Category Archives: LibLink

For highlighting articles by Lib Dems that have appeared elsewhere in the media.

NewsHound

LibLink: How can abuse openly take place in a nursery, by Munira Wilson

By NewsHound | Sun 14th December 2025 - 12:55 pm

In a Guardian article this week, Lib Dem Education spokesperson Munira Wilson called for mandatory CCTV in nurseries to respond to a number of horrific abuse cases taking place in nurseries. She highlighted the structural failures in the childcare sector because of improperly managed implementation of childcare entitlements.

She set out the problem:

Yet the harrowing case of Vincent Chan, a former nursery worker in Camden, north London, who pleaded guilty to nine counts of sexual assault and 17 counts of taking or making indecent photos of children, hit the headlines last week, leaving parents with young children across the country feeling

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The Voice

LibLink: Ed Davey – The first step towards saving our precious BBC: remove Robbie Gibb from the board

By The Voice | Tue 11th November 2025 - 10:24 am

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Ed Davey has written an article for the Guardian continuing his uncompromising support of the BBC:

The BBC is under attack as never before. Donald Trump and his cronies have it squarely in their sights – and there are no prizes for guessing why. The BBC is the world’s number one source of trusted news, so of course snake-oil salesmen such as Trump see it as their enemy. If your power is built on conspiracy theories and distortions of the truth, the last thing

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NewsHound

Alistair Carmichael LibLink: Palestine Action ban reveals Labour’s dangerously authoritarian instincts

By NewsHound | Wed 20th August 2025 - 10:28 am

Alistair Carmichael has criticised the Labour Government for its proscription of Palestine Action. In a recent column for the Scotsman he talked about why he was never able to join the Labour Party:

For all the similarities between Liberal Democrats and Labour, the differences matter too.

Labour has centralising instincts that will always be anathema to liberals who champion community empowerment. Then there is the freedom thing.

Scratch any Labour government and you will find a deep authoritarian streak. It is increasingly apparent that this is every bit as true of Yvette Cooper’s Home Office as it was of those headed by David Blunkett, John Reid and Jack Straw.

He sums up the differences between us and Labour pretty neatly:

For liberals, protecting freedoms of speech, assembly and protest is a given. It runs to the heart of how we see the relationship between the citizen and the state. For Labour, these freedoms are rarely more than ‘nice to have’ when circumstances allow.

He said very much out loud that the Labour decision to proscribe Palestine Action was a mistake:

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NewsHound

Christine Jardine: Labour needs to deliver more for Scotland to beat SNP

By NewsHound | Tue 4th February 2025 - 7:53 am

In her Scotsman column this week, Christine Jardine has a stark message for Labour: get your backsides into gear and do more for Scotland or you are toast at the Holyrood elections in 2026. The last thing Scotland needs is another 5 years of the SNP, so we’d better hope they take heed.

Ahead of the General election last July, it looked like Labour were on course to form a Scottish Government too.

Unfortunately, with cuts to Winter Fuel Payment, the National Insurance rise and threatened benefit cuts, they have blown the goodwill that propelled them to 37 Scottish seats at …

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NewsHound

LibLink – Christine Jardine: How the UK should deal with four more years of Donald Trump

By NewsHound | Wed 6th November 2024 - 8:00 pm

Christine Jardine has written for the Scotsman about how the UK should deal with the second Trump presidency.

Like most Lib Dems, she has focused on the need to strengthen our relationships with our European partners.

The news from the US dampened the mood at Westminster:

Wednesday morning too was cloaked in a cloud of gloom as MPs considered the prospect of an American president whose protectionist instincts and apparently dismissive attitude to Nato and European defence leaves us worried for the future. I do not want contemplate the dread that must have been felt in Ukraine about what it might mean for the support on which their war effort depends.

Then, of course, there are the implications for so many American women and their right to choose what is best for them and their bodies.

We need to work together, at home and with Europe:

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NewsHound

LibLink Christine Jardine: Why cruel laws forbidding terminally ill people from ending their life must change

By NewsHound | Wed 16th October 2024 - 11:55 am

Edinburgh West’s Lib Dem MP Christine Jardine has long been an advocate for a change in the law to allow assisted dying in limited circumstances. Ahead of Labour MP Kim Leadbetter introducing a Private Member’s Bill  “to allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life; and for connected purposes,” Christine set out why she supports it in her Scotsman column.

Why is she supporting Kim’s Bill?

Because I recognise the widespread demand to address an inequality in the law and for legislators like myself to debate whether a change to offer that choice is needed.

