Category Archives: Op-eds

Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler writes…..Listening is just the start…

By Paul Tyler | Tue 1st September 2020 - 4:58 pm

Once we have honed our listening skills we should surely seek to improve ways in which people are themselves empowered.  How can they make their voices and their votes more effective ?

Here are a few immediate and urgent opportunities:

Fair Votes 

Despite the Conservative manifesto promise to make sure “every vote counts the same – a cornerstone of democracy” the current inequality is outrageous.  It takes 33 times as many votes for Green Party supporters to elect an MP as for SNP supporters, with big differences for Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats in between. Voters are cheated by the First-Past-The-Post system.

Ed Davey has committed himself to the cross-party campaign.    But what should be the first priority?   Persuading the Labour leadership to wake up, and accept the strong support of their membership for reform of elections to the Commons?   Or concentrate on extending the STV success in local authority elections in Scotland – now to be repeated in Wales – to ensure voters in England do not miss out?  

If the electoral system is the bedrock of our democracy, then surely some consistency throughout the UK is essential ?

Who Votes?

Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for votes for all citizens when they reach 16.  We led national efforts to extend the franchise for the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and were only thwarted by combined Conservative and Labour Peers when we pressed then for 16-year-olds to be able to vote in the 2016 EU Referendum.   Again, Scotland and Wales are leading the way, and the case for UK consistency is now overwhelming.

UK citizens working or living abroad are often affected by political decisions taken here – most notoriously on Brexit – but their representation is inadequate.  We want them to vote in separate constituencies so that they have MPs who are committed to looking after their particular interests.

Similarly, EU residents working and resident in the UK make a substantial contribution, not least with various local taxes, and should continue to be allowed to vote in local elections.

Subsidiarity

The imminent Devolution White Paper, we are told, will force through the amalgamation of two-tier councils to create more unitary authorities, all with the compulsory addition of elected mayors.   This looks suspiciously like centralisation rather than decentralisation, and is certainly not devolution. Whitehall retains the financial stranglehold, treating elected local representatives as simply a delivery mechanism for national policy priorities.

We have long championed subsidiarity = bringing decisions as close as possible to those who will be affected by them.  The present Government is moving in the opposite direction. 

The example of the SNP Government is also salutary.  Concentrating power at that level, with little devolution to lower tiers of governance at community levels, is no way to spread empowerment.

Transparency

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Mark Valladares

Working from home – better for the economy long-term?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 31st August 2020 - 11:02 am

Full disclosure – the author has been working from home since mid-March.

With increasing pressure being placed upon office workers to return to their town and city centre offices, in order to save the economy, little attention seems to have been paid to the flip side of having hundreds of thousands of workers operating from their homes. The imminent death of Pret, and of small businesses in the urban cores, is being waved at us as a means of provoking us to go back to our daily commute.

Yet, yesterday, evidence emerged that, whilst there is undoubtedly damage occurring, there have been …

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Caron Lindsay

What’s the point?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 30th August 2020 - 5:28 pm

In the few days since Ed Davey was announced as our new leader, I’ve been saddened to see more than a few  people, good solid liberals,  thinking about leaving the party. It’s worrying that both young people, and longstanding activists and councillors, are questioning whether the party can recover sufficiently to deliver the liberal country where no-one is enslaved by poverty ignorance and conformity, to quote the preamble to our Constitution, that we all want to see.

I’ve had many such conversations over the last few days. What has been particularly disappointing is the way in which some supporters of Ed have been so aggressive to those expressing their concerns on social media. One senior activist who should know better told another to “jog on” out of the party. The aggressors sounded more like the Brexiteers baiting Remainers in the aftermath of the EU referendum than members of a liberal party and it was really sad to see. Of course people are going to let their emotions show on social media when they’ve lost and the way to deal with it is with grace, sensitivity and kindness, not aggression and cruelty. I am pretty sure that Ed himself would not condone this behaviour and they do him no credit whatsoever.

So why is it that people are questioning their future in the party, particularly those who survived the coalition years?

