ALDC is the party’s organisation which supports Councillors and campaigning. We know that if you follow their extensive campaigning guidelines, you are more likely to win. They run the Kickstart training weekends which are intense but give individual support to candidates and campaign teams. There is still time to register for the one in November.
Being part of ALDC gives you access to lots of fantastic resources, so I’d recommend any campaigner joins here.
The organisation has announced the result of its biennial elections. The new Management Committee takes office on 25 November 2018 and serves for two years.
They are as follows:
President: Baroness Ros Scott – Suffolk
Chair: Mayor Dave Hodgson – Bedford
Vice-Chairs (2): Councillor Anita Lower – Newcastle
Councillor Steven Lambert – Aylesbury Vale and Buckinghamshire
Secretary: Councillor Sarah Boad – Warwickshire
Treasurer: Veronica German – Torfaen
English Rep: James Moore – Reading
Welsh Rep: Jonathan Pratt – Bridgend
Scottish Rep: Councillor Ian Yuill – Aberdeen
One of the most heartbreaking moments of the 2017 election was that moment at about 6am when we realised that we had only just missed out on winning back North East Fife. The SNP MP and his wife were his own majority. Just two votes in it.
That’s one hell of a bar chart.
North East Fife recently selected the wonderful Wendy Chamberlain as PPC and the irrepressible Scottish Party Leader, Willie Rennie is MSP – winning the constituency seat back in 2016.
They’re now advertising for an organiser. Don’t ever tell him I said this, but I worked for Willie when …
Over the next 10 days, there will be a number of opportunities for party members to express their views about Vince’s ideas about party reform.
These are:
To set up a registered supporters’ scheme and give those supporters the right to vote in leadership elections
To allow non MPs to stand for Leader
To allow people to stand for election as soon as they join the party, subject to approval.
There has already been one session in London and another takes place tomorrow.
Other events take place in Edinburgh, York, Birmingham, Lancaster, Tiverton, Wokingham and Aberystwyth. You can find full details of times and places here.
If you can’t get to any of them, there is a webinar on Wednesday night for which you can register here.
The consultation booklet is available here. It contains 13 questions and you need to respond by 14th October. Federal Board then meets on 15th and 22nd October to discuss what to do next.
It’s World Homelessness Day next Wednesday. To mark the occasion and highlight the plight of young people forced to sleep on the streets, Lib Dem peers Alison Suttie and Olly Grender will be sleeping out overnight. They are raising money for De Paul, a charity which helps young people who are affected by homelessness.
Already they have raised more than £1000 for De Paul. On their Just Giving page, they explain why they are doing this:
This will be our third year of sleeping out just once a year for this charity. Depaul UK is a fantastic youth homelessness charity providing housing and support to 16-25 year olds who do not have a safe place to sleep.
According to government figures, the number of young people sleeping rough in England increased by 28 per cent, between 2016 and 2017. No young person should find themselves sleeping on the streets.
Depaul UK believe that every young person deserves a home and a stake in their community, which is why they work tirelessly to provide the stability and support young people need to progress beyond homelessness.
In 2017, they supported 3,763 young people empowering them to lead better, more independent lives.
This year, to raise vital funds for the emergency and preventative services they provide nationally, Alison and I will team up again and will be sleeping out at the Kia Oval on Wednesday 10th October. That evening before the sleep out we will hear from Depaul staff about the great work they’ve been doing. We will then buy some cardboard from Depaul and bed down for the night.
Back in 1994 or thereabouts, we failed to gain a labour seat in a by-election by a handful of votes. 17 stuck in my mind, but Paul Holmes tells me it’s 34. 17 extra voters.
Tonight, we won that Moor ward seat by a few more votes – a gain from Labour.
I am absolutely delighted that earlier this week the Government announced it would be consulting on the Bill I introduced in Parliament back in June, which would require organisations with more than 250 staff to publish their parental leave and pay policies.
Campaigning does work! The numbers in Parliament and the Government’s inability to focus on anything but Brexit mean that more and more MPs want to work across party lines to make things happen. In fact, my Bill received support from Conservative, Labour, SNP and Green MPs, as well as of course from my Lib Dem colleagues. It’s great to …
One of the things that often pains me in this party, in my eight years of membership, is the way we seem more obsessed with fighting each other than we are getting out there fighting for liberal ideas and candidates.
