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Author Archives: John Marriott

Will a General Election make any real difference?

By John Marriott | Thu 23rd May 2024 - 3:16 pm

The heavens passed their verdict on this sorry government yesterday, as a waterlogged PM announced a July General Election. Many were surprised that he jumped before he was pushed. Cynics might say that, clutching at straws, he was perhaps hoping for a good run for the England team in next month’s Euros to brighten the gloom and to improve his chances. However he should remember what happened to a previous much fancied England team, whose exit from the World Cup contributed, some argued, to the Labour government’s surprise defeat back in 1970.

To be honest, after 14 years of basically Tory rule, according to the opinion polls this latest iteration has run its course and needs to go. The result on 4 July could however be closer than many pundits think. Ironically, First Past The Post could throw up some surprises, particularly for the Lib Dems, despite national polling figures of around 12%, who will be furiously targeting mainly Tory held seats. Don’t rule out a surprise or two from the Green Party either. If the Reform Party does field candidates everywhere and take votes off the Tories the SNP vote collapses in Scotland in favour of Labour, we could see a result similar to 1997.

I get the feeling that apathy might win and that the turnout generally might be low. People are generally fed up; but many still are not convinced that the Labour Party has all the answers, hence Sir Keir Starmer and Co’s cautious ‘torylite’ approach.

We could end up with a situation similar to 2010, with Labour the largest party this time and the Lib Dems in the rôle of king makers. If so, the most Ed Davey should offer if he gets that phone call from Sir Keir Starmer, is ‘confidence and supply’. Coalition governments are something that many our electorate still find hard to handle. Clearly mistakes were made, although, in fairness, if I had to live through any period of the previous decade again, I know which half I would choose.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged 2024 general election | 9 Comments

Have we ever had such an awful prime minister?

By John Marriott | Mon 7th February 2022 - 12:49 pm

I first discovered ‘politics’ when I was about 16. I’d just entered the sixth form, having taken only four years to do my O-levels and had joined the Debating Society (yes, we had them in inner city grammar schools in Leicester back then). It was at the time of the 1959 ‘Life is better under the Conservatives, don’t let Labour ruin it’ General Election, that pitted ‘Supermac’ against the cerebral Hugh Gaitskell at a time when the two main parties were still mopping up around 90% of the votes and, or so it seemed, nearly 100% of the seats between them.

So, my ‘involvement’ goes back a long way and, being a bit of an historian back then, I have experienced at first hand and read about a motley collection of mostly men, who have climbed the greasy pole of Prime Ministership and slid down it again usually into the comforting embrace of a peerage. After their demise, with one or two notable exceptions, few ordinary people have a good or kind word to say about any of them, while many who worked for them still generally paint a favourable picture, even if a few warts cannot be avoided. Do we really think that most of our politicians are really out to screw us? Surely, that says as much about our take on life as it does about the quality or talent on display at any given time.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged boris johnson | 37 Comments

When it comes to Ukraine let’s not forget the geopolitics before we rush in

By John Marriott | Fri 28th January 2022 - 11:03 am

A while ago I read a book by British journalist, Tim Marshall, entitled ‘Prisoners of Geography’, where he argues that where you live colours to a great extent your perception of the world around you. That Mr Marshall is an believer, if that’s the right word, in ‘geopolitics’ is very clear. He’s now followed this up with ‘The Power of Geography’, which I have yet to read; but I assume this takes the idea further.

Geopolitics states that politics, especially international relations, is influenced by geography. That certainly makes sense to me and I would argue, for example, that, living on an island as they do, it is perhaps not surprising that so many English voters, many with an atavistic fear of ‘Johnny Foreigner’ and being prepared to believe some of the myths pedalled by Messrs Farage and Johnson etc, voted to leave the EU.

Interestingly, in the furthest extremities of our islands, namely Scotland and Northern Ireland, support for continued EU membership was higher. With the luxury of firm frontiers and never having been occupied by a foreign ‘power’ for a millennium it is clearly very hard for many to empathise with many European citizens whose parents and grandparents have witnessed occupation at first hand. Who can blame them if many still see in closer economic and political cooperation with their neighbours a way of avoiding such disruption in the future?

