Author Archives: Loukas Christou

Changing our attitude to Liberalism and Britain

By Loukas Christou | Fri 19th June 2020 - 10:29 am

As we face another change of leadership this summer, we must confront the crisis in our identity with Liberalism. We must also admit the peculiarity of a Liberal Parliamentary party and that Liberalism is not an ideology that can be used to confront the Labour Party, the Conservatives, or the SNP. The crucial thing here is that this is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Liberalism transcends ideology and we must use this to bridge partisan politics. Once we have (and I believe we now have) recognised that Liberalism cannot be used in a primarily adversary manner we can move forward in a more positive direction.

The Liberal Democrats should stand as the party of reason and progress, we should be focusing on the central tenets of Liberalism as our way forward. With the recent events such as Black Lives Matter and Covid-19, race inequality and Racism have been highlighted in our society and as Liberals we are the ones who should actively create programmes and campaign for equality in our society. A first step in creating a Liberal future is to acknowledge the lack of Liberalism in our society.

The great triumphs in our history have been tackling illiberalism in this country and, moving forward, I hope we can add to these triumphs in Britain’s history. The Liberal Reforms of the early twentieth century, the abolition of abortion laws, the campaign against the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, and legalisation of same-sex marriage are all triumphs of our party that came about by acknowledging that our society we live in is not as Liberal as we would like to believe, and that we, as Liberals, must act to change the current conditions.