Category Archives: Op-eds

Matt McLaren

We MUST stop using the language of votes “not counting” and “wasted votes”

By Matt McLaren | Tue 25th August 2020 - 3:55 pm

As Liberal Democrats we all care about electoral reform. Nevertheless, we really don’t make a strong case for it by saying that people’s votes in safe seats “don’t count” or that we have untold “wasted votes“. That is of course one way to look at it, but completely ignores the reality that any electoral system will have people who vote for candidates or parties which aren’t then represented – even with Proportional Representation (PR), such as those voting for parties which achieve less than 5%.

More fundamentally, even under the current First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system every vote counts (and I’d be the first to take to the streets if it didn’t) since every vote is literally counted to see which candidate has the most (such an act is, of necessity, a comparison and involves weighing every pile of votes against every other). By talking about wasted votes we are conflating voting at all with voting for the winner – a specious argument since the very idea of electing someone (again, of necessity) means choosing between competing candidates and therefore having both winners and losers.

That is not to say that FPTP is a good system, it isn’t! Outside the United States (which is an exclusively two party polity in a way the UK hasn’t been for decades, a presidential system, and otherwise not a democracy we should wish to emulate for a whole host of reasons) almost no liberal democracy in the world still uses FPTP – certainly no other in Europe. But in making the case for reform we should rely on and encourage voters’ innate sense of fairness when presented with the facts of the result, rather than a present a questionable interpretation of their role in democracy as it stands.

As such, it would be far better to focus on the HUGE disparity between the numbers of votes cast for different parties and the MPs these actually elected (i.e. in 2019 ~26,000 for an SNP MP vs ~51,000 for a Labour MP and a staggering ~335,000 for a Lib Dem MP). Add this point to the threat to democracy manifested by any party which gains only a MINORITY of votes thereby acquiring absolute power by having a MAJORITY of MPs, with no checks on that power save a weak House of Lords (presenting examples such as Blair taking us to war in Iraq despite the public being overwhelmingly against it, or Thatcher introducing the poll tax, or Boris delivering a devastating no deal Brexit, if that goes on to happen) and you have a very powerful argument for reform.

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Cllr Ian Cuthbertson

Coronavirus crisis test for education services

By Cllr Ian Cuthbertson | Tue 25th August 2020 - 2:33 pm

After becoming York’s Executive Member for Children’s Services in 2019, I immediately started on the task of putting together an improvement plan to deliver the best possible services for the future generations in York. But, eight months into the role, we found ourselves unexpectedly having to deal with a national emergency which would see both Children’s Services and Education facing an unprecedented crisis. Our administration’s response in York can be best characterised as converting what had seemed ‘impossible’ into ‘possible’.  Yet the contradictions, confusion and periods of silence from our Government, have turned the challenge of the last few months into something which will shape our services for years to come. 

Since the introduction of ‘lockdown’ in late March, York’s teachers and school staff have gone above and beyond to help young people, parents and carers through this incredibly difficult time.  Whilst our city’s 63 maintained schools, academies and special schools have been taking care of our most vulnerable students and the children of our amazing key workers, the Government has stoked-up the levels of confusion and distress through ever-changing guidance on safety regulations, timescales for re-opening as well as the support available for the most disadvantaged students. 

Like elsewhere in the country, teachers here in York have been doing fantastic work in incredibly difficult and unusual circumstances. I am proud of the support that they have given pupils throughout lockdown by providing stimulating online learning materials across all year groups.  Government was quick to note the importance of providing access to remote learning through initiatives like free laptops and a temporary data charge exemption on sites which provide vital education for children, yet it was months into lockdown before the most disadvantaged children would receive any such help. York’s first delivery of laptops, allocated under arbitrarily strict Government guidance, arrived at the end of June.  And we have yet to receive a response to a letter sent to the School’s Minister warning of the urgency of the provision of this help. 

Similarly, Children’s Social Services, caring for the most vulnerable children in the city, had to adapt quickly to working more remotely.  Because fewer face-to-face meetings could take place due to health guidance, our staff put incredible effort into finding ways to contact all children and families safely. With a growing increase in the demand for such services as lockdown progressed, staff have gone above and beyond in making sure no child in need is left behind at this challenging time. 

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Jane Dodds

Jane Dodds writes: With a liberal basic income, we can invest in everyone

By Jane Dodds | Tue 25th August 2020 - 11:45 am

As conference season arrives we have a unique opportunity to pass a policy that in the 21st Century is part of the essential foundations of a more liberal future for our country – that policy is a Universal Basic Income.

Supported by both of our leadership candidates and pioneered by the late great Paddy Ashdown the time for the Liberal Democrats to take the step and be the main political party backing a Basic Income is now.

We know that Coronavirus has lifted the lid on the widespread financial insecurity that hardworking people and families have to deal within the UK. For many – from freelancers to those on zero-hours contracts – there is simply no meaningful safety net in place for times of crisis. This fundamentally undermines everything we believe in, and everything we want to achieve.

Our message is the Liberal Democrats can provide the basic financial security everyone needs in these testing times with a Basic Income. It would be a fair simple way to do what us liberal do best – empower people to dream big and reach their full potential.

As Liberal Democrats, we believe in the essential goodness of humankind – that, given the opportunity, in most circumstances, most people will choose to do good rather than harm. That’s why we believe putting power in people’s hands is the best way to a good society.