Far too often our party becomes personality-centric, you either love someone or hate them. We define our relationships and views of people based upon one or two key things we either agree or disagree with them on, this is not constructive and doesn’t help us work together as a party. You can have grievances with someone, you can incredibly dislike them, but do we have to turn everything into a war of “I don’t like this person; therefore, I’m going to oppose everything they do and try to lock them out of things”?
We are a party which prides itself on freedom from conformity, the rights of the individual and the tolerance. We need to accept people can be different, hold different views and have a different set of values from us and still be members of the same party. We need to move past this hyper-personal atmosphere and change the party culture towards one which fosters ideas, involves & engages members from all walks of life and builds a genuine movement for change.
I must have done something wrong in my previous life because for the last 15 years or, so I have been (it feels like I have been condemned) to travel to work by train. Firstly, it was from Solihull and now from Wokingham to London. My local train from Earley (which comes from Waterloo) to Reading arrives on time no more than 8 to 9 times a year. Approximately 60 per cent of the trains to London are late getting into Reading. However, coming home the trains do leave Paddington on time and get to Reading more or less on time – I can’t complain about my journey back.
I live about 30 miles from London. My trains going to work are invariably late, I often don’t get a seat, and the cost for the national rail ticket is more than £4000. I will no doubt start dreaming “We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to your journey!!”.
Nearly one in three trains across Britain are late, and delays on some routes affect more than half of journeys. So why are trains delayed? The reasons seem to be because the infrastructure like track, signals, tunnels, overhead lines, trains etc., have been poorly invested in and that has resulted in worn out trains running on crumbling infrastructure. Although the rail companies are modernising and buying some new trains it doesn’t seem to be well managed and often results in further delays.
If the rumours at Conference were even a tiny bit true, Layla Moran is partial to the occasional cocktail.
So, as she admits herself, giving up booze for a month is going to be a challenge, but she’s doing the annual Macmillan Go Sober for October challenge.
Ok. Those who know me will know this is a MAJOR personal challenge. All proceeds to a good cause. Will do updates by Twitter. Wish me luck!! https://t.co/zPKXlkUh0K#GoSober2018
Our Lynne Featherstone was the Minister who instigated same sex marriage in England.
She welcomed the news on Twitter.
It was always going to have to happen after sex marriage meant our laws became discriminatory. At last – the wrong will be righted! https://t.co/HWQK6AuoY3
Lynne has always acknowledged the support of Theresa May, who, as Home Secretary, gave her Bill crucial backing. However, the Tories would never allow Lynne to introduce mixed sex civil partnerships. Even now they haven’t done it entirely voluntarily. They were forced to either scrap civil partnerships for same sex couples or introduce them for everyone.
It was therefore sad that the Prime Minister didn’t acknowledge Lynne’s role.
She is v careful to say sponsor – and she did back me. Be nice if she mentioned it though https://t.co/lnvld6ETAx
LGBT+ Lib Dems chair Jennie Rigg welcomed the move and said that this was just one of the things that needs to happen to achieve proper partnership equality. I did love the very on message inclusion of “demand better.”
Our annual campaigner awards, which were sponsored by Election Workshop and presented by Willie Rennie MSP, were revealed during our AGM at Autumn Conference in Brighton.
The results were…
BEST LOCAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN
We were looking for local parties that have fought effective and strong 2018 local election campaigns.
Runner-up: Southwark
Following sobering 2017 results, it was decided that the local party needed to make changes to how it campaigned. Over the past decade or more much of Southwark has undergone significant changes in demographics, with an increasingly large number of young professionals that have few …
Good morning, and welcome to another week here at Liberal Democrat Voice.
Something is happening out there, with Liberal Democrat polling numbers consistently edging up into double figures. Is it the start of the long march to credibility, or is it a reflection that, compared to Labour and the Conservatives, our stance on Brexit is beginning to cut through?
