Eid Mubarak everyone. Muslims will be celebrating another Eid with certain restrictions still continuing in places of worship. But it’s wonderful to see that many worshippers are returning to pray at their local mosques. This is why I invited Ed Davey to witness the hundreds praying outside in the court yard of Regents Park Mosque on the last Jumma (Arabic for Friday prayer) before Eid Al Adha. It was a touching moment for me as I have many beautiful memories of coming to the mosque, praying in the gardens at night during Ramadan and playing with friends in between Arabic lessons. My father was influential in supporting an Islamic studies school that still runs to this day every weekend for children. My father also held our regular Muslim Teachers’ Association meetings at the mosque and we attended every Eid here as a family, meeting many relatives and friends. So when I asked Ed Davey to visit the mosque, this wasn’t just a historical moment, it was personal. This mosque means a lot to me and thousands of Muslim families in London.
It is just over two years ago that a Liberal Democrat Peer, made the following intervention;
My Lords, the reality on the ground is that rural bus services have been in decline for some years now, to the extent that there are many quite large villages which no longer have any kind of bus service at all. Have the Government made any assessment of the impact this is having on residents’ ability to access essential public services such as health and education?
As it turned out, the Government rather hadn’t. But now, Philip Alston, along with colleagues Rebecca Riddell and Bassam Khawaja, has published “Public Transport, Private Profit – the Human Cost of Privatizing Buses in the United Kingdom”. And, as someone who lives in a village which lost its last scheduled bus service a decade or so ago, you might not be surprised that I took rather more interest than might otherwise be the case.
But, of course, it’s not just small, rural villages that are now cut off from the bus network. As the authors note, some 3.34 million people could not reach any food stores within fifteen minutes by public transport. That adds costs for the rural poor, adds traffic to the roads and leads to those who can’t drive for whatever reason to be forced towards larger communities in order to function more easily.
You might find yourself wondering why, when the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Health are all self-isolating, and new cases have reached the peak levels seen last over the New Year, today is a good day to declare as “Freedom Day”. And yet, for all of the bombast that the Prime Minister offered in the days leading up to today, even he is now quoted as saying;
So please, please, please be cautious. Go forward tomorrow into the next step with all the right prudence and respect for other people and the risks that the disease continues to present.
You couldn’t make it up. It’s like reading the cover of Private Eye. Health secretary Sajid Javid gets a positive Covid-19 result. If the Prime Minister and Chancellor, who met with him on Friday, were ordinary mortals, they would have been banished into the self-isolation wilderness for 10 days.
But those at the heart of government live more privileged lives. Driving to Barnard’s Castle to test eyesight. Sneaking a clinch with a mistress, though forgetting to smile for the CCTV. And now Johnson and Sunak, who must not to be confused with the comedy act Laurel and Hardy no matter how tempting that is, are on a trial. They are piloting a stop at work with Covid scheme and testing daily.
Cuba may be reaching the end of its search for Utopian Socialism – shop shelves are empty and people are hungry. Ten years from now 2021 will be known as the year that the world was dragged kicking and screaming to the reality of climate change. The Taliban continues its march to victory with the capture of a key border crossing in the southeast corner on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Boris Johnson’s win on foreign aid this week was the world’s loss.
When we were looking at this week of by-elections coming up, we thought it’d be a bit of a lull. In fact, it’s been one of the most exciting by-election weeks we’ve had in a while! A Tuesday by-election, flying the flag for the first time in 15 years in Sandwell, and an outstanding Parish Council win by just one vote. It’s been a great week for us by-election nerds!
We had quite the pleasant surprise here at ALDC towers when someone reported a by-election happening on Tuesday night, even more so when it ended up being another Lib Dem win. Whilst there’s long standing statutory requirements for local elections to be held on the first Thursday of May, and the same for general elections since the Fixed-Terms Parliament Act, no such regulations exist for by-elections, and is merely convention. Why this one bucked convention no one quite knows…
America has developed its own version of Original Sin. It is called the Critical Race Theory and is proving to be yet another toxic debate topic dividing Black and White and the growing chasm separating America’s right and left.
Original Sin was propagated by St Augustine in the 4th century. It maintained that every human was born sinful and spent a lifetime fighting against it. The Augustinian philosophy was a major tenet of the medieval church and proved especially with the breakaway Protestant sects. Gradually, however, first the Catholics, and then most of the Protestants revised their thinking. Sin was washed away with sacrament of baptism and replaced with personal responsibility.
