Category Archives: Op-eds

Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: A bad year

By Tom Arms | Fri 18th December 2020 - 5:36 pm

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2020 has been a bad year. It is certainly the worst I can remember and I have been around for 71 of them.

The main cause is, of course, coronavirus or covid-19. It started in Wuhan, China almost exactly 12 months ago, and as the year draws to a close about two million people worldwide have lost their lives to this deadly virus.

Coronavirus has destroyed lives and livelihoods and although vaccines are now being distributed, it will be some time before the world returns to normal—if ever.

The Chinese were initially slow to respond to the threat. Whether their tardiness was in response to a lack of medical knowledge or political considerations is unclear. It was most likely a combination of the two.

The Chinese appeared to have relatively quickly stopped the spread of the virus; helped partly by long years of experience of pandemics and epidemics and partly as a result of a tightly-controlled society. As a general rule, Asians have fared better than their counterparts in other parts of the world. Most scientists have ascribed their relative success to experience of dealing with similar viruses such as SARS (an earlier form of coronavirus) and Avian bird flu.

Those that have fared better than most were countries who could quickly and efficiently shut their borders to the rest of the world. Iceland, New Zealand, Taiwan and Australia are four examples, although almost everyone is suffering as winter and covid-fatigue set in.

The worst hit were the countries of the West – Europe and North and South America. There the combined emphasis on individual liberties, lack of experience and knowledge, political ineptitude and an emphasis on wealth over health led to the greatest number of deaths.

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Joe McCauley

Working class Liberal Democrat

By Joe McCauley | Fri 18th December 2020 - 2:05 pm

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Across the political board, parties’ memberships remain hugely unrepresentative. We can and must do more to simply reach out to those who we perhaps forget all too easily.

Political turmoils, such as Brexit and the continuing Scottish Independence debate, have not only exposed deep socioeconomic fractures in our society – it has also created some new ones. Identity politics is unfortunately here to stay and with that then comes the strengthening of class politics. It is important to recognise how many people are now priding themselves once again on being labelled working class, in some way, shape or form.

There is rightly so plenty of talk about inclusion within our own party, particularly during the times of the Black Lives Matter movement and recent reviews, which touch on many of these issues, but it seems all too often working-class people or people generally from low-socioeconomic backgrounds are left behind in these reflections.

For me, as a young boy raised in a concrete tower block in a notoriously rough area of Glasgow, I was proudly raised by my single-parent mother in a low-income household, I decided not to go to university and worked several low paid jobs. My family’s history, my own economic uncertainty and social circumstances certainly earned me the label of working-class. It also meant at that time my inherited political party was likely to be Labour, the party that many seemed to accept around me with no questions asked at that time.

Now, I am a dedicated Liberal Democrat member and have been for some time, and I am now comfortable to say I feel at home. But there are times where I somehow feel quite disconnected and alone due to the class that I am inherently tied too.

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Katharine Pindar

Build Back Fairer: the new mantra for now

By Katharine Pindar | Thu 17th December 2020 - 4:21 pm

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This title is about health equity issues, however, not building better houses. Professor Sir Michael Marmot, author of the Marmot Review – Health Equity in England Ten Years On which was published in February this year, has led a follow-up study called Build Back Fairer: The Covid-19 Marmot Review.

The new report highlights how inequalities in social-economic conditions before the pandemic contributed to the high and unequal death toll from Covid-19.

The enduring social and economic inequalities in society mean that the health of the public was threatened before and during the pandemic and will be after. Just as we needed better management of the nation’s health during the pandemic, so we need national attention to the causes of health inequalities.

Professor Marmot is as unflattering here about the present state of affairs as he was in his ten-year report. He writes, “Poor management of the pandemic was of a piece with England’s health improvement falling behind that with other rich countries in the decade since 2010”. That, he recalled, was for several reasons including that “the quality of governance and political culture did not give priority to the conditions for good health”, that there was increasing inequality in economic and social conditions, a rise in poverty among families with children, plus a policy of austerity and consequent cuts to funding of public services.

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Mary Reid

How many people will miss the vaccine because they don’t have a GP?

By Mary Reid | Thu 17th December 2020 - 11:12 am

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I am looking forward to having the Covid-19 vaccine. Well, not the actual act of having a jab in my arm (twice), but because it will open up my life. Apart from a short window in the summer, we have not had any social visits in our home since March and we still only leave the house for walks or for medical reasons.

We can both be confident that we will be called in for the vaccine at some point in the New Year. But it appears that an unknown number of eligible people may be missed. Thousands of people in the UK are not registered with a GP. We can only speculate on the reasons why anyone may not be registered – it could be down to something simple like moving house, or it could be something more complex around immigration irregularities, even because someone is the victim of trafficking.

To be effective, as many people as possible should be vaccinated, whatever their immigration status. So surely the NHS needs to know how many people in the country are not registered, so they can be traced and contacted?

Munira Wilson asked Health Minister Jo Churchill how many people are not registered in England, and was told “No such estimate has been made.” In other words, they don’t know.