I have never made any secret of my belief that the current situation is unacceptable. The law does not offer compassion and choice but instead can seem inhumane and cruel.

She cites a comprehensive inquiry by the Commons Select Committee on Health and Social Care:

It received thousands of submissions and heard hours of testimony from all sides of the debate. It also interrogated evidence from parts of the world where the laws that will be under debate here were implemented years ago.

The committee’s final report provides exactly the sort of evidence on which the upcoming debate will draw and decisions will be made when the bill comes before parliament. For me, the most significant finding was confirmation that palliative care, however good, is not always sufficient to relieve suffering. And, curiously, that care often improves after assisted dying legislation is introduced.

She concluded by saying that she didn’t feel she had the right to deny choice to people at the end of their lives:

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Donna Harris on improving equality in maternal and neonatal outcomes

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 2nd October 2024 - 8:36 pm

Layla Moran, Hina Bokhari with LDW members after maternal inequality debate

One of the most moving and powerful debates at our recent Brighton Conference was on a motion from the official Lib Dem Women organisation on improving the inherent inequality in neonatal and maternity care.

I wrote about the debate at the time:

Lib Dem Women had put forward a motion on tackling inequality in pregnancy and neonatal care. Some of the stories of maternal and pregnancy loss were shocking,  and the higher rates among black and Asian communities shameful.  Laura Gordon told a terrible story about the death of a young refugee who didn’t get the care she needed and died. Maybe if she had had an interpreter, her life might have been saved. There’s no sign of Labour improving things because of the lack of money. As Tam Langley said “We have to invest in babies who can’t wait for the economy to recover.”

Donna Harris has written an article for Comment Central about the motion and why it was needed.

espite being the second-largest economy in Europe, the UK has a higher infant mortality rate than 26 of its European neighbours, earning a troubling reputation as the infant mortality capital of Europe. How is this possible? These deaths are preventable. These tragedies are avoidable. Yet, nearly half of our maternity services are rated as “inadequate” or “requiring improvement” by the Care Quality Commission

The motion called for those who had suffered pregnancy loss to be offered help and support by the NHS after one miscarriage, not three. Donna explains why:

Women who suffer miscarriages often face not only the grief of losing their babies but also often endure traumatic medical interventions. Their pain and trauma are often dismissed, swept under the carpet as if it never happened. In the National Health Service, a woman must endure three miscarriages before being referred to a consultant. It is little surprise that many women who experience pregnancy loss suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and perinatal obsessive-compulsive disorder. This policy must change now!

The figures on infant mortality for black and asian mothers and babies babies compared to white mothers and babies are shocking:

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NewsHound

LibLink Steffan Aquarone Westminster, an organisation ripe for transformation

By NewsHound | Sat 28th September 2024 - 11:55 am

Our 57 new MPs have spent the Summer representing their constituents, writing to ministers and getting used to Westminster traditions and rituals.

North Norfolk MP Steffan Aquarone has written for Radix about his first impressions of Westminster and he’s identified a whole stack of things that need to change.

The Houses of Parliament are sinking into the Thames. Many dozens of offices were condemned upon their vacation by outgoing MPs. There are electrical and water hazards only a few metres underfoot, and the whole thing will cost billions to fix – not least because MPs are insistent they stay in the building while it happens.

But there is an even greater urgency to transform the way the organisation operates if we’re to bring about the change this country badly needs.

The layout needs updating for a start:

Rather than being designed around main thoroughfares, the grand corridors are built around the ritual ceremony that opens Parliament. The layout was set in a pre-digital age when runners carried messages between chambers, meaning the fastest way from the new bit to the old is via sets of narrow stairs.

Instead, a modern internal design is needed, where the main thoroughfares join together areas most frequently used by MPs and staff going about their business, with plenty of space to step aside and benefit from chance conversations and exchanges, privately but safely.  MPs stuck in small individual offices is a less ominous, but no less outdated, example of pre-digital working practices.  Opposite Westminster, the York Road offers a striking range of modern, collegiate working environment that could serve as nearby inspiration.

He has some thoughts on how the structure of Government inhibits it:

Modern organisations are customer centric; their bosses oversee key functions that are aligned to their customers’ or users’ journeys.  They are no longer siloed by functions that mirror operational processes (and are more convenient for the organisation than its customers).  Government needs Secretaries of State for Prosperity and Wellbeing, for the Citizen Experience, and for Data and Privacy, if it’s going to respond to the needs of the modern world, not catch-all Secretaries of State for Agriculture, Health, or Local Government.

