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Category Archives: Op-eds

Delivering a Rainbow Crossing in Sutton

By Jake Short | Wed 26th May 2021 - 4:18 pm

Since I was elected in 2018, as one of 33 Lib Dems on Sutton Council, I’ve been working with our local LGBTQ Forum to advocate for and promote the LGBTQ Community across our borough.

I’m extremely pleased of the close working we’ve been doing as local community champions on the Council to draw attention to and support minorities in our borough, from supporting our faith communities in the aftermath of the horrific attack in Christchurch and working with local Black Lives Matter groups to address racial inequality in Sutton to supporting organisations like the Sutton LGBTQ Forum.

Parts of this work have included attending their events, promoting their activities and most visibly, working with them to install two Pride crossings in the borough, with the first being installed in June 2020.

One, most recently installed in May 2021 is the UK’s first ever permanent trans pride crossing, unveiled to mark IDAHOBIT this year.

In both cases, the projects undoubtedly benefited from the fact Sutton has one of the longest-running Lib Dem council administrations in the UK: it didn’t take much convincing to get colleagues on board! I’m very grateful for the support the ideas have received from Cllr Manuel Abellan in his capacity as Chair of our Environment & Sustainable Transport Committee, and Cllr Steve Cook as the Arts lead for the Council. Together we brought officers – both from cultural services and Highways – and the community together to work on technical details to get these projects implemented. As ever, to get the ball rolling the first step was simply to ask!

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Tagged LGBT, pride crossing and sutton | 21 Comments

My Jewish journey to understanding Israel and Palestine

By Gillian Mosely | Tue 25th May 2021 - 11:00 am

As I watched with horror, the escalating flames in Jerusalem, and their reverberations around Israel and Gaza, it was bitterly ironic that preview screenings of my film, The Tinderbox, are running now.

Five years ago I set out to make a single film that would allow audiences to understand what’s been happening in Israel/Palestine for the past century. Despite being told that there must already be historically rigorous, balanced documentaries clarifying past and present context, I have been unable to find another. This notwithstanding, after two years it became clear that despite being a BAFTA/RTS-winning, Oscar-nominated documentary film team, I and my colleagues were going to have to make this film unpaid. No one was interested. Thankfully, crowd-funding enabled us to pay for many of the costs that couldn’t be deferred and three years later the film is being distributed.

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Tagged friends of palestine (Lib Dem), israel and palestine | 4 Comments

Scotland – time for Project Facts

By Barry Turner | Tue 25th May 2021 - 9:30 am

As Liberal Democrats, we do not support independence and we don’t want a second referendum; we have better ideas about the constitution. However, we must live up to our title as democrats and must recognise that there is now a clear majority at Holyrood for such a referendum. It would be foolish and self-defeating to oppose it. We must not repeat the mistake we made at the 2019 General Election when we were proposing to ignore the outcome of the EU referendum by not going back to the electorate for a second vote. That surely damages our reputation and cost us votes.

But we can take a constructive, different and positive view about how a second independence vote should be organised, learning lessons from the disastrous EU referendum process involving four years of discord and wrangling, and resulting in an outcome that few seem to be happy with. The simple yes/no, in/out binary approach to referenda with little in the way of facts, just opinions, guesswork and hope, and a promise on negotiations later, is not the way forward this time. It will give no guarantee that the outcome, if in support of separation, will meet the expectations of all those voting for change. The reason for this is the massive imbalance between the population of Scotland and the rest of the UK with whom Scotland will be negotiating and who will be very much affected by separation. Their representatives will bring a different set of requirements to the table that will potentially have a huge influence on the outcome. Another White Paper, as promised by the SNP, given this scenario will serve no real purpose other than again being a wish list and merely a basis for negotiations from one side only.

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Tagged independence, Scotland, scottish independence and Scottish independence referendum | 31 Comments

The Windrush scandal – a sign of things to come for EU citizens?

By Michal Siewniak | Mon 24th May 2021 - 11:43 am

For me personally, a huge advantage of living in the UK is the fact that I’ve had so many opportunities to meet so amazing (and inspiring) people, who migrated to Britain from all corners of the world. Many of them I call friends.

Due to the pandemic, I feel that we often miss some important stories. This week, my eye caught a report about the Home Office’s appalling failure to protect and support the victims of the Windrush scandal.