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Sue Miller

New Year’s Resolution – Support the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons

By Sue Miller | Tue 15th December 2020 - 12:36 pm

Liberal Democrats should have the chance, at Spring Conference 2021, to vote to uphold the international rule of law and take a stand with the many countries who have signed and ratified the UN Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. We should adopt a policy of support for the Treaty.

We have a choice to continue to align with the Conservatives and Labour, who will not support the Treaty, or to recognise that 21st century security depends on international cooperation and the rule of international law. We should recognise that resources and political energy should be spent on fighting climate change and inequality – not on modernising weapons of mass destruction. We should spend resources instead on conventional forces that can play an important role in peace keeping.

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Citizens Britain: a radical agenda for the 2020s

By Ian Kearns and Jon Alexander | Mon 14th December 2020 - 12:47 pm

On Saturday, the anniversary of last year’s disastrous General Election, we published a new report. Citizens’ Britain is the follow up to our previous collaboration, Winning for Britain, which was the first data-rich review of 2019. That earlier report concluded with the challenge of identifying “a distinct, progressive, liberal alternative”. Citizens’ Britain, a country where every voice is heard, and where we work together to solve the problems we face, is that alternative.

We must be honest with ourselves: liberalism itself is now under threat in this country. A year on from the General Election, the Conservative government’s approach to the pandemic and Brexit is endangering lives and livelihoods. Since his re-election, Boris Johnson and those around him have enabled nationalism and right-wing conservatism while also stifling progressive voices and ripping up the liberal institutions and frameworks that underpin our daily lives.

The mandate that Johnson and his cronies are claiming for this is rooted in a myth. The myth says people are uninterested in politics and just want government to get on with running things while they are left alone to get on with their lives. The Tories, to be clear, believe that Brexit and the hoarding of power in the central executive, at the expense of parliament, the devolved administrations, and local government, is no more than a response to the popular demand for government to ‘just get on with it’. To the extent that their governing philosophy extends beyond that, it is to say only that people should occasionally be called upon to use their consumer power to boost the economy.

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Geoff Reid

Civilised disagreement – a target for 2021?

By Geoff Reid | Mon 14th December 2020 - 9:53 am

Some while ago, I was taken to task on this site for declaring that people had been the victims of conmen before and after the 2016 referendum. Apparently this was highly insulting to leavers although I was trying to emphasise the pain that goes with being lied to deliberately and made to feel stupid. It was a generalised statement and I can’t ever remember saying to an individual “You’ve been taken for a ride.”

In my own council ward two-thirds of the referendum voters opted for Vote Leave. This does not mean we treat them with contempt nor vice versa. The voters at local elections carried on voting for us. Some of them actually said explicitly that they disagreed with us about the EU but they supported us for other reasons.

As we move into the economic pain that is inevitable in 2021, the last thing on our lips should be “We told you so.” There will be those who will continue to see the EU as the source of all their woes but since there are now Conservative MPs who realise that they were sold a dud in the election of a party leader there will be ordinary voters who will sooner or later come to the same conclusion.

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Caron Lindsay

EU Trade Deal: there are no good options left

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 13th December 2020 - 11:48 am

European and British flags.

I hate 13th December. I really, really do.

On this day in 1984, my Grandma died, way too soon, at the age of 64. I still miss her.

And last year, in the early hours, any hope of avoiding Brexit evaporated as Boris Johnson got a majority that could have enabled him to govern with more wisdom and flexibility from the constraints of the reckless extremes of his party. He chose not to take that chance.

On top of it all, we lost Jo. I’m still not over that. She remains one of the most exceptionally talented people I have ever known. She’s proof that the best people don’t always win in politics.

An election once Jo had had the time to establish herself would, I suspect, have had a very different result.

We are where we are though. And it isn’t fun. 2020 has not excelled itself. A couple of bright spots – the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, to be confirmed by the Electoral College tomorrow, the development of effective vaccines against Covid have not lifted the gloom by much.

Now the dreaded 13th December is the day we enter the final stage of the Brexit drama.

Whatever emerges from the EU negotiations over the next hours is going to be far from good. We’re looking at a catastrophic no deal or a damaging fig leaf of a deal that will hurt our businesses and cost people their jobs and homes. Let’s be clear. The Government is choosing this path. It had better options open to it. When we were gripped in the first wave of Covid, they could have done the responsible thing and requested an extension to the transition period. We’d have voted for it, so would the SNP. Labour probably would and the EU would almost certainly have granted it. The more excitable ERG types on the Conservative benches would have made a lot of noise, but we would have bought ourselves some time and stability.

I’ve always thought that the Brexit agenda was mostly about turning our economy into a low regulation, rights-free zone. This is why they are so resistant to any future improvements in things like environmental standards or workers’ rights. They dress it up as sovereignty, but it’s an oligarch’s charter really.

They manipulated people’s feeling of powerlessness with false promises of taking back control. The truth is that those people at the sharp end, the lowest paid and most vulnerable, will have less control than they had before.

There should be no problem with accepting the EU’s reasonable level playing field requirement in the trade deal. I doubt that there will be any major changes within the next few years anyway. These things take time to get through and would take even longer to actually come into force. If there were any changes, we could debate them and decide whether to accept them or take the consequences.

