Author Archives: Wendy Chamberlain

Wendy Chamberlain MP: Tips for winning your selection campaign

By Wendy Chamberlain | Fri 30th July 2021 - 11:58 am

When I joined the Liberal Democrats in 2015, immediately following the General Election, I was working in military resettlement, supporting service leavers into employment. If you had told me that within 5 years, I would be a Member of Parliament for the party, I would have laughed very loudly.

When I decided to enter the selection for North East Fife in 2018 (at that time the most marginal seat in the UK with only 2 votes separating the SNP from the Liberal Democrats) it was clear that I needed to take some of my own job-seeking advice on board.

If you are serious about becoming a PPC in a Liberal Democrat target seat, here are some top tips on how to approach the selection. I’m assuming here that you are already an approved candidate.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured and wendy chamberlain mp | 2 Comments

Wendy Chamberlain writes: Response to BLAC Lib Dems

By Wendy Chamberlain | Thu 8th April 2021 - 2:28 pm

Dear Avril, Alexandrine, Tumi, Yukteshwar, Rabi, William, Pramod, Tamara, Yeow, Ian, Afy, Alhaji, Flossy, Jacquie, Julliet, Lisa, Marisha, Nancy, Steven and Stuart,

Thank you for your letter about the report of the Government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. I agree that urgent action is needed to tackle the injustices, inequalities and discrimination Black people face in the UK today.

As you may know, in recent years our party has developed a large number of wide-ranging new policies to address these issues. At our Spring Conference in March 2019, members endorsed the paper ‘Eradicating Race Inequality’, produced by the party’s working group on race equality. This set out measures to tackle inequality across six broad areas: education and learning, employment and income, health and social care, participation in public life, justice, and community and housing.

And at our Autumn Conference last September, we passed a further motion entitled ‘Racial Justice Cannot Wait’. This affirmed that Black Lives Matter and reaffirmed our commitment as Liberal Democrats to combat racism – whether conscious or unconscious, individual or institutional – wherever we find it, including within our own party. It called on the Government to enact a range of policies to address structural inequality and guarantee equal representation in society.

The need to tackle racial discrimination and inequality is also an important theme running through other key policy papers the party has recently adopted, including those on business and jobs, crime and policing, health and social care, and immigration.

As a result, the party has a very strong platform on racial justice – the strongest of any political party in the UK. That has been the basis for our ongoing campaigns to abolish the Conservatives’ discriminatory Hostile Environment and end the disproportionate use of Stop and Search, as well as our parliamentary activity on these issues and our interventions in the media – including our response to the Government’s recent commission.