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The Independent View: A new vision for better business

By Tom Wills and Louise Eldridge | Tue 25th August 2020 - 10:14 am

Ahead of the 2019 General Election, the Liberal Democrats made a welcome commitment to ensuring “better business”. 

This vital policy promise, which sits squarely in the Party’s commitment to an ongoing pursuit of ‘radical reform’, recognises that the current system is not working to everyone’s benefit, and that firms should be have a positive impact on society alongside pursuing profit. The strongest of the policy pledges was for “a general duty of care for the environment and human rights”: a law requiring UK companies to assess and act on the risks that they pose to, and thus be better placed to prevent, deforestation, modern slavery and child labour.  

There’s never been a better time for the Liberal Democrats to maintain and build on this commitment. The UK is already moving in this direction, not least since the EU’s announcement that it will bring in such a law that will apply it to all companies operating in the bloc, regardless of where they are based.

Layla Moran MP has made the first move, pledging to meet a civil society demand “to support and call for a new law that will require UK companies to conduct due diligence on their human rights and environmental risks and holds companies accountable for failing to prevent abuses that do occur”. We call on Sir Ed Davey MP to match this pledge. 

A new law is sorely needed. The actions of some British companies are damaging communities and ecosystems around the world, shredding our national reputation for fair play. 

Last year, Traidcraft Exchange visited communities in rural Liberia who had been illegally pushed off their land by a British company, Equatorial Palm Oil. The promised compensation payments hadn’t materialised and protestors against the company had been intimidated and beaten with the support of Liberian authorities. Without the land that they had owned and farmed for generations, families were left without food or a reliable income, pushed further into poverty and insecurity.

In the past few years, the CORE Coalition has supported cases brought against three UK-based companies – Vedanta, Shell and Unilever – by communities in Zambia, Nigeria and Kenya, whose lives and livelihoods had been devastated by mining pollution, oil spills and violence. In all three cases, ‘parent’ companies in the UK profited from their overseas operations but failed to protect workers and communities from harm. Victims have had to jump through near impossible hoops to access justice, with the law overwhelmingly stacked in the companies’ favour.

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Also posted in The Independent View | 4 Comments
Jo Hayes

Party reform: why I wouldn’t set out from here

By Jo Hayes | Mon 24th August 2020 - 12:25 pm

As Mary Regnier-Wilson has pointed out in a comment on David Murray’s article, the Liberal Democrats Party is meant to support proportional representation; yet the Scottish and Welsh state party representatives on every committee are there to represent only a small proportion of the party’s total membership while the English state reps are meant to represent the rest, which is not proportional at all. The practical effect is that the members in Scotland and Wales have built-in massive over-representation on federal committees.

It is a bit like the US electoral college which gives more say over the White House …

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 29 Comments
Caron Lindsay

All is not well in the SNP

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 23rd August 2020 - 11:06 am

Next year, the Scottish Parliament elections take place. Nicola Sturgeon’s minority SNP Government’s record will be up for the judgement of the electorate.  The SNP has been in power now for 13 years. The children who were done over by the exams fiasco up here have had their entire education with the SNP in charge. And, as 16 year olds have the vote in Scottish Parliament elections, they will have the chance to make their voices known.

Scotland’s public services are failing, local government is being undermined and underfunded and it’s hard to think of anything major that the SNP has done that has been as positively transformative as free personal care, land reform, free eye and dental checks and STV for local government introduced by the Liberal Democrat/Labour coalition which governed for the first 8 years of devolution. And it’s the Liberal Democrats who were the driving force behind those reforms.

Nicola Sturgeon is getting a lot of credit for the way she has handled the Coronavirus crisis. Certainly her communications have been a lot clearer than the UK Government’s but she has faced the same issues in care homes. Willie Rennie highlighted lack of testing for new care home residents early on and, eventually, she had to change course. We have had a more cautious approach to the easing of lockdown up here, but I get the sense that people don’t really understand what they are and aren’t allowed to do. Conversations with parents of school age children set alarm bells ringing for me. Our schools have been back for two weeks. I’ve heard several accounts of there  being a few kids off with coughs at several schools. Their families didn’t seem to be self-isolating or getting tested, though…. You would think that one would be a no-brainer, but the message that the whole household should self isolate for 14 days unless there is a negative test result does not seem to be getting through.

Aside from the challenges of defending its record and managing the pandemic, the SNP has its own internal problems and divisions. They used to be, at least in public, suspiciously united. Any disagreements were kept private. Now there are fault lines between those who favour a more gradualist approach to independence and those who basically want to do a Catalonia, between those who favour a more progressive and equalities centred agenda and those who think feminism has gone too far and those who think that Alex Salmond’s behaviour towards women has been unacceptable and those who think that he is the innocent victim of a feminist conspiracy theory. The party’s internal civil war on transgender rights is a symptom of a much wider schism.

Two programmes this week are well worth your attention. Kirsty Wark’s BBC documentary on the trial of Alex Salmond is shocking and infuriating. The outcome of the trial did not really get the attention it deserved as it ended on the day that lockdown was announced. While no guilty verdicts were recorded on any of the charges, the evidence highlighted behaviour towards women in a professional environment that was at the very least questionable. On Tuesday journalist Dani Garavelli took a look at the history of the deepening divisions within the SNP in a programme for Radio 4, Scotland’s Uncivil War

Unsurprisingly, both women have been subject to abuse on social media for daring to investigate. And the abuse they have taken is nothing compared to what the women who actually complained about Salmond’s behaviour are getting. Garavelli mentions within her programme how some nationalists called for her to face criminal proceedings. Politicians calling for journalists to be prosecuted is not a good look. On Twitter, a couple of days after her programme was broadcast Garavelli spoke out about some of the criticism she had received:

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Not so free or fair elections

By Tom Arms | Sun 23rd August 2020 - 8:55 am

Elections are great. They are the cornerstone of liberal democracies. They ensure that the government has the support of the people so that the country can move forward.