Government needs innovation and the capacity to defy convention:

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NewsHound

LibLink: Bobby Dean – a return to austerity will not solve Britain’s problems

By NewsHound | Mon 23rd September 2024 - 4:45 pm

Whilst The Economist is calling for Liberal Democrats to move economically rightwards, the mood music from the newly-elected Liberal Democrat MPs is somewhat different.

In a piece for The House Magazine, Bobby Dean, the MP for Carshalton and Wallington, suggests that;

Starmer says he wants to end the politics of easy answers – and I agree. But on the exam question of “how to fix Britain”, he sidesteps complex answers in favour of a simple one that we have all heard before: we must tighten our belts.

If this approach turns out to be what it sounds like – a

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NewsHound

LibLink: Caroline Voaden on Brexit and what to fix now

By NewsHound | Mon 23rd September 2024 - 11:58 am

There’s been an ongoing debate within the party about Europe, and the ambition for rejoining the European Union. And, within that debate, there has been an oft-expressed disappointment that the party is not bolder and more vocal on its ambition to rejoin at some point.

Caroline Voaden, the newly-elected Liberal Democrat MP for South Devon, laid down a rather clearer marker in a piece in The House Magazine on Thursday, noting;

I also now represent Brixham, one of the UK’s largest fishing ports – a place that supported the Brexit ideal, but where they now say they were hoodwinked by

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Mark Valladares

LibLink: Should the Liberal Democrats move to the right economically?

By Mark Valladares | Sat 21st September 2024 - 5:22 pm

Catching up on my reading, I came across this advice from “The Economist” from Wednesday.

With the ongoing debate about overtaking the Conservatives at the next election, and with real questions about the political direction of the Conservative Party under a new leader, what, if anything, should we change as we face a Labour Party with a vast majority and emerging challenges from the Greens and Reform UK?

The Economist sums its advice up thus:

Britain has a two-party system designed, broadly, to produce one party more to the left economically and another more to the right economically. Labour has sewn up

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NewsHound

LibLink: Alistair Carmichael MP Why Musk and Robinson are now threats to democracy

By NewsHound | Tue 13th August 2024 - 11:19 am

Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael had some wise things to say about the riots that have plagued the country over the past two weeks.

He compared what happened here to the events of January 6 when MAGA types invaded the Capitol as some Republicans in Congress tried to steal the 2020 election from its rightful winner, Joe Biden.

Today the man who encouraged and stood to benefit from that political violence, if it had succeeded, is an even bet to be elected as President of the United States.

As the UK faces down our own wave of misinformation-fuelled rioting, albeit less directly targeted at our democratic institutions, we must learn the lesson from our American cousins – and refuse any attempt to normalise political violence.

He warned that we need to tackle the root causes of this violence:

In the short term, the problem may primarily be a matter of policing and the courts, but in the long term, we need political solutions to the issues thrown up by these riots. Violence and threats of violence cannot become normalised in the way that they increasingly have been in the United States.

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The Voice

LIbLink: Ed Davey – Lib Dems plan to ‘finish the job’ in Tory heartlands

By The Voice | Tue 30th July 2024 - 9:30 am

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Over on the Guardian website, there’s an interview with Ed Davey in a buoyant mood:

Confirming that he intends to lead the party into the next election, Davey said the party would again ruthlessly target so-called blue wall seats, traditionally Conservative areas where the Lib Dems have taken advantage of perceived Tory complacency and disaffection with the party’s ideological direction.

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The Voice

LibLink – Jess Brown-Fuller on her first week as MP for Chichester

By The Voice | Tue 16th July 2024 - 12:15 pm

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Over on the Guardian, our new MP for Chichester, Jess Brown-Fuller, provides diary of her first week as an MP:

On Wednesday I had the opportunity to “swear in” – taking my oath of allegiance to the crown – and officially take my seat in parliament, which was a particularly special moment in the day. I then hit the ground running by writing a letter to the environment secretary on pressing matters affecting Chichester, organising meetings for the weekend to discuss sewage and water quality, dealing with media inquiries, supporting residents and, last but not least, trying to remember where I’d last spotted a ladies loo.

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Are we delivering too many leaflets?

By Mary Reid | Thu 23rd May 2024 - 1:29 pm

Party President Mark Pack gives the answer – NO!

He writes:

Q. Do leaflets work?

A. Yes.

Q. Really?

A. Yup. There’s plenty of evidence, both internal party evidence (e.g. tracking changes in canvass data in the aftermath of leaflets) and also from academic research. Examples of the latter are here and here, and there’s also polling evidence of voters remembering getting leaflets and being influenced by them. Plus there’s the evidence of what other parties have done when they’ve walloped us in elections.