There are many places where geography, or possibly our interpretation of it, have, since WW2 alone, come back to bite us, for example in Korea, the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Whether it is the arbitrary drawing and redrawing of boundaries, linguistic, cultural or religious boundaries, trying to impose ‘solutions’ based on our own, largely western perception of what is best is often a recipe for strife and unnecessary bloodshed. I would urge our leaders in the West to be careful not to overreact to what is going on today on the border between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged putin, tim farron and ukraine | 26 Comments

Are we now living in an anocracy?

By John Marriott | Thu 20th January 2022 - 12:29 pm

“Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you?”, the late Tony Hancock famously asked, “Did she die in vain?” It’s a few centuries (over eight to be precise) since King John put his mark on that famous Charter at Runnymede and I’m just wondering whether it was all worth it.

Joking aside, I really am in despair as to the direction of travel that western ‘democracy’ appears to be taking. In particular I refer to our own Anglo Saxon ‘democracy’ on both sides of the Atlantic, although the situation in many parts of western and eastern Europe does not fill me with joy either.

I suppose that a few LDV readers may not be familiar with the word ‘anocracy’. To be honest, neither was I until recently and, every time I type the word into a text, my rather ancient iPad doesn’t recognise it, insisting on underlining it in red. Well, it’s apparently a form of government, which Wikipedia tells me “mixes democratic with autocratic features”. As Teresa May famously asked; “Sounds familiar?”

In both the USA and the United Kingdom our ‘democratic’ institutions have moved little since the 18th century. In the former, its much vaunted written constitution, designed when the country was still a collection of small colonies clustered on the eastern seaboard of the continent, is now struggling to accommodate the aspirations of the changing population of a superpower. In the latter the parliamentary system, which may have worked on a severely limited franchise, when Britannia ruled the waves, is now failing to cope with the UK’s demise as a world power and its inability to find a modus vivendi with its near neighbours let alone with the rest of the world. The judgement of the late Dean Acheson is as valid today as it was back in the 1960s.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged anocracy | 24 Comments

Real recovery starts with local government

By John Marriott | Fri 23rd July 2021 - 4:08 pm

I’m sure that some of you may see my name and the title of this article and think: “There he is, banging on about local government yet again”. Guilty as charged, Your Honour. The reason for my ‘banging on’ again has been prompted by an article in today’s Guardian by one of its leader writers, entitled ‘Local Politics is cutting a path for Labour’. Being the Guardian, the answer would of course be Labour. Wouldn’t it? However, the writer’s sudden discovery that there IS political life outside the Westminster bubble is welcome. However, some of us have been well ahead of him down the road to Damascus and, having served as councillors for many years – in my case thirty – we know most of the pitfalls.

What I have discovered is that you can succeed in local government by dint of your personality rather than the colour of the rosette you wear. If Labour is waking up to the potential of local government, why isn’t the party that turned community politics into an art form?

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged labour and Local government | 30 Comments

Defending parish councils and standing up for local government

By John Marriott | Fri 19th February 2021 - 2:51 pm

Parish councils are often largely ignored in the scheme of things. However, the recent antics of Handforth Parish Council have enabled many people to view what goes on in their name in the local council chamber. It has sadly shone a less than favourable light on the more unsavoury goings on in some parish council meetings, which, believe me, are not that untypical.

From more than two decades of experience, I recognise three types of local council, the Proactive, the Reactive and the Inactive. The Proactive Council has members who can think outside the box, are prepared to exercise the full powers afforded them by central government and are not afraid to raise their Precept above inflation to provide services.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged handforth parish council and parish councils | 4 Comments

That was the year that was (with apologies to Ms Millicent Martin) – Part 2, COVID

