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Category Archives: Op-eds

Liberal Democrats must act now to prevent deaths on hunger strike

By Tanvir Ahmad | Thu 18th December 2025 - 12:01 pm

There are moments when Parliament must intervene not because it is politically convenient, but because failure to act would be morally indefensible. This is one of those moments.

Lawyers representing several Palestine Action linked prisoners have now warned that their clients may die without urgent ministerial intervention. Some have been on hunger strike for more than 40 days. Medical collapse, loss of consciousness, and dangerous blood test results have already been reported. These are not speculative concerns. They are immediate, time sensitive risks.

The Liberal Democrats exist to hold government to account when power is exercised without humanity or scrutiny. That responsibility now falls squarely on our Parliamentary team. The government has attempted to blur this issue by framing it as a continuation of the proscription debate. It is NOT!

Whatever view one takes of Palestine Action and whatever view one takes of the government’s decision to bundle organisations into a single proscription order, none of that justifies allowing people to deteriorate to the point of death in state custody.

These individuals are on remand. They have not been convicted. The government has a non-negotiable duty of care. Refusing to meet legal representatives while credible warnings of impending death are being made is not a neutral administrative choice. It is a failure of ministerial responsibility.

This is precisely the type of situation where the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary team must act decisively and visibly.

These actions should include:

Urgent parliamentary questions to the Justice Secretary on the health of the hunger strikers;
A formal request for an immediate ministerial meeting with lawyers and MPs representing the prisoners;
Written questions on medical oversight, remand decisions, and alleged interference with legal correspondence;
Cross-party engagement, led by Liberal Democrats, to prevent any death.

The Liberal Democrats should not wait for tragedy before acting.

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90 Comments

From the River to the Sea . . .

By Leon Duveen | Thu 18th December 2025 - 10:14 am

This phrase, or variants of it, has a long history and invokes different meaning to different people. We all need to realise what we may mean by it is not what those who hear it understand by it.

The roots of this phrase or slogan seem to be in the time of the British Mandate rule in Palestine, and it comes from the Revisionist (i.e. right wing) Zionism movement led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the movement that also produced the Jewish Terrorist groups, Irgun and Lehi, and the ideology of what is now Likud led by Binyamin Netanyahu. It was the dream of this branch of Zionism to have a Jewish State that reached from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, even beyond.

Later (the exact chronology is disputed) by the 1970’s, the phrase was adopted by the Palestinian Nationalist movement to call for a Palestinian State excluding Isreal and, by implication, most (if not all) Jews from that land.

In modern times the phrase is linked to the pro-Palestinian movement in the West with the second line of “Palestine will be free.” While many who chant the slogan may not mean that this implies the eradication of Israel, many in Jews, both in Israel and those in the Diaspora, hear that implication in those words and fear that it will be accompanied by a mass eradication of Jews between the Mediterranean to the Jordan, just as when the original slogan was first coined, the Arabs who lived in Palestine feared a Jewish state would mean their expulsion or eradication.

Given this mixed history, it is no wonder that the phrase stirs different emotions in people depending on which side of the Palestine/Israel conflict they are. However, if we want to help both Palestinians & Israelis address the issues that divide them, help the find a way to allow both to live in peace, share that land they both love and call their homeland and allow the children of both grow up free from the threat of more wars & violence, we need to think before we repeat this phrase either by itself or with a second line.

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Tagged israel and palestine | 15 Comments

Mathew on Monday: a year that revealed the limits of old politics

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 15th December 2025 - 7:29 pm

As this political year draws to a close, it has revealed something fundamental about the state of our country: Britain is crying out for change, but all too often is being offered more of the same.

After years of Conservative failure, voters rightly demanded competence and decency.
Yet while the Conservatives have continued to implode-trapped between ideological exhaustion and an inability to reckon honestly with the damage they have done-the change on offer from Labour has too often felt cautious, managerial and constrained by self-imposed limits.

Stability matters, of course. But stability without ambition risks becoming stagnation.
This has been most obvious in the economy.
Inflation has eased, but living standards remain under severe pressure, particularly for younger people locked out of secure housing and good work.

Labour’s insistence on tight fiscal rules may reassure markets, but it has yet to reassure families wondering when life will actually get easier. The Conservatives, meanwhile, continue to talk as if they were not in charge for fourteen years – a political amnesia that convinces no one.