It’s nothing personal about Ed. It’s more that the party has seemingly chosen a path that will lead to more of what they see as the bland managerial centrism that, let’s face it, has not done us many favours in the past 10 years. They are simply not up for more of the same and don’t believe that the party can recover if it pursues this tactic. “What’s the point?” is something I’ve heard a few times.

I do have some sympathy with that. This party is at its best when it is bold and radical and does the right thing, not necessarily the popular thing. The voters weren’t exactly clamouring for Paddy to stand up for the rights of citizens of Hong Kong, but it was the right thing to do and he enhanced his reputation by making that argument.  We forget how massive a thing it was when Charles Kennedy opposed the Iraq War. It took a huge amount of political courage to take that stance and he took absolute pelters for it at the time, but he was ultimately proved right.

It is the language we use and how it resonates with people that will be crucial in our future success. We have not been very good at articulating what we are for and telling our story. Ed Davey was right to say that we are going to concentrate on listening to voters. That part of his acceptance speech jarred with me a bit because that is our trademark in so many of our local campaigns that we actually give a damn what people think. But then, that is not the perception people have of us nationally and, let’s face it, party members were not the focus of his remarks. However, I did find the phrase “National Listening Project” more Orwellian than empathetic. They might want to fine tune that one.

I do understand why people have been thinking about leaving the party and I really hope that they don’t. Ed has his mandate now and he needs to be given the chance to show that he can deliver on what he said during the campaign. I will be staying because I strongly believe that the immense talent within the parliamentary party, within our council groups up and down the country and amongst our talented staff and volunteers up and down the country can get us back on track if we work together and co-ordinate our efforts. We need to show that we are operating on the same set of values across the whole of the UK.

If I have any anxieties it is on tactics, not values. If I thought that any of our leaders didn’t share the values in our Preamble, I’d have been out the door a long time ago. And you can see how they have been living our principles in what they have been doing in Parliament. Jamie Stone fighting for those who have excluded from government help during the pandemic. Christine Jardine trying to achieve indefinite leave to remain for NHS and care staff who have been on the Covid front line (more on that later this week when she launches her Bill on that subject), Layla leading with her Coronavirus enquiry making sensible recommendations to avoid a second wave of the virus, Munira holding the government to account for its failures on test and trace and in care homes to name many issues, Alistair pushing the government to do more to press China on their horrific treatment of the Uighurs. Daisy fighting for freelancers and for more help for the creative industries.

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Adrian Sanders

Ed’s experience can help him rebuild the Liberal Democrats

By Adrian Sanders | Sun 30th August 2020 - 11:23 am

In his acceptance speech Ed Davey claimed to have been a member of our Party for 30 years. This surprised me as I worked in the same Liberal Democrat Whips’ office as Ed in 1989/90 and had assumed he was already a member.  I can’t claim to have influenced him in joining, but I can imagine some of the other great people who were in that team might have done.

My surprise was down to Ed’s keenness at the time to ensure we had a credible economic message and his enthusiasm for campaigning at the grass roots to get that message across, combined with his natural Liberal responses to the issues of the day we discussed each morning as we put the press cuttings together for our MPs. 

It was a small and effective team that saw our opinion poll rise from an asterix to near double figures thanks in part to the campaign materials we produced in association with ALDC. Known as the People First campaign it was promoted through ALDC and the tiny but talented campaigns team in Cowley Street. It was a first and much missed example of integrated campaigning the new leader might wish to remind himself of.

I also recall that it was Ed who came up with our distinct economic policy to give the Bank of England independence. This policy helped broaden the Party’s appeal beyond the inspiring leadership of Paddy Ashdown and our community campaigning. It was a policy that became one of the first things the new Labour Government did despite it not featuring in their General Election campaign.

In the run up to the 1997 election there seemed to be a wide understanding, probably learnt through the extensive local government experience within the Party, that you can have radical views and policies, but you can’t vote for them if you don’t get Liberal Democrats elected. This is where the targeting of messages and resources was developed that proved so important in helping to win seats like Twickenham and Oxford West & Abingdon for the first time since universal suffrage. 

