This Saturday we ask the question that many of us have heard, whether it’s the opposition to our social values or people who feel forgotten by the party after our 2005 heights – “What IS the point of the LibDems?” – at the Radical Association’s first fringe.
It is vital that we have a frank discussion about the party- what it has been and achieved in the past, and how best it can be a vehicle for change and improving people’s lives in the future. (Radical association co-chair Natasha Chapman)
We encourage all to query, despite how basic it may feel – as we often see this question is posed by bad faith actors, many of whom sideline fundamental liberal issues as “niche” or not credible to the voters at large.
We saw this with Iraq, Brexit, we see it currently with LGBT+ rights, as transphobia attempts the mainstream. We as Liberals are right on these issues – and without us who else will oppose authoritarian parties which who refuse evidence, compassion and even basic reason?
The farmers and the affluent retirees of this part of Cumbria have returned a Tory MP as long as anyone can remember. Indeed a Tory MP seems as much a part of the natural order here as Wordsworth, lambs, lakes and Beatrix Potter.
The crop of lurid orange Lib Dem signs in the farmer’s fields, however suggests that the political climate is changing. “Lib Dems winning here!” the posters declare. (The Times 22 April 2005.)
And so we did and the stakeboarding campaign was a major element in that success.
In 2005 we had 644 sites and by 2010 when Tim Farron’s majority was at its highest it was 1296 excluding those farmer’s fields. The latter amounted to over 50 sites. On each of these sites we would erect at least 5 boards.
That may well be a record for any party for any election in the UK. Though someone will tell me they did better. I do not think we will reach that figure again in Westmorland and Lonsdale.
Late last year I was asked by the Federal Policy Committee to chair a working group on regional powers in England within a Federal UK. The group was charged with developing policy on powers for the level between local government and the Federal government, taking into account the broader vision set out in conference motion “The Creation of a Federal United Kingdom” (passed at Autumn Conference in 2020). The group was asked to build on existing policy as set out in policy paper 117 Power to the People (2014) and policy paper 130 Power for People and Communities (2018) and consider models from other Federal States such as the Federal Republic of Germany.
A modernised Federal United Kingdom has long been a key priority for Liberal Democrats – encompassing a fair voting system for all elections, reforming the House of Lords into a Senate, and developing a written constitution.
The motion passed in September 2020 represents an important foundation for the creation of an England of the Regions.
It sets out principles for the UK to become a union of its nations and regions. In relation to England, it says we believe in a truly federal United Kingdom with an equitable distribution of resources between different parts of the United Kingdom based on their respective needs. It refers to federal and state governments in which subsidiarity applies to the nations and regions of the Union and in which the exercise of public responsibilities is decentralised as much as is reasonably practicable. It says that the Upper House should become representative of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom and that there would be a federal Council of Ministers to enable the governments and parliaments of the various parts of the Union to work better, building on the work of joint ministerial committees.
The motion however says nothing about local government. It does not say how many English regions there should be, nor what exact powers they should have. It does not say anything about taxation or how resources would be redistributed. It implies each region can have ministers but not for which departments. Clearly, the detail needs to be filled in – hence the working group.
The news that this government wishes to increase the number of nuclear warheads is not welcome news. It sends out the wrong message. Global Britain, it seems, is a regression to the past of imperialism and jingoism. It is not the way to win friends and influence in the world. Nuclear weapons are terrible weapons that should never be used. The horrors that were inflicted on Japan were enough.
There is a need to prevent nuclear proliferation. Do Pakistan and India need the bomb? The unstable nature of Kashmir means an endless source of conflict that could well escalate. What hope is there for North Korea and Iran not to acquire these weapons. Britain was part of the agreement to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Brexit Britain strikes again, no longer willing to be part of an international order that promotes peace.
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a blog for Lib Dem Voice on the Government being behind the curve in introducing measures to curb the spread of Covid-19. Little did we know then what was coming then. By 21 March last year, there had already been more than 400 deaths from Covid in UK hospitals , and that seemed shocking at the time. A year later, there have been 125,580 deaths within 28 days of a Covid test and 143,259 deaths where Covid was listed as the cause on the death certificate (all data in this article are quoted to 15 March 2021). This amounts to one of the highest Covid death rates in the world.