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Caron Lindsay

Munira Wilson leads parliamentary debate on Excluded

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 13th December 2020 - 10:35 am

It’s a year today since Munira Wilson was elected as MP for Twickenham. Since then, she has held one of the most stressful roles, as Health Spokesperson, holding the Government to account for its often reckless and chaotic handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Like all other MPs, though, she will have a lot of casework from people who have had the financial rug pulled from under them – owners of small businesses whose activities have been curtailed or stopped altogether during the pandemic. People who run events companies, creative industry freelancers such as make-up artists are just some examples of those who simply have had no income and no support since March. Then they were struggling. Now they are desperate.

Lib Dems have led the fight for support for this group. Jamie Stone set up an all-Party Parliamentary Group and our MPs have repeatedly pressed the Government  to do more.

This week, Munira led a parliamentary debate to highlight the plight of those 3 million people who have been excluded from the Government’s support schemes:

You can read the whole debate here.

In her opening speech, Munira highlighted the impact the Government’s failure to provide support has had:

There has, at times, been a suggestion that some of the excluded are highly paid and dodging tax in some way, especially those paid via dividends. My constituent, Fraser Wilkin, who runs a travel company in Twickenham, pays himself by dividends because of the huge fluctuation in annual income due to events outside his control, such as the coronavirus. If he had drawn a regular salary through the year, he would have been unable to fulfil his statutory and contractual obligations to his clients, in terms of prompt refunds when their holidays were cancelled due to the pandemic.

Universal credit is cited as the fall-back. A survey of more than 3,000 individuals found that almost three quarters were unable to access universal credit. Let us face it: we all know that universal credit is not meaningful support. Otherwise, the Government would not have felt the need to create the furlough scheme or the self-employed income support scheme.

We know that the mental health impacts on many of those excluded from support have been stark. There have already been eight reported suicides, and one respondent to the House of Commons digital engagement team said that she almost took her life several times, and one week spent every day in contact with the Samaritans.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Looking foolish

By Tom Arms | Fri 11th December 2020 - 5:19 pm

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Everyone hates to look foolish. To avoid this hugely embarrassing peril they will often go to great lengths ranging from self-deception to conspiracy theories to lies.

And the greater the personal investment in an untenable position the more difficult it is for the investor to change direction and face the chorus of “I told you so’s.”

Two of the most prominent examples of this foolishness are Brexit and Donald Trump. Millions of intelligent Americans have invested their political heart and soul in the Cult of Trump. They cannot comprehend the possibility of his losing the November presidential election. Therefore, their leader must be the victim of a massive fraud.

The numerous election officials – Republican and Democrat – who consistently maintain that the vote was the fairest in American history are evil participants in a Deep State conspiracy. They are in an unholy league with the courts that have repeatedly dismissed the Trump campaign claims of election chicanery.

The fact-filled brick wall that Trump supporters have bumped up against has led some of them to call for dangerously extreme measures. Pardoned former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has, for instance, called on President Trump to suspend the constitution, cancel the election result, declare martial law and then use the military to oversee fresh elections.

Britain’s Brexiteers are faring equally badly, although in a different way.

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Jake Stevenson

Why Holyrood 2021 has me (SN)Paranoid

By Jake Stevenson | Fri 11th December 2020 - 12:23 pm

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It’s approaching that time again, another four years have past and another government will be voted in. Next year Scotland will be holding the Scottish Parliament election in May.

As an activist and a proud political geek, I should be excited and ready to campaign till I’m blue in the face. But unfortunately that isn’t the case. On December 2nd Ipsos Mori published the latest polls, predicting the estimated results of the election. From a first glance, it’s hard to feel worried about the potential landslide form the Scottish National Party. At current the polls show the SNP set to earn 55% (in constituencies) of the vote (-3 when compared to early in October) and a clear majority government. However, you should never trust fully in election polls, they can go from 100% to completely and utterly wrong, and anything in-between.

The SNP first came to power in 2007 and have been in government for 13 years. This hasn’t been the 13 years of a “stronger for Scotland” government they have promised. Just broken promises, public lies and scandals that make you really question if they have the welfare of Scottish people at heart.

Since 2007 the SNP have lead a full frontal siege against our vital services. Scotland’s young people are stuck waiting nearly a year for mental health support, our councils are being cut to the point of near collapse under the strain of keeping things running, our industrial pillars such as the Caley rail yard in Springburn and Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) are being ignored and left to go to ruin, our education system has went from one of the top ranking education systems in the world to average level, they’ve promised full support to fix the climate emergency then do a complete U-turn, and they fully support the oil industries who are scarring our countrysides and seas (fully backed by the Scottish Greens as well) – the list could go on but the article would be an essay if I was to mention every time the SNP have failed the people of Scotland.

