Author Archives: Lord William Wallace

Lord William Wallace

National Conversations we need to have

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 27th May 2026 - 11:57 am

Nearly a year ago the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) set out its understanding of the transformed international environment this country now faces, and called for the government to lead ‘a national conversation’ on how we should respond.  Yet since then there has been silence from the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and only muffled warnings about Russian activities from the Defence Secretary – to the intense frustration of Lord Robertson and General Barrons, two of its authors.  Robertson has accused the government of ‘corrosive complacency’ in its passive response.

We desperately need a number of intense national …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Lord William Wallace

The UK’s political leadership deficit

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 13th May 2026 - 6:02 pm

Political leadership is about changing the public agenda. Keir Starmer has failed to sway public opinion on major issues. Nigel Farage has been a much more effective political leader, albeit for a fraudulent project. He successfully made the argument for leaving the EU against the conventional wisdom of the majority of the British political elite and political commentators.

Margaret Thatcher was in this sense also a highly effective leader. She defied the civil service, many within her own party and Cabinet, and wide sections of the public, and drove through a deliberate shrinking of the size and functions of the state, through tax cuts, privatization, curbs on local government, selling off social housing and more. Politicians today still hesitate to challenge assumptions about outsourcing of public services or pledging to lower taxes, in spite of the very different economic and demographic circumstances we face. The nationalization of British Steel and the return of the railways to unified public management are moves away from neo-liberal orthodoxy – but the water industry still seems a step too far.

Keir Starmer has proved incapable of engaging with the public. The Strategic Defence Review, published ten months ago, called for a ‘National Conversation’ on the multiple threats our country now faces and the response needed to meet them. But we have been told almost nothing since then, and the promised Defence Industrial Plan is still blocked by the Treasury’s refusal to fund it. He’s just delivered another speech on how to ‘reset’ our relations with the EU, which began with some splendid rhetoric and ended with a promise of ensuring better youth mobility, without attempting to explain the complexities of closer cooperation with our neighbours or the trade-offs between sovereignty and shared prosperity and security that we have to make. Worst of all, neither the prime minister or his chancellor have tried to engage the public on the hard choices to be made on public spending and investment in pursuit of sustainable economic growth.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Defending Liberalism against the illiberal counter-attack

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 14th April 2026 - 9:37 am

In Britain, the USA and across Europe an active cultural war is being fought between liberalism and nationalistic reactionaries.  I regret that British Liberal Democrats are playing so small a part in this conflict – fought through the intellectual media and think tank world, within Christian churches (and within Judaism) and across university campuses. Anti-liberal tracts and articles spill out from well-funded think tanks and newspapers in the USA, Britain and elsewhere. Liberal rebuttals are fewer. But Allen Lane/Penguin have just published one full-length rebuttal: ‘Centrists of the World Unite: the lost genius of Liberalism’, by Adrian Wooldridge, who has spent most of his career on the staff of The Economist.

In over 300 pages Wooldridge takes us from the 16th and 17th century origins of liberalism to its contemporary dilemmas. His underlying theme is that liberalism – defined as ‘the belief that society starts with the individual rather than the collective that power is so dangerous that it needs to be restrained, that truth can be striven-for only through open discussion’ – has twice been successfully reinterpreted to meet the challenges of social, economic and international changes, and that we now need a third confident reinterpretation to counter the anti-liberal onslaught we face today.

Continue reading »
Posted in Books and Op-eds | 11 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Defending Local Democracy

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 2nd April 2026 - 9:20 am

While we are all campaigning in this year’s local elections, Liberal Democrats need to be aware of the implications of the ‘English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill’, which has already passed the Commons and is now close to completing its passage in the Lords.  It’s designed to complete the project the Conservatives began of imposing elected mayors and ‘Combined Authorities’ all across England, with larger unitary authorities to replace remaining district and county councils.

As the Liberal Democrat group’s Cabinet Office spokesman, I had not intended to get actively involved in the Bill beyond its constitutional significance for the governance of the United Kingdom – which is almost ignored in the Bill.  Sitting alongside our Bill team as we moved from Second Reading through eight days of committee and two days of voting on amendments at report stage (one more to come on April 13th), I’ve become more and more appalled – like my colleagues – of what it means for local democracy.

Its title itself is fraudulent.  It’s about decentralization, not real devolution, and it empowers mayors, not communities.  Its underlying assumption is that the minimum size for efficient local administration is a ‘community’ of half a million people, with ‘strategic’ decisions taken above that level by mayors in ‘Combined Authorities’ responsible for 1-2 million or more.  Just for comparison, there are two sovereign European states with populations of half a million – Malta and Iceland, each with subordinate tiers of democratic government.  Luxembourg is slightly larger.  The larger combined authorities cater for populations approaching those of the Baltic and Nordic states.  They are to be governed by executive mayors, who will appoint a substantial number of ‘commissioners’ as responsible for specific areas – Parliament is still contesting how many they may appoint.  Councillors from the unitary authorities below them will have limited powers of scrutiny.

London is both a model and an exception for this reform.  Its 32 boroughs (plus the City of London) range from 150,000 to 390,000 people, with an elected Assembly to counterbalance the executive Mayor and his appointed deputies.  But there are murmurings that ministers and officials regard London boroughs as ‘outdated’ and wish as soon as possible to shrink their number to some 6-8.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Can we prevent Middle Eastern conflict dividing British politics and society?

By Lord William Wallace | Mon 2nd March 2026 - 3:14 pm

Immediate domestic reactions to American bombing of Iran have displayed how divided British political parties are on Israel, Iran and US approaches to Middle Eastern politics. Priti Patel as Conservative shadow foreign secretary was firm in her support. Nigel Farage was even more enthusiastic and uncritical. Liberal Democrat MPs have been critical, and insistent that the UK should not become directly involved. Labour has been cautious, contributing only to ‘defensive’ operations against Iranian responses. The Greens have condemned the American attack. The old idea that politicians of all parties should stand shoulder to shoulder when international crisis threatens has long gone.

Attitudes to the USA partly shape this. But we have to be aware, in our ethnically and religiously diverse country, of the domestic dimension, and do whatever we can to limit bitter divisions abroad from becoming rooted within Britain. We have a valued and long-established Jewish community, many of whom are deeply unhappy about Bibi Netanyahu’s hardline policies but who nevertheless take their turn in guarding their synagogue and defending their community. We have also a growing Muslim community, from South Asia, Yemen, the Gulf states, Malaysia and East and West Africa – many first-generation immigrants, but most now their children, grandchildren or even great-grandchildren. Younger British Muslims naturally feel solidarity with their Palestinian and Iranian counterparts. Relations between British Hindus and Muslims of South Asian origin have in some places been adversely affected by Prime Minister Modi’s Hindu nationalism, feeding into a narrative of Islam under attack.