Sadly, after the 2010 election we ignored the lessons and moved away from the tactics that had secured our bridgehead which has left Tim, Jo and now Ed with an enormous challenge to overcome. 

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Daniel Newton

Keeping Young People in the Liberal Democrats 

By Daniel Newton | Sat 29th August 2020 - 9:54 am

We all know losing can be disappointing. As someone who was heavily involved in the Vote Layla campaign, it might not come as a shock that I was disappointed in the result of the leadership election. It goes without saying that I will rally behind our new leader, but I will make no bones about it: addressing the biggest issue facing our party for the last 10 years will be considerably harder.

The issue we face is a mass exodus of members that are disillusioned and disenfranchised, particularly younger members. When campaigning in the leadership election, I encountered countless people who had already cancelled their membership or were about to, because they saw our party as irrelevant and uninspiring. On top of that and more specifically, over the first 24 hours of the announcement of the new leader, I witnessed a number of previously active young people in the Liberal Democrats cancel their memberships and look for other political homes. 

This trend doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon. A poll recently showed that the Greens are ahead of us in terms of young people voting intention. As the party that used to be the home of students, of the alternative voice, of the anti-establishment and of the progressive, it is imperative that we return in some way to this narrative, or risk fizzling out of existence.

Luckily for us, being low in the polls gives us a chance to do exactly this. Yes, we do need to be relevant to ordinary voters by returning to speak about policies people want to hear, not just policies Liberal Democrats like to hear. But I argue that, in the long term, it is more vital we stay relevant and inspiring to young people if we ever want to be competitive to other parties.

One particular example of us doing the opposite to the above was the issue of the environment. In the 2019 GE, it was such a hot topic and such a unique moment for us to reinspire young people nationally, especially when we had caught their attention on the Brexit issue. Instead, however, we ended up looking out of touch because we had a carbon neutral target that appeared less ambitious than our rivals.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Politics of fear and loathing

By Tom Arms | Fri 28th August 2020 - 4:47 pm

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Fear is the major political currency of America’s Republican Party. The traditionalists are frightened of socialism. They are scared of big government. They dread the thought of a diminished suburban life style.  They are panic-stricken at the thought of losing their guns that protect from the forces of both the law and lawlessness. But most of all, in an increasingly racially divided society, the long dominant White population is terrified of becoming a minority.

Republicans will deny that they are racists. But the fact is that race issues have been a dominant theme in American politics from the arrival of the first African slaves in 1619, to the genocidal elimination of Native Americans, the Civil War, segregation, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Act and, finally, Trump’s wall.

They are not overly concerned with constitutional rights (except perhaps their interpretation of the Second Amendment). Enforcement of the rule of law is not at the top of agenda (except as it pertains to the protection of property). Whether or not their president is a tax-evading, misogynistic, narcissistic, racist, incompetent foul-mouthed liar is of little interest. They accept that he is a bastard. But he is their bastard. Even a global pandemic which has left more Americans dead than in any other country takes a back seat to the battle to preserve the fabled American dream.

America is a largely conservative society. Donald Trump is in the White House because he has successfully managed to persuade Americans that he is their best bet for fighting off the foreign hordes and ideas that run counter to perceived American values. In this election, the American right has gone to war; and, as in any war, the first casualty is truth.

That was obvious from the Republican Convention where speaker after speaker uttered outrageous lies in pursuit of four more years of a Trump presidency. Former Army Colonel turned anti-abortionist nun, Sister Deidre Byrne, accused Joe Biden and Kamala Harris of supporting not only late-term abortion, but infanticide as well.

Tennessee Senator Marshal Blackburn warned: “If the Democrats have their way, they would keep you locked in your homes until you become dependent on the government for everything. “

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Ben Lawrie

A letter to disheartened Layla supporters

By Ben Lawrie | Thu 27th August 2020 - 6:03 pm

In the aftermath of our leadership election, emotions are high. I know there are people disappointed by the result. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disheartened to be on the losing side. I know Ed is a great liberal, a caring person, and a hugely credible environmental campaigner and I’m still a Liberal Democrat at the end of the day no matter what.

