Author Archives: Zagham Farhan

Zagham Farhan

In defence of Britain – lessons from death

By Zagham Farhan | Sun 25th August 2024 - 8:55 am

Earlier this week I lost my grandmother, and while it’s been a deeply challenging week, especially for my mother and grandfather, I’ve been struck on numerous occasions with the way in which the British state came to our aid- and made the process go as perfectly as we could have asked for. 

The healthcare she received was beyond excellent and was done with a kindness and compassion that still surprises me in its depth. My sister heads off to medical school in about three weeks, and I very much hope that that is the kind of Doctor that she turns into. 

Having worked at a GP surgery for a year, I’m cognisant of the fact that the NHS is on its knees, and I suspect won’t survive for many more years bar reform of the highest order (which our new Prime Minister has neither the will nor the political capital to deliver). But I sincerely hope that we never lose the ethos of the system; that everyone matters, and that health doesn’t come with the tap of a credit card, but instead with a beaming smile. 

We knew from about 10.00 on Wednesday that she wasn’t going to make it through the day, and from that moment to her passing at almost 18.00 the staff in the ICU did not make a single mistake. The rest of my family remains quite religious, and at no point did they falter in aiding us in the religious acts that people wanted to undertake. They provided white string and cotton wool, tracked down a hijab for my sister. I will never forget the image of a female Chaplain with a Scottish accent delivering a booklet of Islamic prayers and asking if the Chaplaincy could help find an Imam. I said to my parents at the time; in how many other countries would we get this? Multiculturalism in all its glory, and human compassion shining through.

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Zagham Farhan

Our MPs swear an oath to the Monarch – that’s wrong

By Zagham Farhan | Mon 15th July 2024 - 2:02 pm

This article was inspired by a clip I came across on Instagram of Labour MP Clive Lewis being sworn in, where he noted that he made the oath under protest, in the hope that one day people would live in a Republic. This reinforced to me the idea that our Members of Parliament swear an oath not to their constituents or the people who elected them, but instead to the Monarch and his heirs. My distaste for the Monarchy as an institution is well known to those around me, but I think that regardless of your opinion of the institution as a whole, you can concur that our MPs’ oath should focus more on their role as representatives of the people, as opposed to their status as servants of the King.

Our Constitutional settlement is messy and complicated, but in the modern day we accept our Monarch as a figurehead, and the actions of the State are conducted almost entirely through HM Government – who must command the support of the House of Commons. I don’t like it, but it does work.

What many people don’t realise however is that our Ministers don’t rule in conjunction with the Monarch, but rather through their authority. Each law must gain Royal Assent, each Secretary of State derives their authority from the King. Indeed, in the brief window between Rishi Sunak resigning and Sir Keir Starmer arriving at Buckingham Palace; all executive power rested with King Charles III. Our Monarchy is fundamental to our political system, engrained into every element of our governance.

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Zagham Farhan

I went to a Reform UK rally. This is what I learned.

By Zagham Farhan | Sun 14th July 2024 - 1:00 pm

Bored in Oxford, three weeks after the end of term and with everyone else having gone home, I decided to take an impulsive day trip to see the Reform UK rally in Birmingham on the last Sunday before election day. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, as a committed Liberal Democrat and a son of immigrants, I was most certainly apprehensive. I was viewing it essentially as a learning experience, a chance to discover what had driven these people towards Nigel Farage’s newest political entity. 

After an extremely pleasant National Express bus trip and getting slightly lost in the NEC- I found myself in a huge hall, which I later learnt houses around 5000 people. There was an unmistakeable buzz in the room. I got the feeling that the people there felt like they were witnessing something really important. I doubt many of them had been to a political event before, and they’d been uniquely drawn in by Reform. I saw lots of England football shirts, and even a couple of Make America Great Again hats. It was a notably old audience, it seemed like the vast majority were 50+ with an assortment of young men too. I saw very few young women, and very few people from ethnic minorities.