Nowhere is the failure of old politics clearer than in our public services. The NHS has endured yet another year of crisis, with strikes reflecting not militancy but desperation. Conservative neglect created this mess; Labour’s reluctance to be bold risks managing rather than fixing it.

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Tagged anti-semitism and political messaging | 12 Comments

From Hong Kong’s Tai Po fire to Jimmy Lai’s political persecution end impunity for crimes against journalists

By Larry Ngan | Mon 15th December 2025 - 5:00 pm

For the past two years, my father (Jimmy Lai) has been on trial under Hong Kong’s arbitrary and draconian national security law…. His skin is drying up, his nails are changing colour before falling off, and his teeth are decaying. His eyes are often dry and bloodshot.

– Claire Lai, The Washington Post, 9th December 2025

Lai was the owner of Apple Daily, the largest pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong. Mere words of concern from the UK government are not enough when it comes to his political imprisonment in Hong Kong. The UK Government needs to take action to end impunity in …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged hong kong and jimmy lai | Leave a comment

Equality, degrowth and survival

By Michael Taylor | Mon 15th December 2025 - 12:31 pm

I am becoming increasingly concerned by the party’s continued stress on economic growth. This is in total contradiction to what is necessary on the environment. Of course, when pressed, this aim is hedged about as ‘green growth’, but increasingly this is detached from the direction needed to save the planet.

As a Quaker, one of my aims is to speak truth to power. When the very survival of our planet is threatened by widespread flouting and outright denial of the steps necessary to achieve a green economy, it is surely time that we, as radical politicians, start to tell the truth about the future direction of our country and our planet.

We can no longer promise never ending increases in living standards. So, all the pretence that somehow, we can improve life for those on lower incomes through growth must be discarded. The only way the poor can become less poor is through greater equality and this necessitates the rich having less. It is already obscene that a small number of people, both in the UK and worldwide, have income and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice and are able to use the power that it brings to pursue their goals at the expense of everyone else.

As a party, we pass policies which talk about equality, but our leaders continue to talk about growth, rather than facing up to the need to radically shift the split of income and wealth. It may not be a popular message and it will be roundly attacked in the media owned by the super-rich, but it’s the truth.

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Tagged economic policy | 18 Comments

What is the “right” level of immigration to the UK?

By Nick Baird | Mon 15th December 2025 - 9:12 am

There are few current issues more emotive than that of immigration, so I wanted to take a dispassionate view of the future demographic and economic implications of where we are now, and what might happen in the future, particularly if Nigel Farage achieved his aim of ‘net zero’ one-in, one-out migration as he stated in June this year.

I took as a starting point the population projections published by the Office of National Statistics.

The central assumption is that the UK’s population will grow from around 69 million today to 77 million in 2047. One key point to note in this projection is the forecast that deaths will exceed births every year from the end of this decade, and so growth is primarily driven by net inward migration at an average of 340,000 per year, with the people coming to the UK at a rate approximately double that of those leaving.

Using this data we can consider alternative scenarios. In the unlikely event that we went for absolute zero immigration while still allowing British citizens to leave and taking into account below-replacement birth rates, the population would fall dramatically to around 61 million in 2047 with a collapse in the number of those of working age.

However if we look at the ‘net zero’ position advocated by Farage, then the population would fall slightly from its current 69 million to 67.5 million by 2047. At first glance this might appear an insignificant change, but in reality the effects are dramatic.

The reason for the significance is demographics. Other data from the ONS shows that 94% of immigrants coming to the UK are of working age, as are 93% of those emigrating from the UK. However, the UK’s existing population is ageing, and we currently have a ratio of working age people to non-working age (children and pensioners) of about 1.8.

In Farage’s ‘net zero’ scenario, we end up with a falling ratio of working to non-working age to around 1.5, and a working age population in 2047 roughly 2.5 million lower than it is today, most of whom will have become pensioners. This has huge implications for both taxation and spending, because getting old is expensive.

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Tagged immigration policy | 19 Comments

Let us meet this challenge with unyielding resolve

By Jack Meredith | Fri 12th December 2025 - 1:55 pm

As of writing this, the date is 11/12/2025.

The illegal expansionist Russian invasion of Ukraine has now reached its 11th year, with the firing shot taking place all the way back in 2014, with the unlawful annexation of Crimea and the Donbas Region, followed by several years of empty threats from Russia, whilst occupied Ukrainians suffered under Russian rule.