Q. OK, one leaflet I understand. But why so many?

A. The typical leaflet gets only a few seconds consideration from a member of the public – so you need to do a lot of leaflets to get anything more than the merest sliver of information over.

He then quotes research from the Electoral Commission after the 2019 General Election which includes this:

Over half the people who took part in our survey after the election said they saw campaign materials from parties and candidates, around a third said they got information from the televised leader debates or online sources.

  • 55% of people who took part in our research after the election said that they got information from leaflets/flyers
  • 32% from a party leader debate on television
  • 29% from newspapers or news websites
  • 24% from social media posts and adverts by campaigners
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NewsHound

LibLink: Claire Tyler The time for radical reinvention is now

By NewsHound | Wed 22nd May 2024 - 8:20 pm

Our Claire Tyler has written an essay for a Make Every Adult Matter publication on the next steps for policies to tackle multiple disadvantage. These issues are important to think about as we head into the General Election on 4th July.

Claire wrote about the need for local, joined up services alongside a much stronger safety net.She set out the problem:

The accepted post-war norm has been for successive generations to experience better lives than their parents. That is not true anymore for the younger generation, as they are experiencing worse outcomes in terms of pay, security and housing. And the two-child limit for benefits continues to hold many families in poverty. The Marmot Review: 10 Years On highlighted that in the past decade, people can now expect to spend more of their lives in poor health. This is a crisis that will grow rather than fade without radical intervention.

What would the Liberal Democrats do about this?

Liberal Democrats would finally put mental health on the same footing as physical health, and invest in public health and prevention so that fewer people get ill and need treatment. We would break the cycle of reoffending by improving rehabilitation in prisons and on release. We would commit to building 150,000 social homes a year by the end of the next parliament. And we would set a target of ending deep poverty within a decade with a major anti-poverty strategy. Crucially, Liberal Democrats also understand that radical reform will take more than just good policies in each government department. We also need to reform our public services, taking a coherent, joined-up approach so that they work for those who are most in need. In tackling multiple disadvantage, this means committing to action in three key areas: leadership from the heart of government, local autonomy and co-production, and shared outcomes that endure for the long term.

And decisions being made locally is really important:

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NewsHound

LibLink Jo Swinson: New thinking about economics for a world in polycrisis

By NewsHound | Wed 15th May 2024 - 9:30 pm

Economic optimism is not in plentiful supply at the moment. Former Leader, Jo Swinson, now Director for Partners for a New Economy, has managed to find some, though, in a recent blog post on WINGS, which

is a community of thought leaders and changemakers who are committed to ensuring philanthropy reaches its fullest potential as a catalyst for social progress. We are committed to end inertia, break down silos, challenge conventional wisdom and create an enabling environment for philanthropy to flourish. Our goal is to encourage collaboration and ignite potential — to rally philanthropic actors everywhere to build a more just, equitable and healthy world.

Jo wrote about the transformative impact targeted philanthropy can have in a world in a state of polycrisis:

A world in crisis is the new normal, so it’s no wonder that many people are experiencing burnout from pandemic fallout, geopolitical instability and the soaring cost of living of recent years.

No matter what your funding strategy or thematic focus is, your partners and the work you fund are certainly impacted by the ‘polycrisis’. Scanning the horizon for future trends, a return to how things were seems very unlikely. Just as many funders mobilised and adapted strategies to respond to Covid-19, or found ways to provide uplifts to grantees facing massive inflation, so philanthropy has to look ahead and prepare for a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. WINGS rightly explores this in its current four-part seminar series ‘Embracing the Unpredictable: How is Philanthropy Navigating Complex Interconnected Crises?’ as part of the Philanthropy Transformation Initiative.

Many foundations are choosing to work differently in the face of polycrisis, including:

Replacing siloed thinking with a systemic view, narrow funding streams with cross-cutting programmes and ‘multisolving’ for several problems at once
Collaborating with other donors to pool funds and learn together, instead of a ‘go it alone’ mentality

Identifying and funding action to tackle the root causes of problems, not just symptoms

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NewsHound

LibLInk: Christine Jardine: WASPI women offered little hope by Tories or Labour

By NewsHound | Wed 27th March 2024 - 8:38 am

The ink was barely dry on the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report on the DWP’s failure to warn women of changes in their State Pension age than Jeremy Hunt was popping up on Sunday’s Kuenssberg programme trying to wriggle out of the Government’s responsibilities to compensate those women.