The event was extremely well run, with food and drink stalls, and they even managed to drive their election bus in somehow. The speaker line up consisted of Chief Exec Paul Oakden, Ann Widdecombe, major donor Zia Yusuf (I recommend that you watch this speech in particular), Richard Tice and of course Nigel Farage. When my friends realised where I was off to, I was surprised at the number of messages I got saying ‘stay safe.’ I had never considered that I might be at risk at this event, but apparently a number of my friends (all students) thought that I would be utterly unwelcome. I didn’t find that to be the case at all. Everyone was exceedingly polite, and while I didn’t make any effort to engage in any political conversation, I’m sure they would have been more than willing. 

The speeches centred on a few central political themes- the Tories have failed, the state is too big, we should be patriotic, immigration is too high, there are only two genders. ‘Put British people first’ was uttered repeatedly. Each speaker got a rapturous reception from the audience. 

I think they were translating anger into messaging in a way that other parties failed to do in this election. These are people who haven’t seen palpable economic growth in years, seen the culture of their cities changing, and their public services creaking. Reform have managed to direct that anger, to give them a sense that the ‘British’ people had been ignored, and that they present the answer. 

I share very little politically with Reform UK. The way that they’ve continuously demonised immigrants has been a significant contributor to the horrible nature of our public discourse on the issue. Their attempts to erase trans people are deeply damaging. Some of their candidates demonstrated the very worst of what British politics has to offer. Their rhetoric is dangerous, and we need to ensure that we challenge it at every turn. I’m sure many of our nation’s bigots and racists showed up to vote for them on the 4th July; but I also think that many of their voters are just normal people, completely disillusioned with our politics. 

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Zagham Farhan

Our elections are broken. Let’s fix them!

By Zagham Farhan | Wed 10th July 2024 - 7:37 pm

I’ve always detested First Past the Post. As a child getting into politics, one of the first things I did was learn about all the voting systems out there, and each one I learnt about seemed better than FPTP. 

This election has brought home to me just how flawed this system is, and how rigged it is in favour of the political establishment. I’ve spent much of the last couple of the days reminding people that Labour got just 34% of the votes in this election. Just over a third of voters endorsed Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour, but he’ll spend much of the next five years behaving as if he has the full confidence of the entirety of the British public, and an unlimited mandate to behave as he wishes. We must remember that he simply doesn’t have the confidence of the majority of the British people, and to hold Labour to account as such. 

The biggest losers to our electoral system this time around were Reform UK and the Greens. Both those parties’ seat counts don’t accurately reflect their national support in the slightest. Our system is deliberately exclusive, shutting out parties who aren’t able to geographically concentrate their support, and keeping the two main parties in power. In my opinion, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. 

While FPTP suited us excellently this time around, we need to ensure this doesn’t make us forget our core beliefs. Constitutional Reform has long been at the centre of the Liberal Democrat agenda, and it needs to continue to be. We’re a large block in parliament now, and that gives us a platform. We need to work with whoever might be willing, to ensure our elections are truly representative. 

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Zagham Farhan

We should be ashamed of our failure to oppose the Smoking Ban

By Zagham Farhan | Thu 18th April 2024 - 10:15 am

The recent Tobacco and Vapes Bill, that passed its first reading in the Commons with an overwhelming majority, is decidedly anti-liberal and anti-freedom; and I’m extremely upset that the party leadership decided not to take a stand on this. When I first joined the Liberal Democrats, one of the primary reasons was that I believed us to be the last remaining party in this country to be fundamentally pro-Freedom, and to hold that as a core and imperative value. It seems that this is slipping through our fingertips.

The bill aims to do a number of things – my particular contention is with the idea of banning smoking for life for those who are turning 15 this year – thus making them a ‘smoke-free’ generation. It’s action on vapes is a separate matter, that I won’t address here. There are so many issues with this action, for anyone who cares about individual liberty.

Firstly, to smoke is an individual choice. Over recent decades, the wealth of scientific evidence has concretely proven the overwhelmingly devastating health impacts of tobacco – and I would argue almost no one legitimately disagrees with the idea that those who smoke know that its harmful. However, steps have been taken – such as the limiting of advertising and the proliferation of health advice – that have resulted in smoking rates also dropping significantly. In essence, people who smoke know what they’re doing. Restrictions on smoking in indoor places have also had an impact on second-hand smoking, again contributing to the idea that those who smoke are only harming themselves.

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