It is well known that Lib Dems like few things better than a good raffle. Somewhere back in the mists of time – even before the bit about no one being enslaved by ignorance or conformity – it must have been written, “wheresoever two or three are gathered together they shall tear up strips of cloakroom tickets and contest the ownership of cheap wine and a box of Milk Tray.
Forgive me then, if I offer a heretic’s view. There is one thing I like even better than a raffle and it is an auction. I suspect I am not alone. Many times I have seen my former MP colleague, Don Foster, auction a five pound note at Lib Dem dinners and watched as bids reached three figures after a bout of frenzied bidding.
It is, therefore, in the spirit of public service that Scottish Liberal Democrats have brought to you an online auction to add a few extra quid to the coffers ahead of elections to the Scottish Parliament in May. The site is
You may be able to bag yourself some great holiday accommodation for that post-lockdown break (or next year if that suits better);
You can pick up some blue chip political memorabilia – books, pictures, a framed Private Eye cover signed by Sir Vince Cable or a campaign Tee Shirt from Jon Ossoff winning campaign in Georgia that finally handed control of the US Senate to the Democrats;
You can bid to spend time with some of our party’s stars – tea for two with Nick Clegg or Sarah Olney, lunch with Ed Davey, a guided walk up the Coniston Old Man with Tim Farron or a lesson in Palestinian Cookery with Layla Moran.
Conservatives despise local government. English local authorities have been starved of funds since the coalition government began, with a sharper downward curve since 2015. The one-size fits-all model of elected mayors has been imposed on successive ‘city regions’ – in the case of Yorkshire, against the settled preference of almost all the local authorities in the region. Worst of all, ministers bypassed local authorities when the pandemic struck, ignoring local public health officers and the local knowledge that councillors and staff embody, and spending huge amounts of money on contracts with outsourcing companies. When Russian spies poisoned the Skripals Salisbury’s public health officer efficiently led the complex response. But ministers ignored that lesson when COVID-19 struck.
The Test and Trace scandal is potentially one of the worst that Britain has suffered since the war. £37bn has been committed over two years, with £23bn spent so far. Let’s put that into context. The total estimated cost of renewing the UK’s nuclear deterrent is £30bn.. The Department of Transport’s annual budget for England in 2020-21 is £16.6bn. £23bn is almost 10% of the annual central government transfer to local authorities, spent on a project that local authorities could have provided for a fraction of the cost. We do not yet know how much excess profit the contractors made, but we do know that the scheme has so far been less effective than in comparable countries – and that it would have been more effective, as well as far less expensive, if it had been run by local government.
Remember all those volunteers who came forward – and who were often ignored? And those small companies that offered to provide PPE for local hospitals, whose proposals were forwarded to central government and then left unanswered? It’s a mark of how far the careerists who run today’s Conservative Party are from politics on the ground that it did not occur to them to use the resources of local government and communities rather than exorbitant consultants and multinational companies.
It will be the first elections to our now renamed Welsh Parliament – Wales’ own Parliament.
It will be the first time the people of Wales have had their say on the parties since Brexit and the first time they’ll get to vote for parties on their taxation policies – an area only recently devolved to Wales.
No matter who you speak to in Wales, the number one priority that people have is what next after Covid? Our fantastic health service is stretched, our economy has stalled, and most people are frankly just a bit glum and fed up.
We’ve got a royal family which controls the Crown Estates, a huge area of land, and contributes to society in a variety of ways, while getting most of its funding through the taxation system.
We’ve got a House of Commons representing, as you would expect, the general public, and a House of Lords, which is politically appointed, scrutinising our laws.
We pay people benefits to people on the basis that they are disabled rather than the fact that they may need the money and we make people who don’t meet the threshold of disability try to live on next to nothing if they can’t find a job.