Looking at this it all seems doom and gloom, especially when the Scottish Lib Dems are sitting at 6% (+2% since October) in the polls, but we need to  take the positives and learn lessons from the victories we’re achieving and the progress we are making. Our Willie Rennie and the rest of our fantastic MSP team have appeared more and more in the headlines of newspapers, news segments and on the TV, asking all the tough questions. Now Councillor Liz Barrett went from 3rd place to winning the seat of Perth City south, beating the SNP and the Conservatives as well. In last year’s General Election we managed to get now MP Wendy Chamberlain elected in North East Fife, cementing our grip on the area in both Holyrood and Westminster.

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Chris Perry

A longer read: Women born between 1954 and 1960 lose up to £40,000 each

By Chris Perry | Fri 11th December 2020 - 9:41 am

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From October 6th anyone born after 5th October 1954 will have a state pension age of 66 – for some women this is six years later than they were originally promised.

The 1995 Pensions Act intended raising the age of eligibility to the State Pension for women to 65 over a ten-year period between 2010 and 2020. The 2011 Pension Act accelerated this and raised the age to 66 for both men (previously 65) and women.

Women born in the 1950s might have spent half their working lives paying National Insurance in the knowledge they would get their State Pension at 60 years of age and may now get up to £40,000 less than they knew to be their entitlement.  There is evidence of women retiring only to discover they will not get their State Pension. Even some people closely involved with older people and pensions were unaware of the precise timetable as so little publicity was given to it.

The “Back to 60” campaign lost its appeal in the High Court, in October, but “Women Against State Pension Inequality” continue their campaign. These women have a very real grievance and yet appear to be being brushed aside. Both LibDems and Labour had it in their manifestos to do something about it. And former Pensions Minister, Baroness Ros Altmann would appear to support some compensation on grounds of maladministration as these women were not written to personally in either 1995 or 2011.

More than 1million female workers have no savings or private pension provision, of which 43% have less than £100 saved. Two million people over 75 live alone, of which 1.5 million are women.

There are 1.9m older people living in poverty in Britain today many of whom were forced into retirement and condemned to spending the rest of their lives in poverty. Britain has one of the lowest State Pensions in the developed world at just 29% of average earnings with the official definition of poverty being anything less than 60% of median household income. Britain’s 29% compares with 100.6% in Holland, 94.9% in Portugal, 93.9% in Italy, 91.8% in Austria, and 81.8% in Spain.

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John McHugo

A Europe policy for the Scottish elections: a humble suggestion

By John McHugo | Thu 10th December 2020 - 12:31 pm

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I must begin with a disclaimer. I am not Scottish, I have no Scottish blood that I know of, and I have never lived in Scotland (the “Mc” in my surname is Irish, courtesy of a great-grandfather who left Galway in the Potato Famine and ended up in the Metropolitan Police). But I love Scotland. As a Lib Dem I campaigned in the 2014 referendum for Scotland to remain in the UK, and today I am as devastated as any Scot that we are leaving the European Union.

That certainly gives me no right to make any suggestion about what the people of Scotland should do at this juncture, so I float the following with due humility. It is an idea; it is not thought-through. If it is worth thinking about, there will be much devil and much detail to be grasped before it can be developed into a policy, but I throw it open for discussion in the party, north and south of the border.  Here goes.

In next year’s Scottish elections, we should campaign for Scotland to have the same status in the UK as Northern Ireland will have from 1 January 2021. It would mean Scotland remaining in the Single Market and having the same customs status as NI.

It would have the following advantages:

  • it would be democratic (giving at least some weight to the Scottish vote in 2016 to remain in the EU);
  • it would also respect the 2014 Scottish referendum decision to remain in the UK;
  • it would end the new invisible border in the Irish Sea between NI and Scotland (although leaving it in place for England and Wales).
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Victoria Lee

Reform the House of Lords

By Victoria Lee | Thu 10th December 2020 - 9:30 am

With Britain battling both a pandemic and an economic crisis, and bracing itself for the chaos of a no or thin deal Brexit, introducing the idea of Lords reform sounds, at best, out of touch, and, at worst, misguided.

Recent events however suggest that we can no longer afford to ignore it.

First was Lord Kilclooney’s offensive tweet referring to Kamala Harris as “the Indian”. It was enough that it was racist and misogynistic. Pretending that he simply could not remember her name when a Google search would have revealed it in less time than it took for him to write the tweet tells us that it was a calculated move. We already know that black and Asian political candidates face the brunt of online abuse. In July this year Dawn Butler MP closed her constituency office in part because of bricks thrown through the windows, and threats against her and her staff. In this context, the impact of the tweet is a chilling effect on democratic engagement: you are not welcome. The Commissioner for Standards has proved incapable of enforcing any behavioural standard, with Lucy Scott-Moncrieff responding to News Letter on 12th November 2020 that “n this instance, Lord Kilclooney’s conduct on Twitter does not fall within the scope of the Code and it is outside my power to investigate”.

Second was the Conservative peer David Freud’s involvement with five Conservative MPs in a letter to senior judges seeking to influence the decision of Mrs Justice Whipple, the judge tasked with ruling on whether the references made in Charlie Elphicke’s criminal trial could be made public. The secretary to the Lord Chief Justice, the head of the judiciary in England and Wales, responded that it was improper to “seek to influence a judge in a private letter and do so without regard for the separation of powers or the independence of the judiciary”. The matter has been referred to the Commissioner for Standards by Helen Hayes MP.