Last week, Labour decided that, rather than take a view on Brexit, or on a People’s Vote, they would offer several. Unfortunately, whilst Sir Kier Starmer was enthusiastically received for suggested that a new referendum would include the option of remaining inside the …
This week, Jo Swinson has persuaded 10 major firms to share their parental leave policies as a key element in the fight against maternity discrimination. Jo, who introduced shared parental leave as a Business Minister, now wants companies to go further to encourage employees and attract more people to work for them:
She wrote for the Independent about why this was so important:
A new mother forced to resign after being bombarded with texts and emails telling her she “obviously can’t work with two kids”. Another one who returns to work to find herself reapplying for her job after a company restructure.
Lib Dem peer and Home Affairs spokesperson has talked to Buzzfeed about the death of his former boyfriend from an accidental overdose of the drug GHB.
In an emotional and candid interview, he described how he and Michael had been in a relationship, which, after they split up, became a very close and enduring friendship.
In 2013, Brian received a call from Michael’s brother with the horrific news that Michael was on life support. He rushed to the Intensive Care Unit to say goodbye.
At the inquest into Michael’s death, the Coroner pointed out the key sign that he had been in …
By Malcolm Bruce
| Fri 28th September 2018 - 1:30 pm
I fully understand why the party leadership is consulting on ideas to broaden our support.
I am a lifelong Liberal and want our party to be founded on Liberal values. But I never want it to be a purist sect.
I also understand the concerns that offering free association to registered supporters might devalue party membership.
However membership confers the knowledge that we are offering core funding to the party and we can help shape policy and stand for and participate in internal elections and become an election candidate.
I believe we have to be realistic. Our support has fallen to single figures in spite of standing united for what at least 40 per cent of voters want on Brexit.
We all know that the high levels of support for the two larger parties is mostly based on the negative reality of our outdated voting system.
While both have core support around half of their voters are motivated by fear and hatred of “the other lot”.
So Conservative voters are in fear or hatred of the prospect of a Communist-led Labour Government or, in large parts of Scotland, sick fed up with the indy-obsessive incompetent SNP.
Many Labour voters are sick of the self-serving, arrogant, selfish xenophobia of the current Government and want rid of them.
For these voters the Liberal Democrats are a weak irrelevance and an indulgence they cannot afford even if they recognise we more closely identify with their own views.
Yes, where we can connect in local by elections and the few constituencies where we retain credibility we can cut through, but to take us back to where we were, let alone break through to Government, requires us to become insurgent challengers ready to take on all comers and unite the voices of reason.
There is a new, clearly defined road to political power—become an anti-politician.
Forget about compromise, consensus and appealing to the middle ground. Dismiss ideas of party loyalty. Discard thoughts of reasoned political debate.
No, today’s successful politician is a crude, crass, socially unacceptable bully pandering to the basest human instincts to gain power. Finally, today’s successful candidate must be outside the traditional political establishment.
You may think that the previous is the start of yet another diatribe against President Donald Trump. In a way you are right. Trump is the international benchmark. He has lit the torch down this dark and dangerous path. But others are following. The latest addition to this pantheon of horror is Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazil is important. It is Latin America’s largest country, population of 207.7 million.It has the eighth largest economy in the world.And, it is resource rich with more potential than an infant Amadeus Mozart.
On October 5th Brazilians troop to the polls for first round presidential elections. The run-off between the top two from round one will be held on 25 October. At the moment there are nine candidates. 63-year-old Bolsonaro is 40 percent ahead of his nearest rival.
His commanding lead is partly due to the fact that Bolsonaro is laid up in a hospital bed recovering from a knife attack which provided him with the additional aura of political martyrdom. But even before he was stabbed on 6th September Jair Bolsonaro was streets ahead of his political opponents,
To secure pole position, Bolsonaro has out-trumped Trump. On the subject of misogyny, the Brazilian has said he would not rape a certain congresswoman because she was “too ugly.” His daughter, said Bolsonaro, was conceived in a “moment of weakness”; maternity pay should be scrapped and women should be paid less because of pregnancies.
There is increasing worry about the impact of Brexit on our local economies and the recognition that it is important to make plans for all eventualities.
