Author Archives: Richard Church

Opinion: The West Lothian Question has left Ed Miliband in a deep hole

By Richard Church | Fri 19th September 2014 - 2:01 pm

Ed Miliband has to concede that home rule for Scotland must mean that Scottish MP’s should no longer vote on English only matters. Not to do so would be unreasonable, unfair, and also deeply unpopular in England. It would give the Tories the biggest stick they could wish for to beat Labour with up and down England in May next year.

If Ed does agree to withdraw Scottish (and Welsh) Mp’s from English legislation though, any future non Conservative UK government might be paralysed by a Conservative majority of English MP’s elected on a minority of the English vote. Labour would be unable to deliver on the NHS, on Education, on welfare and on a whole host of key priorities. Worse, without an English executive there would be gridlock. Labour, even with Lib Dem support, wouldn’t even be able to deliver devolution to English Regions with an English Tory veto.

Posted in Op-eds | 81 Comments

Opinion: Not British values, Liberal values

By Richard Church | Wed 11th June 2014 - 12:15 pm

Michael Gove says that schools should promote the values of democracy, mutual respect and tolerance. Who can disagree with that? They are not just British values, they are liberal values.

Extremism is allegedly being promoted in some schools by a small minority within one religious faith. That’s the context in which Michael Gove makes his statement. The values he wants to promote though are universal, to mean anything they must be applied as rigorously in one school as in another, and to one faith as to another. Some people will use the term ‘British Values’ to isolate and judge certain communities whose ethnic origin is not British, that may not be what Mr Gove intended, but it is what will happen. We must find a better way to describe the values we share.

Posted in News | 41 Comments

Opinion: You don’t have to wear a red poppy

By Richard Church | Mon 4th November 2013 - 6:42 pm

This week there is a bit more pressure on all of us to conform. You would think, watching the telly, that wearing a poppy is compulsory, it isn’t. Of course, the expectation to conform by wearing a symbol in a lapel is nothing to the expectation placed on young men 100 years ago.

This year I discovered a letter from my great grandfather, Wesley Church, published in his local paper, the Northampton Echo, in 1917, condemning people for throwing stones at a conscientious objector who was on his way to attend a tribunal. He wrote: ‘There are hundreds who are …