Elections are great… IF (notice the capital letters) they are free and fair. Otherwise they are an exercise in political hypocrisy designed to sacrifice the national interest to special interest groups—a sad, bad and ultimately dangerous road for the guilty politicos and the country they claim to represent.

There are several elements that contribute to making elections free and fair, including: Multiple parties representing a variety of political views; a free press; open debate; secret ballots;  transparency in polling procedures; an absence of foreign interference and an inclusive structure which ensures participation by all members of society.

Of course, the absence of any or all of the above conditions doesn’t stop the less democratic rulers from staging polls and claiming the mantle of respectability that elections bestow. They are a sham; easily exposed as such and suffer the consequences accordingly. It would probably have been better for the rulers concerned to have not bothered with the vote in the first place.

The most recent dramatic example of a sham election is Belarus where Alexander Lukashenko claimed 80 percent of the vote. There is no free press in Belarus. Virtually all of Lukashenko’s political opponents were thrown into jail before the election. Anti-Lukashenko rallies were banned. The ballot boxes were almost certainly stuffed, that is if they even bothered to count them. The result has been national chaos as tens of thousands have risen up to demand the end to Lukashenko’s 26-year-old dictatorship. Thousands have been beaten, arrested and thrown into detention. The electoral crisis in Belarus has sparked a foreign policy crisis as The European Union supports the Belarussian opposition and Vladimir Putin warns Brussels to back off.

Putin’s electoral record is also heavily tarnished. The restrictions are nothing like those in Belarus but “Russia,” as Melbourne University reports, “does democracy differently.” For a start, freedom of press is a rapidly disappearing asset in the land of the Muscovites. But more importantly is the handling of opposition candidates. If they become too troublesome they are imprisoned on trumped-up charges or simply “eliminated.” Elimination was the fate of liberal politician Boris Nemtsov who was shot and killed on a Moscow bridge in 2015. This week we learned that the oft-arrested and imprisoned Alexei Navalny is in a coma in Siberia after drinking, what his family claim, was a poisoned cup of tea.

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James Cox

Enough talk about pacts, let’s make votes matter!

By James Cox | Sat 22nd August 2020 - 5:20 pm

Last year, I participated in an experiment. After more than a year of solid campaigning in anticipation of a general election, I stood aside in favour of a formal electoral alliance of different parties devised in order to maximise their number of seats and try to stop Brexit. Whilst the success and tactical merits of the Unite to Remain alliance can be debated at length, it at least saw parties band together in common purpose and try to play the first-past-the-post system against itself.

This controversial proposal was consistently met by claims from anti-reform politicians, including the Labour MP in whose constituency I stood aside and tried to unseat, that we were being anti-democratic, denying voters their right to vote for the candidate or party they most believed in, and for trying to rig elections for our own political ends. There may well be some merit to these claims, but what these politicians have to confront is that the same criticism they had could be applied directly to FPTP.

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Ian Martin

Under China’s Shadow

By Ian Martin | Fri 21st August 2020 - 5:31 pm

The new “cold war” in the far east, in reaction to China’s economic power and military build-up, is set to cause the United States to strengthen its military presence in the region. There is speculation that Britain’s new aircraft carrier HMS Elizabeth is going to be permanently based in the far east. It certainly will make its maiden voyage through the South China Sea. But what of the nations in the SE Asian area?

Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines certainly reject China’s claims to all of the South China Sea. Indeed, the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling at The Hague sided with the Philippines and rejected China’s “nine-dash line” maritime claims. However, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries as a block are unlikely to side with the United States. Trade with China now exceeds that of the EU in the ASEAN region and the countries look to China to revitalize their economies especially in the wake of the fallout from covid-19.

While China seeks to resolve disputes through its Code of Conduct with ASEAN, this document suffers limitations. Its geographical scope remains undefined. Does it include all of the South China Sea or only parts of it?

Second, its legal status has not been defined. Unless it is binding it will be ineffective.

Third, the applicability of international norms remains doubtful. As mentioned, China has ignored the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s Ruling. The Code of Conduct needs an effective monitoring mechanism for enforcing international law and norms. China must not seek to impose its will unjustly on others. It has fired on Vietnamese fishing vessels and in the past, China has asked Vietnam to stop oil drilling with a Spanish company and threatened war if the Philippines tried to enforce the Court of Arbitration ruling or drilled oil in the disputed areas. Indeed, China seeks to exclude foreign oil companies from the South China Sea.

Fourth, there is no agreement on the dispute mechanism.

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Layla Moran MP

Layla Moran: Protecting lives and providing reassurance through the Cross-Party Coronavirus Inquiry

By Layla Moran MP | Fri 21st August 2020 - 2:07 pm

Each week LDV invites leadership candidates to submit one article. This is this week’s article form Layla Moran

This morning, I wrote to the Prime Minister in my role as the elected Chair of the Cross-Party Coronavirus Inquiry. Following over 1000 evidence submissions, we are recommending an urgent move to a ‘zero-covid’ strategy.