By John Marriott | Wed 30th December 2020 - 12:58 pm

We have been living with the fallout from the 2016 Referendum for more years than many of us would care to admit to. After the General Election last December, many really did think that, followed by our exit from the EU we really had reached the “end of the beginning”. However, who would have thought this time last year that we would have spent most of 2020 hunkering down and ending with probably our largest ever peace time deficit? And for once we were not alone. How we humans have got to where we are exposes several theories. My personal view is that we humans are paying the price for encroaching ever closer to the animal world. Given nature’s shrinking environment it is not surprising that viruses are continuing to cross the species barrier and pose serious threats to our survival. What we have experienced all over the world for most of this year has been war by any other name. Just as two world wars in the space of thirty years witnessed the evolution of the aeroplane from the wood and canvas biplane of 1914 to the all metal jet plane of 1944, so the combined efforts of teams of scientists around the world have produced vaccines in less than twelve months that before had taken years to perfect, and in the case of a vaccine against HIV/AIDS, not at all.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged coronavirus | 5 Comments

That was the year that was (with apologies to Ms Millicent Martin) – Part 1, Brexit

By John Marriott | Tue 29th December 2020 - 12:31 pm

In his Christmas radio broadcast in 1939, the Queen’s father quoted the poem by Minnie Louise Haskins; “I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year; ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown’”. The answer came back; ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God’. Now, I have no problem with people putting their faith in the Almighty. Many of us today probably think that our salvation might rest more in our own hands. In many ways, what we have faced in 2020 and what are likely to face in 2021 in the form of a potentially existential threat, is not dissimilar to what my parents faced back in 1940, as my father was preparing to embark with the BEF for France and Belgium, fortunately to return a few months later via Dunkirk. As I wasn’t born until 1943, I’m pretty glad he did! For me and I suppose for many people, two issues dominated 2020 and, as neither has been resolved completely, are set to play a decisive rôle in 2021 as well. I’m sure that you can guess what these ‘issues’ are.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit | 4 Comments

Post-18 education – a chance for the Lib Dems to make a real impact?

By John Marriott | Tue 14th July 2020 - 1:02 pm

Embed from Getty Images
The Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson MP, has recently placed the Blair philosophy of ‘further education’ in doubt by saying that we are sending too many young people to ‘university’. You might say that this isn’t that surprising coming from a Tory, albeit one who was educated in a state comprehensive school.

However, quite a few people have been thinking this for years and some, like me, have been prepared to say it out loud. Does that make us bad people? Have we perhaps lost our way as a nation when it comes to equipping our young people with the knowledge and skills not only to make a success of their lives but also to make a valuable contribution to our nation’s future economic success?

We can’t keep relying on other countries to provide us with qualified people, whether they be doctors, nurses, scientists, teachers and engineers or bricklayers, plumbers and joiners. We have got to start producing more of our own home-grown material and not expect other countries to provide us with the qualified people we undoubtedly need. The same also surely applies in this uncertain age to manufactured goods.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged comprehensive schools, higher education, polytechnics, secondary modern schools and university | 23 Comments

When politics really does take a back seat

By John Marriott | Sat 28th March 2020 - 1:00 pm

Professor David Runciman, writing in the Guardian this week, may be right about a layer of politics being stripped away in this current crisis and, as he describes it, there being “a trade off between personal liberty and collective choice”. Speaking to his nation on the Edison phonograph at the start of World War One, Kaiser Wilhelm II ended his address with the words; “I recognise no parties any more, only Germans”.

Whether we like it or not, what we are now in the middle of is a war; but, as Mr Spock might have said to Captain James Kirk; “not as we know it”. Wilhelm was the head, despite the trappings of democracy, of a basically autocratic regime, which sought to shore up its power by enlisting patriotism, and it worked for a while as it did also in Tsarist Russia, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey.

I know that there are many people, who suspect the motives of many of those advocating obedience rather than debate; but these are extraordinary times for mankind. As Dr Liam Fox, not someone whose views I generally share, wrote last weekend, we, who have only been around as a species some 200,000 years, are facing an ‘enemy’ that has survived for millions.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged coronavirus, politics and professor david runciman | 32 Comments

Are we witnessing the Strange Death of Socialist England?

By John Marriott | Wed 18th December 2019 - 2:32 pm

Back in 1935 Anglo-American historian, George Dangerfield, described in his book ‘The Strange Death of Liberal England’ how the Liberal Party of Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George, succumbed between 1906 and 1914 to the multiple assaults of Irish Home Rule, the reform of the House of Lords, Women’s Suffrage and the militancy of the Trades Unions. I would, with hindsight, add to that the rise of the Labour Party, which, after being shielded under the liberal wing, eventually took flight and replaced its sponsor as the main rival to the Conservative Party.