Continue reading »
Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged and | 13 Comments
Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes… Defending Liberal Democracy against populist powers

By Lord William Wallace | Sun 25th January 2026 - 8:43 am

As we watch Donald Trump knock down the checks and balances built into the US constitution to constrain the powers of executive Presidents, with the acquiescence of the Republican Party,  we need to think hard – and campaign about – the absence of similar checks within our own system of government.  Britain’s unwritten constitution has rested, as Peter Hennessy famously said, on the ‘good chaps’ theory of constitutional behaviour: that no political leader who won a majority in the House of Commons would ever behave in an ungentlemanly fashion.  Across Europe as well as in the USA we’re now learning that populist leaders are not gentlemen.  So we must be out there making the case against unlimited populist government and for reforms to strengthen constitutional liberal democracy.

Reform of our over-centralised political institutions is at last creeping from the realm of political nerds into the field of active discussion.  That’s partly because of a rising awareness that the outcome of the next election could become a constitutional crisis – either a Commons without any party large enough to form a government on its own or with only one coalition partner, or a party with a majority of seats elected on less than a third of those voting.  It’s partly because we face a crisis of public distrust in national politics, with surveys showing much higher levels here than in comparable European democracies.  And it’s partly that Britain is evidently suffering from an over-centralised state, in which the Prime Minister now struggles to with so many issues at once that long-term thinking is impossible.

Asked to contribute the other week to a discussion at the annual conference of the Institute for Government (the leading think tank on Whitehall, central government and public services), Andy Burnham argued that ‘we need to reform Westminster to bring about the reform of Whitehall.’.  Our first-past-the-post electoral system, he went on, builds in a two-party system that rests on staged confrontation between government and its institutionalised opposition.  The Whips’ control of government business and the majority party’s MPs stifles critical and constructive debate and inhibits cross-party cooperation.  The Financial Times published a letter last Friday on similar lines.  A list of City leaders set out ‘the economic case for coalition government’, arguing that ‘the see-saw of policies’ which accompanies the constant shuffling of ministers in this ‘era of politics as a blood sport’ deters investment and damages business confidence.  The FT followed up with a full-page weekend article by Andy Haldane declaring that ‘the public has lost faith in the political system’ and asking ‘Has Britain become ungovernable?’

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 9 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Coalition Government again?

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 2nd January 2026 - 4:22 pm

Just before the Christmas recess I sat down in the Commons cafeteria opposite a Conservative front-bencher whom I knew.  ‘There will have to be a coalition after the next election,’ he told me, ‘bringing you together with Labour and the Greens.’  I realised after absorbing this that he was effectively telling me that the Conservatives could not revive in time to hope for a majority, and that the prospect of either a Reform majority or a Tory-Reform coalition gave him nightmares.

It’s 3½ years at most until the next general election.  Plenty of crises and shifts in political moods may intervene to alter the pattern that opinion polls and local by-elections have indicated over the past year – of five parties between 10% and 30% in England, with six or more competitive in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.  But it’s wise to anticipate the likelihood of an indecisive outcome.  We would probably then have to negotiate – and successfully manage – a multiparty government.  The current Labour Government is floundering in large part because the campaign it fought to win its majority did not provide it with the programme needed for successful government in difficult domestic and international circumstances.  The circumstances that will face the incoming government – of whatever colours – in 2029 are likely to be even more difficult than in 2024.

Many readers of LibDem Voice will groan at the thought of entering another coalition.  But we’re in politics to promote liberal principles, and the most effective way to promote them is to be in power, locally and nationally.  So we need to learn lessons from the 2010-15 coalition and from earlier attempts to cooperate with other parties.

To start with, we need to admit that Liberals are instinctively too inclined to trust others, to be optimistic about outcomes and to believe in rational negotiation. David Steel was naively confident that Callaghan would reward the support we offered his shaky government in 1977-8.   In 1996-8 Paddy Ashdown was far too trusting of Tony Blair, not appreciating the hard and partisan men behind him.  Nick Clegg set out to demonstrate that coalition government would work, without being sufficiently suspicious of those behind Cameron who wanted to push through their Conservative agenda while leaving the Liberal Democrats to take as much of the blame as possible.  Next time we have to be harder, more suspicious and more politically partisan.

In the 2010 coalition government the 53 Liberal Democrat MPs served to close the small gap between the 306 Tory seats and an overall majority: too much of an imbalance to stop most Conservative ministers behaving as if they were still the majority party, let alone to change significantly the working methods of Downing Street, Whitehall and Westminster.  Parliamentary numbers matter enormously in our flawed political system.  If no party in the government has much above 200 MPs, and we have gained well over 100, we will be better placed from the outset.  Winning more seats is a necessary precondition for effective shared government.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 49 Comments
Lord William Wallace

A ‘whole society’ response to threats to national security

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 12th December 2025 - 11:55 am

How seriously should we now take threats to Britain’s national security?   Liberals by temperament have never been hawkish on defence, though concerned increasingly with threats to society and economy like pandemic diseases and climate change.   We’ve been happy with the progressive transfer of funds for defence into health and welfare since the end of the Cold War 35 years ago, including the selling-off of former barracks and training centres for what used to be the Territorial Army – though we’ve been very unhappy about recent cuts in development spending to find money for defence.  But the international situation has now changed for the worse.  Russian ships are prospecting for cables around our coasts, drones hover over neighbouring countries, there are cyber-attacks and occasional sabotage on British soil, and President Trump trusts Russia more than the UK and our European neighbours.

In July the government published a major Strategic Defence Review (SDR).  The Prime Minister’s introduction declared that ‘when Russia is waging war on our continent and probing our defences at home, we must meet the danger head on.’  He did not add that we may well have to meet the danger – and the new forms of hybrid warfare that includes – without the full support of the USA.  The SDR and associated documents – the ‘National Security Strategy’, covering also climate and health threats, and the ‘UK Government Resilience Action Plan’ – set out some radical ideas about what is needed to respond.  The government has promised an increase of 1% of GDP on defence and security within the next 4-5 years, to double to 5% of GDP by 2035 – not a sign of immediate urgency.  More immediately the SDR calls for a ‘national conversation’ to engage the public in the ‘whole society’ response that is required.

Since then there has been silence. No national conversation has been launched by our timid and distracted government.  The budget has put off spending more on security and defence; the Ministry of Defence has reportedly been told to hold back on several spending programmes.  General Sir Richard Barrons, one of the three lead-authors of the SDR (along with George Robertson and Fiona Hill) has just told a think-tank conference that the budget means that ‘for two years defence goes backwards’.  Conservatives and Reform are so preoccupied with cutting taxes that they have made no criticisms of this, nor said anything about security and defence as priorities.  So what should we be saying, against the weight of right-wing focus on lower taxes and the overall timidity of the Labour government?

The most radical concept, for me, in the SDR is the call for a ‘whole society’ approach to national security.  After several decades in which government has engaged its citizens less and less in public life or forms of public service, this conjures up the idea of active citizenship, in local communities as well as contributing to national efforts, volunteering to respond to national emergencies and domestic and external threats.  It emphasises local responses, expanding civilian rescue teams, emergency responders, police and military reserves, and a new Home Defence Force, ‘to improve national resilience.’  This would be a reversal of what we have seen in recent decades, with Labour governments seeing themselves as delivering services to a largely passive population, Conservatives denigrating public service, squeezing local government and selling off Territorial Army depots and drill halls.  