I wonder whether statistics (see below) show the inefficiency of the Home Office or whether they clearly demonstrate an implementation of hostile …

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Tagged home office, settled status and windrush | 13 Comments

Hay Festival highlights – including Vince Cable on Money and Power

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 23rd May 2021 - 12:54 pm

Until last year, I’d never been to the Hay Festival, much though I’d have loved to go to the beautiful Welsh town. I drove through it when I was in Brecon and Radnorshire for the by-election in 2019 and would love to spend more time there.

Anyway, the pandemic has meant that the annual festival has had to go online and is free to access. Although when I say free, there is a danger that you end up buying many books.

Last year, I registered for so many events and enjoyed them all. This year’s event starts this Wednesday, 26th May, and goes on until 6th June.

The beauty of this is that if you are working from home, you can have the events on in the background – but they are available to listen to for 24 hours afterwards.

I also have a subscription to the Hay Player (only £15 for the year) and many events end up there after the Festival is over.

I’ve spent some time this morning browsing through this year’s events. On 3 June, from 1-1:50 pm, our Vince Cable will be talking about his book Money and Power: The World leaders who changed economics. From the programme:

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Tagged hay festival and vince cable | Leave a comment

How YOU can support EU citizens in the UK

By Robert Harrison | Sun 23rd May 2021 - 10:52 am

Put yourself forward to be a member of the EU Citizens’ Panel.

Many members of the Liberal Democrats will have been horrified to hear about the treatment of EU citizens arriving in the UK, as reported in the Guardian, Politico and other newspapers.

Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are cases of European citizens who have lived among us for many years suddenly finding themselves unwelcome with questions being raised about their entitlement to healthcare and even school places for their children. This was not supposed to happen. EU citizens were told “nothing would change” after Brexit and it was one of the negotiating positions of the European Commission during the withdrawal negotiations. The principle set out in the Withdrawal Agreement was that those Europeans living in the UK at the end of the transition period would continue to maintain their rights. It is simply not happening.

The Withdrawal Agreement set up an Independent Monitoring Authority to monitor the implementation of the citizens rights aspects and its website can be found here.

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Tagged brexit and eu citizens | 2 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review: Palestine, Trump, Morocco v Spain and China

By Tom Arms | Sun 23rd May 2021 - 8:58 am

At last a ceasefire. But not until acting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reduced Hamas’s rocket manufacturing capability to a pile of smouldering twisted metal and brick dust. Hamas had tried smuggling ground to air missiles into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt. But they were too easily discovered and closed by the opposition. So they turned to Iranian expertise to develop a home-grown defence manufacturing industry. It worked. At the start of this latest spat, there were thousands of missiles launched from sites dotted around Gaza with ranges of between six and 120 miles. Netanyahu had to react quickly because of the ever-present threat that the conflict could rapidly escalate. Iran could join in from bases in Lebanon and Syria. The US would then be obliged to come to the aid of Israel. What would Russia do? How about Turkey? The Arab countries….? In fact, four rockets were fired from southern Lebanon, and they appear to have been a factor in Israel’s decision to cave into the growing international chorus for a ceasefire. But a military truce is only a tiny step towards resolving the underlying problems. That can only come with the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords and the implicit two-state solution. These were shelved in favour of Israeli hegemony by increasingly right-wing Likud governments which was emboldened most recently by the unquestioning support of Donald Trump. During this most recent clash Joe Biden has taken the traditional pro-Israeli line (“Israel has the right to defend itself”), but changing American demographics and a growing pro-Palestinian faction in the Democratic Party is shifting political parameters. It is also further polarising the parties with the Republicans embracing Trump’s sycophantic pro-Israeli position and the Democrats starting to question it.

The news that New York has moved their investigation of the Trump Organisation from a civil to a criminal case is no shock horror story. Falsely manipulating property values to obtain loans and tax breaks—as the Trump Organisation is alleged to have done—is fraud, which is a criminal offense. The bigger question is what effect will this have on the ex-president’s political future. It could go either way. True to form, Donald Trump was quick to brand the switch from the civil to criminal legal system as part of a Democrat-organised “witch hunt” which puts it alongside the Mueller Inquiry, double impeachment and election “Big Lie”. At last count 70% of Republicans believe him and the handful of Republican Congressmen and Senators prepared to oppose the ex-president are losing their jobs and being booed on the floor of the house by their party colleagues. But New York’s actions have moved the future of Donald Trump out of the political arena and into the courtroom. The fight now is not between Republicans and Democrats in Congress but between Trumpists and the independent judiciary, or Trump v. the constitution.