We let people in charities and businesses pay themselves six figure salaries and little or no taxes, and we put sometimes quite unreasonable expectations on the self-employed.
Usually, if I can, I write something at the beginning of the day. Today, however, I didn’t, as I wanted to leave space for Caroline Pidgeon’s powerful piece on violence against women.
And, at the end of the day, having looked at the comments, I’m pretty depressed. A series of men either blaming a small minority, or changing the subject, or just being blind and deaf to the words of those who actually suffer from abuse and violence. Bluntly, it isn’t a small minority of men, unless they’re awfully active given the statistics indicating that most women have been victims. And let’s change the subject, why don’t we? Anything rather than face the fact that, because of the behaviour of some men (yes, I know, not all… nada, nada, nada), women and girls make decisions that restrict their freedom of action because of the risks that exist. We, as a society, need to address that and, sadly, because the overwhelming proportion of violence against women is at the hands of men, the attitudes of men have to change. Some of you whose comments suggest that your liberalism is more polite veneer than instinctive – acknowledging that some of you aren’t liberals anyway – make me more than uncomfortable. The word is embarrassed.
I was delighted to receive an email this week from a good friend of mine, Roger Casale, founder of the New Europeans and also a former Member of the UK Parliament.
Roger emailed to say that one of his colleagues, Peter Conradi, who is Sunday Times Europe’s Editor, was running a story this weekend about the reasons why so many Poles have already left the UK. I was really pleased that I had an opportunity to speak to Peter and that the article itself was published in yesterday’s paper. It was a fascinating conversation, which, probably for the first time, helped me to pause and reflect on the causes of the Polish nationals’ departure from the UK. This trend has already directly affected many of my fellow countrymen and countrywomen.
It is estimated that almost a million Poles lived in the UK before the Brexit vote. Some, mainly anecdotal evidence, suggests that around 200,000 members of the Polish community have now left the UK. It is a significant exodus of Poles, which, in my view, might continue in the future. So what are the reasons why people have left or are leaving?
It was Private Eye, perhaps unsurprisingly, who nailed the Conservative U-turn on corporation tax rates. They note Boris Johnson’s quote at the Conservative leadership hustings on 5 July 2019 that;
Every time corporation tax rates have been cut in this country it has produced more revenue.
Perhaps Rishi Sunak wasn’t listening, or perhaps he thinks that the Laffer curve is a bit old hat, but the proposed increase in corporation tax effectively reverses most of the Coalition Government’s cuts in tax rates – George Osborne inherited a basic rate of 28% and a small profits rate of 21%. If the Laffer curve …
Some four and half years ago I wrote to Liberal Democrat Voice about the abuse of the honours system. I wanted Tim Farron to take a moral lead, abjure hierarchical honours and not nominate anyone for more than a BEM. My article The political honours system is sick, possibly fatally was published and drew a little interest but quickly dropped off the radar.
The time has come to revive the issue. Earlier this week the Times published a report that civil servants are actually coaching companies like Serco on the most effective way to obtain honours such as MBEs for their staff. What kind of an honours list this will produce later in the year does, to my mind, not bear thinking about.
Is this who we should really be honouring in this horrendous year? Surely the only appropriate use of the system is to devote it entirely to the front line workers and volunteers who have kept the country safe and maintained as much normality for the rest of us as possible. NHS staff, care home workers, the emergency services, teachers, shop workers, local authority and public transport employees and volunteers should be the people honoured in 2021. While there are perhaps groups I have missed off my list, no politicians, chief executives, senior civil servants, senior managers or contractors who will already be rewarded through their pay packets, should receive honours.
The scenes on Clapham Common last night as the police broke up the vigil for Sarah Everard were a disgrace and undermine the fundamental principle of policing by consent. Leading Lib Dems have called on the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick to resign. It was not a protest. It was a statement of solidarity with a woman who had been abducted from the streets of London and murdered. It was a declaration that women should be safe on the streets. Lib Dem Voice editor Caron Lindsay told of her personal experiences yesterday.