Critical Race Theory maintains that all Americans—or at least all White Americans—are born racist.
Before my election to the Senedd I was a child protection social worker. I worked with some of the most vulnerable children and young people in society and those staff dedicated to giving them every chance to thrive.
That is why I jumped at the chance to table a debate on legislative proposal in the Senedd on Wednesday, just weeks into the first term. I used the opportunity to shine a light on the work that we must do here in Wales to create a genuine care system based on the needs, hopes, and aspirations of children and young people.
I used my voice in our national parliament, to speak up for the children, young people, and staff who are waiting for the Welsh Labour Government to act.
The Prime Minister gave his big speech on “Levelling Up” and as we discovered it is still a slogan in search of policies. The only positive was a half-formed idea around further devolution. If the pandemic has taught us anything from the separate policies of devolved First Ministers, Track and Trace to the spotlight on Metro Mayors, it is that effective policy can only be delivered at a local level.
Our current constitutional settlement is obviously lopsided between Nations and the English Regions. What’s worse, government fiat often dictates spending. It is time to recast our country and develop a model that works for the whole country. Every company knows that the closer a service is to the people it serves the more responsive it is. And yet the dominance of the Treasury and Whitehall means the government pays lip service to this idea. Local government is given responsibility but starved of funding. There is another way.
We held the last of our summer meetings this week and now that the deadlines for motions for autumn conference have passed, we were able to focus squarely on thinking about our future plans. So there were fewer decisions, and mindful of FPC Meetings Reports Fatigue, I’ll try and be briefer than usual!
We’ve carried out Equalities Impact Assessments on all our recent policy papers. We now want to develop and strengthen this approach further and agreed a plan for doing this. Many thanks to Helen Cross, Lizzie Jewkes, Mohsin Khan and Tara Copeland for driving this forward.
We have started our programme of work developing policies on strengthening the UK’s relationship with the EU, with the long term goal of membership. Our first motion on this territory is coming to this conference and this week we discussed our longer term plans for this work. We plan to develop proposals on joining the EU’s free trade area, the Single Market, to bring to spring conference, with more to follow. Thanks to Duncan Brack who is working closely with staff in bringing this forward.
Finally we discussed our plans for future policy working groups. We kicked around various ideas on this, prior to taking some firm decisions in the autumn. Early priority areas here are likely to include prominently work on creating a fairer and more caring society (linking up to the party’s commitment to UBI, which we will be consulting party members about further at this autumn conference). This is likely to be a mixture of drawing together existing policy to present it in the right way, and developing new policy, with a firm focus on appealing to target voters. Supporting child development in the early years and housing and planning policy are also areas we are currently thinking a lot about. There will be further discussions on this, and work on others, in the autumn, which we’ll report about then.
Federal Conference Committee met via Zoom call on Saturday, 10 July for the agenda selection for our Autumn Conference 2021. The meeting was a lengthy one, which was in part due to the large selection of motions received.
A few announcements before the report; as you may be aware Geoff Payne, departed the FCC in early May, and I am delighted to have been elected the new Chair of FCC. All of us wish Geoff the very best for the future. A recount was held for the vacant place on the Committee, and I am delighted that Keith Melton has joined as our new member of the Federal Conference Committee. Chris Adams has also been elected in the vacant Vice-Chair position and will take responsibility for the General Purposes Sub Committee.
This Autumn conference will be held online, via our third-party provider, Hopin. You will be able to find more information about the virtual conference. If you are planning to attend conference, we highly recommend taking part in the interactive exhibitions and the fringes.
The FCC wants to pay its thanks to the continued amazing efforts of the Conference Office team and members who have worked so incredibly hard. You will see from the timings of Conference that it is slightly different to the usual format, and we hope that this will give more people an opportunity to attend virtually, but also it has meant that we have been able to increase the number of motions selected, we have allowed short breaks between sessions but have also worked hard to include as many of the motions submitted as possible. The agenda for Conference will be published very shortly.
Ever since Boris won the 2019 General Election, there has been growing talk of the need for a “progressive alliance” to stop the Tories winning the next election.
Quite what this might involve is unclear. Some would like a national pact between Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens so only one party would stand in each seat, and others want simply to promote greater tactical voting and other parties to scale back their campaigning where another party is the main challenger.
Helpfully, the by-elections in both Batley and Spen and Chesham & Amersham give us some insight into how this could work and how voters might react.