The evidence, from NHS frontline staff, care home workers, health bodies, charities, scientists, bereaved families and other individuals, has sometimes been difficult to read and listen to.

It has been shocking to hear about the impact of the lack of clear Government strategy in place to eliminate coronavirus from the UK. It has left the public confused and our NHS and care staff flying blind.

It was heartbreaking to hear from bereaved families, who know that more could have been done to protect their loved ones. But these stories must be heard, and lessons learned in time to protect others.

It’s why we set up the All-Party Parliamentary group last month, which now consists of over 60 cross-party MPs and peers. We’re holding a rapid inquiry over the summer months into the UK response to Covid-19, to learn lessons ahead of any potential peak this winter.

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Rob Davidson

Algorithms don’t fail people, people do

By Rob Davidson | Fri 21st August 2020 - 11:34 am

The inequality in this year’s A-level results has been strongly linked to the performance of an algorithm – the statistical model that the government used to ‘automatically’ upgrade or downgrade results for pupils. While ministers will be called to question, for many it will be the cold, faceless, automated algorithm that is seen as the problem. We, as liberals, must be clear: the A-level disaster is not a programming error; algorithms merely reflect or even enhance the bias of their designers.

The Labour Party has said the A-level algorithm was ‘unlawful’, the FT has described how ‘the algorithm went wrong’ and clearly the process had massively unfair outcomes. Yet, this wasn’t data science gone rogue like Terminator’s Skynet or the ineffable AI in Ex Machina: this was a political choice reflecting political biases.

When the government’s advisory body got their Covid19 models ‘wrong’, it wasn’t because of algorithms but rather a lack of diversity  – both in thought and in demographics – within the advisory team. The algorithms and models weren’t ‘wrong’ and they certainly weren’t the reason for e.g. people of Bangladeshi origin being disproportionately affected by the disease – instead, the problem was in the inherent bias of a skewed group of designers.

In the case of this A-level algorithm, it made good statistical sense to include the historical performance of schools in the prediction model because that minimises the total error across all results – intuitively we know that pupils at exclusively funded Eton get more A* results than pupils at woefully under-resourced Scumbag College. And yet, it goes against every British and liberal value of fairness and equality of opportunity to downgrade the brightest lights from a poorer performing school as part of a mathematical rounding exercise.

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David McKenzie

Unionists need to get the swagger back!

By David McKenzie | Thu 20th August 2020 - 4:15 pm

I’m a Federalist, and I’d assume almost all our membership would describe themselves as so. I’m also a Unionist because those terms are interconnected, however, it would seem to me several of our members in Scotland seem afraid to label themselves as so. Why?

We’ve got a fight on our hands; 2021 is going to be tough but don’t kid yourselves it’s far from settled to be a landslide victory for the SNP. I’ll tell you right now, there will be absolutely no equivocation when I tell people where I stand on the constitutional issue of Scotland. We are a Unionist party because it represents not only the settled will of the people of Scotland but economically, the only viable option to reduce poverty and progress equality throughout our country.

2014 was ugly, divisive and at times for several of my activists in Inverclyde there was physical intimidation for supporting Better Together. I didn’t offer appeasement then and I won’t be doing so now; I don’t believe another referendum is in the best interests of the country. We have a raft of issues across Scotland we have to deal with. Every single one of our problems in Education, Health and Poverty have been thrown to the wayside by the SNP in favour of chasing IndyRef2 … it’s a negation of duty to every single person living in Scotland. It must stop!

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Peter Wrigley

Public Health England: some questions

By Peter Wrigley | Thu 20th August 2020 - 2:16 pm

In addition to the obvious inadvisability of scrapping and restructuring the nation’s arrangements for maintaining public health in the middle of a pandemic, the creation of the new National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP) opens several cans of worms.

First Public Health England (PHE) itself.  It was created by David Cameron’s government as a result of the Andrew Lansley  “reforms “of the NHS in 2012.  These were hugely controversial, and bitterly opposed by Labour, who saw them as a means to facilitate yet more back-door privatisation of the NHS. Be that as it may, it is, or rather was, a Conservative creation, their own and no-on else’s.  If they think it needs to be scrapped after less than eight years of operation, then this demonstrates that Troy ineptitude is not confined to the current amateurs.

In 2012 we Liberal Democrats were in coalition with the Conservatives, and we voted for these “reforms.”  The decision was not taken easily, and I understand caused great anxiety to our members in the House of Lords, who were eventually won over by the Labour Peer, Lord Warner.  He was a former health minister in the Blair/Brown governments and assured our Lordships that the “reforms” were all right.  It later transpired that Lord Warner had financial interests in BMI healthcare, which owned 54 private hospitals and clinics in the London area.

The problem this episode exposes is that we Liberal Democrats did not then, and do not now, have the financial resources to employ sufficient researchers and experts to give reliable and impartial advice, and often need to rely on tainted advice such as the above.  Along with Proportional Representation, when we next have influence on the government we need to include the adequate and independent financing of political parties so that all parties have the resources to subject the government of the day to informed scrutiny.

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Lib Dem Mum

Lib Dem Mum 3 – awkward exes and reviving your local party

By Lib Dem Mum | Wed 19th August 2020 - 7:20 pm

Two letters this week, dears. I feel quite overwhelmed! I’m simultaneously glad to be of service and sad that my children have problems.

