There’s been a lot going on this week. I mean not one, but two government resets, the second caused by the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.

I like Angela Rayner. She is funny, doesn’t mince her words and was one of the Labour Government’s best communicators. While there was no way she could stay after the ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus said she had broken the Ministerial Code, he delivered his verdict with “deep regret” saying:

I believe Ms Rayner has acted with integrity and with a dedicated and exemplary commitment to public service.

I get that it was complicated and that she should have sought the advice. However,  I do wonder whether any person in her circumstances should have to pay extra tax because of circumstances which arose from making long term arrangements for her disabled child.  Should there not be exemptions in this sort of case? We shouldn’t be seeking to further penalise carers who are already giving so much.

I was also very impressed that Ed Davey did not join in mudslinging. On Wednesday he said:

I understand it is normally the role of opposition leaders to jump up and down and call for resignations – as we’ve seen plenty of from the Conservatives already.

Obviously if the ethics advisor says Angela Rayner has broken the rules, her position may well become untenable.

But as a parent of a disabled child, I know the thing my wife and I worry most about is our son’s care after we have gone, so I can completely understand and trust that the Deputy Prime Minister was thinking about the same thing here.

Perhaps now is a good time to talk about how we look after disabled people and how we can build a more caring country.

I am much more sympathetic to Angela Rayner than to any of the Tory ministers who clung on to office in unedifying circumstances, often with their Prime Minister’s backing.

I might not share her politics, but I think her heart is in the right place and I hope that some day we see her back on the front line.

Reshuffling the deckchairs

The ensuing Cabinet reshuffle had some interesting changes. Yvette Cooper may be relieved to escape the poisoned chalice of the Home Office, though having to deal with Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu is no picnic. David Lammy, as Deputy Prime Minister will still be able to have cosy fishing chats with US Vice President J D Vance, though he should make sure he has the right permit.

There is some consternation, I understand, amongst Scottish Labour members about the replacement of Ian Murray as Secretary of State for Scotland with Douglas Alexander. Ian was the only Scottish Labour MP between 2015 and 2017 and 2019 and 2024. He knows how to campaign and has built quite the fortress in his Edinburgh South constituency which he won despite a ferocious challenge from us  in 2010 by just 316 votes. He is well-liked and can’t really be blamed for the nosedive in popularity for the Labour Party north of the border. They made 36 gains in the UK General Election last year yet a More in Common poll this week forecast that they would lose 4 of their already low 22 seats.

Douglas Alexander is seen as a big hitter with the ability to at least limit the damage. He has a massive political brain but he can show some spectacular lapses. He was blamed for the appalling Better Together party political broadcast which gave even some of its strongest supporters what we call up here the “dry boak.” Those of you with long memories will understand what I meant when I called it “Rosie Barnes and the rabbit without the political intelligence.”

That same More in Common Poll is much better news for us, predicting that we could end up with 14 MSPs, an increase of 10. Yes it’s just one poll, but we are doing a massive amount of work on the ground, much more than at this stage in previous years. We are also, for the first time, asking for people’s votes on the list at an early stage.

We have wrestled with how to make the case for the list for a long time. We’ve over-complicated it so much. In fact, poor Alex Cole-Hamilton was the unfortunate staffer who had to turn some very complex messaging into graphics for the 2003 election. He did well with what he was given, but maybe we should have done then what we are doing now – simply asking people to vote for us.

Digital ID – really?

Lisa Smart, our Home Affairs spokesperson, wrote the most read article on LDV this week. She posed the question whether we should change our position on ID cards in this digital age. Our commenters weren’t so sure with several picking up on her saying that it could “help identify undocumented migrants.”

I am way more profligate with my data than I probably should be. A glance at my wallet on my phone will show loyalty cards for various supermarkets and hotel chains and booking sites.

I have chosen, maybe unwisely, to sacrifice my data for some convenience – and to spend less on my weekly shopping though I curse the loyalty card discounts. Why should I get £1.25 off my butter when the elderly person who wouldn’t know one end of a smartphone from the other wouldn’t?

Capitalism is all about various corporate entities pretending to serve you with various iterations of corporate bovine scatology.

Our relationship with the state is different. It exists to serve the people, not for it to control the people.

However nice and voluntary Lisa Smart’s scheme would be, imagine what that would mean in the hands of Farage. At a glance he would know where every gay, trans, non white or disabled person was.  I am sure you would agree that that is not ok.

It would be bad enough in the hands of authoritarian Labour. There is no way it would be voluntary for long.

We also must not use it as a pass to access our public services, particularly healthcare. We cannot turn our nurses and doctors in to government gatekeepers.

Back to school

This week saw children in England and Wales return to school, two weeks after the rest of the UK.

English Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson took to the airwaves to tell parents in her best teacher voice to get their children’s backsides to school. That infuriated me as I know of so many situations where the most vulnerable children are being let down by the health and education system. If they got the help they needed, maybe they would be able to get to school. If their parents weren’t exhausted and stressed from trying to support a suicidal, depressed, anxious child, or striving to ensure that those with some form of learning disability got the support that made school tolerable for them, maybe everyone would be a lot better off.

Children are having to wait years for ADHD assessments, children in incredibly distressed states are having to wait years to be seen by a mental health professional. This is not ok. And just one year is a sixth of their secondary education.

What those parents need is an Education Secretary who gets it. Who goes into work every day determined to make sure that those children and their families get help. They do not need to turn on BBC Breakfast and be lectured.

Terri White wrote an excellent article for the I paper this week on this very subject.

I’ve spoken to a mum who became suicidal while begging for support for her neurodiverse daughter, who couldn’t leave the house. Another who was put in temporary accommodation with her kids – miles away from school, without money for the bus fare. A teacher who had to provide a pupil with a duvet and a pillow. A student with no shoes, after he’d walked them off his feet. A teenager caring for their chronically ill mum. A dad, driven to the edge after two years fighting for the alternative provision his son desperately needs.

She concludes:

So yeah, it’s way past time for the Education Secretary to get a grip on school absence – but solutions can only be found when we accurately, truthfully, name and face the causes. Otherwise, I suggest we raise our voices to ask just one question of our Government: exactly how many generations of kids are you happy to lose to this crisis?

I think every MP will be familiar with the sort of scenarios White describes. It absolutely breaks my heart to think of the young people who are suffering intensely without help or hope.

This Government is very good at finding shortcomings with the parents or the young people or the people claiming benefits whose disabilities. Maybe they should look at the many and varied ways in which these vulnerable people have been failed by Government and sort things out for them.

Kate’s hair

She has some. She got it coloured. We do not need acres of digital space and newsprint analysing it. I even saw a headline saying “Kate’s hair needs to decide if it belongs to a royal or an influencer.”  Give me strength.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social