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Are we witnessing the end of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the US

By Lord William Wallace | Sun 30th November 2025 - 9:14 am

Ever since 1941 the fundamental assumption of British foreign policy has been that the ‘special relationship’ with the USA is the foundation of our international security and status.  Winston Churchill reimagined Britain as America’s ‘Ango-Saxon’ partner, and as ‘the bridge’ between North America and continental Europe.  Huge numbers of US forces were based in Britain during the war; 10,000 US personnel, in several USAF airbases and intelligence stations, still remain.  Access to US intelligence, nuclear missiles and defence technology is crucial to our defence and security.  The UK has of course become more and more the junior partner in the relationship, but still – policy-makers have argued – sufficiently valuable to Washington to continue to give us privileged status.

What if the special relationship is now over?  President Trump has said he looks forward to Germany becoming the leading power within NATO.  London has been left as much in the dark on Trump’s latest plan for Ukraine as Paris, Berlin and Rome.  Several generations after the shared experience of World War Two that created the special relationship, fewer and fewer Americans (in an increasingly diverse society) see themselves as part of an Anglo-Saxon world or feel any particular affection for Britain.  

Trump, Vance and others on the hard right see Britain as a territory to be gained, a country to be converted to their vision of free market capitalism and ‘Christian nationalism.’  Money flows into Britain from US foundations promoting ‘traditional values’ and patriarchal society.  The US ambassador in London intervenes in public procurement decisions to protest that our government ought to favour US companies.  But there’s little sense of partnership, only repeated denigration of today’s British society and liberal values.

Tony Blair saw Britain as America’s privileged partner because we also played a leading role in Europe.  Boris Johnson fantasised that we could regain a global role without Europe, only to find that we could not even send a carrier task force to the Pacific without support from other navies.  The UK outside the EU remains of some importance to the USA, if we dared to remind Washington.  We’ve just agreed to pay Mauritius £100m a year for the US base on Diego Garcia.  The US benefits from intelligence stations and access to bases in the UK, Cyprus, Ascension Island and beyond.  But US Administrations focussed on China and Latin America place less value on the sharing of other global assets.  ‘America First’ advocates on the right of the MAGA movement are now denigrating Winston Churchill as a warmonger, who took the USA into war in Europe when he should have made peace with Germany.  Even if the Democrats regain control of the Presidency this isolationist resurgence will block a return to Atlantic cooperation.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 21 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Why does the UK handle budgets like this?

By Lord William Wallace | Sun 9th November 2025 - 8:45 am

Another budget, and another set of parliamentary debates – and newspaper comments – that will generate much heat but very little light about the choices Britain faces in raising state revenue and funding public services.  Since Margaret Thatcher used revenues from North Sea oil and receipts from privatization to fund current spending through asset sales rather than higher taxes, Britain has been stuck with a false self-image that we can be a country of both lower taxes than our continental counterparts and comparably generous public services.  Brexit of course, with its consequences in in depressing economic growth, has made the choices more difficult.  But we still have politicians calling for tax cuts without suggesting what impact on public spending they will have.  How do they get away with it?

I’ve just been reading a paper a novice Liberal Democrat MP wrote 25 years ago on how badly the British Parliament handles budgetary scrutiny and debates on spending and taxation.  He notes that the British Parliament has one of the weakest systems for parliamentary influence over government expenditure in the world.  He condemns the way in which taxation and spending are discussed separately rather than as unavoidably linked, with changes in the tax structure sprung from the Chancellor’s budget statement rather than carefully examined for their impact on the economy – which has led to the UK now having one of the most complex and untidy systems of taxation in the developed world.  He decries the false divide between ‘policy’ and ‘finance’ – the first the province of ministers, the second the responsibility of permanent secretaries who answer to the Public Accounts Committee for how funds have been spent. ‘It matters how a country takes its decisions on the budget. It may be less exciting, but process matters’, Ed Davey argued.  He therefore made a series of proposals to strengthen the role of MPs in discussing financial choices and in later scrutinising how well funds have been spent.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 6 Comments
Lord William Wallace

We need to talk about the end of life

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 31st October 2025 - 1:55 pm

We need to talk about how the UK supports its growing number of older people, and in particular about the end of life. One of the many weaknesses of British politics is that its structure does not make it easy to link related issues, But the age of retirement, pensions for the elderly, the rising proportion of the NHS budget spent on those over 70, the cost of drugs, social care, palliative care, and the debate over assisted dying, are all interlinked – above all by the pressures they all put (now and potentially) on the UK budget.

The problem of providing and funding long-term care for the elderly was grasped by (Liberal Democrat minister) Stephen Williams during the coalition government, but weakly supported by Conservatives and opposed by the Labour opposition.

Theresa May as Prime Minister tried again to address the balance between private and public funding of long-term care, only for Labour to attack it as a ‘Death Tax.’ Since then care provision has drifted and costs have risen. The dominance of the private sector has grown as many cash-strapped local authorities have sold off their care homes, as charities have retreated from the sector and private equity has bought into it – driving up what Councils have to pay and holding down carers’ wages. Enterprising private providers have built retirement villages and apartment blocks for the well-to-do, but there is little new provision for poorer retirees. Local Council budgets are now weighed down by social care costs to the exclusion of other needs.

Right-wing attacks on the size of Britain’s welfare budget have omitted to mention that nearly 60% of welfare spending now goes on pensions: 8% of GDP, up from 2% after World War 2 as life expectancy has risen. When Lloyd George introduced old-age pensions, less than half the population lived long enough to benefit. Many of us now draw our pensions for 25 years or more, and medical advances will continue to lengthen life expectancy (and increase what the NHS spends on elderly people).

Liberal Democrats in the coalition government were proud of our commitment to the ‘triple lock’ on pensions. 15 years of pensions rising faster than inflation have shrunk pensioner poverty and enriched those also benefitting from post-employment pensions (like me). The case for ending the triple lock is strong – although the temptation for opposition parties to oppose the government doing so may still be stronger. The case for increasing taxes on better-off pensioners is even stronger; we benefit from a range of financial concessions but pay a lower rate of taxation than those in employment – because we no longer pay national insurance. But there’s little chance that Reform and the Conservatives, the parties of older people, would accept the logic of any increase, faced with the wrath that the Mail and the Telegraph would unleash.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 13 Comments
Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes: Understanding British liberalism

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 19th September 2025 - 11:55 am

Editor’s note: Jonathan Parry will be discussing his ideas at the Journal of Liberal History Fringe at the Durley Suite in the BIC at 8:15 pm. 