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged tom arms world review | 14 Comments

Observations of an ex pat: Lies, damned lies and the Russian Government

By Tom Arms | Fri 21st May 2021 - 8:46 pm

What a hoot. I mean, I nearly landed in hospital with laughter split sides. Did Russia actually believe that US and British intelligence would launch a major cyber-attack on the American government in order to cast blame on Moscow?

To be fair to Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), he didn’t actually categorically blame the CIA, National Security Agency, MI6 and GCHQ for the December Solar Winds hack into US government departments and about 100 private companies. Naryshkin simply denied Russian culpability and claimed that the tactics were similar to those used by American and British intelligence. The careful intelligence-speak gives him wriggle room to deny the denial should that ever become necessary.

What we are talking about is what the intelligence world calls a “false flag” operation. The term dates back to at least the early days of European empire when marauding pirates would hoist the flag of a friendly nation in order to close quarters with their prey before raising the skull and bones and opening a broadside. The same tactic was used by the British and French navies with great effect during the Napoleonic Wars.

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Tagged observations of an ex pat | 7 Comments

Why have choirs been silenced this week?

By Mary Reid | Thu 20th May 2021 - 7:36 pm

This evening I will be attending a rehearsal with the other members of my large amateur choir (in concert a couple of years ago in the photo). We were looking forward to meeting again in person today – 30 members were going to be able to attend at the school hall which is our usual rehearsal venue, with the rest of us watching on YouTube and singing along. Next week a different group of 30 were planning to go along to the school.

Then on Tuesday we learnt that the guidance from DCMS had changed (see Section 2.4) and that the rule of 6 now applies to in-person rehearsals. Choirs around the country were both shocked, disappointed and bemused at this unexpected change and have had to make rapid re-arrangements, which, apart from anything else, will have financial implications both for their Musical Directors and for their rehearsal venues.

So this evening we will all be meeting yet again on Zoom, just as we have been doing for the last year. As anyone who has tried singing on Zoom will know, the time delays make it completely impossible for everyone to sing at the same time, so we all mute ourselves and sing along to a backing track without hearing anyone else. It’s a poor substitute for singing together, but we have been putting up with it when there was no alternative.

You may think this is a niche concern, but over 2 million people sing with an amateur choir in the UK, more than play amateur football. It brings immeasurable benefits, both physically and in terms of mental health. When I was going through ultra-busy and quite stressful times in my political life the one thing that I continued to do was to attend choir because, as I used to say, “it keeps me sane”.

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Tagged choirs | 15 Comments

The Pause: hardest part to deal with

By Katharine Pindar | Thu 20th May 2021 - 4:34 pm

These weeks after the Super Thursday’s elections can be difficult to handle, whether you were elated by success, deflated by lack of it, or partly arriving where you want to be. Our mostly steady-as-you-go results are challenging but can also feel rather trying, both locally and nationally.

Locally, we have to get on dutifully with Liberal Democrat President Mark Pack’s blog post: ‘9 things you must do to wrap things up properly after an election’. But the questions arise straight away and require hard thinking: How can we build from victory? How can we rise from defeat? Or, if it’s No Change, how to motivate the troops and keep activity going?

This can feel exhausting. Thoughts arise of taking a holiday now instead, or at least organising some trips to see family or friends shut off from us for so long by the Pandemic. But yet we can’t shut out the plight of our Covid-ridden country because the victims are right here.

The latest for whom our concern is needed may be people in our neighbourhood renting their homes. Half a million private-sector renters were behind with their rent, Citizens Advice reported in January, and debt charity StepChange estimates that 150,000 tenants are in danger of eviction, yet the Government’s freeze on evictions is due to stop at the end of this month. That is a problem clearly requiring urgent campaigning and probable local supportive action.

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62 Comments

Pupil Premium at risk

By David Brunnen | Thu 20th May 2021 - 12:07 pm

The Pupil Premium is a system designed to invest more in areas where there is greatest need. At a time when Covid has exposed the growing extent of child poverty, the logic of Pupil Premium means that greater investment in teaching must be made to support their needs – unless, apparently, the Department for Education changes the rules.

Just when the eligibility for free school meals (the metric used to calculate the Pupil Premium) is increasing (up by more than 100,000), the Department for Learning to Save Money has decided to calculate the schools budget from data before the recent upsurge.