Ukraine’s forces, while still strong in spirit, are beginning to be pushed back by invading Russian troops, due to several factors.

North Korean troops have been deployed, in aid of Russia, to assist in the illegal expansionist invasion. The Kremlin has previously brought in Russian mercenaries and Syrian fighters to bulk up its numbers against defending Ukrainian forces, along with troops pulled from Russian-occupied lands, including South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Abkhazia. It is currently recruiting fighters from Iran.

America’s support for Ukraine has recently faltered, with President Trump supporting a peace plan that was all but engineered by the Kremlin, including capping the size of the Ukrainian military and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, with the recognition of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk by Ukraine as ‘de facto Russian’; following the unveiling of this ‘peace plan’, Ukraine, understandably, rejected it, seeking a new plan that would not involve ceding territory to an invading country.

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged russia and ukraine | 2 Comments

A ‘whole society’ response to threats to national security

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 12th December 2025 - 11:55 am

How seriously should we now take threats to Britain’s national security? Liberals by temperament have never been hawkish on defence, though concerned increasingly with threats to society and economy like pandemic diseases and climate change. We’ve been happy with the progressive transfer of funds for defence into health and welfare since the end of the Cold War 35 years ago, including the selling-off of former barracks and training centres for what used to be the Territorial Army – though we’ve been very unhappy about recent cuts in development spending to find money for defence. But the international situation has now changed for the worse. Russian ships are prospecting for cables around our coasts, drones hover over neighbouring countries, there are cyber-attacks and occasional sabotage on British soil, and President Trump trusts Russia more than the UK and our European neighbours.

In July the government published a major Strategic Defence Review (SDR). The Prime Minister’s introduction declared that ‘when Russia is waging war on our continent and probing our defences at home, we must meet the danger head on.’ He did not add that we may well have to meet the danger – and the new forms of hybrid warfare that includes – without the full support of the USA. The SDR and associated documents – the ‘National Security Strategy’, covering also climate and health threats, and the ‘UK Government Resilience Action Plan’ – set out some radical ideas about what is needed to respond. The government has promised an increase of 1% of GDP on defence and security within the next 4-5 years, to double to 5% of GDP by 2035 – not a sign of immediate urgency. More immediately the SDR calls for a ‘national conversation’ to engage the public in the ‘whole society’ response that is required.

Since then there has been silence. No national conversation has been launched by our timid and distracted government. The budget has put off spending more on security and defence; the Ministry of Defence has reportedly been told to hold back on several spending programmes. General Sir Richard Barrons, one of the three lead-authors of the SDR (along with George Robertson and Fiona Hill) has just told a think-tank conference that the budget means that ‘for two years defence goes backwards’. Conservatives and Reform are so preoccupied with cutting taxes that they have made no criticisms of this, nor said anything about security and defence as priorities. So what should we be saying, against the weight of right-wing focus on lower taxes and the overall timidity of the Labour government?

The most radical concept, for me, in the SDR is the call for a ‘whole society’ approach to national security. After several decades in which government has engaged its citizens less and less in public life or forms of public service, this conjures up the idea of active citizenship, in local communities as well as contributing to national efforts, volunteering to respond to national emergencies and domestic and external threats. It emphasises local responses, expanding civilian rescue teams, emergency responders, police and military reserves, and a new Home Defence Force, ‘to improve national resilience.’ This would be a reversal of what we have seen in recent decades, with Labour governments seeing themselves as delivering services to a largely passive population, Conservatives denigrating public service, squeezing local government and selling off Territorial Army depots and drill halls.

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Tagged national security and strategic defence review | 10 Comments

The digital battlefield: Why the Liberal Democrats must supercharge online communications

By Tim Holden | Fri 12th December 2025 - 8:55 am

In the rapidly evolving landscape of modern politics, the campaign trail is no longer just paved with leaflets and street stalls—it’s dominated by algorithms, viral content, and instant digital connection. For the Liberal Democrats, a party with deep roots in local activism and a compelling national vision, improving online communications is not merely an optional extra; it is a critical necessity for survival and growth.

The challenges we face in a multipolar political environment are compounded by structural disadvantages—particularly the overwhelming dominance of established parties in funding and the disproportionate attention given to populist rivals. This imbalance makes the digital sphere our most crucial, most direct avenue to voters.