Chesham & Amersham: a victory for tactical voting
Let’s take Chesham & Amersham first, where the Liberal Democrats started in firm second place. We fought a vigorous campaign and proved early Green party claims that they were going to be the main challenger wrong. People who were traditionally Labour voters, realising that their vote could make a difference, decided to tactically lend their vote to the Lib Dems – including some Party members and activists.
After more than a decade in the role, Willie Rennie announced this evening that he is standing aside as leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats.
Watch his statement here:
He leaves while he is still incredibly popular within the party – and the tributes he has received from outside it show how valued he is across politics.
When he took over in 2011, he inherited a party that had been given the hoofing of its life in the Scottish Parliament elections, reduced from 16 MSPs to just 5.
The small group he led had a big voice, though. Over the years, the Scottish Lib Dems have been the go-to people on issues like education and mental health. Willie’s dogged persistence, challenging Scottish Ministers week in and week out on issues like police centralisation, college places, mental health waiting times, childcare and free school meals shifted government policy on many occasions.
He stared wipeout in the eye in the Scottish Parliamentary elections of 2016. If you had told me we would emerge with 5 MSPs from that election after the disaster of 2015, I would not have dared to believe it. But he showed what he could do with a bright and optimistic campaign which include him launching the manifesto while running down a soft-play volcano and being interviewed on a slide. When his photocall at a city farm was overshadowed by two amorous pigs, journalists were given a packet of Percy Pigs each at the next big event.
His commitment to improving the party’s diversity saw him ensure that we had all women shortlists for both 2017 and 2021 elections, a gender balanced team of spokespeople and serious money invested in diversity projects in each year’s Scottish budget. He put his own neck on the line to get these measures approved by Conference. He needed a two thirds majority and he got it by basically ringing everyone who had registered and talking them round.
And he has travelled the length and breadth of the country so many times supporting candidates at every possible level of election. He’s encouraged people to stand who have now been elected. He has led campaigning with boundless energy, enthusiasm and a huge smile.
I am incredibly sad to see him go, but I can understand that after 10 years of unrelenting graft, he relishes the chance to do something a bit different. He’ll stay on as MSP for North East Fife, of course – but don’t expect him to stop speaking out on th issues he has championed.
And as a campaigner who has been responsible for many of the party’s successes over the past three decades, his skills in that direction will be in demand.
So what now?
The Scottish Executive will set a timetable for a leadership election in which any of the party’s other three MSPs will be eligible to stand.
But for now, let’s look at some of the lovely things people are saying about Willie:
This is the call of the Health Foundation charity in its final report this month from a long-running enquiry into the impact of COVID-19. Calling on the Government to address the root causes of poor health, the report makes clear that the investment required into people and communities will involve jobs, housing, and education, plus action to ‘level up’ health.
In the report, they say;
The pandemic has revealed stark differences in the health of the working age population – those younger than 65 in the poorest 10% of areas in England were almost four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those in the wealthiest. Recovery needs to prioritise creating opportunities for good health – a vital asset needed to ‘level up’ and rebuild the UK recovery.
In this weekend’s review, LDV’s foreign correspondent Tom Arms talks of events in Haiti, a basket case of a country whose presidents tend to come to an untimely end, including this week President Moise.
Joe Biden is continuing to withdraw from Afghanistan. Donald Trump is suing Facebook. Both difficult strategies.
The delta variant of Covid-19 is causing cases to rise rapidly around the world, especially in countries with low levels of vaccination. Vaccinating Africa must become a priority to save lives in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres.
Crowding together. Shouting. Singing. Welcome to the excitement of football. As England and Italy prepare for the Euro final, scientists are concerned that football is helping drive up Covid-19 infection rates by allowing potentially super spreader events such as the finals at Wembley and Wimbledon. It is predicted that seven million pints will be served during the Euro final tonight in pubs across the land. Health secretary Sajid Javid has suggested we might be heading towards 100,000 new cases a day. Did he take sporting events into account?
It’s coming home but could coronavirus also be coming home with the fans? Maybe Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid want that. Could the Euro final be a booster jab that gets us closer to herd immunity.
York has become the first city in the UK to sign up to the Good Business Charter – a pioneering imitative that puts fairness, representation, diversity and a shared commitment to our environmental responsibilities at the heart of our economic strategy.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, City of York Council has had a clear focus on working closely with the business community, supporting small and micro businesses, and promoting our unique approach to economic development – the ‘York Way’.