Last night, the Lib Dems in Opposition on North Devon (District) Council put forward a motion to examine exactly that:
The impact of Brexit (hard or soft) will affect all North Devon residents. This Council believes that with Brexit fast approaching, it is both sensible and realistic that the potential risks and impact of Brexit on North Devon – good and bad, short term and long term – are fully understood as far as is possible and aired in public together with detailed discussion on how these impacts can be mitigated. To achieve this, this Council undertakes to organize and co-ordinate a public conference/symposium before Christmas in which North Devon’s experts and leaders in business, farming, tourism, education, health and social services and other areas are invited to participate, together with elected representatives at all levels. This council is uniquely placed to lead this initiative by immediately setting up a Cross Party Working Group. The findings and conclusions of the symposium would be presented as a report to full Council and other authorities. Furthermore we request that consideration be given to how this Council can assist businesses etc. before and during the transition period.
I am pleased to say that the motion passed, with support from some Conservatives and Independents who recognised the need for such a symposium.
Cllr David Worden, Leader of the Liberal Democrats on North Devon Council, spoke passionately for the motion:
Whenever we turn on the news or read the newspapers it appears that the headlines are all about Brexit. I don’t want to go into the pros and cons of whether we should or should not leave the EU but I am extremely concerned about the impact of Brexit on the economy of North Devon. We live in one of the most deprived areas of the South West. There are hardly any services which have not been hit by austerity cuts. We simply cannot sit back and let the disastrous No Deal scenario, which seems ever likely, to be upon us, unprepared.
Jo Swinson, Lib Dem Deputy Leader, has announced nine major employers have agreed to publish their parental leave and pay policies.
Representing around 150,000 employees, the nine companies are:
Accenture
Addleshaw Goddard
Direct Line Group
EY
KPMG
Linklaters
PwC
RBS
Santander
Jo has been campaigning tirelessly for greater transparency on parental leave and pay. Getting these large companies to agree to disclose their parental pay and leave policies sets a standard that other companies will feel more pressure to follow.
Jo praised these employers for “setting an excellent example, demonstrating to others they can …
By Tahir Maher
| Wed 26th September 2018 - 3:45 pm
Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson Tim Farron said about the “latte levy”:
“We’ve been calling for this for years and the Conservatives have continued to do nothing – each year over 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups are thrown away and I now hope a small levy will finally be introduced to slash this waste.”
There is public support for using tax to reduce waste for single-use plastics. Firms that use unrecyclable plastic should be taxed to drive them to use other forms of packaging. This is part of the government target to abolish all plastic waste by 2042. The proposal is to use the funds raised to research into new recyclable/degradable plastics.
As Tim suggested, we need a tax on coffee cups that are very difficult to recycle. This is to deter the massive waste of plastic use that is having such a detrimental effect on our environment. This call follows the successful introduction of the 5 pence tax on plastic bags, by the Lib Dem, that has dramatically reduced their use.
From 2005 firms have had to buy a packaging recovery note (PRN), those firms who manufacture packing waste, to help offset the cost of dealing with the packaging. The PRN was to drive firms to more greener packaging. We, as a party, should push the government to increase the PRN to drive manufacturers to develop and use recyclable plastics.
The party has, rightly, focused on campaigning for an Exit from Brexit, but it appears to have done absolutely no thinking about how to campaign if we fail.
The press and internet are awash with Brexit doomsday scenarios: planes grounded; food shortages; lack of medicines; travel restrictions: a plummeting pound; riots; even a coup. However, Project Fear is no guide to campaigning in unknown territory.
How would we campaign in the new reality, if there is no People’s Vote or the vote is lost? There will be 9000+ council seats to fight on 2 May 2019, and we want to do well in those elections. If Britain does not Exit from Brexit, it will surely not be possible to fight those seats and ignore the UK’s changed circumstances? Can we afford to wait until Spring Conference, or later, before we consider the consequences of this outcome?
Having supported the European project since its early beginnings, we are surely not going to abandon it now? It won’t be easy to persuade people to support re-joining the EU without the opt-outs and special deals we currently enjoy when so many of them want to leave even when we have all these benefits. It could be a long haul. In the immediate future, as a matter of survival, our country will have to try – rapidly – to create a raft of new international agreements on trade; sourcing our food and medicines; creating new supply lines for manufacturers and suppliers; the new practicalities of travel. The UK currently has almost no people trained in the necessary skills to negotiate these agreements.