Liberal Democrats have come to the party by all sorts of routes – some through specific campaigns, others through local activities, through parental encouragement or through education and persuasion. All of us within our broad church, whatever path brought us here, will benefit from Jonathan Parry’s short history, ‘Liberalism’ (Agenda Publishing 2025), which has been written to remind us of the continuities of ‘the ideas and visions put forward by Liberal politicians’ since the term ‘Liberal’ began to be applied to Whigs and Radicals in the 1830s. – emphasising the political practice of Liberals in politics rather than the theorists who have written on Liberal philosophy.   ‘We cannot hope to find one single “Liberal ideology”, in the sense of a theoretically coherent set of principles.’  But he does trace a number of broad themes that have shared for nearly 200 years.

He argues that the continuity of British Liberalism is best defined as resistance to the concentration of power, either in central government or in vested interests, such as landowners, corporations or the established church.  Liberalism promoted local government against central direction, pluralism in religion and education, and civil liberties against state direction.  Today’s Liberal Democrats should take pride from the efforts their 19th century predecessors put into developing schools, sanitation, better housing and public transport, against Tory opposition, before moving under the 1906 Liberal Government to introduce pensions and national insurance through central taxation. He also tells us that the Liberals also legislated in 1906 to allow local authorities to provide free school meals. 

‘Most of the confusion in discussing political liberalism comes from economics.’  Parry argues that laisser faire free market economics never persuaded leading Liberals to shrink the state – although after World War Two some outsiders were attracted to the party by the hope that it would adopt such an approach.  Cobden and Bright saw free trade as a means to international cooperation, and retrenchment of central government expenditure as opposition to spending on war and government sinecures.  Similarly, he argues that political liberals never preferred negative liberty – freedom from state interference – as more important than positive liberty – participation in public life and citizenship.  He sees the domestic policies in Chamberlain’s 1891 Newcastle Programme as pointing towards the great reforms of the 1906 government, though blocked in Gladstone’s last government by the overwhelming problem of Ireland.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes: The leader of the illiberal world is visiting Britain

By Lord William Wallace | Mon 15th September 2025 - 11:55 am

Trump’s state visit will throw a harsh light on the links between the American and British right.  Proponents of Brexit sought to protect our sovereignty against continental Europeans, but have always been ready to follow the United States.  Daniel Hannan’s book, ‘How We Invented Freedom and Why it Matters’ (2013) proclaimed the supremacy of the English-speaking peoples and the inferiority of others. Nigel Farage is almost as often in Washington as in Westminster. Those around Trump see Britain as a country that ought to be like their America, and that they plan to recapture for their version of freedom.

Much of the right-wing press and its comment contributors are far more familiar with Washington think tanks and American conferences than with political currents in any part of Europe. Climate change denialism, opposition to diversity programmes, dismissal of liberalism in all its aspects, blind faith in lower taxes and fewer public services, all flow across the Atlantic from West to East.  Finance also flows, into the right-wing think-tanks of Tufton Street and other anti-liberal bodies.  Charlie Kirk (sadly now shot in Utah) founded Turning Point UK in 2018 to extend his well-funded campaign to recapture American universities from the ‘liberal elite’ to British campuses.  British politicians and conservative intellectuals are invited to National Conservative conferences; American anti-abortionists train British activists.    Paul Marshall’s ‘Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’ brings together likeminded anti-liberals from across the English-speaking world, with prominent Republicans and hard-right Americans among its speakers.  J. D. Vance’s visit to the Cotswolds this summer, where he met with several of Britain’s leading right-wing figures, showed that the American new right see Britain as part of their natural territory.

An extraordinary Op-ed in the Times on September 8th, by a British journalist – Dominic Green – who writes for the Spectator as well as the Wall Street Journal, set out the US Right’s approach to their ‘special relationship’ with Britain.  ‘The frontier of the American empire is hardening as an economic, military and digital frontier.  America expects Britain to do its duty and remain inside it.’   He reports ‘the view, now unanimous on the American right, that Britain is an accelerated case study in the willed decline of the West. … ‘The Americans cannot afford to lose Britain.  That means they must pressure Britain into line, not just with Trump’s open disapproval at a press conference but by withholding intelligence or slow-walking economic preference.’

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Lord William Wallace

How should we respond to November’s Budget choices?

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 9th September 2025 - 2:00 pm

This is a review of the policy paper we will be discussing in Bournemouth.

The next two months in British politics will be crowded with speculation about what Labour will propose in terms of public spending and taxation in the budget, now announced for November 26th.  Kemi Badenoch has already accused the government of wanting to raise taxes, without suggesting how she would fill the gap between spending needs and resources available, and the right-wing media are full of calls for tax cuts without clarifying what spending cuts should accompany them.  Nigel

…

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | 17 Comments
Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes: What are we campaigning FOR?

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 26th August 2025 - 11:57 am

The Liberal Party I joined in 1960 was far better at thinking than campaigning.  The party leader, Jo Grimond, published several books, with radical proposals ranging from co-ownership to joining the ‘Common Market’ and cancelling the independent deterrent.  There were multiple policy groups, several academically-led bodies like the ‘Unservile State Group’ that published their own lengthy analyses, and a Liberal Summer School.  We weren’t much good at campaigning, but we prided ourselves on being ‘the party of ideas’.

Young Liberals in the 1960s also loved debating policy, but after the setbacks of the 1964 and 1966 elections were critical of the amateurish approach to campaigning.  Community politics proved itself from local successes, and rising generations of Liberal campaigners learned how to win, one ward and one seat after another, through pounding the pavements and taking up local issues.  Several decades later, the 2024 election showed what we can achieve through targeted campaigning.  But facing an electorate that is more and more sceptical of all politicians, we risk being seen as nice, friendly but hard to define in political terms.  The Labour government is now being criticised for having no overall message to underpin its policies.  We are in danger of attracting similar criticism.

So we need to spend more time thinking, making political discussion and informed proposals complement continued campaigning.  Party policy-making runs through an unavoidable cycle between elections: immediate exhaustion after each election, with new MPs, Councillors and members finding their feet and defining their roles; sufficient experience and time in the second and third years to try out new ideas and shape them into attractive and practical policies; greater caution about floating new ideas as the next election approaches, as party strategists boil down policy packages into messages and manifesto and guard against hostile publicity exploiting any half-prepared idea that is floated.  

We need to be particularly attentive during this political cycle for two reasons: first, that the most likely outcome of the 2028-9 election is that no party wins an overall majority (unless, horror of horrors, Reform sweeps in), and that we find ourselves as a potential partner in whatever government is formed; second, that the economic and international situation which that new government faces will be at least as grim as it is today.  Many Liberal Democrats will groan at the suggestion that we might once again go into government, particularly if we were not the senior partner.  But we could not refuse to negotiate if the outcome is unclear, and if – for example – we find ourselves with 100 MPs or more in a 3-party negotiation (an entirely possible scenario) we will be in a much stronger position than in 2010, provided we have prepared carefully and have agreed priorities.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 18 Comments
Lord William Wallace

How should Liberal Democrats approach Digital ID?