This issue affects 6 million women born in  the 195os, many of whom had to wait 6 years longer than they had expected to get their State Pension and only found out at the last minute so they had no time to plan accordingly. This has led to them experiencing hardship, poverty and having to work much longer than they had planned.

Christine Jardine, who has been championing the cause of the WASPI (Women against State Pension Inequality) women ever since she was elected in 2017, used her Scotsman column this week to warn that neither the Tories nor Labour have a plan to put this right for the women affected.

She said:

Sadly, there is little optimism for anything other than the inaction that we have come to expect, not just in this issue but in the protracted inquiries and delayed settlements over the infected blood scandal, Hillsborough and so many others. Many of the women too seem unsurprised, if disappointed, at the lack of an immediate definitive outcome. As do those who have campaigned tirelessly for justice for them.

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The Voice

LibLink: Richard Foord MP demands a better deal on pharmacies

By The Voice | Tue 26th March 2024 - 10:25 am

Over on the Midweek Herald, Richard Foord MP writes about the threat to high street pharmacies:

…these important facilities are under threat, and we are risk seeing them disappear from some of our high streets altogether. More than 1,000 pharmacies across England have shut their doors since 2015 and many more are facing an uncertain future as funding for these services has been cut by 30 per cent in real terms over the past seven years. There’s a vacancy rate of 14 per cent in community pharmacies in the West Country, compared to eight per cent across the UK. Communities like Axminster have already seen one of their pharmacies closed, leaving residents having to queue out of the door to get help from the sole remaining pharmacy in town, and in Sidmouth the news that Boots was giving up on their Woolbrook Road pharmacy caused considerable concern.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Victor Chamberlain: Local authorities still hold the key to accessible housing

By NewsHound | Fri 23rd February 2024 - 10:01 am

Southwark Lib Dem Councillor Victor Chamberlain has written for Inside Housing about providing suitable housing for disabled people.

He sets out the problem:

It’s over a century since the ground breaking Addison Act of 1919, passed under Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George, laid the foundation for social housing in the UK. Despite significant progress since then, it’s disheartening that we still grapple with fundamental challenges of providing quality and suitable housing for everyone. This is particularly true for disabled people who lack a range of suitable housing options, especially adequate numbers of accessible and adaptable homes. 

Accessible housing is not just a matter of convenience; it is a fundamental human right that directly impacts individuals’ safety, independence, and quality of life. Accessibility features and home adaptions also prevent avoidable hospital admissions and care home placements. Every £1 invested in housing adaptations is worth in more than £2 in care savings and quality of life gains. It’s a win-win scenario that cannot be ignored, particularly at a time when social care budgets face unprecedented strain.

The Disabled Facilities Grant, intended to fund housing adaptations, is woefully insufficient to meet demand. The £30,000 cap on expenditure per home is outdated and inadequate, leaving many unable to afford the necessary modifications. Consequently, local councils are forced to cover the shortfall from overstretched social care budgets, exacerbating financial strain and limiting resources for other essential services.

He cites the example of a disabled resident who has waited 22 years for a home that meets her needs.

The solution, he argues, lies in social housing as the private rented sector cannot meet people’s needs.

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The Voice

LibLink: Ed Davey on the Post Office scandal

By The Voice | Thu 1st February 2024 - 1:50 pm

Ed Davey has been writing in The Guardian today under the heading “I fell for Post Office lies – and I’m sorry. But I won’t be silent as Tories prey on victims’ trauma”

He writes:

The Post Office Horizon scandal is the greatest miscarriage of justice of our time, and I am deeply sorry for the families who have had their lives ruined by it. As one of the ministers over the 20 years of this scandal, including my time as minister responsible for postal affairs, I’m sorry I did not see through the Post Office’s lies – and that it took me five months to meet Alan Bates, the man who has done so much to uncover it.

The Post Office is owned by the government but not run by it, so the official advice I was given when I first became a minister in May 2010 was not to meet Bates. He wrote again urging me to reconsider, and I did then meet him that October. But he shouldn’t have had to wait. When Bates told me his concerns about Horizon, I took them extremely seriously and put them to the Post Office. What I got back were categorical assurances – the same lies we now know they were telling the subpostmasters, journalists, parliament and the courts.

Since then, the innocence of the subpostmasters has been proven.

He goes on:

So how did we get here? It’s hard not to conclude that this was a conspiracy on a grand scale, and it was only exposed when a brave whistleblower came forward from inside Fujitsu itself in 2015.

