Author Archives: Stuart Wheatcroft

Opinion: Liberal Youth’s ambitious liberalism

By Stuart Wheatcroft | Tue 24th March 2015 - 9:45 am

Last weekend I attended Liberal Youth’s excellent Conference in Leeds. This is a regular event that allows members to meet, debate and – this time especially – campaign.

The final item on the agenda was a debate on “Ambitious Liberalism: a Radical, Liberal Voice for the Future”, which I proposed.

Although there are plenty of policy items in the motion, this was not primarily a motion about policy. Most of the individual items were already Liberal Youth policy. As we head into the final weeks of the General Election campaign, it is worth taking a few moment to reflect on what unites us as a party, and that is what this motion set out to do.

In putting together this motion, I took inspiration from the excellent mission statement published by Liberal Reform. In particular, Liberal Reform identifies four key strands of liberal thought, which form the basis of the text Liberal Youth adopted this weekend.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged liberal youth and liberalism | 12 Comments

Liberal Youth Elections 2013… England Convenor: Stuart Wheatcroft

By Stuart Wheatcroft | Fri 3rd May 2013 - 3:30 pm

I have been a member of the Liberal Democrats since the end of 2005. Despite this, I had no serious involvement with Liberal Youth until early 2012. Liberal Youth was not an effective organisation nationally, and in my area it was non-existent.

A huge amount of progress has been made. Liberal Youth’s contribution to the campaign in Eastleigh has been widely recognised. The momentum has been continued through the Gold Guard project, with action days in key seats around the country and a huge membership engagement push at every level of the organisation. More must be done, but there has been …