By Tahir Maher
| Wed 26th September 2018 - 10:45 am
The Liberal Democrats can hold their head high on the progress we have made to support women in the party and LGBTQ; I am now getting more positive with the party’s commitment to supporting ethnic minorities. However, the poor relation in all this is the support for disabled members. I don’t believe that there is the focus on disability issues as there is for other groups. Few in the party made it their mission to raise the issues that disabled people face, more than Robert Adamson.
A small tribute to Robert by Gemma Roulston the current Chair of Lib Dem Disability Association (LDDA):
Robert Moray Adamson was a carer who himself was diagnosed with MS. Robert never let the disease stop him taking a very active role in the party not only as Joint Chair of LDDA but with other party bodies like the English Party. Robert worked arduously to help and improve the lives of anyone with or without disabilities.
Robert and I worked well over these last two years together on LDDA business. When Robert was approached by Your Liberal Britain, about how to make their sessions at conference accessible, Roberts comments were taken up not only by them but by FCC too. With all the issues that Robert was going through he didn’t, however, agree with the right to die.
Robert has been Chair, Secretary, as well as newsletter editor of LDDA. He was always there for anyone with a kind word, good advice and was supportive. This year the Autumn conference in Brighton didn’t feel the same without him. Robert made a difference to people.
I recall that Robert wrote an article on being a candidate at Darlington entitled “The sitting candidate”, Robert was a kind, thoughtful and a humorous man. Robert’s one wish for LDDA was for it to be a SAO.
God bless Robert, rest up and enjoy not having to deliver leaflets, or have to herd cats.
By Tahir Maher
| Wed 26th September 2018 - 7:30 am
Thresa May is leading a divided party not wishing to be led and is heading in the opposite direction to anywhere she wants to go. Jeremy Corbyn is trying not to lead his party on Europe when his party is calling out for leadership. Vince is trying to get the party ready to take opportunities from a perceived moderate move from voters who are fed up by the dogmatic and squabbling Tories and leaderless Labour. Voters are moving away from the Tories because they have no agreed Brexit strategy, the can’t go to Labour as their 1970’s socialist tentacles have reappeared, and they won’t come to the Lib Dems as they perceive, wrongly, we are too small to make a difference. What a horrid dilemma. The country is being led by a Tory piped piper who is perilously taking us closer to the cliff edge.
YouGov polled in July asked voters what their top three priorities for the EU negotiators were:
Allow British companies to trade with EU without tariffs/restrictions – 42%
Allow the UK to make its own deals with other countries outside the EU – 40%
Maintaining co-operation with EU on anti-terrorism / security – 38%
(Immigration came in fourth with 29%).
For Brits abroad, 31% of Remain voters thought it was an essential requirement to agree a solution for them for those who voted for Brexit it was 8%. Labour supporters (28%) were more concerned about this than Lib Dem (25%).
Look, Theresa, I really don’t understand this. The European Union have told you that you can’t have this. You keep telling them that it’s what you want. When are you going to understand that, when you choose to leave, you get what they want you to have, especially when you have no status quo to revert to?
One assumes that someone has tried to explain this to our Prime Minister, but given that she has rather painted herself into a corner, it probably wouldn’t make any difference. In fairness though, even without her ludicrously self-harming red lines, her platform is being demolished by the ERG on one side, and the Democratic Unionists on the other.
And yes, there are signs that more thoughtful senior colleagues are looking for a way out, but between a Canada+++ option, which doesn’t solve the Irish border issue, and a Norway (—?) option, which doesn’t really exist, it does appear that we’re heading for either a snap election or no deal. And whilst Liberal Democrats might benefit from the former, is it likely to resolve anything, or would another even more painfully hung Parliament be the outcome? I was, at least, impressed by Jeremy Hunt’s spoken Japanese…
So, where are we now? Labour are meeting in Liverpool, with creative ambiguity the order of the day over Brexit.
If Labour bows to middle class liberal elites' demands for a second referendum (because they're the only ones who want one), they thereby insult the millions of Labour voters who knew exactly what they voted for in June 2016. And almost guarantee they lose the next election-IMHO pic.twitter.com/3QmHc91ka7
The Party’s membership, having been described as a middle-class elite by Iain Dale (who should really know better), appears to be overwhelmingly in favour of a “people’s vote” – it’s called internal Party democracy, Iain – with a leader who, frankly, isn’t. Can. or will, Jeremy and his mate Len deny their supporters the vote that they seem to want? And if they do, what do those who joined Labour to fight Brexit do?
