Author Archives: Katharine Pindar

We Liberal Democrats want power. Leader Tim Farron has stated that we want to be in government again, to have power to enact our policies, and we also seek power in local government through our elected councillors.

At present though we seem all too far away from having power. The ’fightback’ after the grim 2015 General Election results seems to have petered out. Yes, numbers of council seats have been won back, and yes, we now have 12 MPs instead of 8. But highly valued MPs have lost, scores of deposits have been forfeited, and we reach only 7% in the polls. We hoped to have massive support from Remainers, now that the country’s economy is faltering and the promises of the Brexiteers being shown up, but in the highlighted clash of May’s Tories and Corbyn’s Labour, pro-EU voters found other priorities.

Then the vote on the amendment to the Queen’s Speech to stay in the EU single market and the customs union gained only 101 ‘ayes’, as the Government and the Labour Party maintained their extraordinary negative alliance. What we Lib Dems actually want is for the British people to realise that Brexit is not only harmful but need not be carried through. But it hasn’t happened yet.

So we are as powerless as before. Or are we? It’s interesting that a Corbyn ally, Ian Lavery, says that the Labour Party is now ‘too broad a church’, and that Momentum voices are suggesting that 50 moderate Labour MPs might like to join us. Previously, Tory commentator and former MP Matthew Parris had similarly said in a Times column that his party may be too broad a church, though he didn’t go so far as to advise a breakaway movement, remarking that ‘Liberal Democrats aren’t serious about government.’

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron was given a new title by the Mail on Sunday. Under the striking large-caps headline, THE WRATH OF FIERY FARRON, Tim was reported as  fired up to denounce the Tory manifesto declaration that the value of people’s homes will be taken into account in future to help pay for extensive home care. People will only be able to safeguard £100,000 of their total assets, including their home. ‘If you have dementia’, Tim is said to have told the Mail journalist Simon Walters, ‘Theresa May is coming for you. Your house is up for grabs.’ He said it showed the hardness of May and her party. ‘She’s making the Tories nastier than ever.’

This is the Prime Minister who pledged herself when taking office last July to ‘a vision of a country that works not for the privileged few but that works for every one of us.’ Here is a May policy which seems likely to dismay every modest home-owner in England and Wales who contemplates retirement without much other wealth, in fear now that the lottery of life may make them or their partner housebound with long-term illness.

Mayism in practice already seems far from the Prime Minister’s vision. Inflation has reached its highest level in almost four years, with consumer prices at 2.7% now rising faster than earnings at 2.3%. As always, it will be the poorest families who suffer most, with the greater part of their income going on necessities including food and energy. And there is no relief proposed in the Tory manifesto for families on frozen or reduced benefits, already suffering from the government’s austerity programme. Instead, pensioners will lose the present guarantee of a 2.5% annual rise in their pensions, and primary-school children are to be denied their nutritious free school lunches, reversing policies initiated by the Liberal Democrat ministers in the Coalition government.

‘Liberal values are always worth fighting for.’ That statement is self-evident to Liberal Democrats, who believe they know what they mean by the term, and are committed to that fight.

Is it not evident in Tim Farron’s leadership of us towards a Britain ‘open, tolerant and united’? Do we not recognise the liberal values in our Preamble, as it begins, ‘ We seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community …’? Yes, we know what we mean.

But those words, ‘Liberal values are always worth fighting for’, were actually spoken, according to The Times on Monday, by the Tory sage and ex-Cabinet minister, Sir Oliver Letwin. In the report by Rachel Sylvester, under the heading ‘We all made a terrible mistake on immigration’, Sir Oliver is quoted as saying, ‘properly controlled immigration enriches the country in every sense’, and as asking Theresa May to challenge the xenophobic mood.

Good luck there, Sir Oliver. You have a surely impossible struggle to persuade your divided party to unite on that. But, welcome to the Liberal Democrat viewpoint! It is our party which has constantly stressed the values of immigration to Britain.