Well, I wonder whether, following this latest Labour debacle, …

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Posted in Op-eds | 38 Comments

Are we, at last, witnessing the strange death of Conservative England?

By John Marriott | Thu 3rd October 2019 - 10:25 am

What does the Conservative party stand for in 2019?’ is a question asked in Tuesday’s Guardian’s Journal section by sociologist, William Davies. That got me thinking back to the count in the early hours of Friday morning in the newly formed Sleaford and North Hykeham Parliamentary at the end of the 1997 General Election, my only foray into the maelstrom of national party politics. As the Lib Dem candidate, who finished a respectable third behind a resurgent Labour Party and ahead of Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party, I watched Douglas Hogg give his customary acceptance speech. I remember vividly the words he used. Casting his eye over a mass of blue rosettes in the audience, he ended by saying; “We Tories always win in the end”.

Living for most of my adult life in Lincolnshire, with the notable exception of the City of Lincoln, I can vouch for that remark. Having read his article, I just wonder whether, at last, Mr Davies might be on to something. I’ve finally began to read ‘The Strange Death of Liberal England’ by the late Anglo-American historian, George Dangerfield. I often ask myself why people vote Conservative, although I do confess having done so once in a General Election myself back in 1970 before four years living and working abroad made me see the error of my ways.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged conservatives | 9 Comments

It’s time to fix our democracy, before it’s too late

By John Marriott | Tue 18th June 2019 - 8:38 am

Sorry, folks, but is anyone else getting pretty fed up with People’s Votes, Brexit and Leadership Hustings in LDV? Of course these things are important; but there really IS more to life! Even if all that gets sorted out in the next few months/years (fat chance of that, most of you will probably say) we are still left with a democracy which, while currently in A & E, might soon be heading for intensive care unless we wake up. I know that this kind of esoteric musing appeals to the political anorak rather than a hardworking citizen trying to keep …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged democracy | 45 Comments

Local Government is facing what could be an existential crisis. How can it be saved?

By John Marriott | Wed 1st August 2018 - 4:34 pm

Some of you may think that the title of this piece is another example of hyperbole. You might be right as the local government has faced crises before. However, as someone with 30 years’ continuous service as a local councillor, I do think that what we have come to expect concerning local services could be something we will in future only read about in history books unless something is done to reverse the downward spiral.

Especially since WW2 governments of all political hues have over the years progressively emasculated local councils, not only by taking many of their responsibilities away from …

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Posted in Local government, News and Op-eds | Tagged funding councils | 37 Comments

The Thorpe Affair – What if?

By John Marriott | Sun 17th June 2018 - 8:55 am

I am one of those with a fascination for history, who sometimes indulge in the practice of ‘What if?’. Some of you may know what I mean; but, if not, here are a few examples. Let’s start with 1066. What if King Harald had actually defeated Duke William of Normandy at the battle of Hastings? Scroll forward some eight hundred years and ask yourself what if President Abraham Lincoln had not attended Ford’s Theatre on that fateful night in April 1865? What if Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s driver hadn’t taken a detour in Sarajevo in June 1914 or what if Adolf Hitler hadn’t shortened his speech at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in November 1939 and left early? And finally, more recently and perhaps nearer to home, what if Nick Clegg hadn’t accepted David Cameron’s ‘generous offer’ in May 2010? I’m sure you get the idea.

So, you might say, what has this got to do with Jeremy Thorpe and the Liberal Party? Well, what if, following a massive surge in support (around 20% of the popular vote) which, thanks to FPTP, resulted in only a derisory 14 MPs, he had managed to win over his colleagues and the party grassroots and accept the offer of Ted Heath to join a coalition government following the ‘Who governs Britain’ general election of February 1974?

The ‘baby boomers’ will surely remember the early 1970s, which started out with Heath’s surprise victory in the ‘70 General Election, when his government embarked upon a race for growth with the infamous ‘Barber Boom’, that, despite the inflation it eventually unleashed, especially in the housing market, appeared to many, even up to the summer of 1973, to be bearing fruit in economic terms, despite storm clouds on the horizon.