With that said, many of you saw the need for new energy, a fresh start and a revitalisation of our party.

The leadership is only one aspect of our party and one piece of the puzzle. Please don’t give up.

Local, Scottish and Welsh elections are approaching.

We have lots of fresh faced, energetic and bright young talent in the party. People who embody what it is we loved about Layla in the first place. People like Molly Nolan in Caithness, Sutherland & Ross and Jenny Marr in the Scottish Borders.

Support them. Lift them up.

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Lib Dem Mum

Lib Dem Mum 4: Trans rights are human rights

By Lib Dem Mum | Thu 27th August 2020 - 4:00 pm

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 am a feminist, and a liberal, and I think we should all have the right to live our lives as we choose. I have been watching, as an outsider, the heated discussions about trans rights. I don’t (to my knowledge) have any trans friends or relatives, and my interest in this is purely a human rights one. I do not want trans people of any gender to suffer, but nor do I want women to suffer. There are people on both sides of this debate who I find broadly credible, and there are people on both sides who seem to want to destroy the other. I want to be fair and just to everybody, and for us all to go forward to a more liberal and just society.

Help?

Confused, Lanarkshire.

 

Dear Confused,

As a peace-loving liberal mum, I generally like to try to see all sides of a debate and reach a compromise if one is possible. This is one of those instances where I do not think compromise is possible.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the 1980s have seen all this before. The discourse around trans rights is very much a warmed over version of things people used to say about gay people in the 1980s, with a thin cloak of feminism added on top to make it more superficially acceptable. Even the toilet panic is an old canard that’s been resurrected. “Men in dresses are a threat to YOUR children” is an exact copy of the scare stories that went around at that time. And yes, there were angry and unreasonable people on both sides of that debate in the 1980s, too. It didn’t stop us, as liberals, ultimately accepting that one side was in the right. The other side, I’m afraid, was a force of reactionary conservatism (even the ones who were otherwise perfectly nice people and were good at phrasing their rhetoric in respectful and reasonable language).

Then as now, I find the best way to navigate claims and counterclaims is to look at evidence. Britain doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and several other countries have already implemented the reforms trans people call for – our closest comparison being Ireland. Trans people of all genders are no more likely to be a threat than any other human being – in fact the horrifying statistics show that they are far, far more likely to be threatened by other humans. Yes, some humans, cis and trans, of all genders and none, are Bad People. Yes, some humans, cis and trans, of all genders and none are “a threat to YOUR children”. This is because those individuals are a threat, not because of their gender, or sex, or lack of either.

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David Warren

Smells like team spirit

By David Warren | Thu 27th August 2020 - 2:01 pm

Now it’s all over I can write about it and what a few weeks it was. Signing up with team Layla was one of the best things I have done in a long time.

Having met Ms Moran back in 2017 at a local party AGM I had pledged to support her in the event that she decided to run for the party leadership so impressed was I by this charismatic young Liberal Democrat MP. I should say I am not easily impressed, starting out in politics aged 16 has led to a certain level of cynicism in this 50 something guy. So I signed up and over the course of the contest made my contribution which mainly consisted of watching the hustings and phoning members. The latter gave me a fascinating insight into our party in various parts of the UK. Hundreds of calls to Scotland failed to uncover another Warren. I know they are there just maybe not in the Liberal Democrats.

The campaign was good for me because after years as a family carer it gave me a purpose. Everyday I was able to make my contribution and the only thing that got put on hold was the gardening. Most evenings we had a zoom event get together organised by the excellent Jason Johnson which really helped build team spirit. We got to know each other and bonded in a way that helped us strive to achieve more in the days ahead. Relationships were built which I hope will endure and our skills were utilised in a way that led on to discussions about how a lot of us felt underused by the party. I very much hope that will change in the future.