Do you have a problem for Lib Dem Mum? Email [email protected] or DM @lib_mum on twitter in complete confidentiality – only Lib Dem Mum sees messages to these accounts. No one in the team at LDV has access (and for the avoidance of doubt Lib Dem Mum’s views are her own and not those of the LDV team).

All correspondents will be acknowledged, and if you are published you will be given a pseudonym.

Dear Lib Dem Mum,

I used to date someone in the party and it didn’t end well. I am now nervous about going to party events as that person might be there and they have been quite mean about me over the Internet. How can I go back to party events and feel safe?

Yours, Nervous

 

Dear Nervous,

I’m sorry to say that given the propensity of humans to date people with similar interests and political views, your problem is quite a common one. It’s understandable to not want to bump into an ex at events where you want to feel comfortable, especially unexpectedly: I can think of some of mine I feel that way about. Relationships end, and not always amicably, and that is just a fact of life, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to deal with the unpleasant feelings that can come from running into someone you don’t feel comfortable being around.

In terms of going to events it can cause real worry, especially if this person is still a member of your local party or is likely to turn up at conferences you attend – this would be the case in any group, not just the party. And perhaps they even feel the same way about you? Most party officers and people who help organise events should be sensitive to this sort of issue – they will have come across it before, believe me – and will try to be supportive and help people to have some space at party events. You could perhaps ask for seating to be arranged such that you are far apart, or for the party to take it in turns to invite one of you to one event and the other to the next event, and so on. Hopefully, if you are both reasonable people, the wounds will heal in time and you will feel able to share spaces in the future.

The problem comes (and I do not wish to make assumptions about your circumstances, Nervous, but this will apply in some cases) if one or both of the parties involved has been genuinely nasty or even abusive. That sort of person will potentially want to cause you more hurt, for whatever reason, and will not be amenable to having a turns arrangement or being seated away from you, and might even actively seek you out to cause trouble. I do not like thinking that any of my children would behave so cruelly, but nevertheless I know that it does happen.

In those circumstances it is best to involve the party disciplinary procedure, which you can access here. Apart from anything else, it makes party events uncomfortable for everyone else if someone is behaving improperly, and the party needs to make sure that sort of behaviour is not quietly accepted with an embarrassed shuffling of feet, but is rooted out. I would hope that every body in the party is alive to these sorts of things, not just in terms of romantic relationships, but other conflicts, and does their best to make party events safe spaces for everyone. A truly abusive person does not belong in the party, and I know that disciplinary procedures have been used to exclude people from events in the past. I really hope this is not your situation, but if it is the party should help.

Love always,

Lib Dem Mum

 

Dear Lib Dem Mum (this is a fantastic idea, btw, thank you so much!),

My local party is in an affluent area and demographically should be perfect fertile ground for our party.  We have historically been pretty successful, but have suffered hugely from attrition over the last few years, and we were hit hard by the effects of Coalition.

We have a decently large membership and are not a poor local party, but we have barely any activists.  Repeated efforts to recruit and engage over the last few years have all been fruitless – we’ve tried gold-dust canvassing, letters, events, hiring a staffer for the purpose, ‘knocking-up’ our new joiners – nothing works, and believe us, we’ve tried.  The overwhelming response we get is that members would like to help, but can’t due to poor health, or parenting or work commitments.   The lack of activists is so demoralising that we struggle to fill our committee, and what events we do have are only ever attended by the dwindling number of ‘usual suspects’.  People who have come to help us who have succeeded in these initiatives elsewhere have invariably left, scratching their heads.

What do you recommend?  We are at our wits’ end.

Despairing, Home Counties

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Also posted in News | 11 Comments
David Murray

Federal Bored !

By David Murray | Wed 19th August 2020 - 1:27 pm

The Thornhill Report was severely critical of our governance and control. The feedback to the Review identified severe strategy shortcomings, leadership, organisation, and disconnect at all levels of the party. In particular, the report claimed, “the Federal Board was often a ‘rubber-stamp’ and is too large a group to be a realistic decision-making body.” There is no way that cohesive decisions can be made simply, quickly, and effectively. “The Federal Board – 40+ members – is not, cannot, and should not be that team.”

So instead of recreating itself and its function, the Federal Board has created a ‘Steering Group’ that is composed of 14 of the existing 43 Board members. This plans to become the decision-making and strategy-generating body for the party. The Steering Group has two directly elected members, (the President and a Vice-Chair), Acting Co-Leader until new Leader elected, Vice President (appointed) representatives of the three state parties, five federal committees, the Young Liberals and Principal Councils. That leaves the 29-member rump of the Federal Board with no contributory purpose.

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24 Comments
Rhys Taylor

Reflections on exam results and our Minister

By Rhys Taylor | Tue 18th August 2020 - 11:26 am

I have a confession to make. I think that Kirsty Williams is bloody brilliant.

As if it wasn’t enough being the sole Welsh Liberal Democrat elected to the Welsh Parliament and the most senior non-Labour politician in Wales, then there was COVID.

The pandemic demanded an incredible amount from our schools and the wider education system. More or less overnight, schools became childcare hubs for keyworkers with teachers delivering blended learning, undertaking wellbeing checks, providing packed-lunches and so much more.