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Jon Alexander

What can the Lib Dems learn from the Tories digital campaigning?

By Jon Alexander | Wed 9th December 2020 - 4:00 pm

During last year’s election, I took a brief secondment from my usual role to join the team at the political consultancy Datapraxis – this is where the relationship started that resulted in the Winning For Britain report I co-authored with Ian Kearns earlier this year, and that I know many in the party have found useful.

Another of the organisations I got to know during that time was Valent Projects and in particular its Director, Amil Khan. An investigative journalist and social media strategist, Amil was digging into what the Conservative Party was doing online – and what he was finding was fascinating, in two ways. First, there was some seriously questionable activity going on, which will surprise very few people. More importantly, though, they were using digital in some very different – and very smart – ways.

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Paul Tyler

Elective dictatorship

By Paul Tyler | Wed 9th December 2020 - 2:30 pm

You may hope – with Trump on his way out – that his UK protégé may have given up the tricks of the Trump playbook. However, take a look behind the Brexit and Covid headlines this week, and you will get a glimpse of some devious destruction of our constitutional conventions.

In his Dimbleby Lecture of October 1976 former Lord Chancellor Viscount Hailsham – a true Tory if ever there was one – warned against Britain’s slide towards “elective dictatorship”.

With the recent publication of a draft Bill to repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, his illustration of the power which then …

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Ben Martin

International Human Rights Day

By Ben Martin | Wed 9th December 2020 - 9:00 am

Today is a day for celebration and reflection. As we celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the United Nations proclamation and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we can reflect on all that has been achieved and all that remains to be worked on.

When the UN general assembly first voted to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UK delegation expressed frustration that the proposal included moral obligations but lacked legal force. It was not until 1976 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights that the majority of the articles in the Declaration gained legal weight.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the most translated document in the world, having been translated into 523 different languages. It has been instrumental in influencing International and domestic laws across the globe, including the fourth Geneva convention, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act.

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Rabina Khan

Racism in football still hasn’t been kicked out

By Rabina Khan | Tue 8th December 2020 - 1:25 pm

It’s been 27 years since the establishment of Kick It Out, English football’s equality and inclusion organisation, which works with the football, education and community sectors to challenge discrimination and encourage inclusive practices.

Sadly, racism, abuse and discrimination are still rife in society, but the very nature of chanting in football stadiums makes some believe it is a licence to hurl insults at team players.

On Saturday 5 December 2020, at a Millwall home match against Derby County, some of the 2,000 fans booed players who “took the knee” before the start of the game. Although players, officials and staff at Premier League and English Football League games have been taking the knee before games since June, Saturday’s match was the first to host fans since the second lockdown was lifted. Boos were also heard amongst the 1,000 fans in the JobServe Community Stadium, Colchester, prior to the match between Colchester United and Grimsby Town.

Although Millwall’s supporters’ club claimed that the motives behind the booing were not racist, no other explanation was given as to what the motive was. As Kick It Out Chairman, Sanjay Bhandari said, “Racists rarely admit they are racists — they try to hide their backlash under a seemingly respectable cloak.”

On Monday 30 November, BBC One aired the documentary Anton Ferdinand: Football, Racism and Me, in which the now retired Queens Park Rangers’ footballer spoke about the constant racial abuse that he suffered, including an on-pitch incident in 2011 in which Chelsea player, John Terry, used racially abusive language. Terry was eventually found guilty, fined £220,0000 and banned for just four matches by the FA. Ferdinand also received bullets in the post and missiles were thrown at this mothers’ house.

A House of Lords’ Library Briefing earlier this year (Racism in Football: Tackling Abusive Behaviour) showed that there has been an increase in the number of racist incidents reported in professional and grassroots football in recent years.

According to the Public Order Act 1986, a person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.

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Caron Lindsay

Why should we have to move?

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 8th December 2020 - 11:55 am

“Why should we have to move everywhere and everything because of him?”

That question is on the front of Change, Justice, Fairness, a Scottish Women’s Aid community research project into homelessness caused by domestic abuse in Fife.

Too often, the trauma suffered by victims of domestic abuse is exacerbated when they are forced to leave their homes, often with their children. It is not acceptable that they should be forced into this situation.

It is unlikely that the event that led to them seeking help was the first incident. Safe Lives suggest that someone will endure 50 incidents of abuse or violence before getting effective help.

So you have very vulnerable, traumatised individuals, the vast majority of whom are women, having to declare themselves as homeless. That means that they are put in temporary accommodation, perhaps for short periods into bed and breakfast accommodation with no cooking facilities, where they don’t have the comfort of having their own things around them, the children don’t have their toys. They are perhaps in an unfamiliar area away from their support networks. They could get moved at any time to different temporary accommodation. That instability and insecurity piling even more distress on to them.

Those who aren’t married and aren’t named on the tenancy face a lengthy and complicated battle to gain occupancy rights if they wish to stay in their home.