The UK’s tradition of policing by consent is being replaced by policing by authority. Legislation now in parliament looks set to reinforce authority at the expense of the fundamental right of freedom to protest.
In this weekend’s world review, Tam Arms opines that Joe Biden’s economic stimulus package will boost the world economy. A new space race is underway much of it led by Russia and China, and of course Elon Musk. Tom also talks about the Covid-19 vaccine controversies, overstretched health services across the world and the countries that are luring us with holidays. A thinktank has downgraded India – once trumpeted as the world’s biggest democracy – to an “electoral autocracy”. Back to China again with Tom’s review of the annual National People’s Congress.
I am going to be in so much trouble, because the National Maraphone is 3 and a half hours old and I haven’t made a single call – which is unusual for me. I’ll make it up in the week, I promise.
Like so many women, I’ve been profoundly upset by the events of this week. I think we all feel it because we all have a story to tell, something we were lucky to escape from in one piece. But these things cast a long shadow.
When we talk of being frightened if we are walking alone somewhere, we have good reason to be. When we talk about having our fingers through our keyring, just in case, we have good reason. When we talk about our constant vigilance, our constant scanning to work out potential escape routes, it’s because we’ve been followed by someone who has scared us.
I woke up this morning feeling that I needed to go back to the place where a man threatened me two years ago and make a video to tell that story. I still find it hard to be there and I’m very grateful to my niece for giving up her morning to come with me to film this.
What happened to me is on the minor end of the scale and I was lucky to get away, but virtually every woman I know will have had a similar experience.
One of the things that struck me the most about the response surrounding the case of Sarah Everard was that on Twitter the phrase “not all men” has been trending alongside her name. It has become a common pattern that as soon as women talk about their experiences that they are met with some form of reply such as “but not all men are like this” and “men can be victims as well”.
While both statements are true, it ignores the fundamental point that abuse happens when someone in a position of power takes advantage of their own power at the expense of the victim. So, although there are male victims (which for the record whose cases should be taken very seriously) and while not every single man is a predator, there is an overwhelming pattern of men being perpetrators and women being victims. This is because in society, men still hold most of the power; whether that be in upper body strength (which on average overpowers a woman’s) or much more crucially in the societal privilege that men have held over women for centuries.
This leads to the fact that 97% of women between the ages of 18-24 (according to a study reported by the Guardian) have reported experiencing sexual harassment. Herein, my problem with the “not all men” sentiment lies. If not all men are predatory, then why have(virtually) all women experienced predatory behaviour? This is a conundrum.
Speaking from personal experience, I was fifteen and in school uniform when I was first felt up by a man sitting next to me on public transport and younger than that when I was first catcalled. Those were not the last times such incidents have happened and as a twenty-year old I have now lost count. These experiences are far from unique, they are (a relatively mild) reality of a woman’s experience. It is these accumulated experiences that make every woman consider their personal safety most times they leave their home. Sarah Everard would have made these same considerations.
When I first heard about Sarah, it felt like I had swallowed a very bitter pill. Immediately it was because of how heartbroken I was for Sarah and her loved ones, but the aftertaste was the reality that that could have been me (or any woman). I myself grew up in South London not far from where Sarah was, and have friends that live in that area. It is considered pretty safe. So, then she was walking in a pretty safe area on main roads,before 10pm, wearing bright colours, on the phone to her boyfriend. Yet Sarah Everard was still was not safe.
If women get taxis, they have creepy – and sometimes worse – encounters with taxi drivers. If women take a walk in broad daylight, they are assaulted. If women have the audacity to go to work, they are still assaulted. Despite everything we do, as women by default, our safety is always in question. That is without throwing in other factors such as class (which means that women have to face this behaviour in less safe areas and are more likely to work later hours) or race (which exposes them to the chance of hate crimes therefore increasing risk of attack).
Who said what when and to whom in the British Royal Family is dominating world headlines? Bullying, racism, misogyny, mental health…. They are all urgent and material topics, and it is important that the Queen – and by extension – the Royal Family reflect the concerns of the society at whose apex they stand.