The triple threat: Media bias, big money, and digital disruptors

The Liberal Democrats operate under structural disadvantages that online communications must actively seek to overcome.

1. The Mainstream Media Squeeze and Reform UK’s Over-representation

For a third party, achieving fair representation in national print and broadcast media is a perennial struggle. The news cycle overwhelmingly prioritises the two largest parties. Crucially, studies have shown that despite the Liberal Democrats having a significantly larger number of elected MPs (e.g., 72 vs. Reform UK’s 5 MPs in a recent comparison), Reform UK receives considerably more airtime on key news bulletins.

The Skewed Narrative: This imbalance means Reform UK is often framed as the protagonist—setting the agenda and driving conflict—while the Lib Dems are often relegated to a passive role, merely responding to the policies and claims of others.

Online is Our Direct Channel: We must utilise social media to bypass these gatekeepers entirely. We can deliver our core messages on the cost of living, the NHS, and environmental policy directly to the public without mediation or spin.

Good Practice Example: AOC’s Instagram Q&As. US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez uses live Q&A sessions to break down complex policy issues, building authenticity and trust. Lib Dem MPs and spokespeople should regularly host similar sessions, turning the active scrutiny the media denies us into a direct, empowering conversation with voters.

2. The influence of large donations and campaign spending

The traditional power of large political donations further skews the playing field. While all major parties benefit from big donors, the scale of funding available to the largest parties and those supported by ‘mega-donors’ creates a significant resource disparity in overall campaign spending.

Party resource disparity impact on campaigning solution

Donations to established rivals Funds massive staff numbers, high-cost polling, and huge digital advertising budgets.

Focus on organic reach, ingenuity, and local authenticity to achieve cut-through at a lower cost.

High national spending limits

Allows dominant parties to spend up to the high legal limits on national advertising.

We cannot compete with multi-million-pound war chests on advertising spend alone. Our digital strategy must be built on ingenuity, authenticity, and grassroots mobilisation, turning every local activist’s social media account into a campaigning asset.

3. Learning from the digital disruption of populist rivals

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6 Comments

Moving on

By Rob Parsons | Thu 11th December 2025 - 8:13 am

These days we Liberal Democrats often divide ourselves, broadly and crudely, into “economic liberals” and “social liberals”. Economic liberals tend to start from the market, prioritising entrepreneurship, low taxes and preventing state interference. Social liberals tend to start from human rights and social justice, usually assuming a greater level of taxation and regulation, and thus of state activity, than economic liberals. But there is a substantial overlap in belief, and the crude characterisation of the last two sentences by no means describes all liberals.

The labels are as traditional as the idea, and I suspect have ceased to be useful as the world has changed so significantly since the days when they were forged. In fact in some ways I suggest that they are actively unhelpful. I have not met a social liberal who does not want a functioning market. Many economic liberals value social justice highly, although I have met too many who have difficulty accepting that individual freedom is a higher goal than maximum market efficiency.

Liberalism begins with the freedom of the individual. When liberalism first cohered, the most substantial threat to personal freedom came from the powers that be – the church or the state, the state being in the form of a monarch, an oligarchy, or even an alleged democracy like nineteenth century Britain.

It made sense at the dawn of liberalism, and it still makes some sense now, to link personal freedoms with freedom to transact. In other words, free markets made free people. For much of the history of liberalism that worked. It was possible for selfish actors to manipulate markets, and for the world to remain seriously unequal, but the downside of markets was more than made up for by the diminution of the dominance of the state and the sway it held over people’s lives. The key force to be aware of, and to guard against, was the force of political power, backed up ultimately by the state’s monopoly of the use of violence on a basis that was claimed to be legitimate. (For the purpose of this argument I am ignoring ecclesiastical power despite its persistence. Churches still retain much power e.g. the maintenance of the Lords Spiritual in this country, the spread of megachurches with cult-like characteristics in the USA and many southern countries, the rise of “Christian” nationalism. But, while they can wield great power over individuals and communities, their power globally is much more limited than it used to be.)

Two arguments were deployed if markets worked to the detriment of individuals. The first was that while some suffered, society at large benefited because markets mostly saw to it that populations prospered. (A rising tide lifts all boats.) The second was that the excesses of markets could be tamed through formal (legislation) and informal (consumer power) means.