The process of transferring a tenancy can also take time, during which the victim can be homeless. This needs to be sorted with greater speed. The Scottish Government needs to produce guidance that strengthens the rights of the victim to prevent them going down the stressful homeless route.

This is why I persuaded the Scottish Liberal Democrats to pass policy calling for better support for housing for victims of domestic abuse. In a very moving debate, members shared their own experiences.

We call on the Scottish Government to do more to ensure that they have the right to stay in their own home if they wish to do so. If they are to be moved, that should be done in a planned way. We recognise that the statutory homeless route is not appropriate for families who are suffering the effects of abuse.

I was surprised to learn that not all social housing providers have stand alone domestic abuse policies so we call on housing associations to do more to support people in this situation

The Women’s Aid research identified serious flaws in the way victims were treated. Women described how they had to talk about what had happened to them in an open plan office.

A third of the staff who dealt with disclosures of abuse said that they had not had any training.

Particularly troubling was the fact that the majority of service providers didn’t have any idea that the moment of leaving an abusive partner was the most dangerous for the victim.

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Geoff Reid

Thinking about both sides of the letterbox

By Geoff Reid | Mon 7th December 2020 - 5:36 pm

I was born in the same year as Donald Trump and Dolly Parton. No problems deciding which is one of my favourite Americans! Actually I was born on exactly the same day as the late Freddie Mercury (infinitely more Dolly than Donald). Do the sums and you will realise that I was surprised to find myself an endangered species – sorry, vulnerable category, when the virus came knocking on too many doors.

My colleagues were quite firm as to what I should and should not do. I consider myself pretty fit for my years, which is mainly due to delivering a few thousand Focus leaflets, or some other pieces of paper, every time we go to press. My legs do not take kindly to an absence of walking the streets but by temperament I am not into exercise for its own sake.

So after a few weeks of little more than telephoning constituents to see how they were faring, online casework and zoom meetings, I was very happy to join in our Ward Audit programme. I went out most days, without speaking to a soul, but peering down gullies, taking pictures of fly-tipping and noting faded road markings.

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How should Liberal Democrat MPs vote on any trade deal? Irina von Wiese and Humphrey Hawksley set out the options

By Irina von Weise and Humphrey Hawksley | Sun 6th December 2020 - 10:12 am

We acknowledge the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party is not big enough to impact the vote on any Brexit deal and believe abstention is not an option. It would be seen as weak and give rise to attack from all sides. We do have opposing views on what the Yes or No vote should be, but we do have opposing views on what that vote should be. With whom do you agree?

Irina

Anything but a vote against would be a betrayal of our most loyal base and our core values.

Most vote for us because of our unapologetically pro-EU stance. This is the only thing that still distinguishes us from Labour. Voters remember backbones – Paddy Ashdown and Kosovo, Charles Kennedy and Iraq – and punish cave-ins – Nick Clegg and tuition fees. Only a vote against a Tory Brexit deal will show that we stand by our principles. We cannot endorse any form of Brexit.

A shambolic trade deal is not the ‘will of the people’.

We accept that a majority of people voted to leave the EU, but they never voted to leave the Single Market and Customs Union. Faced with the current situation, only 38% still think Brexit is a good idea. Whatever is agreed now will fall a long way short and cannot deliver what was promised in 2016.

A vote against ‘the deal’ is not a vote for ‘no deal’.

It is difficult to judge whether any deal short of a customs union will prove ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than no deal (WTO terms with the possibility for a trade deal in the future). Economically, a deal may mitigate the worst Brexit fallout but politically, it could be spun by Johnson’s propaganda machine as huge success and help him stay in power. ‘Whatever the verdict, given the Tory majority in the Commons, a LibDem vote against a deal will not bring about a ‘no deal’ result.

This vote is about standing by our principles. NO deal can be as good as the deal we had as full members of the EU. Now is not the time to give up on our principles, and our hopes for an eventual return to full membership.

Humphrey

Just about every British institution — parliament, the courts, the police and two general elections – has tested Brexit and it is happening. The Lib Dems have courageously opposed it and, yes, it is a bad thing. But the democratic process, which this Party signs up to, has delivered it.

A Brexit agreement represents far more than just more Tory lies and stitch up. Far more is at stake than bickering domestic party politics. Its impact is global. An agreement will be intricate and detailed. Twenty-seven other countries, whom we count among our allies, see it as the best way forward. A yes vote will be a vote for them, showing that we support limiting the damage that Brexit will cause to European lives, and that we support ensuring things can continue as well as can be in a bad situation.

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The Voice

Lib Dems support Small Business Saturday

By The Voice | Sat 5th December 2020 - 2:53 pm

After the year they have had, small businesses need a break.

So many have struggled as a result of the pandemic, either unable to trade or severely restricted.

Think of all those little independent shops who have been closed, open, closed and open again throughout the year.

The weeks before Christmas should be their busiest time.

The first Saturday in December is always Small Business Saturday, a day when we encourage people to support small businesses. This year it has even more resonance. We would miss the vibrant diversity of our local communities if we lost these assets.