What really derailed the ‘project’, besides the Heath government’s inability to deal effectively with Trades Union militancy and ineffective management, was the OPEC oil embargo following the Yom Kippur War between the Arab states and Israel in October 1973 which saw oil prices quadruple in a matter of months, thus presenting unions such as the NUM with an open goal. Just to think that, only a few years earlier, the Economic Minister of the booming West German economy, Karl Schiller, had confidently claimed that “the future belongs to oil”.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged counter-factual | 18 Comments

So, where do the Liberal Democrats go from here?

By John Marriott | Mon 7th May 2018 - 8:34 am

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

These famous words, spoken by former Liberal, Winston Churchill, in 1942 after the second victorious Battle of El Alamein, could very well sum up where the Liberal Democrats find themselves after what many would see as a very satisfactory comeback after a few difficult years. But, as they say, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. There is no guarantee that even moderate success at local elections will translate into success in a General Election. Despite the accusation …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged future strategy | 50 Comments

The ‘Education battlefield’

By John Marriott | Tue 10th April 2018 - 11:02 am

It wasn’t always Tory v Labour, and it doesn’t have to be again!

State education, particularly at secondary level, is like the proverbial curate’s egg, thanks largely to mistakes made by politicians of all parties over the past sixty years – and I include the 2010-2015 coalition as well. However, much of the mess was already in place by the beginning of this decade so I suppose that we could call it a joint affair between Tories and Labour. However, much of the success of state education is down to Liberals, as were the ideas behind the Welfare State, which emerged from the 1942 Beveridge Report.

State education, that is to say, the education of the many not the few, really began with the 1870 Elementary Education Act, and drafted by Liberal MP William Forester, which established through democratically elected School Boards, voluntary elementary education for children from 5 to 13 (raised to 14 in the 1918 Fisher Act). What Forster wanted to achieve was to retain Britain’s competitive edge in world trade. To do that, he needed an educated workforce (where have we heard that before?). This was achieved in spite of massive opposition from certain quarters, who saw no reason to educate the working classes above a certain rudimentary level. The 1901 Balfour Act, opposed largely by the Liberal Party and non conformists, replaced local School Boards with Local Education Authorities and succeeded in allowing the C of E and Catholic Churches to get on board and possibly was the main reason why the Tories were virtually annihilated at the 1906 General Election.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged education | 29 Comments

How to pay for local services?

By John Marriott | Mon 12th February 2018 - 5:26 pm

For many years now, governments of all political colours have seen fit to centralise more and more powers to themselves. The result of this has impacted directly on the councils that once were the major providers of services that have improved the lives for generations of our citizens. Today, they are a shadow of their former selves, whose lack of influence is clearly reflected in poor turnouts in local elections.

There have been promises to reverse the centralisation of powers and to devolve many of the powers back from where they have been taken over many years. So far, progress has been painfully slow.

Whatever services that remain the responsibility of local government must still be paid for. Traditionally the bulk of the funding came from central government grant, based on a formula devised and administered in Whitehall. The rest (around 30%) came from revenue and a smaller contribution from the recipients of those services via the Council Tax.

The strains are now really beginning to show. The 2010-2015 Coalition Government used its austerity programme to cut its central grant progressively and used the so called ‘Council Tax Freeze Grant’ to bribe councils not to raise Council Tax, at least not above 2%. The result was that a council like Lincolnshire that accepted the grant was forced massively to reduce its staff and many of the services it provided, libraries being just one example, in an attempt to protect Frontline Services such as Adult Social Care. Interestingly, had the County not accepted the grant but had raised Council Tax by 1.99% for the duration of the grant, it would now be around £30 million better off.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged local government finance | 21 Comments

We need to challenge some of those Brexit statements

By John Marriott | Mon 18th April 2016 - 3:34 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Well, the ‘official’ EU referendum campaign has finally begun. Funny, it appears to have been going on for months already.