The world now is different. It has become steadily more different since the rise of globalisation in the eighties, and in particular the impetus given to that movement by the neoliberal policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Now markets are globally dominant, and a few individuals and companies dominate the market. Indeed, such is the imbalance of power that any relationship between labour and profit has been broken. (The rising tide no longer lifts all boats.) Current wealth has such a force of gravity that it attracts more wealth to itself, and is largely in the hands of people who want to leave as little as possible to the rest of us. Markets affect the lives of everyone around the whole planet in ways that state power finds hard to match, even when projected by Donald Trump.

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Tagged liberalism and philosophy | 32 Comments

The Peggie case and the problem of shadow funding

By Tanya Park | Wed 10th December 2025 - 11:54 am

An employment tribunal recently dismissed almost all claims in the closely-watched Peggie v Fife Health Board case. Sandie Peggie, a nurse with gender-critical beliefs, sued her employer over its policy allowing a trans woman doctor to use the female changing room. The tribunal found no direct discrimination, no indirect discrimination, and no victimisation. Only one narrow procedural claim succeeded.

For many, this reads as vindication of trans-inclusive policies. But there’s a bigger story liberals need to understand. This case is part of a coordinated litigation campaign operating largely in the shadows, bankrolled by wealthy individuals and organisations whose funding remains deliberately opaque.

Who paid for Sandie Peggie’s legal representation? We don’t know. What other similar cases are they funding? Whether this is an isolated grievance or a test case in a broader strategy? We don’t know. That’s precisely the problem.

Over the past two years, employment tribunals have seen a forty-fold increase in gender-critical belief discrimination cases. Multiple NHS trusts faced legal action within just three months, the Girl Guides received a pre-action letter threatening litigation over their trans-inclusive policies, and the pattern continues to accelerate. The strategy works even without courtroom victories – both the Girl Guides and the Women’s Institute recently withdrew trans-inclusive policies in the face of legal threats, capitulating before cases even reached tribunal.

Beyond the direct policy changes, the litigation serves another purpose: media attention. Each case – win, lose, or settle – generates headlines positioning trans-inclusive policies as legally risky and politically contested. The public controversy itself becomes the victory, shaping discourse and institutional behaviour far beyond any single courtroom.

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Tagged lawfare, LGBT rights, litigation, Trans Rights and transparency | 14 Comments

The cruelty is the point: ruscism and Russia’s war on civilians

By Jack Meredith | Wed 10th December 2025 - 8:55 am

I read a lot of posts and articles from people who try to dissect the reasoning behind Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Some conclude that it is simply a geopolitical squabble between two post-Soviet states. Others suppose that NATO and/or the EU must have “provoked” Russia into invading a completely separate nation that is not formally a member of either international organisation, despite both organisations allowing nations to join or leave as they please; see Brexit for the EU and the most recent threats of US departure from NATO.

However, I propose a much simpler, albeit darker, reason for Russia’s invasion. And that reason is ruscism, a term that encapsulates the ideology of Russian imperialism rooted in a history of expansionism, chauvinism, and a belief in Russian superiority, which fuels aggressive actions like the invasion of Ukraine.

Ruscism, or ‘Russian fascism’, was first identified during the First Chechen War when Dzhokhar Dudayev described it as: ‘a variety of hatred ideology which is based on Great Russian Chauvinism, spiritlessness and immorality.’

That phrase, “extreme cruelty”, comes up a lot whenever Russia is involved.

In the First Chechen War alone, there was the indiscriminate bombing of Shali, a Chechen town, with the use of cluster bombs focused on targeting markets, gas stations, hospitals, a Muslim cemetery, schools and collective farms. There was also the Samashki Massacre, during which “Zachistka” took place. “Zachistka” is a Russian euphemism for “mopping up” in relation to killing civilians inside occupied enemy territories.

The UNCHR reported that over 100 people, mainly civilians, were murdered by Russian troops in Samashki, noting that soldiers “deliberately and arbitrarily attacked civilians and civilian dwellings”, by way of shooting, using flame throwers and throwing grenades into basements where mostly women, elderly people and children were hiding.

In the Second Chechen War, while both sides committed war crimes, Human Rights Watch noted that the majority of deaths of civilians were caused by Russian forces, ranging from the refusal to create safe evacuation corridors to ignoring the Geneva Convention, to looting from civilians’ homes before murdering said civilians. Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who the Kremlin murdered for shining a light on Russian war crimes in Chechnya, documented in her book “A Dirty War” the atrocities she both came across and was told about by survivors, including finding a school essay by a Chechen child which reads:

I do not know if Putin has a heart. But if he did, he would not have started such a war. Putin thinks human life is worth fifty kopecks. He is deeply mistaken. I’d like Putin to know that we are also human beings.