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Steve Trevethan

On Coronavirus and finance

By Steve Trevethan | Thu 27th August 2020 - 9:41 am

The UK, like USA, Japan and others, have a profound advantage with which to recover from the financial consequences of Covid, if they choose to understand and use it.

They are currency issuers, unlike countries using the euro and the dollar, which are currency users. Unlike currency users, e.g. Germany, Greece etc. financially sovereign nations can always meet future obligations: they can never run out of their money.

Increasing or decreasing “the deficit” neither makes future generations poorer nor richer. Consequently, the Government can and should, without excessive inflation, spend its currency to fully manage the problems and opportunities to maintain or increase the well-being of citizens and children. It neither needs, nor should, let the “deficit myths” restrict its management of the Coronavirus and its consequences.

The government’s ability to spend is limited by the economy’s ability to produce, not the debt.
Dean Baker

It should also be limited by care of environments which include, climate, ecology and societies.

Economics without contexts and compassion is a form of fascism
William Harris

Fiat money gains its authority through being the medium in which a government extracts taxes. Unlike commodity money, with intrinsic value and representative money, representing something with intrinsic value, it is intrinsically valueless. It is part of a government’s “spend, tax and borrow” practices. Taxation creates the demand for the government’s money and so is not a governing factor in governmental spending. Government spends first and taxes some back. The difference goes to the private sectors of the economy. Unless taxation is less than expenditure, private sectors suffer deficits and the economy under-functions. Insufficient taxation results in damaging excessive inflation.

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Paul Reynolds

Why Britain should worry about Kashmir

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 26th August 2020 - 1:29 pm

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Kashmir is one of those decades-long conflicts which rarely makes it into the mainstream UK media;  until recently. In June this year 20 Indian soldiers died in fighting with Chinese soldiers, on the border between Indian-administered and Chinese-administered Kashmir.

So what is the nature of the conflict and why has it become much more dangerous this year ?

Central to the recent upsurge in violence, lies China-India relations. To understand, we must start with ‘British India’.

After Indian independence following WW2, Kashmir was divided into Pakistan administered and Indian administered territory, with two smaller areas controlled by China. Both the Pakistani and Indian administered sides are majority Muslim, except (Buddhist) Ladakh, on the Chinese border.

India and Pakistan have more than once gone to war over territory, and so have India and China.

When Indian administered Kashmir was established, the spectre of future Kashmiri independence was raised, and significant autonomy provided for in Article 370 of the Indian Constitutions, later also by Article 35A.

Among these provisions were restricted involvement of the Indian state (foreign policy, defence etc). Land ownership and receipt of public services like education and health were restricted to Kashmiris. Article 370, leading potentially to independence, was a factor in the measure of acceptance by Kashmiris of Indian administration early on.

However, in the late 1980s an insurgency by Muslim Kashmiris against Indian administration started, with various forms of support, overt and covert, from Pakistan. This rise in violence against Indian rule was largely a result of gradual erosion of autonomy and democracy;  and fading prospects of independence.

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Catherine Crosland

The most fundamental of human rights

By Catherine Crosland | Wed 26th August 2020 - 11:20 am

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I am sure that most of you will have been shocked and distressed by recent reports that, during lockdown, Many care homes were ordered to place “Do not resuscitate” orders on all their residents. In many cases, there was no discussion of this with either the residents themselves or their families. About half of these were care homes for the elderly. The other half were for younger adults with learning difficulties or other disabilities.

It is hard to find words for this violation of the most fundamental of human rights – the right to life. We thought we were going into lockdown to protect the most vulnerable, when in reality, there seems to have been a policy of leaving the most vulnerable to die. It seems to have been decided that the lives of elderly and disabled people somehow mattered less than those of the young, or of people free of disabilities.

Even if it could be argued that very frail elderly people often would not benefit from resuscitation, or from treatments like ventilation, this would not apply to the younger, healthy people, who happened to have a learning difficulty, who were also being condemned to die.