But there is a wider constitutional issue at stake. And it is complicated by the role of the monarchy; the obtuseness of the unwritten British constitution; the British class system; and the problems of investing a part of the constitution in a physical person.
Well, there is still all to play for – Labour Bristol has failed to be the first local authority to take a stand on advertising high carbon products like polluting SUV cars.
They have agreed to ban fast food advertising on council-owned advertising sites, like bus shelters, but they failed to follow up on the rest. They say they would need to go out for consultation on it and they fear ‘consultation fatigue’.
It was the person who commented on Facebook that really gave me pause for thought: “I get that you may be working abroad,” he wrote, “but this might be a bad image to project upon people who are severely pissed off and stuck in what was once a great country.”
I was on a business trip to Australia. Anyone who knows what I do professionally (I’m a tennis commentator) would not only have known it was a business trip and not a jolly, but my commentary could be heard across the UK. I had recorded a county elections campaign video from my hotel quarantine room in Melbourne contrasting Australia’s approach to Covid with Britain’s, yet instead of people hearing my comparison, some heard ‘Australia’, saw me in a polo shirt, and thought ‘jolly’. I wouldn’t call 14 days in hotel quarantine jolly.
I understand that people are irritated when they’re locked down in a cold snap and they see someone in a polo shirt pontificating from somewhere’s summer. But this form of shooting the messenger (or shooting the messenger’s location) means people don’t see the blindingly obvious message – that they are being taken for a ride by our government.
The biggest comparison I drew between Australia and Britain (or perhaps it should be between Victoria and England) was the contrasting sense of cause and effect. Australia has taken the necessary measures to eradicate the virus, and is largely back to normal now, while Britain’s lockdown is based on hoping for the best with poor enforcement, and we’re a long way from normality. But this week’s figures on track and trace in England highlight an even bigger contrast.
When I joined the Liberal Party in the 1980s, I was optimistic that the UK would replace its unrepresentative voting system in the not too distant future. Fast forward to 2021 and we remain stuck with First Past the Post and, at first glance, little reason for optimism.
The current set-up has never been ideal for the UK or indeed any modern democratic society. First Past the Post results in governments elected by a minority of voters, with policies supported by a minority of the electorate being imposed on the majority. This leaves far too many people feeling excluded and unrepresented. With a distorted link between voters and MPs, how can the UK call itself a representative democracy>
The answer, as we know, is Proportional Representation (PR). Replacing First Past the Post with a fair alternative will make our democracy truly representative. Pluralism is a key tenet of democracy. As a liberal and a democrat, I recognise the need for a voting system that allows multi-party politics to show itself rather than be hidden by the illusion of First Past the Post. Proportional Representation provides a framework for multi-party politics to flourish and voters to be represented.
We have all heard the tiresome arguments against PR, all the more worn-out considering that the UK is now the only democracy in Europe to use the outdated First Past the Post system for its main elections. The myth that reform would end the constituency link is nonsensical, considering the range of systems that can preserve and even strengthen it by improving voter choice both at the ballot box and in between elections. Those resistant to change also argue that a switch to PR would be a risky, unnecessary experiment. Considering that Proportional Representation is used in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and is well established across Europe, this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
All major opposition parties apart from Labour support Proportional Representation for UK-wide elections and groups like Make Votes Matter are pushing the debate in the right direction. The establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Electoral Reform is the latest boost in the campaign, ensuring a strong coordinated voice in parliament to champion the need for change.
A year ago Boris Johnson promised that his government would undertake the most fundamental review of the UK’s international priorities since the end of the Cold War. He promised that this would be the biggest review of our foreign, defence and development policy since the end of the Cold War, designed to maximise our influence and integrate all the strands of our international efforts.
Next Tuesday, March 16th, the first part of this ‘Integrated Review of Foreign and Security Policy’ will be published – several months later than planned. Changes in those responsible haven’t helped: David Frost was made national security adviser, then threatened to resign, then became instead the Cabinet minister for (mis)handling relations with the EU. Dominic Raab was distracted by the messy business of putting the FCO and the Department for International Development (DfID) together. The Prime Minister as usual wasn’t thinking things through. We expect a smoothly-written essay on ‘Global Britain’, without much detail on what that means in practice. The implications for defence manpower and resources will appear in a separate paper two weeks later.