Fast forward to today, to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. And what do we see? The use of prohibited chemical weapons by the Russian army has occurred approximately 465 times. Nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted from Russian-occupied territories. More than one million people have been deported from Ukraine to Russia by Russian forces. The UN has reported numerous cases of civilians being “arbitrarily detained and subjected to enforced disappearances“. Amnesty International has stated that Russian troops had “shown a blatant disregard for civilian lives by using ballistic missiles and other explosive weapons with wide-area effect in densely-populated areas”. These don’t even begin to cover the scope of atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine, ranging from mass graves to sexual violence and the forced conscription of Ukrainians in Russian-occupied areas.

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged russia and ukraine | 13 Comments

Liberal Action

By Tim Holden | Tue 9th December 2025 - 3:00 pm

Just like so many people, I went through much of my life following the politics I grew up with. Growing up in Wales, this was nationally Labour.

After years of following the Labour ideology without questioning it and spending many years involved with student politics, it was the Brexit vote that made me think. The morning the Brexit result was announced, my young daughter turned to me and said, “That’s rubbish, what are you going to do about it?” This was my turning point.

I soon found out that my political home was not Labour, and the personal views I had struggled with for years are actually those of a Liberal: liberty, equality, democracy, community, human rights, internationalism, and environmentalism.

The evening after the Brexit vote, I joined the Liberal Democrats and closed a 20-year chapter of active involvement in Labour. Not wanting to let my daughter down, I became actively involved in the early years of the anti-Brexit campaign and continue to do so until this day. My paternal grandparents would be horrified, as they had done the opposite decades previously, taking a lead with the anti-Common Market campaign.

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Tagged liberal action | 2 Comments

Learnings from a term on Federal Council, and advice for the next

By Chris Northwood | Tue 9th December 2025 - 8:49 am

I don’t think Federal Council ever fully found its feet. And I think one of the fundamental reasons for this is that we never really understood what it was for. Was it intended only as an emergency brake for bad decisions made by a reduced size Board, or was it intended more of a broader Overview and Scrutiny function, equivalent to local government? My interpretation of the constitution was that it was the latter, but much of the discussion in Council focussed more on the former – which decisions should we call-in?

This fundamental tension is one the party must resolve if it wants a functioning Council. A productive relationship between the Board and Council isn’t one where the Council threatens use of a big red stop button constantly. Instead, the Council must trust the Board to do the right thing, with that trust being earned with Council being confident that the Board is doing the work to implement the party strategy, as agreed by conference, through proactive scrutiny. The use of a veto power should be an extreme one. Expense limits for the Presidential election was one of the few examples of the Council being effective at influencing the board, and we did not need to use the veto to implement this.

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged Federal Council | 2 Comments

Mathew on Monday: the UK and Europe must show moral leadership in today’s London talks on Ukraine

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 8th December 2025 - 4:30 pm

As leaders gather in London today for urgent talks on Ukraine, one truth should sit at the heart of every discussion: this is not simply a diplomatic meeting, it is a moral test – for the UK, for Europe, and for every democratic nation that claims to stand for freedom.

Nearly three years into Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion, Ukraine continues to pay the highest price imaginable. Cities still scarred by missile strikes, families scattered across continents, children growing up under the shadow of war -these are not abstract foreign-policy concerns, they are the lived reality of a people fighting, …

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Tagged accident and emergency, emergency services, sport and ukraine | 9 Comments

Starmer must address the Nation

By George Cunningham | Mon 8th December 2025 - 10:56 am

In case the message hasn’t quite got through to our European Leaders, you can’t voice it more starkly than in the new U.S. National Security Strategy.

The new strategy shows the U.S. administration’s contempt towards the European Union (unsurprisingly, given it is a powerful economic competitor). It believes the EU is endangering European civilisation (e.g. “migration policies”, “loss of national identities”, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition”), and declares that the U.S. will therefore “cultivate resistance” to save us, which will de facto lead to increasingly interfering in our internal politics to encourage right-wing governments getting elected.