Naturally, the Department for Depriving the Deprived, objects to this dismal characterisation. The Children’s Minister, Vicky Ford, says the change “won’t make a huge difference” – which begs the question – why have they done it? The Department for Hiding their Homework were asked to show their working, but refused to release it, claiming it “could harm the department’s reputation in regard to the accuracy and credibility of the statistical information it produces”.

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Tagged pupil premium | 2 Comments

All Liberals must call out and combat the alarming rise of antisemitism in the UK

By Peter Rainford | Wed 19th May 2021 - 2:10 pm

One of the most depressing and dangerous reactions to the current upsurge of Israeli and Palestinian violence in the Middle East has been the alarming rise in anti-Semitic incidents here in the UK.

On 13^th May the Jewish Times highlighted a 250 percent increase in reported anti-Semitic incidents since the start of the recent violence.

Incidents include the now notorious video of racist abuse in North London, vile anti-Semitic abuse shouted at a Jewish schoolgirl, altercations outside synagogues and a swathe of anti-Semitic hate on social media, some of which I have witnessed.

Whatever our opinions of the rights and wrongs of the conflict, whatever our view of current policy and actions of the Israeli Government or of Hamas & Hezbollah, we must ensure in our comments that we do not fan the flames of anti-Semitism.

I do not support the Israeli government violent action in Gaza, I support a two state solution to the conflict and the rights of the Palestinian people to a homeland. I also support the right of Israel to exist and prosper.

There are four common anti-Semitic tropes, currently repeatedly appearing in social media posts about the conflict:

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Tagged anti-semitism | 13 Comments

Save Palestine by rediscovering the British Liberal tradition

By Shane Burke | Tue 18th May 2021 - 11:15 am

Right now, as events unfold in Gaza, a test case is emerging for British Liberalism, and European Liberalism more broadly, the response to which will say a lot about the state it is in within Western Europe. That test case is the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict.

For too long, some liberals have been indifferent to the persecution of Palestinians by the Israeli state, with the honourable exception of the Liberal Democrats. A lack of forceful criticism or forbidding expression of objection to the actions of the Israeli state, in the case of Emmanuel Macron, is to the disgrace of the noble cause of liberalism. That is why British liberals need to rediscover their liberal heritage to save the reputation of liberalism as something more than what cynics dismiss as mere talk.

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Tagged israel, John Locke, john stuart mill and palestine | 18 Comments

How easily we have surrendered our private freedoms….

By Paul Walter | Tue 18th May 2021 - 9:45 am

Embed from Getty Images

On Sunday we had a visit from a relative in the garden at a two metre distance.

On Monday they kindly returned and we hugged several times.

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Tagged Covid-19 and lockdown | 30 Comments

A positive approach to constitutional change

By Denis Mollison | Mon 17th May 2021 - 12:55 pm

George Foulkes is seeking cross-party support to change the rules for any new referendum on Scottish independence. This is a wrong, undemocratic, and above all negative way to go. We should instead address the real issues in a positive spirit. We should concentrate on the issues, not try to gerrymander the process.

Process

First, in response to George Foulkes’s suggestion, we should take the advice of the 2018 Report of the Independent Commission on Referendums, which made specific recommendations on both the franchise and whether a simple majority should suffice:

For UK wide referendums, the franchise should be the same as for elections to the House of Commons (with the addition of members of the House of Lords who are entitled to vote in local elections). For referendums in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland, the franchise should be the same as for, respectively, the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, or Northern Ireland Assembly. For regional or local referendums, the franchise should be the same as for local elections in the corresponding area. ($12)
Supermajority requirements are extremely rare in other mechanisms for political decision making in the UK. To impose them for popular but not parliamentary decisions would challenge legitimacy. It would therefore be inappropriate to require a supermajority for a referendum. ($33)

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Tagged constitutional reform | 21 Comments

Committee capers in London’s City Hall weaken Labour influence

By Andy Boddington | Sun 16th May 2021 - 10:23 am

The AGM of the London Assembly took place on Friday. Conservative Andrew Boff was elected as assembly chairman, with fellow Conservative Keith Price as his deputy. Previously, Labour’s Navin Shah and Tory Tony Arbour held the posts.

If Sadiq Khan was not happy about the Tories taking over the assembly leadership, he will surely be even less happy that the Labour group on the assembly no longer chair any of the influential scrutiny committees. Media reports suggest that Labour AMs went into a strop during arguments over chairing the transport committee and walked out.