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The Voice

LibLink: Vince Cable on industrial strategy

By The Voice | Fri 17th November 2023 - 1:38 pm

Vince Cable has been writing at CommentCentral under the headline: Industrial strategy is vital to boosting growth. He bemoans the closure of blast furnaces in Port Talbot and Scunthorpe.

He says:

The closures seem to be a mockery of the optimistic story about a future based on green jobs since the closures are prompted by a wish to move the industry onto a less energy and carbon intensive (and more modest) footing, using electric arc furnaces to turn scrap back into steel. The government is putting in £1 billion to help finance the transition.

But critics point to a dearth of constructive ideas for the industry. Britain produces 10 million tonnes of scrap steel a year, less than a third of which is currently recycled (the rest being exported and recycled elsewhere), so why are there no plans to boost domestic production? Why are there no plans to use hydrogen as a reducing agent in updated blast furnaces making use of Britain’s resources of offshore wind to generate ‘green’ hydrogen through electrolysis? Where is the strategy?

He compares the UK with countries such Japan, China, Germany and Israel and praises their industrial strategy.

After a brief flurry of free market discipline, the Coalition was soon forced into reactive intervention to stop large factory closures. I decided to launch a comprehensive, sector based, industrial strategy. Conservative colleagues went along with it, some reluctantly. There was positive engagement from business – and trades unions – and in sectors like vehicles, aerospace, life sciences and creative industries. there were industry-wide strategies that were acted upon.

To my pleasant surprise, Theresa May kept and developed the industrial strategy, under Greg Clark. It couldn’t last. With Boris Johnson came ‘f**k business’ and also pathological short-termism (though Dominic Cummings managed to get the DARPA ‘moon-shot’ project launched). Truss and her free-market fundamentalists like Rees Mogg and Kwarteng had no time for ‘industrial strategy’.

Sunak seems to be going down the same path. In contrast Labour is keen to give industrial policy a central position.

He concludes:

I like to claim that industrial strategy was one of the Lib Dems’ big but unsung achievements in the Coalition government. But industrial strategy depends on shared, cross-party ownership. In that spirit, I would like to see Jeremy Hunt using his Autumn Statement to give his support to industrial strategy as part of his programme for boosting growth.

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Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable: The net zero consensus is over

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 30th August 2023 - 9:50 am

How do you save the planet when we no longer agree on key measures to save the planet? These questions are posed by Vince Cable in his latest column for Comment Central. As Vince often does, he poses questions that some Liberal Democrats will find difficult, particularly in relation to North Sea Oil licences and relations with China.

Consensus between the parties is key to making long term plans to save the planet, he argues.

He sets out how far the Conservatives have fallen on climate change:

It was Margaret Thatcher who originally embraced the global warming issue and wider environmental stewardship and who demonstrated by championing the Montreal Protocol on the Ozone Layer the force of British leadership. David Cameron (initially) and Boris Johnson continued this tradition. The resigning Environment Minister, Zac Goldsmith, has told us, however, that this Prime Minister is simply uninterested. Or hostile. Or cynically preparing for what I call the CAT strategy in the coming election: climate; asylum; and transgender; a culture war campaign.

He outlines a series of uncomfortable trade-offs that he says we must be prepared to make to get to Net Zero.

One of those trade-offs is cost. Nothing fuels populist anger more than regressive levies on environmental bads. For families whose sole practical, means of transport is an old banger, environmental taxes are resented, no matter the impact on the planet or local air quality. Politicians may choose to press ahead but they cannot ignore the negative side effects. In practice, the trade-offs are more complex. The environmental levy paid on fuel bills to provide support for new renewables was criticised for increasing energy bills but has helped to drive down the cost of offshore wind to a point that it is now consistently cheaper than gas.

He says that nuclear must also be part of the package:

Indeed, hostility to this impeccably zero carbon and energy secure domestic source has been led by the same green campaigners who oppose fossil fuel use. What we need is a portfolio of different, low carbon and secure sources including new renewables, nuclear and carbon capture.

This will cheer those within the party who are challenging our longstanding anti nuclear energy policy. Last year a motion to include nuclear power as part of an energy security package was put to Scottish Conference and referred back.

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NewsHound

Christine Jardine: Tinker, Tailor, Tartan Trews

By NewsHound | Mon 21st August 2023 - 10:35 am

Christine Jardine’s tongue is stuck firmly in her cheek in her Scotsman column this week. You can tell she’s enjoying making fun of the latest nonsense advanced by a former SNP MSP – that the reason the SNP is doing so badly is that it has been infiltrated by MI5 to discredit the independence cause.

It seems that after 16 years in power, including one term with an outright majority, the failure of the SNP to persuade the Scottish people to jump ship from the UK was all because of unionist subterfuge.