This horrifying situation was not confined to the care home sector. Some GP practices put pressure on elderly people, people with certain health conditions, disabled people, and in some cases autistic people, to sign “Do not resuscitate” forms for themselves, and agree that an ambulance should not be called if they were to become ill with Coronavirus. Imagine the feelings of these people, on being asked to agree that their lives were not worth saving. In many cases these were people living alone, unable to see friends and family due to lockdown, and now finding that the health service was apparently turning its back on them. They must have felt utterly abandoned. Many must have despaired. Meanwhile, their neighbours “clapped the carers” every Thursday.
How dare anyone suggest that the life of an elderly, disabled or autistic person is of less value than that of a young, able bodied, neurotypical person?

I hope every liberal believes that every life is of equal value. We must never forget that the most fundamental of human rights is the right to life itself.

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George Kendall

What kind of Universal Basic Income do you support?

By George Kendall | Wed 26th August 2020 - 8:55 am

There has been a lot of debate in the party about Universal Basic Income, but it’s not always been clear what kind of UBI is being proposed. This article is to ask you to choose from four clear options.

A key issue with UBI is how it will be funded, and if it is funded, whether other priorities will have to be dropped. In the 2019 election, Jeremy Corbyn proposed raising taxes by £80bn/yr. The Liberal Democrats proposed an extra £51bn/yr spending (this included a £14bn/yr ‘remain bonus’)

The four options below involve combinations of the cheapest of the schemes recommended by Compass and the spending from the 2019 Lib Dem manifesto.

  1. £191.9bn/yr extra taxes

Scheme 1 from the Compass paper (see below), plus the £51bn/yr spending from the 2019 Lib Dem manifesto

  1. £140.9bn/yr extra taxes

Scheme 1 from the Compass paper (see below), none of the 2019 Lib Dem manifesto implemented

  1. £61bn/yr extra taxes
  • Keep the £51bn/yr extra spending from the 2019 manifesto
  • £10bn/yr to move the UK benefits system more towards a negative income tax system
  • A UBI pilot scheme (cost very small)
  1. £51bn/yr extra taxes
  • Keep the £51bn/yr extra spending from the 2019 manifesto
  • A UBI pilot scheme (cost very small)

The UBI Scheme 1 in the above options comes from proposals in the paper written by Howard Reed and Stewart Lansley and published by Compass. It is outlined in the graphic below, along with Scheme 2, which is more expensive.

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As well as saying which of the above four you prefer, do also give us your ideal option.

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The Voice

Make your mind up time: Lib Dem Women’s hustings

By The Voice | Tue 25th August 2020 - 7:00 pm

There are just 19 hours left in the Lib Dem Leadership election. Many of you will still be making your final decision on who to vote for.

If you are still not sure, why not watch some snippets of the 47 hustings that have taken place so far?

One event that isn’t on the website is the Lib Dem Women event that took place last month. They have recently uploaded it on to You Tube and you can watch here.

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Ed Davey

Ed Davey writes: I want to rebuild our party and take on the Tories

By Ed Davey | Tue 25th August 2020 - 5:23 pm

As we wrap up the Liberal Democrat leadership election, I wanted to thank the thousands of people who have taken part in hustings, sent in questions to the campaigns and engaged in this contest.

It’s absolutely right that there is a robust process that properly tests our next leader, and makes sure that whoever wins on Thursday has been put through their paces by the party. Whatever happens later this week, I know that Liberal Democrats will come together and turn our hand to doing what we do best, getting out campaigning and standing up for communities up and down the country.

If you haven’t returned your ballot yet then there is still time to vote for me so that we can rebuild our party on solid foundations, and campaign for a fairer, greener and more caring society. That’s my vision for the future of our party, and I know I’ve got the experience we need to deliver it. 

With your support, I want to rebuild our party and take on the Tories, and put more Liberal Democrats in town halls, council chambers and Parliaments right across the country.

But we have to be realistic with the challenge that we face. Even a quick glance at our election review will tell you that the next leader, whoever it is, will be taking on a big job. There are deep, structural challenges that the party faces and it will take time for us to fix the problems Dorothy Thornhill identified in her review, and put the party in the best place to get back to winning elections.

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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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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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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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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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