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Tagged featured and london assembly | 9 Comments

Observer: Clegg and Alexander have “sold their souls”

By NewsHound | Sun 16th May 2021 - 9:28 am

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Writing in the Observer, Will Hutton writes an excoriating assessment under the title: “Cameron, Alexander, Osborne, Clegg: how the austerity ‘quad’ sold their souls”.

Particularly relevant quotes include:

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Tagged Danny Alexander, david cameron, george osborne and nick clegg | 101 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review: Cheney and Trump – Round One to the Cult of Trump v. the traditional Republican Party

By Tom Arms | Sun 16th May 2021 - 8:41 am

The ousting of Congresswoman Liz Cheney from the number three spot in the Republican ranks appears to be a victory for Trumpists and supporters of the stolen election “Big Lie.” Or is it? It is true that 70 percent of Republicans believe Trump won the election despite the fact that every court and election official (including Trump’s own appointees) rejected the former president’s claim. It is also true that Republican Party grandees such as Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz are four square behind the Big Lie. But, by alienating Liz Cheney, the forever Trumpers have created a formidable opponent who has dedicated herself to the maintenance of the rule of law, the US constitution and ensuring that Donald J. Trump or his ilk never occupies the White House again. And she is one tough lady with impeccable traditional party credentials.

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Tagged american politics, donald trump and tom arms world review | 5 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Israel – The Problem is Internal

By Tom Arms | Sat 15th May 2021 - 5:27 am

The current fighting in Israel is different. It was not sparked by a suicide bomber from Gaza, Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority or an Arab state. Hamas did not decide to test its rocket capability with a random attack.

No, this time the cause is the long smouldering fuse of discontent by the Palestinian’s living inside Israel. And because the roots are internal, the problem is even more intractable and dangerous.

Not all the Palestinians fled Israel during the 1947-1948 war of independence. Some of them simply refused to go. Some actually savoured the thought of living in a democratic country. The descendants of these stay-at-homes now comprise 20 percent of Israel’s population.

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Tagged featured, israel and palestine | 20 Comments

What next for UK politics?

By Michal Siewniak | Fri 14th May 2021 - 2:26 pm

Oh boy, there is a never dull day in British politics!

It is very true that a week in politics can be actually quite long and eventful. The dust hasn’t settled yet and so much has already happened since last week’s elections. It was incredibly interesting to see how people across the country voted last week and how the election result might impact the future of the UK.

I am not a famous political strategist, however it is true that the political landscape in the UK is changing, that’s for sure. The “Red Wall” collapsed. The by-elections in Hartlepool showed that the Labour Party can’t automatically count on votes from the working class people. Would it be fair to say that it is now the middle-class in bigger cities, which “saved” the Labour Party from a total disaster (London, Liverpool, Manchester). Is it also true that the Labour Party has lost its “political identity”?

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Tagged politics | 14 Comments

It was a bloke’s world in the Super Thursday elections – why do so few women stand for public office?

By Andy Boddington | Fri 14th May 2021 - 8:06 am

With thanks to the Fawcett Society and the Democracy Club, we can analyse the gender of the more than 21,000 candidates that stood last Thursday. Just one third were women (33%). Of the major parties, the Greens had the highest proportion of women at 43%, followed by Labour (41%), the Lib Dems (31%) and the Conservatives (27%).

This article sets out the data and asks why relative few women are standing for elections. It does not provide any answers.

My first thought was bias against women in the selection process. That may well exist. But of the 1,285 candidates whose description was “Independent”, and therefore were self-selected, just 24% were women.

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Tagged 2021 elections, featured and gender balance | 17 Comments

Violence in Israel and Palestine – Layla Moran’s Urgent Question

By Andy Daer | Thu 13th May 2021 - 3:34 pm

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The Urgent Question put by Layla Moran in Parliament yesterday exposed the gulf between government rhetoric and any attempt to deal with the real causes of the horrific violence unleashed in Gaza and elsewhere in Israel and Palestine over the past few days. Asked time and again for the government’s response, James Cleverly told the House the government was ‘urging restraint’ on both sides. Layla’s call for clarity on questions like support for UN Security Council resolutions was met with the bland response the government would be trying to “encourage an end to the violence”. Asked by Layla when would be the time to recognise the state of Palestine, if not now, Cleverly just ignored the question.