Johnson has rhapsodised on ‘Global Britain’, without ever explaining what exactly that implied. Freed from the constraints of the EU, he saw Britain recovering its ‘buccaneering spirit’; he seems unaware that the buccaneers were licensed pirates. He’s been ecstatic about sending a carrier task force past Singapore to the South China Sea, though he never explained what the strategy behind that would be. Tory think-tanks have produced reports on ‘the tilt to the Indo-Pacific’, which others have labelled ‘the tilt away from Europe’.
English nationalists made us vote blind on Brexit. Our eyes are now well and truly open. The SNP ask us to vote blind on independence in May. They offer no plan. They can’t. For the foreseeable future, leaving the Union would be a disaster for the Scottish people.
Scottish Government figures for 2019/20 expenditure and revenue show a deficit of 8.6%, about average for the last five years. Our expenditure per head at £1,633 was about 12% more than the UK, and we paid £380 or 2.5% less tax, including oil and gas. The rest of the UK envy our free university education, prescriptions and home care. UK subsidies by the Barnett formula underwrite our jobs, health, pensions, education, social security and other public services. According to the 2018 SNP Commission, an independent Scotland would need 5 to 10 years of austerity to replace them.
It sometimes seems as though the Party has been adjusting its internal conduct and discipline system since its foundation. And, of course, you have to have one because not everyone is reasonable, and people don’t always behave reasonably towards each other in an organisation where the idea is to convince people of the rightness of your views, to win the argument, if you like.
The problem is that, with any process, you have to supply the resources to make it work, and if the experiences of too many people are to be believed, that simply isn’t the case currently. It would be very easy to blame the professional staff responsible for managing the system but, from painful personal experience, I can vouch that they are too few in number to manage the flow of complaints, and too dependent on volunteers to fill all of the roles that the process requires.
For some reason, people often seem surprised that whilst I own a house and have a driving licence I choose not to have a car. I could afford to buy and run a car, but I choose not to, because I don’t need one. The public transport network where I live isn’t perfect and the walking and cycling infrastructure could do with some improvement, but it’s more than enough for me to get around.
Transport accounts for around a third of UK greenhouse gas emissions, with most of this coming from road transport. Therefore, given the government’s commitments made at the Paris climate summit, the government should be seeking to do whatever it can to help us reduce the amount of traffic on the roads. And inevitably when this government fails to take any action, the opposition parties should be making a fuss about it!
We have stood on the streets and applauded our front line NHS staff. We have wondered at their resilience in the biggest health crisis of our lifetimes. We have sympathised with them when they have fallen ill and with their families when they have died.
The reward health service workers will get for their efforts is a measly 1% pay rise. Ministers seem not to recognise that those who have worked themselves into exhaustion, taken on extra shifts, faced danger every working day need a boost. With tax allowances frozen, the lowest paid staff and frontline nurses should at least get the 2.1% pay rise they were promised.
In this weekend’s look at world politics our foreign correspondent Tom Arms looks at political events in the UK, Boris Johnson cutting aid to Yemen, politics in the EU shifting to the left, a bad week for ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and ASEAN foreign ministers pushing for the release of Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the return to democracy in Myanmar.
In his speech to Scottish Spring Conference, Willie Rennie reached out to disillusioned SNP voters who may be upset by the division in their party and the SNP Government’s failures in so many areas. He set out what I reckon is the Scottish Liberal Democrats most bold and radical offer for 22 years. It really has that vibe of reform about it. Free human rights based social care, a job for every teacher on the register if they want it, a housing first approach to homelessness, economic regeneration are all part of the package to put recovery first.
He also shared memories of Charles Kennedy after last week’s documentary.
He was introduced by Cllr Liz Barrett, who won a fantastic Council by-election victory at the end of last year.