Elsewhere, the Prime Ministers of Malta and the Czech Republic have suggested that a referendum wouldn’t be unwelcome. In other words, if a referendum took place, European leaders would be minded to give us an extension to the deadline in order to complete it. Unsurprisingly, this was seen by the Brexiteers as being an unwarranted interference. It’s called “giving you more options”, but these are Conservatives against choice, it seems. As is always the case, Conservatives only believe in freedom and choice when the freedoms and choices on offer are ones they approve of.
But I sound angry this morning, and it’s too nice a day for that. We’ve got a full slate of articles on Brexit, on party reform, on electoral reform and campaigning, so there’s plenty for you to get your teeth into.
And, if you need a laugh, here’s a video of men in penguin suits attempting to fill buckets of water on a revolving turntable (TW: Stuart Hall is doing the commentary)…
By Caron Lindsay
| Sun 23rd September 2018 - 3:45 pm
Tim Farron made a barnstormer of a speech in the migration debate at Conference last week, and was largely credited with fending off the threat of a Reference Back.
However, the Chair of Lib Dem Immigrants, Lisa Maria Bornemann, pointed out a flaw in his argument, to the great amusement of everyone in the hall except Vince. Watch our Leader’s face. And contrast with Tim’s realisation that he had been well and truly pwned. I was sitting right behind him and just after this he turned to me, still laughing, and said something along the lines of “Well, that’s me done.”
Today is Bisexual Visibility Day. Even now, bisexuals come in for a fair bit of prejudice even from other parts of the LGBT community. LGBT+ Lib Dems have put out a statement to mark the day:
Today we are marking the twentieth annual Bi Visibility day, which aims to raise the profile and visibility of bisexual people within our society – a society which so often overlooks them. Whilst great progress has been made in advancing rights and acceptance for gay and lesbian people (although of course, there is more to be done), bisexual people often suffer from assumptions based on the gender of their current (or last) partner and the prejudices of their peers. Media portrayals can trivialise their experiences, treat them as curiosities, or suggest that their sexual appetites are greedy and promiscuous. In such a climate, young bisexuals can feel pressured to “pick a side” and this is part of the reason why bi people suffer from far worse rates of mental illness than either gay or straight people. On top of this, the needs of bisexuals are often overlooked in the provision of health and social services.
Their chair Jennie Rigg added:
As Liberals, we stand against conformity and judging people based on their gender or the gender of their sexual or romantic partners. As a bisexual woman, I refuse to be put into a box by others because of the gender of the person, or people, I form relationships with. Today I celebrate Bi Visibility day by being even more visible than I normally am, and stand up for my bi siblings who do not yet feel able to be as visible as I am. My fellow bis are valuable and valid whether they are out or closeted, and I will continue to fight for their rights.
Follow the LGBT+ Lib Dems Twitter account for useful resources throughout the day. Here are some other Lib Dems marking the occasion on Twitter:
Here’s a quick summary of the Lib Dems’ reaction to Theresa May’s statement on the Brexit negotiations yesterday:
Tom Brake called for Parliament to be recalled:
The Prime Minister has had the most humiliating European summit in recent memory and returned with a tattered Chequers deal, making a no deal Brexit more likely than ever.
Two years down the line and the only consensus the PM has made across Parliament and the EU is that Chequers is unworkable.
Instead of pontificating to television cameras, May must now recall Parliament to explain how she got the country into this terrible mess, what her plan is to get us out of it, and when we can have a people’s vote and an exit from Brexit.
Welsh Leader Jane Dodds reckons we need a change of PM:
Theresa May pledged to the country to get the best deal possible but her unwillingness to compromise has left her isolated and now she’s doubling down on her fantasy Chequers deal. You cannot simply keep trying negotiate a deal which has already been ruled out by almost everyone involved and expect an eventual success, politics does not give marks for effort.
Brexit did not, and should not, mean whatever the PM decides it means. It took us 18 months to get the Chequers paper and her religious support of it shows the PM has no realistic plan for Brexit, that’s why she must resign. She has failed to listen to the people, failed to listen to the EU and never quite accepted she lost the General Election. I fully understand the difficulties she faces within her own party, but the buck must stop with her as PM and party leader.