Lib Dem parliamentarians have been out and about supporting small businesses in their constituencies. Here’s a flavour of what they have been up to:

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Marisha Ray

Standing up for Race Equality is a multi generational task

By Marisha Ray | Fri 4th December 2020 - 8:19 pm

Last week I wrote of my own emerging awareness of ethnicity and discrimination, awareness from childhood.

This immediately elicited a parody on social media, which I personally found hilarious – imitation, even parody is a form of flattery; however, I did wonder whether any other contributions to Lib Dem Voice would be met with such a response, so swiftly were they written by someone from a well represented or powerful group, though you might well believe that this is more likely in that case. I leave it to you to speculate on whether this is part of the a great British tradition or whether it too is a manifestation of structural discrimination, intended to put people from under represented groups off. While you could say that it hasn’t put me off, are the very people who would be put off, the ones whom we wish to include?

While of course I could write about the statistics of race equality, I’m a physicist by training and while I have done many different things one of which was to track and latterly direct 800 performance (statistical) indicators for 6 years in order to work with others to turn one of the worst councils in the UK into one of the best, that would not give you a feel for the lived experience of being in a minority group and it is precisely the view that the experience doesn’t count, it is simply the statistics which matter which is a part of the issue.

Childhood is in so many ways an important time, if not the most important time of our lives, and it is important in forming our ideas on race equality too. I will stick with the theme of race equality in childhood and write about my mother and my aunt’s early life.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Pakistan – next to recognise Israel?

By Tom Arms | Fri 4th December 2020 - 5:45 pm

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Wafting through the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and across the parade ground of military headquarters in Rawalpindi is an interesting political rumour: Will Pakistan be the next Islamic country to recognise Israel?

If it does it will not be so much a feather in the Israeli-American cap as a full-sized Native American war bonnet. Only Saudi recognition would beat it as a diplomatic coup.

But is the rumour likely to become a reality? Diplomats say that such a move is possible. But set against the brick wall of political realities it is highly improbable.

For a start, the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in Pakistan are completely different from those in the countries that have recently recognised Israel—Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan. The UAE is an extremely wealthy states ruled by absolute monarchs. Their largely pliant population is happy to stay out of politics as long as the oil money keeps rolling in. Bahrain is not enormously wealthy, and its population is divided between Sunnis and Shias. But the ruler is an absolute monarch and in lock step with the UAE.

Sudan is not so wealthy. But its diplomatic position has been bought by Washington. As one of the centres of Islamic terrorism, it languished for years on America’s economic blacklist. US aid and investment is now pouring in.

Pakistan, in comparison is poor and its politics are Byzantine. The per capita income of the 212.7 million Pakistanis is below that of Sudan at $1,357 a year. They are 154th in the world wealth stakes.

Prime Minister Imran Khan is a perfectly competent and charming man, but he is politically circumscribed. The real power in Pakistan is the military—the sixth largest in the world. The prime minister is allowed to operate freely, but only within parameters established by the military, especially the army. If he steps outside the parameters than he runs the risk of removal—even a military coup.

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Simon McGrath

Time to reform the English Party

By Simon McGrath | Fri 4th December 2020 - 10:15 am

At the English Council tomorrow (Saturday 5th Dec) Callum Robertson (incoming joint Chair of the Young Liberals ) and I will be proposing a motion which seeks some substantial changes in the way the English Party is run.

That sentence probably prompts questions among LDV readers: what is the English Council and how does it relate to the rest of the Party?

In most of the Party – local associations, regional parties and the Scots and Welsh State parties and the Federal Party the governance structure is based on One Member One Vote, but the English Party has a system of indirect elections. The way it works is that at the same time as regional elections people elect members from that region of the English Council – a group of 150 people (which also include reps of the Young Liberals) which meets twice a year.

The functions of the English Council are set out in the Constitution (Section 5 and 6) but it is the sovereign body of the Party in England (though it has agreed that policy is dealt with by the Federal Conference).

So how well does this work? The vast majority of party members in England seem unaware of this structure. In many cases there is no contest for members of the English Council and some regions have not appointed their full quota of members.

The time has come for change. I realised when trying to explain the structure of the English Party to a newish member who asked how people are elected that I simply could not justify the way we currently work. The  motion has two parts:

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Audrey Eager

The Irish Liberal Democrat Society AGM 2020

By Audrey Eager | Thu 3rd December 2020 - 7:34 pm

From a small group that gathered in Bournemouth at Conference in September 2019, I am delighted to say that in a year on marked with a pandemic and all the troubles that this has brought, the first AGM of a new Irish caucus within the Liberal Democrats will be next Monday, 7th December 2020 at 7pm.

We have two very special guest speakers joining us – Stephen Farry MP from the Alliance Party to speak on his work in Parliament over the last year, and Gerald Angley, Irish Deputy Ambassador to the UK. We look forward to hearing from them both.

As a new entity, we are working towards formal status within the Liberal Democrats, and as such, one of our main housekeeping goals has been to develop a new constitution for the Society and we will be presenting that work at the AGM next Monday.