The full text is below:
Councillor Liz Barrett.
Councillor for the ancient capital of Scotland.
Victor over the SNP in John Swinney’s back yard.
Winning from third place.
Thank you, Liz.You are a true liberal champion.
Conference, it’s almost six years since we lost our Charles, Charles Kennedy.
But last week we were treated to a wonderful tribute to his life in that BBC Alba documentary: A good man speaking.
We all have our own personal recollections of Charles.
Mine was the extraordinary courage it took, just days after acknowledging his alcoholism and resigning as Leader of the Liberal Democrats, to come to Dunfermline.
He came to help me win that by-election.
He would have been forgiven if he had chosen to hide away, to recuperate, to nurse his wounds, but instead he chose to face it up.
As we walked down the High Street, surrounded by the mass ranks of the media, a voice from a pensioner at the back shouted – “we love you Charles”.
As quick as a flash he retorted: “now madam, I am in enough trouble as it is”.
But that lady spoke for us all.
And if there is a lasting legacy from Charles Kennedy’s life it should be the conduct of the debate, of elections, of political life.
That would be a good way to remember our Charles.
I think Charles would be pleased with how the Liberal Democrats have conducted ourselves over the last year through the pandemic.To put recovery first.
We set aside our differences to work together.
Working constructively with the government to deliver funds for business, tourism, fishing; an expansion of testing; access for parents of new borns; and a faster roll-out of the vaccine.
Ministers have recognised the part we have played from the First Minister to the Health Secretary to the Economy Secretary.
We rolled up our sleeves to get us through this pandemic.
There was a lovely sight this week that has made all that work worthwhile.
After months of separation, families are safely back together again in care homes.
Considering here just everyone living in Britain, all of whom Liberal Democrats value, what kind of equality should we seek for them? And what matters most for public policy?
Equality of treatment in health and social care, I suppose we expect and the nation demands, not just our party. So far there is no disagreement. But equality of educational opportunity for all children and young people? We haven’t got that in our country, far from it. For Liberal Democrats to campaign for it when we aren’t prepared to reduce the privileges of the private schools perhaps limits our efforts, but we will surely try to help.
Do we seek equality of income for all? Hardly. Or of wealth ownership? Scarcely. But we do want nobody to live in poverty.
Then, how about equal freedom for everyone to have satisfying lives? Yes, certainly. Equal freedom to ensure our children have good lives? Yes, surely. However, both those last two aspects of equality depend on freedom, which to me is the greatest good.
Well, equality is a Liberal Democrat value as well as freedom. We as a party wanted everyone to have the equal provision of a basic citizens’ income when we passed the UBI motion at the last Conference. However, is it not possible, if that is the only income-related equality we seek, that the nation might in achieving it become more unequal? Because there could be large swathes of the working-age population in future subsisting on the basic income, whether out of necessity or to relish the freedom it represents. Perhaps we will stop trying to help everyone who wants a job to find one. Perhaps we will stop bothering about them not having a home of their own, rented or privately owned? Well, no, you will say, of course we want everyone to have a secure and affordable home – equality in that. So housing benefit must continue.
Andrew Tampion "@Jana – yes, of course we should treat people as individuals. But we have to marry that principal with the need to counterbalance past discrimination."
Why?...
Roland >” I did see changes happen. In the 70s I was teaching in a secondary school and I was giving pastoral support to one of the pupils who was pregnant”
...
Rif Winfield Mohammed,
I'm sure that Starmer is not going to decide to step down within the next week. Like all of us, he will await the results of the Greater Manchester m...
Jana @Slamdac
“PR nullifies the effect of tactical voting and allows Reform and Restore to gain power.”
Two claims - both false.
Some PR systems, like STV...
Alex Macfie Joining a coalition will cause our vote to collapse only if we handle it badly, as we did in the Nick & Dave hook-up. That it was more a hook-up than a busi...
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Makerfield: we can breathe again.
Andrew Tampion 
Roland 
Rif Winfield 
Jana 
Alex Macfie 