As I have said before, Europe’s leaders have been too obsequious in their pandering to the current U.S. administration. The reason is obvious. We are beholden to the U.S. for many aspects of our security. Yet now we must think how we can manage the Ukraine war and European security on our own. We must bolster urgently our European defences, sufficiently to deter the expansion of Russia hybrid warfare against Europe and its evolution into kinetic warfare, threatening the lives of our own citizens.

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Tagged democracy, europe and resilience | 27 Comments

The Additional Member System and its overhang problem

By Denis Mollison | Sun 7th December 2025 - 1:01 pm

The Additional Member System (AMS), otherwise known as Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), is one of the leading contenders as a Proportional Representation system for UK General Elections. However, as this piece describes, it can turn alarmingly disproportional when the number of parties in contention increases to the levels we are seeing today: five parties in England, and six in Scotland, are now polling at over 10%.

AMS/MMP has been used for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, and for the London Assembly, since devolution came in in 1999 – though the Welsh Parliament (Senedd) has decided to use a closed List system from next year’s election onwards.

Recent polls for next year’s Scottish Parliament election were widely reported as suggesting that the SNP are predicted to win 62 of the 129 seats (48%).

What has been less reported is that this is despite their predicted proportional entitlement being only 43 seats (33.3%). How can this happen in a supposedly proportional system?

The answer lies in what are known as ‘overhangs’, where a party wins more of the constituency seats, elected using FPTP, than their proportion of the list vote justifies.

For example, in a Scottish electoral region with 9 constituencies and 7 list seats, if a party gets 33% of the list vote, its proportional entitlement will usually work out at 6 seats (out of 16). So if it wins 8 of the 9 constituencies, which is quite likely if there are many other parties splitting the votes, it has 2 more seats than its proportional share. The ‘top-up’ component of the system will give it no list seats, but it already has too many for proportionality. What is or can be done about this?

In Scotland, as in the London Assembly and formerly in Wales, a party is allowed to keep its overhang seats, and other parties’ shares are reduced. According to analysis by Ballotbox Scotland current polling data suggest that in next May’s Scottish Parliament election the SNP would have 19 overhang seats; these would come at the expense of Labour (19 instead of 25), Reform (17 instead of 23), Conservatives (11 instead of 14), Liberal Democrats (10 instead of 13) and the Greens (10 instead of 11). Note that one implication is that pro-independence parties (SNP/Greens) would have a majority in the parliament of 72 seats (56%), against their proportional entitlement of 54 (42%).

Germany, which was the first country to adopt an AMS/MMP system, has had a similar problem of overhangs in recent years. But it has dealt with it differently, prioritising proportionality above constituency entitlements. In both 2017 and 2021 it allowed parties to keep overhang seats, but added extra list seats to maintain strict proportionality at national level. This required adding 111 and 133 seats respectively to the German parliament in those two elections.

Following those results, Germany has now adopted a different way of dealing with overhangs, so as to keep the Parliament at a fixed size (630): if a party wins too many constituency seats in a region, some are disallowed, using the percentage achieved in their constituency vote as criterion. In this year’s election 23 constituency winners were disallowed, with those constituencies left without an FPTP elected representative. The alternative under the previous arrangement would have again required adding well over 100 seats to the parliament.

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Tagged additional member system, ams, electoral systems and proportional representation | 32 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 7th December 2025 - 9:15 am

Venezuela

Venezuela is not—repeat, NOT—a major drug producing country. That is according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

It is not even a major transit country. That honour is reserved for Mexico and Central America which provide the major transport routes from production centres in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.

Some cocaine is transited to the US through Venezuela but most of the drugs that passing through the South American country are bound for Europe, according to the DEA and UNDOC.

Then why, you may ask, has President Trump and his sidekick Pete Hegseth, blown up boats (allegedly carrying drugs) coming mainly from Venezuela. So far 87 people have died in these legally suspect attacks. Why also, is a major US naval force led by the world’s largest aircraft carrier (the USS Gerald Ford) parked off the coast of Venezuela with the obvious intent of threatening regime change?

The answer is OIL.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves—330 billion barrels compared to 260 billion in Saudi Arabia, the world’s second largest.

But the oil is staying in the ground. It wasn’t always that way. In its production heyday, Venezuela was extracting 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. Current production is up significantly from a year ago but is still only 921,000 barrels a day.