The spark which ignited the current wave of violence was the proposed illegal evictions in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, and it was Conservative MP Crispin Blunt who challenged Cleverly to spot the difference between the UK’s response to that and its response 25 years ago to illegal settlements in Har Homa. Cleverly replied that “the UK’s position on settlements is of long standing,” unintentionally making Blunt’s point for him. What we did in the past had no effect, and we intend to keep doing it.

Underlining the futility of the Cleverly’s assurances that we have strong diplomatic ties with Israel and can have a “powerful” influence, Benny Gantz, the Israeli defence minister, has announced that “we will not listen to moral preaching against our duty to protect the citizens of Israel”, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says “we will inflict blows on (Hamas) that they couldn’t even dream of.” The British government calls for restraint and a proportionate response, and Israeli ministers proudly announce they are not listening. The disproportionate response the IDF boasts of carrying out in Gaza is explicitly outlawed under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and constitutes a war crime.

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Tagged israel and palestine | 24 Comments

The long history of working class Tories and Labour paternalism

By Geoff Reid | Thu 13th May 2021 - 12:00 pm

If anyone who does not come from Newcastle upon Tyne has heard of Walker it will probably be as the birthplace of the singer Eric Burdon of the Animals, and possibly their song “Gonna take you back to Walker” which was a metaphor for serious punishment (i.e. being sent to a very run-down area next to the shipyards).

My first council by-election in 1963 was in the Walkergate Ward. The Young Liberals were helping and I remember a young woman in tears coming back from canvassing on Walker Road, shocked by a string of Conservative voters in some of the least salubrious housing in the city.

As in many parts of the north, there has always been a core working-class Tory vote. It rarely elected Conservatives because for decades in working class wards Labour defeated the Tories on the basis of a “vote for us on polling day, we have the right ideas and we will look after your interests” strategy. This paternalistic, top-down approach has reached the end of the line. Thus, the Tories have exploited a political vacuum in many areas and got elected. Whether they can work with local people to make a difference to their communities and their individual lives is another matter.

I said this in Tuesday’s Guardian, where with others I was responding to a piece by John Harris, who had suggested that the seeds of Labour’s renewal lie at the grassroots. Many Yorkshire Lib Dems know that the Eccleshill Ward where I have been a councillor since 2010 is one of the most working-class three member Lib Dem wards in Yorkshire and the Humber. So I finished my letter by saying:

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Will the PM eat his ID card?

By Mary Reid | Wed 12th May 2021 - 2:19 pm

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In today’s Guardian Marina Hyde has unearthed this quote from Boris Johnson in 2004:

If I am ever asked on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded I produce it.

I am reminded of Paddy Ashdown promising to eat his hat in 2015 when the polls were predicting large Lib Dem losses. And of Lib Dem Voice’s former editor, Stephen Tall, who pledged to run down Whitehall naked if we halved our number of MPs in the same election. Stephen, bless him, honoured his commitment, and did the run in full view of TV cameras on a cold Autumn day, although he was permitted a thong. Even Paddy submitted to good humoured humiliation when he ate a chocolate version of his hat on Question Time.

I somehow doubt that the Prime Minister will honour his pledge. But then the requirement for voters to present photo ID in order to be able to vote in a polling station, as announced in the Queen’s Speech yesterday, has already met with a great deal of public opposition, so its chances of reaching the statute books are, in my view, quite slim. However, we must not make any assumptions about how it will play out, and we must ensure that everything possible is done to prevent it becoming a reality.

The reasons for opposing voter ID have been covered extensively, but it is worth reminding people that it was blatantly used in some US states by Republicans to suppress Democratic votes.

Any extra complexity added to voting processes anywhere in the world potentially discourages some voters from exercising their democratic rights, and may even disenfranchise them.

In simple terms, voter impersonation (“personation” as it is correctly called) is a vanishingly small offence in the UK, as indeed it is in the US. The Electoral Commission has published reports which show that 1 person was convicted of personation in 2017, none in 2018, 1 in 2019, and none in 2020 (although very few elections took place last year). This is not a problem seeking a solution.

On the other hand, it is a solution creating a problem.

In a research briefing from the House of Commons Library, we learn that the Electoral Commission had found that around 25% of voters do not have either a passport or driving licence – the most popular forms of photo ID used in this country. By extending that to include other forms of ID, such as bus passes, some 92.5% would be covered. But that still leaves 3.5 million voters without any permissible form of ID.