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 25th July 2025 - 10:10 am

Liberals have a proud record of opposing state intrusion into daily life.  I learned the story of the Liberal role in liberating UK citizens from compulsory ID cards after the end of the Second World War when I was first a student Liberal.  That was, after all, a form of ‘Stop and Search’, giving police and other public officials the right to demand that any one of us walking along the street or coming into an office can prove who we are.  Harry Willcock, who refused to show his ID card to a policeman and afterwards tore it up outside the National Liberal Club, was an active Liberal. His successful appeal against prosecution was led by Emrys Roberts (then a Liberal MP) and Basil Wigoder (a future chair of the party and peer).  Nick Clegg described Harry Willcock as one of his greatest heroes when opposing the last Labour Government’s efforts to introduce identity cards.  Labour’s legislation to introduce a national data base for citizens, with cards to carry, was repealed by the coalition government, with active Liberal Democrat support.

Requiring every citizen to carry a card, to be produced whenever challenged by a police officer, would be an extension of ‘Stop and Search’ which all Liberals would oppose.  But I have become persuaded that opposition to the integration of government data bases is now mistaken, that moves towards a form of digital ID have advantages, and that we should focus instead on ensuring adequate accuracy, transparency and security – and access for citizens to check.

The immediate trigger for raising this is the publication of a government paper on ‘Our Strategy for modern and secure elections’, which sets out plans to move from our antiquated, locally-based electoral registration towards an Automated Voting System (AVR).  An estimated 8 million UK citizens are missing from our electoral registers, because they move too often, because their landlords have not passed on the forms, or because local officials have failed to find them at home when conducting an electoral canvass.  Almost all of them are registered on several government data bases – with National Insurance numbers (NINOs), NHS numbers, tax returns or driving licences.  We are supposed to inform those parts of government with which we interact of changes of address, but often forget to do so – and one Department does not inform another when we do so.  AVR would draw on data bases from across government.

My change of mind on government data bases came during the Windrush scandal.  The Home Office alleged that there were no reliable records that these immigrants from the Caribbean had lived and worked in the UK for decades.  But cross-checking with the DWP and the NHS would have established their presence and protected their rights.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 7 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Liberal localism, Labour centralism

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 16th July 2025 - 11:50 am

As Parliament approaches the summer recess, the government is pushing out announcements to set the agenda for the autumn.  An ‘English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill’, 300 pages long, was published on July 10th, which according to the Local Government Association ‘signals a significant shift of powers from Whitehall to local leaders – making it one of the biggest changes to local government in 50 years. It will have a profound impact on all tiers of local government’.  The government is about to publish a White Paper on Election Regulation, in preparation for the Elections Bill it will bring forward in the next parliamentary session.  Both have major implications for British democracy; both take us away from a Liberal approach.  Last week the ‘UK Government Resilience Action Plan’ was also published, setting out measures to respond to future epidemics, disasters and domestic emergencies. 

Looked at together, these three embody Labour’s approach to Britain’s democracy: a deep commitment to the two-party system, a focus on delivery rather than participation, and an assumption that ‘local’ government is about delivering central government’s priorities.  Liberal Democrats will want to argue for a much more open democracy, for relying on local activity to respond to local problems and crises, for allowing and encouraging local initiatives and experimentation in providing public services, and in drawing local citizens in as far as we can to participate in public life.

Liberal Democrat local councillors will have strong views on the weakening of local democracy over the past 30-40 years.  Reorganisation has decreased the number of elected councillors and Councils, increasing the gap between ‘local’ government and the people it serves.  Council taxes have remained the main source of revenue; transfers from central revenues have been cut back and repeatedly altered from one set of conditions to another, while obligations placed on local authorities have increased.  What the Bill now proposes is to extend the elected mayoral model across the whole of England, leading ‘strategic authorities’ which will deliver government priorities, with a single tier of local government below them.  There will be fewer local elections, and fewer Councils; ‘local’ government itself will become more remote from England’s towns and villages.

The Elections White Paper will reverse some of the damaging aspects of the Conservatives’ 2022 Elections Act.  We expect some tightening of the rules on political finance, although Liberal Democrats will press for these to go much further.  The voting system for elected mayors that the 2022 Act changed to First Past The Post will be returned to Jack Straw’s ‘supplementary vote’ in the English Devolution Bill, in the hope of getting it in place for the 2026 elections; the Elections Bill is unlikely to offer any concessions to the transformation of the UK’s political landscape, with ‘the two major parties’ failing to retain the support even of half the electorate between them.  There will be nothing to address the depths of popular disillusion with Westminster politics.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 9 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Whatever happened to political leadership?

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 25th June 2025 - 11:25 am

The style of political campaigning today has become infinitely more professional than when I first became involved in politics.   In the 1960s the news cycle was far slower and gentler; TV and radio interviewers treated politicians with respect, and would allow them to offer long answers without interruption.  Now we have ‘breaking news’, daily opinion polls, multiple staff to advise and aggressive interviewers.  Political leaders are far better equipped to follow the headlines and shifting public moods.  But do they still dare to lead?

The UK’s debate on public spending represents a classic example of government and main opposition doing their utmost not to explain underlying choices to the public, while following conflicting evidence of popular preferences – lower taxes, higher public investment, resistance to cuts in health and welfare.  Ever since Margaret Thatcher used the additional revenue streams from North Sea Oil and the proceeds of privatisation to fund current government spending rather than to build a sovereign wealth fund, Conservatives (like their Republican allies in the USA) have declared themselves the party of low taxation and a smaller state – without explaining to voters what cuts would be needed to reach those goals.  Labour was so wary of challenging that myth that it pledged not to raise any of the largest sources of revenue if it won the 2024 election.   The only party that has explicitly entered an election campaign with a pledge to increase taxes was Paddy Ashdown’s Liberal Democrats in 1997, with our ‘penny on income tax for education.’  A senior Labour adviser told me when we published our manifesto that ‘nobody will vote for a party that says it will increase taxation’ – though quite a few did.

Labour leaders knew very well before the 2024 campaign started that the rising number of pensioners is driving up the welfare and health budgets, that Tory cuts in public investment had left an urgent need to rebuild hospitals, schools, railways and roads, and that leaving the EU had damaged our economy and thus the Treasury’s revenue stream – by some £40 billion, according to think tank calculations.  Facing the wrath of the right-wing media, the challenge of Reform and the Tories, they did not dare to explain the position to our uninformed electorate.  On top of all that, we now face additional challenges: a downturn in the global economy and international trade, resulting from Trump’s disruptive tactics and spreading international conflicts and the unavoidable commitment to increase defence spending substantially.  Keir Starmer has made very little effort, however, to explain to the British public the choices that we face: he’s not a natural political leader, more a manager.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 14 Comments
Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes: How should we play five party politics?

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 28th May 2025 - 12:00 pm

May’s local elections confirmed what opinion polls had been indicating for several months: that England now has five political parties attracting between 10% and 30% of voters.  Nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales make six serious parties: an even more crowded field.  