Not because of dissatisfaction with the state of our NHS, anger at failing education standards or frustration at the growing cost of those ferries. Nor the results of realising during the pandemic that the strength and size of the UK Exchequer and the economy were positive reasons for the Union. Nor was it the emotional ties we all have to family in the rest of the UK that swung the argument. No, it was spooks. British spies in the nationalist camp.

A potential new spy novel, she wonders?

A sort of ‘Tinker Tailor Tartan Trews’ expose of a pro-UK cell acting as a conduit for vital information that Holyrood would prefer to keep clear of the clutches of ‘Big Brother’ in Westminster. That, in claiming the Security Service is anti-Scottish, the originator of this particular conspiracy theory – apparently a former MSP called Campbell Martin – is actually laying the groundwork for a piece of fiction.

It might feature a handful of operatives, presumably well-trained in the love of square sausage and Irn-Bru, which has infiltrated the inner sanctum of the SNP. There they have painstakingly won the trust of the leadership and encouraged them down an independence cul-de-sac, for which they will be rewarded with a cottage in the Highlands and a new identity.

The online version of the article is illustrated beautifully with a picture of Claudia Winkleman in full Traitors get up

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Paul Walter

LibLink: Mark Pack on Sunak’s ‘war on woke’

By Paul Walter | Tue 15th August 2023 - 9:16 am

The Guardian has an article asking “Can Sunak’s rightwing war on ‘woke’, migrants and the environment save the Tories?” with contributions from a panel including our own President, Mark Pack:

It is, after all, the Liberal Democrats – not the rightwing populists of Reform – who have taken four seats off the government with record-breaking swings in byelections this parliament. The message from voters to Lib-Dem canvassers in those contests was very consistent. It was about the NHS and the cost of living, about sewage and failing public services. It was about being fed up with the Conservatives, their lockdown parties and their failures on the mainstream issues.

That’s borne out by pollsters too. The cost of living and the NHS are consistently the top-rated issues. Even Conservative voters want the most polluting vehicles to pay higher taxes and Conservatives are more supportive of the 2050 net zero target than voters in general.

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NewsHound

Christine Jardine: SNP so caught up in indy fantasies they are almost in Narnia

By NewsHound | Thu 3rd August 2023 - 9:55 am

In her Scotsman column this week, Christine Jardine calls out the SNP/Green Scottish Government for wasting public money and effort on independence rather than tackle the problems people face day to day.

I appreciate we all want familiarity for comfort in difficult times, and there can be no doubt that these are tricky times for the SNP. With internal party squabbles, broken ferries, and an ever-lengthening social care backlog, who can blame them for wanting a distraction? But why should taxpayers have to fork out for the SNP’s therapy for frustrated nationalists? Particularly when public funds are tight and so many people are worried about providing for their families.

Lsst week, the Government published a paper on citizenship in an independent Scotland. Promise heavy but reality light is probably the best that can be said about it. As Christine says:

We would all also have our new passports by ‘independence day’. Oh and the colour of these new passports would be maroon, just in case that’s of any interest. We would also somehow have rejoined the EU without the nuisance of having to meet the criteria.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Christine Jardine We must not take peace in Northern Ireland for granted

By NewsHound | Wed 12th April 2023 - 9:07 am

As Joe Biden visits Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Christine Jardine writes in the Scotsman that we should not take the huge step forward to peace for granted.

She started by looking at how we got to the agreement:

Progress towards the Belfast Good Friday agreement had begun shortly before Christmas 1993 with the Downing Street Declaration. The joint statement by Prime Minister John Major and Taoiseach Albert Reynolds stated it was the right of the people of Northern Ireland to decide between the UK or a United Ireland. It also acknowledged the importance of mutual consent in the north and south of the island in resolving issues.

In the following five years, there were ceasefires, cross-party talks and false starts before that historic announcement on April 10, 1998, which in essence contained three basic principles. They are: the parity of esteem of both communities, the principle of consent underpinning Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, and the birth-right of the people of Northern Ireland to identify and be accepted as British or Irish, or both, and to hold both British and Irish citizenship.

And she highlighted the dramatic reduction in loss of life and injury that has followed in the ensuing quarter of a century:

In the 25 years before the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, there were more than 3,000 deaths and 47,000 people were injured as a result of the conflict. Since 1998, there have been fewer than 200 deaths. Still too many, of course, but a reflection of changed times.

Current circumstances, she says, mean that we still have to work to maintain this peace.