Our goal is to create a voice for the Irish community within the Liberal Democrats as a whole. We have high ambitions but like most things, it is dependent on resources both in terms of money and time. However, from small acorns mighty acorns grow.

Since the referendum in 2016, Ireland has seen an unprecedented demand for Irish passports from Britain. In the 2011 Census, more than 430,300 people living in Britain identified themselves as Irish-born, down 37 per cent from the peak of 683,000 in 1961. In 2018, the Annual Population Survey by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) put the numbers of Irish-born people here at just 380,000. Since 2016, almost 100,000 first-time applications for Irish passports were received from people born in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales. That’s the current big picture. Our mission is to help the Liberal Democrats reach out to this community.

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Alistair Carmichael MP

Sanctions on Hong Kong human rights abusers work – we must press the Government to use them

By Alistair Carmichael MP | Thu 3rd December 2020 - 6:06 pm

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2020 has a been a difficult year for people around the world. In Hong Kong, however, the situation has been dangerous for political reasons as much as public health ones. 18 months since demonstrations started against a potential extradition arrangement with China, protests have turned into a struggle for the city’s soul. Hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers have taken to the streets, standing against the looming erosion of their freedoms.

Protestors in Hong Kong are fighting for exactly the liberal values that we hold dear in our party – democracy, freedom and internationalism – values which the encroaching illiberal regime in Beijing does not care for.

The state’s retaliation against these protests has been shocking and brutal. As a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong I have heard firsthand evidence of the police’s brutality. They have committed a plethora of human rights abuses, infiltrated hospitals and launched targeted harassment campaigns against anyone connected to the pro-democracy movement.

In July, a further blow was dealt with the introduction of the National Security Laws. The new legislation broadly criminalise acts such as “sedition” or “collusion with a foreign power”. This can be applied to any act which could be perceived as criticising the Hong Kong government, by any individual, anywhere in the world. I could be prosecuted for writing this article. Perhaps you could be prosecuted for reading it! Either way, the maximum penalty under this law is life in prison.

This already sounds like enough of a dystopian nightmare and yet things have already gone further downhill in recent months. In a farcical act, Beijing removed four Hong Kong lawmakers from the city’s legislative council for the crime of being “unpatriotic”. This escalating aggression should concern anyone who believes in freedom and liberal democracy.

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Mary Reid

Do we need GCSEs?

By Mary Reid | Thu 3rd December 2020 - 8:24 am

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While all the attention was on students who were due to take their A Levels or GCSEs last summer, I was more concerned about those who will be taking their GCSEs in 2021. They are younger than A Level students, and most have not yet fully developed the skills of self-directed study, so still need a high level of teacher input and support.

The two years leading up to their exams next year will have been seriously disrupted. In Year 10 they were learning at home from March to July, and we are all aware of the huge disparities that produced, exacerbating existing disadvantages. In their current Year 11 they have just spent a strange term during which many will have had to quarantine at least once.

It seems headteachers have welcomed the arrangements that the Government has just announced for next summer’s GCSE exams. Students who miss their exams because they are self-isolating will be able to take backup exams in July or will be given teacher assessments. Hopefully, with a vaccine imminent, this will only affect a small number.

Of more significance is the news that the grading will be more generous, and that students will get advance knowledge of some of the topics that will be examined. This will help to compensate for the inevitable reduction in coverage of the syllabus by this cohort.

But this does make me wonder, not for the first time, why we have GCSE exams at all. The UK is the only country in Europe that still has formal public exams at 16. Of course, it made sense when the majority of young people left school at 16, as the results helped them find a pathway into work or into the next stage of education. However, today, between the ages of 16 and 18, all young people have to be in education or work-based training.

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Lord William Wallace

We need to argue for public investment in neglected UK areas AND a generous international aid budget

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 1st December 2020 - 12:45 pm

It’s not a surprise that a You Gov opinion poll showed 66% of respondents supporting the government’s plans for a ‘temporary’ cut in the foreign aid budget. Spending on foreign aid has been consistently unpopular with the British public for years; when pollsters ask what sector of public spending should be reduced, foreign aid outstrips all others.

Liberal Democrats hold to the argument that supporting overseas development is both a moral obligation and a foreign policy priority. But when we face so strong a negative response, we need to think carefully about how we make the case for development spending. And we need also to understand the bitterness of the ‘left behind’ in the former industrial towns of the Midlands and the North, as public spending has been cut and their local authorities have had to close more and more facilities.

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Mark Valladares

Has time been called on Local Government investments in commercial property?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 30th November 2020 - 4:09 pm

One of the most troubling trends in local government finances in recent years is the move by councils into commercial property. Not actually building much, although it’s hardly unheard of, but buying it, using low interest rates to borrow large sums of money. The theory is that, with returns on commercial property higher than interest rates for borrowers, councils can earn a profit in the investments, using the funds to support local services.

It hasn’t gone unremarked, and I wrote about this in December 2018. Of course, since then, the pandemic has had some dramatic effects on commercial property, with the market slumping as retail outlets go under, shopping malls fail and white collar employers in particular pivot towards having staff work at home at least some of the time.

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