By Caron Lindsay
| Sat 22nd September 2018 - 11:16 am
So, under cover of an incendiary and irresponsible statement by the Prime Minister on Brexit, the Home Office slips out a statement announcing that it is betraying the Windrush Generation by denying some of them the citizenship that it rightfully theirs.
In a statement issued late on Friday afternoon, the Home Secretary said a number of Caribbean nationals who came to Britain between 1948 and 1971 would not qualify for citizenship because they failed to meet the “necessary good character requirement” due to committing criminal offences.
Windrush citizens are supposed to be afforded the same rights as British citizens, so the announcement is likely to prompt renewed accusations that they are effectively awarded second-class status.
You have to bear in mind that the criminal justice system has at times been institutionally racist and a black person going through it would have got a much rougher deal than a white person.
Liberal Democrats have reacted with anger to this news:
The Lib Dem Campaign for Racial Equality said:
The @ukhomeoffice is institutionally racist to BAME Britons. The #Windrush generation came to rebuild our country when we were on our knees. They came as subjects of the British empire, not immigrants, don’t strip them of that status! End hostile environment now!#ldcrehttps://t.co/u1REKqXwiH
On Saturday, Ian Kearns electrified the Conference rally with a brilliant speech explaining why, in June, he left the Labour Party and joined the Liberal Democrats.
You can watch his speech above and the text is below.
At Autumn Conference I moved an amendment to F8 “Power to People and Communities”. Our amendment, concentrating solely on English regional devolution was opposed not by a rebuttal of its text and my speech but, sadly, by means of mischaracterisation and misrepresentation of what was written and said.
Since attending the Agenda 2020 session at Autumn Conference 2015 and then the East of England Regional Conference (which near-unanimously passed my motion “Fair Devolution for the East of England”) I have proposed additional criteria to the policy of “devolution on demand” – three little words encapsulating a seemingly straightforward and liberal approach but in fact opening a can of worms.
Quoting from my speech: “Civil Servants drawing lines on the map in dark rooms in Whitehall is a dreadful prospect. An entirely locally-led permissive solution, without additional qualification, is equally flawed because it implies self-selective, first-come-first-served devolution. Those first off the blocks will form regions within no framework and with no obligation to consider the ability of other neighboring districts to form viable regions themselves. We can have neither a top-down imposed solution nor an unmanaged, unfettered free-for-all. This is all about process, not about lines on the map. There must be a clear direction and goals: no areas disenfranchised or disadvantaged by the prior actions of others”.
John Crace of the Guardian made a snide comment on Monday – in his piece about Gina Miller’s speech he said we took a “two-and-a-half-hour lunch break. Presumably, because there wasn’t much more business to discuss.”
I couldn’t disagree with him more – and that’s not just because I’m a member of the Federal Conference Committee. Of course, there was plenty to say on Brexit, where Tories and Labour are tearing themselves apart. However, we debated so many other important issues – how we enable people to thrive in a world of rapid technological change, how we address increasing inequality through wealth …
Alex Macfie Here is the Open Rights Group position (author James Baker is a Lib Dem member BTW).
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/starmers-social-media-ban-f...
keith creswell First post again as a rebuttal to the above posts:
On democracy
The 2016 referendum was advisory, passed with 52% on promises later shown to be misleading (th...
Tristan Ward @ David raw
Your relentless negativity is depressing and unhelpful. Please stop moaning. Consider instead:
Increasing income tax threasholds to £10,000
...
Keith Creswell And from a personal perspective as a former resident of Sweden and Denmark, married to a Dane and a parent/grandparent/great grandparent:
On social cohesion
...
Keith Creswell And a couple of areas the above failed to cover:
On geopolitics
This may be the most consequential argument of all. The world of 2026 looks nothing like 2016....
Runner-up: Southwark
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
A medieval street at the heart of Swansea's social life
Latest voting intention and leadership ratings opinion polls
More missing scientists: Remembering the GEC-Marconi deaths panic of the late Eighties
Makerfield: we can breathe again.
Alex Macfie 
keith creswell 
Tristan Ward 