More United MPs’ Network. From Politics Home:
The group said MPs in the newly-established network will lead campaigns on issues such as poverty and homelessness, responsible technology, mental health and climate change.
The campaign has vowed to capitalise on the “clear appetite” of the public to use online petitions, and has vowed to attract more than 250,000 members, including 100 MPs by next year.
Those who lead and support More United campaigns will also be eligible for money raised by the wider campaign at general elections – with almost £500,000 given out to supportive candidates via crowdfunding in 2017.
Conservative former minister Nicky Morgan and Labour’s David Lammy are among the group, which also includes figures from the SNP, Change UK, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens’ Caroline Lucas.
More United CEO Bess Mayhew said: “People see cross-party working as a proxy for trust in politics. When polling shows that only three out of ten people believe they can make a difference by getting involved in politics something has to change.
“By uniting MPs who can find common ground on divisive issues we want to show there is a way to move Britain forward and work together to build a fair and thriving country.”
I am now back from my blissful trip to the Highlands. Yesterday morning I woke up to this amazing view. We had enjoyed a week of mostly sunshine and some really hot days. Nine hours after this photo was taken, we were heading home in temperatures struggling to reach double figures and driving rain.
While I was away, I went out canvassing with our top of the list in Scotland Euro candidate Sheila Ritchie in Inverness. It’s great to be welcomed on to doorsteps again. Our message that a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote to stop Brexit went down exceptionally well. Labour remainers were annoyed with their own party’s ambiguous stance on Brexit and were willing to lend us their votes for this election.
This is consistent with what others are finding across the country. Conservative remainers are exasperated with the failings of their party and are switching to us.
The prospect of another, imminent independence referendum is also making some SNP leaning voters think again about backing that party.
If there was ever an election worth throwing extra effort at, this is it. We can change the direction of our country and we should all be out there as often as we can over the next month.
Let’s get behind our brilliant candidates and make this a campaign to remember. If you haven’t been canvassing since the coalition years, get out there. You will notice a big difference.
Our prospects in the European elections will be improved by a good showing in the local elections on Thursday. We need to show that momentum so if you are in an area that doesn’t have elections, please go to somewhere that does or do some phone canvassing in the next few days or knocking up on polling day.
Getting lots more Lib Dem councillors is a good end in itself, but this year we have the added incentive of putting a stop to Brexit and establishing ourselves as the best option for remainers to vote for on May 23rd.
Let’s get to it.
But while you are having your breakfast, have a bit of fun with this Brexit quiz. We went to a pub quiz in Fortrose on Thursday night and were languishing in a pretty poor last place until the final round. That round was one of these where you can get loads of bonus points if you can predict how many questions you will get right. And if you don’t meet your target, you end up losing half your score.
The subject was Brexit in people and numbers which was a bit more up my street than Michael Caine movies and tv crime dramas which had led to our last place predicament.
We stormed from last to fourth. It turns out we could have gambled more and come third.
How many of these questions would you get right? No cheating – you are not allowed to use the internet to help you.
I have to confess that until all the headlines about Diane Abbott yesterday, I had no idea that the relatively innocent act of sipping a Mojito on a tube train was illegal, thanks to measures brought in by Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London.
But my main reaction to this spectacular non-event was to wonder what on earth the world has come to when sipping that Mojito is worthy of a public apology and acres of virtual and actual newsprint when lying and cheating your way to a narrow referendum victory is not.
March 29th was the day when we were scheduled to leave the EU. I wake up every day grateful that I am still an EU citizen and am hopeful that I will always remain so. Leaving would break my heart. I can only imagine how it would have felt on March 29th if we were leaving to know that Vote Leave had dropped their appeal against a fine imposed by the Electoral Commission.
The BBC reported:
An Electoral Commission spokesman said: “Vote Leave has today withdrawn its appeal and related proceedings against the Electoral Commission’s finding of multiple offences under electoral law, committed during the 2016 EU referendum campaign.
“Vote Leave was the designated lead campaigner for the leave outcome at the referendum.
“We found that it broke the electoral rules set out by Parliament to ensure fairness, confidence and legitimacy at an electoral event. Serious offences such as these undermine public confidence in our system and it is vital, therefore, that they are properly investigated and sanctioned.
“We have been advised that Vote Leave has paid its £61,000 fine and look forward to receiving the sum in full.”
The fact that Vote Leave cheated has achieved remarkably little traction. This is something that could easily have affected the legitimacy of the referendum result. We are still poised on the brink of taking a regressive and harmful step on the basis of a result obtained by cheating.