Of course it’s possible that over the next four years UK politics might return to its traditional two-party model.  But that doesn’t look likely.  Neither Labour nor the Conservatives any longer command the automatic support of a large proportion of voters, nor the mass membership that used to provide local organisations throughout the country. Other divides apart from class and wealth cut across old loyalties: young versus old, graduates versus school leavers, libertarians versus socially-engaged.  The old dream that a ‘realignment of the left’ might enable us to replace Labour, and the more recent hope that we might push the Conservatives out of contention as one of the two main parties both look illusory.  The result of the 2029 election may largely depend on how effectively different parties target specific constituencies, and whether the Conservatives and Reform can construct a formal or informal electoral pact. And it might then require more than two parties to form a majoritarian government.

After our experience between 2010 and 2015, many Liberal Democrats will groan at the prospect of any form of participation in a government in which we were not the largest party.  But we can’t dictate what election outcome we would prefer, and we need to be prepared to make the best of a different pattern of politics as it emerges.  Established party systems have withered in most other democratic states, as similar social and economic changes have transformed their electorates.  Say that we double our number of MPs in 2029, to become a major player in any post-election scenario, perhaps with more MPs than one of the two ‘established’ parties: what would we do then?  We’ve just seen an opinion poll put us ahead of the Tories.  We HAVE to think ahead.

I suggest some themes that ought to feed into our thinking and campaigning if the current pattern of disillusion with Labour and the Tories persists.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 9 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Churches and chapels, Liberalism and faith

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 14th May 2025 - 11:55 am

Liberals will have followed the papal Conclave with mixed feelings.  Liberalism was forged in opposition to state power and state churches, their enforced orthodoxy and suppression of dissent.  On the European continent that gave early Liberalism a strong anti-Catholic tinge, which hasn’t entirely disappeared.  In England and Wales the alliance between Whigs and nonconformists became central to the 19th century Liberal Party, with campaigns to disestablish the Anglican church and to remove its control over schools and universities.  The high point of nonconformist influence in the party was between the 1880s and the first world war. In recent decades, some active Liberal Democrats have become hostile to faith and religion as such – in some cases intolerant of those in the party who hold to a faith and belong to a church.

I grew up as a Protestant Anglican.  I learned what I now understand as social liberalism from the sermons of Canon Marriott, preaching the ‘social gospel’ in Westminster Abbey (putting down my Biggles book, which choristers were allowed to take in to keep us quiet during sermons),   I had instinctive anti-Catholic prejudices, probably from the English history I was taught and the children’s histories I read.  I was shocked when, as a student, I first met an active Liberal who said he was also a Catholic.  His name was Geoff Tordoff, and he later became a key player in holding the party together during the last years of Jeremy Thorpe’s leadership and the Lib-Lab pact.  Then I worked throughout the 1966 election campaign for Pratap Chitnis, educated by the Jesuits and a practising Catholic, and learned to admire his intellectual as well as campaigning skills.  My prejudices evaporated as I worked with a succession of liberal Catholics whose faith and values went together.

What Liberals (myself included) dislike about religion is the claim to certainty that fundamentalists assert, the hierarchical structure of the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and (often) Evangelical churches, and the corruption of authority when priests defend their institution instead of their faith.  Popes 150 years ago condemned liberalism and the separation of church and state; the Church of England was a pillar of social order and Tory rule.  As institutions, both have fallen a long way short of the faith they proclaim.  Both these ‘establishment’ churches have struggled to adapt to open and democratic societies, and to the uncertainties of reasoned debate and honest doubt that such societies depend on.  But both have adapted, to the point where right-wing media in the USA are bitterly criticising the new pope. 

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 11 Comments
Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes: How should liberals mark VE Day

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 23rd April 2025 - 11:55 am

Once the local elections are over, commemoration of the 80th anniversary of VE Day on May 8th – the end of the second world war – will provide a focus for public attention and local celebrations.  Many of us will be caught up in ceremonies, street parties or receptions.  I will be singing in a commemorative concert in Westminster Hall (with Mike German, Joan Walmsley and 100 others in the Parliament Choir; do listen to it, broadcast on Classic FM).  

The government and the media will want to make this a patriotic occasion.  What additional twist should Liberal Democrats add to this?  I suggest that we should emphasise what Britain and its American ally declared they were fighting the war for: for political and democratic values, for an open international order and for social democracy at home – all values that are now being challenged by President Trump in the USA and by populists in Britain and in other democratic states.

I’ve just re-read President Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’ speech, and the Atlantic Charter that he and Winston Churchill signed on a warship off Newfoundland in August 1941.   Together these set out the shared aims for which the UK and the USA fought the war.  Roosevelt’s speech to Congress on January 6th 1941 declared that:

 We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world. …

The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

Five months before, Roosevelt and Churchill had signed the ‘Atlantic Charter’ – drafted by the British, revised by the Americans – which set out their shared aims in the war.   ‘…their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other; they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned; … they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;….’

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , and | 7 Comments
Lord William Wallace

How do we defend liberalism from this attack?

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 21st February 2025 - 3:39 pm

Liberal democracy is not the default setting for forms of government.  Autocracy, or dictatorships, are.   Liberal democracies, and the open and liberal societies on which they rest, have to be constructed through political struggle and persuasion, and defended once established through similarly vigorous activity.

We can all now see how direct and determined current attacks on liberalism are: well-funded, by a cross-national coalition of hard-right parties actively supported by the Trump Administration in the USA.  This week they gathered in London for the second conference of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, jointly funded by Paul Marshall (majority owner of GB News, who has long since drifted away from his SDP candidacy and Liberal Democrat support to the dark side of right-wing politics) and Christopher Chandler, a multi-millionaire based in Dubai.  Kemi Badenoch gave a ‘keynote’ speech at the conference.  Nigel Farage was interviewed, embarrassed as a double divorcee at being asked about his support for family values.  Hungarian, Australian, Italian and other ‘alt-right’ figures thronged the conference, although the themes predominantly followed American culture wars and Christian nationalism.  What we have seen show how far the British right, including the Conservative Party as well as Reform, have been colonised by American right-wing think-tanks and foundations.  GB News is fully on board; the Mail and the Telegraph seem unsure of how far to support this Americanization of British politics.

What unites this diverse coalition is their shared hatred for liberalism and ‘the woke virus’.  For the most articulate, this extends to a rejection of the modern state and the principles of social democracy, reasserting male supremacy, traditional roles for women and repression of ‘deviations’ like homosexuality.  The ‘dark enlightenment’, a concept that Peter Thiel has espoused and whose most articulate proponent was a guest of honour at Trump’s second inauguration, holds that freedom is incompatible with democracy and that society should return to the pre-rational hierarchy of the 18th century.  Others believe that strong men shape history, society and economy– citing Nietsche, Ayn Rand and Thomas Carlyle.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 10 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Tax increases needed to counter Trump’s full-frontal assault on liberal democracy

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 18th February 2025 - 1:00 pm

So now we have no alternative.  We have to raise taxes.