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Tagged personation and voter ID | 17 Comments

A public interest defence is an essential part of Official Secrets Act reform

By Mark Leftly | Wed 12th May 2021 - 8:55 am

The Queen’s Speech includes plans to reform the Official Secrets Acts. The last of these was passed in 1989, before the dawn of the internet; the first in 1911 – most of the carrier pigeons that served in the First World War had not even been born.

The acts are antiquated and the Counter-State Threats Bill is intended to drag the way we tackle hostile activity from states and new types of actor kicking and screaming into the 21st century. There will be plenty in this bill to keep Liberal Democrats busy in the coming months, not least what Number 10 has briefed The Sun will be “sweeping powers to jail Russian and Chinese spies”.

But my concern is what appears to be a likely omission from the bill. The Queen’s Speech makes no reference to the introduction of a statutory public interest defence. This would create a safety net for people who believe that, for the greater good, they must disclose sensitive information covered by the acts.

Public servants should not, for example, fear jail is inevitable if they are exposing illegalities committed at the top of government. They need to know they can make a public interest defence, albeit one that would later be tested rigorously by a jury. Simply dumping a load of state secrets on the internet would plainly fail that test.

By putting the defence on a statutory footing, civil servants, journalists and others would not have to rely on the creativity of lawyers and juries ignoring the directions of the judge. Katharine Gun and Clive Ponting, the Iraq and Falklands War whistleblowers respectively, escaped jail because of those factors. Others might not be so lucky, while the likes of Sarah Tisdall (the Greenham Common case) did not even have the option of at least testing this defence.

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Tagged civil liberties, official secrets act and public interest defence | 2 Comments

Lib Dems increase their majority in Three Rivers

By Sarah Nelmes | Tue 11th May 2021 - 11:10 am

As this was my first election as a Leader of Three Rivers District Council in beautiful South-West Hertfordshire, I’m thrilled that the wonderful team have increased our majority by one.

We went in to the election with a council of 22 Liberal Democrats, 11 Conservatives, 3 Labour and 3 Independents and now we have 23, having taken back a seat from Independent. And in Three Rivers the PCC candidate polled an excellent 45.6% after second preference votes, great progress from the third position last time.

To achieve that result in such a complicated campaign, with a third of District seats up at the same time as the County seats, is a real achievement and testament to a great campaign team and real hard work by both the experienced candidates and campaigners and our fabulous newbies, two of who won and two others who really increased our share of the votes – targets for the future!

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I love it when a plan comes together

By Paul Walter | Tue 11th May 2021 - 9:40 am

By-elections are funny old things.

In a by-election, the focus on the candidate is huge. Every utterance is monitored and liable to blow up a minefield.

I remember David Rendel, returning to the 1993 Newbury by-election HQ after a long evening’s canvassing. Just outside the entrance he was approached by, ostensibly, a member of the public who wanted to express their support for him. It turned out that they had a microphone stuck up the back of their jacket and were trying to catch David off-guard. Their plan failed. Apart from anything else, David on-the-record was just like David off-the-record!

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Tagged local government by-elections | 3 Comments

If there is a realignment, liberalism must claim its place

By Stephen Barber | Mon 10th May 2021 - 3:32 pm

A lot of early evaluation of last Thursday’s elections has written the obituary of the Labour party as the ‘Red Wall’ further fell to Johnson’s populist Tories. There is a strong sense that a realignment is taking place in British politics and if so, Liberalism needs to be part of it.

While the death of Labour is, I think, still premature, the implications of the realignment analysis should not be lost on Liberal Democrats preparing for the electoral battles of the decade ahead. Many commentators have confidently concluded that Keir Starmer’s party has lost relevance and cannot recover now that the Tories have been accepted as a credible alternative in places that were solid Labour. That is, Labour is trying to hold together a coalition of younger, metropolitan types with older working class voters and there is a clash of values.

This evaluation is far from conclusive. The elections took place during a national (and international) crisis, 4.2 million furloughs were being paid by the state on polling day, Johnson has taken the credit for a successful vaccine rollout, as Tim Farron pointed out, the electorate has tended to support incumbents in England, Scotland and Wales, plus in analysis of the 1247 key wards there was actually a small swing to Labour. Don’t forget, after the 1992 election, there was similar analysis that Britain now lived in a one-party state. And it really wasn’t that long ago that commentators were wondering if there could ever be a route again to the Conservatives commanding a majority. So let’s take care with apocalyptic predictions.

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Tagged political realignment | 32 Comments

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