Oh, and in Wales they were busy preparing for the first ever made-in-Wales curriculum, the biggest piece of education legislation – possibly the biggest pieces of legislation ever put before the Senedd. Led by our own Kirsty Williams.

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21 Comments
Steve Trevethan

Is electoral reform the last thing we need?

By Steve Trevethan | Tue 18th August 2020 - 10:08 am

The last thing we need is electoral reform because we need to think and work in a sequence which results in genuine electoral reform.

The word “genuine” is included because Neo-Liberals, their fellow travellers and their “useful ill-informeds” use the word to describe financial and economic changes which are to the detriment of the general public.

To quote economist Michael Hudson:

The IMF (International Monetary Fund) and kindred Washington consensus bodies demand labour market “reforms” that would reverse the 20th century workplace reforms. The word “reform” is now attached to any policy as an advertising slogan.

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17 Comments
Rupinder Singh

Crisis in Belarus and possible EU and UK policy response

By Rupinder Singh | Tue 18th August 2020 - 8:15 am

#Живёт Беларусь – two words that are the rallying cry for what appears to be a tipping point for the Lukashenko regime with mass strikes at factories, schools, TV anchors resigning and signs that security forces are refusing to follow orders or resigning. Despite the repeat of the Lukashenko play book of arresting or brute elimination of opposition figures, the country coalesced around an unlikely figure in the form of a quiet housewife who has fired up the imagination and bamboozled the regime. It is also a test of how the West, the EU and most notably the UK in …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged | 8 Comments
Joe Otten

The conceptual error behind the A level fiasco

By Joe Otten | Mon 17th August 2020 - 3:10 pm

On day zero we heard of some horrendous downgrades. Perhaps that was just anecdote. No longer. Clearly now we are in the realm of overwhelming evidence that the awarded grades are not a fair indication. Every single FE college responding to a survey covering half of all colleges report lower grades than in previous years. Large numbers of independent schools are bragging about record high grades. The stolen A*s have been awarded to others and the top university places have therefore largely been taken.

In principle, an algorithm could be fair from one school to the next, giving effectively each school its prior attainment. Clearly the algorithm hasn’t done this and therefore clearly it contains errors.

Even without these errors, the concept that if your centre expects a U to be awarded, then somebody has to be given a U, however well they are actually performing, is grotesque. But this is the concept, and it applies to all the grades below the level you are performing at, not just the Us.

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25 Comments
Jo Hayes

On reforming the Liberal Democrat organisation

By Jo Hayes | Mon 17th August 2020 - 2:20 pm

Last September I stood for election to the Federal Board because I was aware of things which had gone wrong and needed to be put right. I didn’t expect my term of office, if elected, to start with picking up the pieces after a catastrophic general election. But it did.

The Thornhill Review has called for change, including to the Federal Board: a huge, sprawling thing with 35 voting members, the influence of any one of whom is very dilute. The Board would be better if it were less than half its current size. But whose seats should go? It …

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Mark Argent

The next coalition?

By Mark Argent | Mon 17th August 2020 - 8:15 am

Does soul-searching over the 2010–15 coalition leave Liberal Democrats in danger of failing to take the credit for our real achievements in government and undermining our relevance by being reluctant to try again?

Even before the arrival of Covid19 we were in turbulent times. British politics since the referendum has been highly dysfunctional.

In the 2019 General Election, my sense was that the Tories and Labour had lurched to extremes. On the doorstep I found even Remain supporters switching from us to the Tories for fear of a Corbyn-led government. Labour seemed to have prioritised ideological purity over electability, which was the place from which they were attacking us over the coalition.

Under normal circumstances, their choosing, in Keir Starmer, a leader who would be a credible Prime Minister would change everything and point to a revival of their fortunes and ours. As it is, the proposed changes to constituency boundaries are likely to favour the Tories. If the country is to move away from having an anti-European, authoritarian and incompetent government, we will need to work with Labour — which has to include the possibility of coalition.

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Mary Reid

Exam grades and what they should have done

By Mary Reid | Sun 16th August 2020 - 2:51 pm

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In this post: Exam Results and Gradings Ianto Stevens explained how and why examiners moderate exam results to try to smooth out inconsistencies from year to year. Some of this was to compensate for variations in the difficulty of exam papers. The overall aim was to give the same balance of grades as in previous years.

For example, suppose on a particular A Level physics paper, students across the country get markedly higher marks than in previous years. Examiners will assume that the students are of much the same ability as previous cohorts and that the variations are due to the questions asked and the marking guidelines. It is almost impossible to write a series of exam papers that produce the same range of results each time.

The problem this year was that this legitimate moderation process was applied not to actual written exam papers but to teacher’s predictions.

I spent many years teaching and organising A level and BTEC courses in a large FE college. Each year the whole of my Easter break was devoted to assessing and ranking coursework projects for some 60 A level Computing students. And, of course, I had to provide predicted grades which I based on their AS levels, mock exams and the state of their coursework at the time when the predictions had to be submitted.

I do understand why there was a reluctance to simply award the students with the grades predicted by their teachers. If that had happened then the overall grades would have been significantly higher than in previous years. The consequence would have been that a higher number of students would have met the conditions set by universities, so there was a danger that courses might have been oversubscribed. Universities always offer more places than they can fill, on the basis that not all will qualify.

So, to avoid a glut of qualified students, the raw predicted grades were treated as though they were actual marks and were moderated to bring them in line with other years. What is more, the moderation was applied at the level of an individual school or college rather than across the whole exam entry cohort – a granular application of a holistic method.