Trump’s appeasement of Russia threatens European security.  But it also poses the full extent to which the Conservative government ran down Britain’s public capabilities – and, let’s be honest, the Coalition also underfunded our public services and infrastructure, and so did the Labour government (and the Thatcher government) before that.  Since the election we have been learning about the appalling state of our hospital and prison estates.  We already knew about the desperate shortage of social housing, the poor condition of many of our roads and the backlog of investment in public transport.  Inadequate pay for teachers in state schools means that we’re losing them faster than replacements are being trained.  Local authorities are struggling to avoid bankruptcy.  And alongside all that, our armed forces are smaller and weaker than they have been in our lifetimes, and the US Administration has just given us notice that it won’t defend Europe if Russia extends its aggression against Ukraine into hybrid or conventional attacks on the rest of Europe.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 13 Comments
Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes: Spending Cuts or Tax Increases? Can we avoid the choice?

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 11th February 2025 - 11:55 am

One of the oddest things about British and American politics is that it remains acceptable to politicians and right-wing commentators to call for cuts in overall taxation without specifying what cuts in spending programmes should accompany them.  After successive Republican Administrations in the USA that have cut taxes and then found it difficult to make comparable reductions in spending programmes, the Trump Administration is at least being ‘honest’ in publicly slashing major federal programmes – through dishonest in suggesting that tariffs will provide a generous new stream of revenue.  In the UK the Mail and the Telegraph, and the Conservative leadership, still attack every suggestion of higher taxation, as well as many proposals to squeeze current spending. 

The Labour Government boxed itself in before the election by promising not to increase the three largest sources of government revenue.  It over-emphasised the potential for returning to faster growth as a means of increasing revenue; and is therefore stuck with multiple crises in public services, while loading extra demands on Council tax in the hope that local Councils will share the blame. The impact of Trump on the global economy increases the obstacles to growth which we (and other countries) face.  Rachel Reeves is hinting at cuts, not only in welfare benefits but also in key public services and public investment.  So what should Liberal Democrats be saying if the government does delay infrastructure investment and squeeze key services?

Across the board, both the public investment needed to revive the UK economy and the public services which support our society are in acute crisis.  The Financial Times last week published a horrifying account of the physical state of some of the hospitals included in Boris Johnson’s unfunded rebuilding programme.  The UK spends much less on government support for research and development than many of its competitors.  The promised AI supercomputer (underfunded in Conservative treasury calculations) has been put on hold; financial support for Ph.D students in STEM subjects, crucial for future innovation, has been shrunk.  The state of Britain’s prisons, after years of under-investment and overcrowding, is appalling.  We have been promised an additional 6500 teachers for schools, but school budgets have not been increased enough to pay for the much-need pay increase for existing teachers, let alone to recruit more.  Similarly we have been promised more neighbourhood police and Community Support Officers, without yet the funding to keep them in place.  We all know that local governments are in desperate financial straits; that social care is a neglected area that is dragging the NHS down with it; and we need to increase our defence budget substantially.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 40 Comments
Lord William Wallace

How do we defend free speech from absolutists and others?

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 23rd January 2025 - 12:40 pm

Elon Musk has declared himself an absolutist on free speech.  It’s a declaration which defines the enemy as ‘the woke virus’, which is condemned as shutting off criticism of minority opinions and groups and shouting down those who express views outside their permitted consensus.  It’s also a demonstration of how far the concept of ‘free speech’ has been weaponised by the right and twisted in in its meaning.   If we want to defend free speech from those who twist the principle to fit their prejudices, we need to be clear about it meaning and its limits.

Liz Truss has just told the Voice of America that ‘The left-wing media of Britain including the BBC, including organizations like the Times and the Guardian and the Financial Times, do not like free speech, free market policies, and they don’t like the status quo in this country being challenged and I will take them on.’  Mark Zuckerberg has declared that his fact-checking teams were ‘politically biassed’, and moved a reduced team from California to Texas, to encourage them to check ‘facts’ in a more Trump-friendly way. Free speech is being redefined as part of the ‘anti-woke’ culture war – to insist on the right to express uncomfortably reactionary opinions, and to bend facts to suit different types of right-wing narratives.

Free speech is central to democracy and to liberal values.  But the right to free speech is not the right to say anything to anyone, regardless of evidence, context or consequences.   Laws against libel and slander protect reputations – though often misused to protect the rich and powerful against criticism. SLAPPS (strategic litigation against public participation) have allowed media magnates and offshore oligarchs to stifle hostile comments.  Misinformation, or worse deliberate disinformation, is on the line between legal but antisocial and illegal because of its harmful consequences in promoting disorder.  Holocaust denial is banned in some countries; medical disinformation can be prosecuted in others. Language that stirs up disorder or promotes criminal or terrorist acts is, rightly, prosecuted.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 15 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Harmony in politics

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 17th December 2024 - 4:50 pm

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if politicians from different parties sang, in harmony, from the same hymn sheet?  That may seem like a Christmas thought but a workday impossibility.

Well, some of the time some of us do.  20 years ago, a Labour peer who knew how many of us were singers but found that the parliamentary timetable prevented us from being in the same church or hall at the same rehearsal time each week suggested that we form a choir within the Parliament estate.  I was sceptical of the idea, but turned up in the crypt chapel just off Westminster Hall for the rehearsal, and have been singing with it ever since.

There are many good voices among the several thousand people working in and around Parliament.  After all, one of the basic skills shared by singers and politicians is the confidence to stand up before an audience and project your voice.  David Lammy, like me, was a boy chorister (he in Peterborough Cathedral, me at Westminster Abbey).  Bernard Jenkin almost became a professional singer; his sister did become a professional, and has been a soloist with Parliament Choir concerts.  Sarah Teather, who sang with the choir when a Liberal Democrat MP, was a wonderful soprano; she also sang solos for us.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Lord William Wallace

Local Democracy, or Devolved Administration?

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 5th December 2024 - 4:50 pm

Within the next few weeks the Labour government will publish its promised white paper on Devolution.  Reports so far suggest it will extend combined authorities with directly-elected mayors across the rest of England, abolish the remaining district councils and move to unitary councils covering parts of combined authorities – in practice a new two-tier system in which the relationship between combined-authority mayors and unitary councils will remain to be settled.  There’s unlikely to be any significant change in financial control from the centre or tax reform.  A move towards three-year settlements for central funding of local and combined authorities is more likely.

I’m not an expert on local government; nor do I know whether our party yet has an agreed position on how to respond.  I accept that the mayoral model in London works well – with a London Assembly to hold the mayor to account, and London borough councils to provide local services and representation.   The mayoral model is suitable for conurbations – though it needs (as in London) to be balanced by a representative assembly, with multiple local councils constituting it.  But I’m doubtful whether a similar model suits the rest of England.