Recently an independent evaluation of the Council’s £1.14m micro grant scheme revealed that since its introduction in March 2020, 294 local businesses were saved from closure and over 500 families and employees from falling into personal and financial hardship.
This week’s by-elections present a very mixed picture, along with some crucial lessons in defending our held seats. With eight vacancies to fight, we stood in six, succeeding in one. We lost our one defence in East Devon, in what was a disappointing result. Nevertheless, good campaigns were fought elsewhere, and we can celebrate a good town council gain.
There two Green gains on Thursday, we stood in one and not the other. The lesson is it’s always better to stand for the sake of giving voters a real choice, rather than getting any misplaced ideas about deals and pacts.
America believes in exporting its Democracy. And it has sought to do so right from the start. Congress regularly ties aid and trade packages to political change in developing countries, too often ignoring local conditions.
For many years America was seen by other countries as that “Shining City on the Hill” first mentioned in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and later repeated by Puritan leader John Winthrop and, more recently, by President Ronald Reagan.
Its War of Independence inspired the French Revolution, liberation movements in South America and elsewhere in the world. The stirring words of the Declaration of Independence are mirrored in similar documents across the globe.
But changes in American electoral politics means that the rest of the world is now questioning America’s claim to the moral high ground, and those questions undermine the success and stability of democracy elsewhere in the world.
The Government appears to have forgotten why, the predominantly Conservative, Coalition Government introduced the “triple lock” whereby the State Pension increases in line with earnings, prices or 2.5%, whichever is the greatest.
It was an attempt to reverse the 30 years of erosion since Margaret Thatcher replaced the “earnings link” with a “prices link”. And after only ten years there is a long way to go to restore the pre 1980 relative value.
Prices are about the cost of static living. Earnings are about the standard of living and quality of life. As the economy grows so too do the expectations and necessities of life. For example, very few people had fridges in 1950; it would be difficult to manage without one today.
Having written 150 blog posts on coronavirus since March 2020, and as a recipient of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, I was eagerly looking forward to the publication of this book. When it dropped into my Audible inbox this morning, I immediately began listening as I ploughed on with my daily business of a councillor while living in self isolation. I was not disappointed.
Sarah Gilbert is Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University. Dr Catherine Green is also at Oxford, where she is an Associate Professor in Chromosome Dynamics at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics. Together they tell the story of how the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was developed in record time amid a pandemic that affected their lives as much as everyone else’s.
Their message is: “We went faster because we had to.” That was despite at times feeling the strain of “an unedified mix of science, politics and emotions.”
On Monday 12th July the Commons will debate the 2nd Reading of the Higher Education (Academic Freedom) Bill. This Bill, which closely follows the recommendations of two Policy Exchange papers and of Toby Young’s Free Speech Union, provides for the Office for Students (OfS) to regulate and enforce rules on free speech within universities, and establishes the new post of ‘Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom’ in the OfS. It gives students, staff and visiting speakers the right to sue universities and student unions for alleged breaches of free speech, with fines to be imposed. The OfS may also impose penalties.
This is a culture war bill. The evidence that threats to free speech in universities are greater now than they were 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago is thin. The Policy Exchange papers are heavily dependent on US sources and examples – yet another example of the increasing capture of English Conservative thinking by US Republican ideas. Gavin Williamson decries an attempt to prevent an ambassador speaking at a university – but my wife as a Young Liberal demonstrated to block the South African Ambassador speaking in Oxford in 1963. He deplores the withdrawal of an invitation to Amber Rudd by an Oxford student society; but I recall at Manchester University in 1968 students disrupting the Education Secretary when trying to speak at an official university event.
Ecocide, unlike Geocide, has yet to be embedded in international law.
Ecocide, as envisaged, would perhaps be reserved for extreme forms of our everyday Planet Abuse and directed at corporates and government leaders whose policies wreak so much damage. Even so, the chances of such condemnation becoming law are minimal – and the chances of it acting as any deterrent, even less. Like so much else in the hot air of climate debating circles, the notion of Ecocide is as purely symbolic as national flag waving or political greenwashing.
On the other hand, everyday Planet Abuse is more easily understood by individual citizens and communities. For sure, there are challenges in tracking useful metrics: many places and people will see different priorities, and we are still a very long way from the general taboos that progressive societies try to muster for, say, Domestic or Racial Abuse.