Yesterday Ed Davey gave a really open and moving interview to Radio 5 live about how he was a young carer to his mother for 3 years before she died when he was 15. His dad had died when he was 4. He talked about the key moment of his life, coming a few months after his Mum died, realising that he was doing things for himself and not her any more.
He said that it has affected his attitude to politics – caring for the most vulnerable is what politics should be about, he said.
He said it informed the way he thought about other people and about the health service and the importance of helping each other. Curries from the Indian family across the road gave him and his family practical help during that time. Watch here.
Well, I suppose they might have been that day when they made their protest in the Commons chamber. It was a visible reminder that we are preoccupying ourselves with Brexit when the entire future of our planet is in doubt. And it was quite funny watching MPs trying to maintain their composure and keep their faces straight.
But the recent spate of protests by the climate change campaigners are doing their cause more harm than good. Ok, so they get attention, but what on earth is the point of gluing themselves to trains, for goodness sake?
I thought public transport was a good thing. Obstructing it, potentially making low paid people with not much power in their workplaces late, is neither big nor clever.
And holding up the traffic might grab headlines but it doesn’t do much for air quality in the vicinity.
The powerful message of children walking out of school to tell us to secure their future is so much more persuasive.
People’s homes are off limits for this kind of stuff, whether there are politicians or heads of companies. If you want to protest go to their public offices. Nobody’s family should have to feel like they are under siege.
The Clegg family was not home – but what if they had been? What about their neighbours? Whatever you might think about Government decisions, politicians’ partners and children should not have had their lives disrupted.
Imagine if they had been home when these 400 people descended? The children are 10, 8 and 3. To a 3 year old, people outside having a go at your daddy, however nice they think they’re being, could be really scary, the stuff of weeks of nightmares.
Now, note that I am not saying that such protests should be illegal, but with rights come responsibilities. UK Uncut have done their cause no good whatsoever this weekend – and that’s a shame because when it comes to some of the welfare reform cuts, as you know, I agree with them.
UK Uncut will have had to have distributed Nick Clegg’s private address to a fairly large number of people, for a start, the 400 there and anyone they tell. How can they guarantee the conduct of every single person who would turn up. It was ok this time, but at some point, if this continues, someone will turn up with malevolent intent.
And that was before an MP was murdered. In the current, febrile climate, when you have emboldened fascists taking to the streets, going to politicians’ homes is not a good look.
There seems to be some horror in the right wing press that a teenage girl is likely to get help to challenge the decision to take away her British citizenship.
At the time Sajid Javid made his decision, Lib Dem Home Affairs Spokesperson Ed Davey said:
Membership of a terrorist group is a serious crime, as is encouraging or supporting terrorism. But Shamima Begum should face justice for those crimes in the UK.
It is not only hard to see Ms Begum and her baby as constituting a serious threat to national security, but it also seems a huge wasted opportunity. We can learn lessons as to why a young girl went to Syria in the first place; lessons which could improve Britain’s security by helping us prevent this happening again.
The decision to deprive her of her citizenship, potentially rendering her stateless, was shameful.
At Scottish Conference, Jo Swinson said:
And while we’re on the subject of the depths Tories will stoop to. Shame on you Sajid Javid for your decision on Shamima Begum, throwing human rights out the window to further your career.
The decision to strip someone of their citizenship should never be in the hands of a Minister.And it’s in the hands of Ministers like him that our country’s future rests.
It is a fundamental principle of liberalism that decisions made by the state should be open to challenge. Everyone should have access to justice and if they can’t afford to do it, they should receive help to get the advocacy they need.
It’s not a fair fight if the government can make life-changing decisions about you and there is nothing you can do about it.
Jana @Nick Baird
“ And by always dragging PIP claimants into these comparisons to achieve maximum effect they are demonising the disabled as scroungers…”
I...
Nick Baird @Peter Martin - the Government has already put a figure on it of 45%. UC claimants lose 55p of benefit for every £1 earned.
The high level of youth unemplo...
Jana “UK home islands” is a phrase I don’t believe I have come across before. The UK is located on two principle islands - Great Britain and Ireland - but incl...
David Allen Nick Baird is right to point out some flaws in Peter Martin's posting. However, when Nick says "If that same individual ... moved into a full time job paying m...
Mick Taylor FS people. You clearly don't have any idea what getting a PhD involves. It took me 8 long years (part time) and everything I did was checked by my supervisors a...
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A train ride to Newport to visit St Woolos' Cathedral
Getting people off the streets is the easy bit, keeping them in their accommodation is much harder
Tory fantasy on net zero
Jana 
Nick Baird 
David Allen 
Mick Taylor 