In Yorkshire the consensus among MPs and council leaders was strongly for a regional body and local councils, if necessary also with elected mayors for the conurbations of West and South Yorkshire.  Instead the last government imposed upon us combined authorities both in North and East Yorkshire, with only two elected councils in each.  The imposition of a unitary authority across North Yorkshire has replaced district councils that covered distinct communities – Harrogate, Craven, Scarborough and Whitby, Richmondshire, and Selby – with a geographically vast area with a much smaller number of councillors.  York, however, was left outside, so an elected mayor and combined authority has therefore been imposed on two very different local authorities.  The combined authority and mayor for East Yorkshire will similarly sit over only two existing local authorities.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 12 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Europe or USA: do we now have to choose?

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 22nd November 2024 - 9:59 am

The UK’s image of its place in the world since the Second World War has rested on the claim to act as the ‘Atlantic bridge’, as Tony Blair used to put it.  We were the USA’s closest ally within Europe, and one of the major players, alongside France and Germany, within Europe.  The end of the Cold War weakened that claim, as American attention turned towards the Pacific.  Brexit weakened it a great deal further.  But now Trump Republicans and their British supporters are insisting that we have to choose: follow America, or slide back towards Europe.

The Times on November 16th headlined the statement by Stephen Moore, advising Trump at his Florida base, that ‘Britain must decide – do you want to go towards the European socialist model or do you want to go towards the US free market?’  If the latter, then a free trade agreement would be available to avoid the tariff war Trump is threatening to engage in with the EU and others; if not, no deal.  This wasn’t a surprise; Daniel Hannan had an Op-ed in the Mail three days before, making the case for Britain accepting a trade deal with the USA and the extra-territorial regulations (on food additives and hygiene, etc.) that would go with it rather than moving closer to the EU Single Market.  There are even reports that some in the Trump camp want to extend the North American Free Trade Area to Australia and the UK, to form an Anglo-Saxon grouping (with Mexico as an anomaly) under American leadership.

Brexit was never really about re-establishing British sovereignty.  For romantics like Hannan about the superiority of ‘the English-speaking peoples’ and the ‘special relationship’ which was thought to offer Britain continuing global status it was about following the USA and accepting its economic and social model rather than what was seen to be the European alternative – yielding sovereignty to the USA rather than sharing sovereignty with our European neighbours.  Boris Johnson’s Churchill fixation pushed him towards the idea that Britain and America were and remain ‘special’ partners.  Nigel Farage is an even stronger advocate of Anglo-Saxon solidarity – assuming that the USA will continue to be run by Republican Administrations promoting free markets and a shrunken state.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 22 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Defending Liberalism in a Trumpian world

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 6th November 2024 - 6:36 pm

World politics is going to be rough in the next few years – and British politics will be increasingly difficult, too.  Trump’s victory means that the USA’s role in global affairs will be highly unpredictable.  But we can predict that American influence will not be constructive on a range of global issues, from combatting climate change to managing the world economy and containing conflicts, and is unlikely to be affected by consideration for British or European concerns.  So how do we respond?

Ed Davey’s first response to Trump’s victory was spot on.  We need to defend and promote liberal values and prioritise rebuilding closer relations with our European neighbours.  Neither of those are easy.  Illiberal movements are gaining ground in many democratic countries, including within the EU.  Liberal democracy gains most support when economies are growing, societies are stable and international relations are peaceful.  Even without the added complications of an incoherent and unfriendly US Administration, the challenges of preventing catastrophic climate change, of coping with the mass movement of people that climate change and regional conflicts are already driving, of moving towards a sustainable global economy and resisting Chinese and Russian expansionism would be hard to manage – and harder to persuade the British electorate to share the cost.

There will no doubt be a flood of analyses of why a majority of American voters supported Trump.  But discontent at the economic and social disruption of their lives, and disillusion with the ‘elites’ who – as they see it – allowed disruptive change to sweep from outside through their communities, were major factors.  Those discontents are widespread in Britain as well.  The ‘left behind’ in northern and coastal towns feel similarly abandoned by educated elites and multinational corporations.  You Gov tracker polls show that the answer to the question ‘Are members of Parliament in touch with the public or not?’ has consistently shown around 70% answering ‘out of touch’ and 10-12% ‘in touch’ over the past five years.  Those in the Brexit Referendum who were saying ‘I want my country back’ were expressing a similar sense of loss to Trump supporters who want to ‘Make America Great Again.’

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 32 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Are we ready for US election chaos, or for President Trump?

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 23rd October 2024 - 2:22 pm

Liberal Democrats will be hoping that the nightmare of the US presidential campaign will be over on November 5th, with a clear win for Kamala Harris, accepted by Donald Trump, leading Republicans and state and federal courts.  But at present that looks the least likely outcome.  More likely by far will be either a contested result, after chaotic events during the voting and state counts, or a narrow Trump victory with chaotic consequences for US politics and foreign policy.  Either will have major implications for British politics and foreign policy.

The continuing rumble of opinion polls suggests a virtual tie between Harris and Trump, with the outcome dependent on who turns out among the small minority of undecideds.  Challenges to names on voting registers are under way in several states.  Counting may well be disrupted; there were some assaults on election counts four years ago, and the atmosphere has become more fraught since then.  Republican local organisations are ready to use the courts to challenge any contestable declaration or hint of malpractice.  We may not be sure who has won for some time.  And the consequences of a Trump win are as uncertain as the candidate’s utterances have become.  So how should we react to what will be an assault on the principles of liberal democracy and on the transatlantic partnership which has been at the core of the UK’s position in the world since 1941?   

One Liberal Democratic theme, I suggest, must be to remind disillusioned citizens in this country of the importance of constitutional institutions and limited government, and the dangers of sliding down the road towards populist rule.  Britain has just emerged from several years of chaotic government, with a populist prime minister attempting to prevent Parliament from returning from a recess when he had been in office himself for only s few months.  We have witnessed right-wing attacks on our supreme court, an Elections Act that lifted constraints on political donations and restricted the autonomy of the Electoral Commission, and Conservative ministers supporting conspiracy theories about ‘liberal elites’.  We now have a Labour government which has won the most disproportional parliamentary majority since 1832: 63.4% of MPs from 33.7% of the votes cast, on a worryingly low turnout of 58%.  Public trust in ‘Westminster politics’ has sunk to the lowest recorded point since opinion surveys began.  The potential for an anti-democratic backlash, if this government fails to improve both economic growth and public services, is high.

Continue reading »
Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 8 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Nick Hopkinson
    We should aim get behind the Growth and Defence Partnership. There is currently no better political vision on offer to grow the economy, defend the country and ...
  • Dennis
    The government has achieved a lot of what it promised to do, and had been on track to achieve more policies stated in their manifesto. https://fullfact.org/gove...
  • Chloe
    I've little sympathy for Starmer. But what he did deserve was to deliver that deeply personal resignation speech uninterrupted by that usual borish oaf S.Bray...
  • Slamdac
    The appears to be some British exceptionalism in these comments. I accept that the EU can't force us to have a referendum, but we can't force them to accep...
  • Nonconformistradical
    "My fear is that Labour are just changing their captain and not their policy programme. What Burnham has said so far is very confusing and disappointing." Se...