I will argue that it was not necessary to moderate the grades at all, but first let’s take a look at the procedure that was adopted. The actual predicted grades were ignored and the rankings used instead. These were mapped on to the spread of grades achieved in that subject, in that school or college, over several previous years. So if in previous years, on average, 5% had been awarded a U (ie fail), then the bottom 5% in the ranked list this year would be given a U, and so on across all the grades.

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Caron Lindsay

Conference early bird discount runs out soon

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 16th August 2020 - 9:16 am

Don’t miss out on your chance to register for our new shiny virtual conference at the early bird discounted rate of £30. The deadline is this Thursday and after that you will have to pay more.

Federal Conference Committee were given a demo of the finalised version of the software this week and even the most normal cynical were, I understand, impressed.

Scotland held a one day trial of the Hopin platform last month and, despite a few inevitable teething troubles, it worked well.

The best advice I can give you is to make sure that you play around with it …

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Caron Lindsay

Kirsty Williams, the one competent education secretary in the UK

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 15th August 2020 - 8:44 am

It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks for exam students. Highers and A level results play a huge role in determining the course of your life. If you don’t get the grades you need to fulfil your aspirations, you have to rethink your whole life. And you will carry those grades around for your whole life.

The question of whether we should have a system that puts so much stress on our young people is up for debate, but that’s for another day.

We know, though, that there are clear differences between the nations of the UK. In Scotland and England, the whole thing has been a disaster. However, in Wales, our Kirsty Williams has presided over a system that she argues has credibility because it guarantees that AS level results from last year will be the minimum grade for this year. That is a system that was scrapped by one Michael Gove in England.

Watch her statement about the way the results have been calculated:

Watch this interview she gave ahead of the announcement of the grades:

Listen to Kirsty talk to Andrew Castle on LBC here. 

Because we have maintained a system whereby AS-levels forms a significant proportion of a final A-level grade, we were able to us that in the moderation process and able to put in a safety net for students so they could not drop below their previous AS Level grade.

“The ability to do that has been very helpful, because those were exams which were set, taken in the same conditions and were externally assessed.

“That can give students, universities and employers real confidence in them”.

She also cast doubt on the validity of giving grades based on mock exams,

“Some schools don’t do mock examinations,” Ms Williams explained.

“Some use mock examinations as a way to boost confidence and deliver them in a way that perhaps they are there to encourage people.

“Other schools use them as a tool of encouragement in the other way, they will mark them really hard so that people don’t get complacent.

“Each school has a different approach which we believe is right for them.”

The Welsh Lib Dems had some clear messaging about results:

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: I am an immigrant

By Tom Arms | Fri 14th August 2020 - 11:14 am

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I am an immigrant. I emigrated from the United States to the United Kingdom on the 12th of December 1971.

I had studied for a year in Britain 18 months before and fell in love with the country and one of its citizens and moved back despite the dreary weather and traffic jams.

I did not flee a Middle Eastern War. I did not turf up at Heathrow claiming political persecution. Neither was I escaping a life of poverty in an African mud hut. In fact, if I had stayed in America I would probably be enjoying a comfortable country club existence.

Nevertheless, I feel an affinity with African, Asian, Hispanic, or any person from any race or country who left their homeland to seek a new life. It is not easy to leave the safety net of cultural familiarity, family and friends.

If you are born to a country your acceptance is automatic. As an immigrant you have to constantly prove your worth and justify your decision to uproot your entire life and start afresh.

I feel I have succeeded. I started an international news agency which launched the careers of well over a hundred journalists. My children are all a credit to me as are the 200 boys – many of them now young me – who have passed through my scout group over the past 20 years.

I am not boasting. In fact, I don’t regard myself as particularly unusual. Immigrants in every country have outstanding records of contributing to their adopted homelands.

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Layla Moran MP

Layla Moran writes …Tackling the environmental crisis from the bottom up

By Layla Moran MP | Thu 13th August 2020 - 5:28 pm

Each week, LDV invites the leadership candidates to write a post for us. This is Layla’s post for this week. 

The climate and nature emergencies are the greatest threats our country – and humankind – face. Climate change is not under control. Worldwide, deforestation and the destruction of habitats continue at a terrifying rate, with catastrophic impacts on wildlife.

This is why, alongside the economy and education, I’ve made the environment one of my campaign themes. My ambition as leader is to make our Liberal voice heard clearly on the environment and to recapture our position as the most innovative and credible party on environmental policy. In turn, this will enable us to build coalitions for action, and to attract support from Labour, Green and Tory voters concerned about the threat to the environment.

Several of the key actions have to be taken by the government. This includes accelerating investment in renewable power, an emergency programme of energy efficiency retrofits for homes, converting the natural gas network to hydrogen, investing in public transport, speeding up the transition to electric vehicles and creating incentives to expand ‘carbon sinks’ through planting trees, restoring peatlands and supporting innovation in carbon dioxide removal technologies. If we move fast enough on all these fronts, we can put the UK on a path not just to net-zero but to net negative emissions.

But government – particularly central government – can’t do it all by itself. They have to take the public with them – which means stressing that tackling the climate and nature emergencies is a shared effort, in which everyone – individuals, households, communities, businesses, investors, farmers, teachers, scientists, engineers, local and national government – has a role to play.