I was interested to see the images of the two official campaigns juxtaposed the other day in the BBC report on my TV screen. The ‘Leave’ campaign was illustrated by old footage of Tories Grayling, Gove and Whittingdale etc. manning the phone lines, whereas the ‘In’ footage showed Tory, Labour and Lib Dem politicians, including the Prime Minister, doing the same thing. For an organisation that has tried so far to be unfailingly impartial in its reporting of the campaign in its ‘phoney war’ stage, I have a feeling that the BBC has possibly given the ‘In’ campaign a visual leg up, by showing its multi party nature. Now, whether we get politicians of different parties actually sharing a platform as we did in 1975 is a different matter.

So far, the arguments for and against have been pretty well rehearsed. We should park immigration for a moment, which could be the deciding factor, but which will still pose problems for us whether or not we stay in the EU. As an EU pragmatist, who thinks that, on balance, leaving the EU now would be a massive gamble, I do have to say that some of the arguments being put forward repeatedly by the Brexiters need challenging.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged eu and eu referendum | 51 Comments

EU Referendum: Are you still undecided?

By John Marriott | Fri 25th March 2016 - 12:55 pm

Those wishing to stay in the EU will point to the economic benefits of membership of what is still the world’s largest single market in an increasingly dangerous world and the unnecessary risks of our coming out, while those opposed to continued membership will cite the need to take back sovereignty ceded gradually to Brussels over the past forty years and to regain control of our borders. Their view is that then we could strike deals with the rest of the world and have a much more money to spend as we would not be paying into the EU coffers.

Neither side of the argument is in any way watertight. The ‘Common Market’ which some of us voted to remain in over forty years ago was very different from what we have created today. There are serious questions about the democratic deficit and whether it is still fit for purpose. Despite delivering prosperity and a certain degree of stability for over half a century there are some serious question marks over its its long term future. The Euro has hardly been a massive success and the EU GDP is currently shrinking. Probably the single biggest crisis for us all both in and out of the EU is how it will deal with migration from the Middle East and Africa, which currently shows no sign of abating.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged eu and eu referendum | 45 Comments

The Government finally “nationalises” all our schools

By John Marriott | Wed 23rd March 2016 - 5:05 pm

So the government has finally decided to nationalise our nation’s schools. At least we now know where we stand. So, if an academy fails under the new system, the buck goes straight to the Secretary of State and not, as now, to the Local Education Authority (which, I assume will simply disappear).

When are we going to stop messing about with education? We are dealing with human beings, not building motor cars, for goodness sake. I note that the current secretary, like most of her cabinet colleagues, was educated privately. In the independent sector, business acumen and PR are part of the DNA of its member schools. “Sell yourself or go under”- and a few actually do!

Some have you may be aware of the goings on at an academy chain in Lincoln where the former Executive Head and his Director of Finance recently went on trial and, to many local people’s amazement, were acquitted. Only this week it was announced that another secondary academy, the one I taught at for 23 years, is having to face redundancies because of some of its grants being cut. Now it is planned also to remove parent representatives from governing bodies, what chance will the local community have to influence their schools?

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged academies, education and england | 32 Comments

One particular “fear” could decide the result of the EU Referendum

By John Marriott | Fri 4th March 2016 - 10:55 am

BMW writes to its UK employees highlighting the dangers of Brexit. A French minister threatens to wave through migrants at Calais en route to Dover and to roll out the red carpet to welcome financial services to his country if we leave. Boris and others say none of this will happen. Great Britain still is great. From his residence across the Channel Lord Nigel Lawson tells us not to worry. The EU needs us more than we need them. Confused? I bet many people are.

Like Lord William Hague, I’m an EU pragmatist. Better inside the tent etc. Unlike our former leader I don’t think that the EU will be ‘about the same’ in ten years’ time. The remarks from Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, following last week’s summit were very apposite. The ‘negotiations’ undertaken by David Cameron, while casually dismissed as ‘thin gruel’ by Eurosceptics like Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, have whetted the appetite of many recent, and not so recent arrivals in the EU for a fundamental change of direction for a project that started life in the aftermath of WW2 when many parts of the world were on their uppers and the numbers of nations actually making things was a shadow of what exists today.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged eu referendum and immigration | 14 Comments

Putting our faith in ‘Leaders’ – There are lessons to be learned

By John Marriott | Tue 2nd February 2016 - 12:01 pm

The recent acquittal of the former Executive Head of the Lincoln Priory Chain of Academies and his Director of Finance appears to have caused a few raised eyebrows in many areas. It is not my intention to pass my own personal judgement on the rights and wrongs of the case. What concerns me more is the fact that the Department of Education considered there to be sufficient grounds to ask the local police to conduct an enquiry which eventually led to a court case that is set to cost the taxpayer a considerable amount of money.