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NewsHound

Christine Jardine – Windsor Framework a hopeful sign for future relations with EU

By NewsHound | Thu 9th March 2023 - 11:15 am

In the Scotsman this week, Christine Jardine pointed out the irony of Rishi Sunak’s pronouncement on Northern Ireland’s special and unique position:

The picture became even more ridiculous when this arch-Brexiteer enthusiastically proclaimed the benefits Northern Ireland could derive from being in both the EU single market and the UK. Is that not what we all used to have?

Are what Rishi Sunak described with a smile as the “exciting prospects” for Northern Ireland not what we all used to take for granted? And yet even as the Tories basked in this self-proclaimed Brexit victory, there was just the slightest hint, a tiny glimmer of hope that our future relationship with the European Union might be salvageable.

It’s good to hear a Lib Dem actually talking about the problems with Brexit:

The reality remains that the Conservatives erected immense barriers to trade between the UK and the EU. Farmers, fishermen and small businesses across Britain remain tied up in red tape and the Conservative government are, as yet, doing nothing to help them. But in recognising the importance of creating a special agreement for Northern Ireland, they may, perhaps, have taken an important step towards reconciliation.

But the SNP saw it as an excuse to get something for Scotland:

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NewsHound

LibLink: Christine Jardine – Sturgeon’s dead cat distracts from multiple failures

By NewsHound | Wed 15th February 2023 - 9:25 am

In her Scotsman column this week, Christine Jardine highlights 3 major SNP Government failures and suggests Nicola Sturgeon’s publication of her tax returns is merely a dead cat to distract from them.

The first failing is the lack of dualling the main route to the north of Scotland, the A9. It was supposed to be one by 2025 but that is not going to happen and fatalities on this road are going up.

Failure to make the promised improvements will impact the economy as well as the health and well-being of isolated communities with poor access to vital services. But most of all it is a failure to make the main route north safe for all of us. Safety was a major factor in the decision to upgrade a road on which the number of deaths still managed to record a heart-breaking 20-year high in 2022.

Thirteen people lost their lives on the stretch from Inverness to Perth of which approximately 77 miles remain to be dualled and the tender for the latest stretch – Tomatin to Moy – was announced this week to have been delayed. Promised improvements now will have to wait while thousands continue to face the real fear of driving on a road which switches intermittently from dual to single carriage and on which you can meet a tractor or road works at any moment.

And then there is the unbelievable capacity to make a mess of a good idea that is the proposed Deposit Return Scheme. Anyone who wants to sell drinks in bottles, or cans, in Scotland after August is supposed to sign up for the new scheme by the end of this month, but businesses are saying they may not bother because of the additional costs they will incur. This weekend no Scottish Government Minister would appear on the main Sunday morning shows to defend the scheme which has even been criticised by SNP MPs.

On a practical level, retailers are unhappy that the vending machines will cost around £20,000 to install and take up valuable retail space. Producers are also beginning to ask questions, and then there are the problems of different pricing for different parts of the UK. Which raises another not insignificant problem: the Internal Markets Bill.

A leading lawyer this week claimed that Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme could create an unlawful trade barrier with the rest of the UK where a similar scheme will be introduced in 2025.

Finally, the Government is yet again delaying the full implementation of welfare powers.

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NewsHound

LibLink Christine Jardine: Sorry just isn’t enough

By NewsHound | Wed 8th February 2023 - 9:24 am

Christine Jardine has long been fighting for justice for those affected by the Infected Blood scandal and used her Scotsman column to say that Government needs to get much better at accepting its own failings so that victims and their families do not have to wait decades for acknowledgement of mistakes and compensation.

She outlined the tragedy and heartbreak the scandal caused.

One woman told how she had discovered that she and both of her daughters have been infected with HIV by a blood transfusion she had been given before either child was conceived. It had been passed on to them during their birth.

A father told of the pain he and his family had gone through over his son’s death. He had been given blood products contaminated by HIV in the early 1980s when there was little understanding of the condition and public fear was at its zenith. Already distraught at what had happened to their son, the family then had to deal with the lack of understanding and stigma which then surrounded HIV.

I thought about friends of my own family who had gone through the grief of losing their father to hepatitis after what had seemed like a life-saving kidney transplant. He had been given a contaminated blood transfusion during the transplant which eventually claimed his life. In a way, the system had let them both he and the donor down as he never enjoyed the full, long life that should have been the result of that amazing, selfless gift.

All of those families and thousands more have lived with pain, confusion and, in many cases, financial hardship for what is now approaching four decades.

She then looked at the failures of Government to act to help, not just on this, but on Grenfell and Hillsborough too.

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