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The Voice

LibLink: Rabina Khan on the treatment of migrants

By The Voice | Thu 13th August 2020 - 11:37 am

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Cllr Rabina Khan is written in The Independent under the headline: ‘The treatment of migrants crossing the Channel is plain wrong and against British values.’ Rabina is a councillor in Tower Hamlets and Special Advisor to Lib Dem peers.

She writes:

Home secretary Priti Patel tells us the UK government is committed to “shutting down” routes used by migrants crossing the Channel to the south coast and disassembling the criminal gangs “making fortunes” enabling the illegal crossings to take place.

And whose fault is it anyway? Well, the French of course – as far as the government is concerned. If the French stopped the migrants putting to sea on their side of the Channel, our brave Border Force officers would not have to be dragging them out of their deflating dinghy on English soil.

…

Does anyone truly believe this will stop desperate people crossing dangerous waters in search of sanctuary and safety? It will not. The government often speaks of its admiration for the Australian points system for refugees. The way we treat these sad souls arriving from war zones, refugee camps and the deserts of North Africa needs no rating – it is plain wrong.

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Liz Jarvis

Let’s find our Kamala Harris

By Liz Jarvis | Wed 12th August 2020 - 4:30 pm

There’s a great quote from Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the US Congress: “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring in a folding chair.” Maybe it was the combination of the heat and the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream sandwich I’d just eaten, but when the news broke last night that Kamala Harris has been selected to be Joe Biden’s running mate, I whooped and woo-hoo-ed. A lot. Only four women have ever been named by a major US party as a presidential or vice-presidential nominee, and none of them have been elected.

We are all acutely aware that this US election is one of the most significant of our lifetimes – a chance for America to reject the corrosive rhetoric of Trump and the appalling racism which his administration has helped to foster. There will be numerous attempts to undermine Kamala Harris, Fox News will throw everything at her; but I have no doubt she has the tenacity to weather any kind of storm. And representation matters.

For the Liberal Democrats, it’s the opportunity to look around and see what we can and should be doing differently, and that means making sure more diverse voices in the party are allowed to take centre stage.

I was really delighted that both of our Leadership Candidates have publicly committed to supporting the Rooney Rule, and hopefully this will ensure that there are Black, Asian and minority ethnic candidates in as many target seat selections as possible. Selections also still need to include female candidates – and if you don’t get why that’s important, when over 50% of our MPs are women, it’s worth noting that in the General Election, just 31% of our candidates were female.

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Ianto Stevens

Exam Results and Gradings

By Ianto Stevens | Wed 12th August 2020 - 3:00 pm

Students and teachers are often disappointed with some or all of their grades, and this will always be so. Don’t let us be consoled by this and dismiss the anxiety over grades as a temporary, COVID driven problem requiring only an immediate, pragmatic solution.

I was for several years in the early 2000s, a senior A level examiner. I set papers, wrote mark schemes and participated in grade reviews before grades were published.

I participated in meetings that manipulated mark schemes after students had completed papers but before they were marked – also in the meetings which manipulated grade boundaries after marking. These manipulations had four aims:

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Lib Dem Mum

Lib Dem Mum week 2 – When you can’t deliver leaflets

By Lib Dem Mum | Wed 12th August 2020 - 11:55 am

Dear Lib Dem Mum,

My local party is moderately successful (we have some councillors but not an MP) and I want to help out. There are some great people in my local party, both elected to public office and on the executive committee, and I really want to help further the cause of liberalism. However, the only thing they ever want me to do is deliver leaflets, and I am not physically capable of doing a delivery round due to mobility problems.

 What can I do to show them that I can be useful in other ways?

 Frustrated, Yorkshire

 

Dear Frustrated,

 If our party has a major flaw alongside all the minor ones that come with being a group of human beings, it’s that we can be more of a leaflet delivery cult than an actual political party. Yours is not the only local party that tends to view volunteers as leaflet dispersal machines. Happily, there are other things you can do: 

  • Within your local party:
    • Stand for the exec. In my experience, local party execs tend to be in need of people who can do things other than deliver leaflets. A good treasurer, for example, is worth their weight in gold, similarly a secretary who is actually good at taking the minutes of meetings.
    • Someone who is good with computers and can do the admin work to arrange leaflet deliveries for other people is often helpful. 
    • Volunteer to do phone banking.
    • Volunteer to proof read the leaflets so that they don’t go out filled with embarrassing typos.
    • Start, or take over an existing, policy working group and work on policies to put forward to regional or federal conference.
  • Within your state and/or region, there is almost certainly a need for people to do all the things that you can do for a local party, but on a larger scale. You can also volunteer to be someone who scouts locations for meetings or conferences for accessibility: that’s not needed on a very regular basis, but it sounds like you would be the person to do it.
  • Within the many internal party organisations (Young Liberals, Lib Dem Immigrants, LGBT+LDs, Lib Dem Friends of Cake, etc. – there are hundreds of these, and there’s sure to be one that meets your interests, the party has a directory of them here), or for the party nationally, there are lots of volunteer administrative roles and most of these are done remotely, from the volunteer’s home, as a matter of course, just because of the geographical distribution of members.
  • You can also stand for federal committees, and/or join Federal Policy Committee working groups, and/or train to become a candidate assessor or an adjudicator for disciplinary matters, and do myriad other things to help out on a national level.
  • At the moment, you can also volunteer to help out your favourite leadership contender. Volunteer to help Layla here or Ed here.
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