This is not the first time that so called ‘Super Heads’ have made the headlines following revelations about their conduct. If you add to that the affair in 2013 of Lincolnshire’s Acting Chief Constable, who was first suspended by our Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), was exonerated by an enquiry and then reinstated with an apology from the PCC at a cost to the taxpayer of around £160,000, you can see that putting our faith in the judgement of individuals without effective and stringent checks and balances can land us in a great deal of trouble and cause embarrassment to institutions that ought to have our respect.

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Posted in Op-eds | 13 Comments

The crisis in the Middle East – Is this the ‘end of the beginning’?

By John Marriott | Mon 7th December 2015 - 9:00 am

View image | gettyimages.com

As the tide of war turned in 1942 following the second battle of El Alamein, Winston Churchill spoke about “the end of the beginning” of the fight back against fascist oppression. I have to confess that these words went through my mind as I sat through many hours of TV parliamentary debate last Wednesday on whether or not to bomb Daesh in Syria. For those who are cynical about the goings on at Westminster, this was an occasion that illustrated perfectly how important our parliamentary democracy really is.

There were some cracking speeches on both sides. Tim Farron rose in my estimation with his contribution, as did Margaret Beckett and Alan Johnson and, as for Hilary Benn, could this be the end of the beginning of his march to the leadership of his party? I noticed that one critic claimed it was short on facts; but there are times when “fight them on the breaches” carries more emotional and symbolic weight than the practicality of fighting on sand. I just wonder whether the reaction to his speech had anything to do with the shoring up of Labour’s majority in the Oldham by-election.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged syria, syria air strikes, tim farron and winston churchill | 20 Comments

Working together to stay in the EU

By John Marriott | Mon 9th November 2015 - 2:43 pm

View image | gettyimages.com

I was personally impressed by the article in last Wednesday’s Guardian by Labour’s Pat McFadden MP, which challenged the Brexiters to spell out just what life would be like for us if we chose to leave the European Union. Coupled with the recent sensible remarks from his party colleague, everyone’s favourite ex-postie, Alan Johnson MP, and the furious back tracking of Messrs Cameron and Osbourne, it gives me hope that all like minded people WILL bury their differences and show a united front against forces both political and popular that seem to think that we can throw our weight around as we did a hundred years or more ago.

As someone who has concerns about the current Lib Dem tactics on the upcoming EU referendum, which seem to be operating in a bubble, with no reference to political reality, the chances of politicians from most, if not quite all, parties sharing both physical and media platforms in the run up to the vote, whenever it takes place, makes a great deal of sense.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit and eu | 13 Comments

Working with other parties in Local Government – What is it about Labour?

By John Marriott | Fri 2nd October 2015 - 3:00 pm

I have been fortunate, if that’s the right word, to have managed to stay a councillor at various levels of local government since 1987. However, with advancing years playing a greater role, I am currently only serving on the Lincolnshire County Council. For over 28 years I have had to work with colleagues of all political persuasion and some who profess to have none, so I have a fair amount of experience of how they react to the fact that I just happen to be a Liberal Democrat. Perhaps ‘true blue’ Lincolnshire is not a good example from which to draw; but it’s all I know.

There is no doubt in my mind that it is far easier to get on with Conservatives than it has ever been my experience with Labour members. Perhaps it is because Tories expect to rule around here and, indeed, since the County Council was established as a local authority in 1973, until two years ago, only once before have the Tories failed to form an majority administration, namely between 1993 and 1997 when Labour and Lib Dems ran the show. Although I was only a humble Town and District Councillor at that time, I do recall talking to my County Council colleagues and being told what hard work it was trying to get agreement from the larger Labour group.

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Posted in News | Tagged labour and Local government | 50 Comments

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