We pride ourselves on the idea that party members make policy at Federal Conference. There is an idea that any member can write a motion, get the required support, and submit it to Conference and the members will then discuss it. This is not quite reality. The 30th June was the deadline for submitting motions for Federal Conference.
Imagine you have spent weeks working on your motion. You submitted it for drafting advice and have made some of the suggested changes. You got the support needed to submit it and have submitted it. Now you wait to hear if it was selected. (You are not told when a decision will be made, but you expect it will be within a couple of weeks or so.)
In the report on the selection of motions meeting of Federal Conference Committee for last September’s Conference, we can see that eight policy motions were selected, with two more reserved for motions on Europe and Covid, and two for emergency motions. Plus a couple of business motions and a couple of consultative sessions.
There were 32 policy motions rejected. So, after all that work your motion is rejected. The odds are against you. Oh well, there are always amendments to work on once the agenda is published.
It is wonderful that the “civic tradition” of children from the Polish Saturday School in Welwyn Garden City continues!
Last weekend, a group of children and a few members of staff visited the Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council. Children had another opportunity to visit the Council Chamber, meet the Leader of the Council, newly elected Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Welwyn Hatfield.
Today I did something unusual for a Liberal Democrat councillor. I thanked local residents for being patriotic.
The area I serve always likes to join in big events. People make huge efforts at Christmas and major national occasions. At the moment, the place is consumed with football fever and many houses are flying England flags of all shapes and sizes. Football truly is coming home in Oakley ward.
That’s why today I delivered a letter of thanks to every home displaying an England flag.
Jane Bonham Carter, the Lib Dem Lords Spokesperson for DCMS has attacked government plans to sell off Channel 4, which “was created to be a disruptive, innovative force in UK broadcasting.”
The Conservative plans to try and sell off Channel 4 are disgraceful and will diminish the organisation.
In this weekend’s review, Tom Arms looks at the dilemmas that faced Joe Biden as he ordered an attack on pro-Iranian militia in Iraq. In another dilemma, Biden could hold up any talk of a UK-US trade deal if he thinks that the Good Friday Agreement is threatened or damaged by Boris Johnson’s tactics on Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, prosecutors are getting closer to Donald Trump. The charging of a Trump Organisation employee could provide more information about Trump’s financial dealing. The organisations’ assets will also be frozen and banks are likely to call in their loans. former South African President Jacob Zuma has been jailed for contempt of court. And Israel is providing an object lesson in Covid complacency.
Ruth Bright Mary's first clarification here is really important as this point frightens many (ie losing a home they CURRENTLY live in to pay for someone else's care)...
David Allen Mary Reid (your first post on this thread): You're right - IF you want to rely on the tender mercies of your local council to part-fund your partner's care home...
Pawel Urbanski The choice seems clear – either funding care or protecting inheritances. If the first £10bn is scarce, it should go to carers and domiciliary care, not a cap...
Tristan Ward "Money is not a resource because it has no direct utility and no intrinsic production value."
I think this means that I am better off being paid in kind rath...
Mary Reid @Rif Winfield. Actually Carer's Allowance is not available at all to a large proportion of family carers - those on State Pension. To quote:
"If your pension i...
Eid Mubarak everyone. Muslims will be celebrating another Eid with certain restrictions still continuing in places of worship. But it’s wonderful to see that many worshippers are returning to pray at their local mosques. This is why I invited Ed Davey to witness the hundreds praying outside in the court yard of Regents Park Mosque on the last Jumma (Arabic for Friday prayer) before Eid Al Adha. It was a touching moment for me as I have many beautiful memories of coming to the mosque, praying in the gardens at night during Ramadan and playing with friends in between Arabic lessons. My father was influential in supporting an Islamic studies school that still runs to this day every weekend for children. My father also held our regular Muslim Teachers’ Association meetings at the mosque and we attended every Eid here as a family, meeting many relatives and friends. So when I asked Ed Davey to visit the mosque, this wasn’t just a historical moment, it was personal. This mosque means a lot to me and thousands of Muslim families in London. 
As it turned out, the Government rather hadn’t. But now, Philip Alston, along with colleagues Rebecca Riddell and Bassam Khawaja, has published 
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Lord Bonkers' Diary: The nation's prison governors
Council by-election win for Lib Dems in marginal Westminster seat
Rural Communities working group - so, let the fun begin...
Is this progress on social care or a false dawn?
Ruth Bright 
David Allen 
Pawel Urbanski 
Tristan Ward 
Mary Reid 