This is because the state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) is corrupt and inefficient. It has not maintained either the oil wells, the pipelines that carry the oil from the Orinoco Basin to coastal shipment centres or the storage depots or ships.

One of the reasons for the inefficiency is that roughly a quarter of Venezuela’s population has fled the oppressive regime of Nicolas Maduro. A large proportion of those refugees are the skilled workers needed to toil in the oil industry.

If Maduro is removed from power—as Donald Trump would dearly love to see—then the Opposition has said that it would privatise the Venezuelan oil industry and invite foreign companies to take over production. In fact, Opposition leader—and Nobel Peace Prize winner—Marina Corina Machado—met with oil companies last April to discuss how they could revive her country’s oil fortunes.

Most of those companies would be American and the exploitation of Venezuela’s heavy crude by American oil companies would be a good fit with Donald Trump’s foreign policy aims.

Honduras

Trump’s policies are nothing if not inconsistent. On the one hand he says he is at war with drug traffickers and his declaration of war justifies blowing up boats without legal due process.

On the other hand, he pardons the former President of Honduras—Juan Orlando Hernandez—who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking.

Hernandez served two terms as president from 2013 to 2021. While in office he was popular with both Barack Obama and Trump. Obama described him as one of “the excellent partners” on the migrant children crisis and Trump endorsed Hernandez when he ran for re-election in 2017.

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Tagged emmanuel macron, honduras, venezuala and vladimir putin | 3 Comments

Observations of an Expat: MAGA Conned

By Tom Arms | Sat 6th December 2025 - 10:10 am

MAGA is waking up to the fact that it has been conned. Almost everyone else knew years ago that Donal J. Tump is a con artist whose talent lies in feeding prejudices with lies that people want to believe.

But in America—as in most countries—there is a socially conservative and fiscally liberal base of voters who are frightened of change while anxious about their bank balances. The Democrats and old school Republicans had failed them. Trump convinced them that he had the answer with his “Make America Great Again” campaign.

Proof of the MAGA’s disillusionment came this week in the form of a special election for a congressional seat in the deeply conservative state of Tennessee. The Republicans held it, but dropped nine points compared to the 2024 poll. If this result is reflected in next year’s mid-term elections then the Democrats will win up to 30 seats in the House of Representatives and possibly half a dozen in the Senate.

This would give the Democrats control of both houses of Congress and guarantee a third impeachment for Donald Trump. On top of that, recent polls indicate that up to 18 Republican senators are prepared to break with the president. That would be enough to impeach, convict and remove Trump from the White House.

The causes of the disillusionment are many and varied. Top of the list is what has been termed the “affordability crisis.” For some reason, Trump insists that “the word affordability is a con job by the Democrats” and that prices are actually “way down.”

For any American who walks down a super market aisle this is an obvious porky pie (rhyming cockney slang for lie) that insults the intelligence of even the most loyal MAGA voter.

Inflation is not the only problem. MAGA is delighted at the dramatic drop in people attempting to cross America’s southern border. In 2022 they reached an historic high of 2.2 million apprehensions. In June 2025 they fell to an historic low of 6,000.

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Tagged donald trump and MAGA | 3 Comments

The “right” to a jury trial – a Scottish perspective

By Stephen Harte | Fri 5th December 2025 - 1:18 pm

All the debate in the press on the “right” to a jury trial in England (and Wales?) has been interesting from a Scottish perspective.

In Scotland, the vast majority of criminal cases are tried in the local Sheriff Court and an accused has no right to a jury trial in the Sheriff Court.

Rather, it is the prosecutor and not the accused who decides whether there will be trial before a jury.

To explain….

In Scotland, the there are three levels of first instance criminal courts:

The Justice of the Peace Courts (minor matters with very limited sentencing powers).

The Sheriff Court – the work horse of the system where most crimes beyond the most serious are tried and which has higher limits on its sentencing power than the JP court.

The High Court of Justiciary – more serious cases including all cases of rape and murder are tried and which has unlimited sentencing powers.

There are no juries in the JP Courts and there are always juries in the High Court. In Scotland, a jury is made up of 15 people and not 12 as in England.

In the Sheriff Court, there is a jury if the matter is tried under solemn procedure and not a jury if the matter is tried under summary procedure.

The sentencing powers of the court if an accused is found guilty are alway greater under solemn procedure than summary procedure.

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Tagged jury trials | 7 Comments

A public demonstration of Russian state terror

By Jack Meredith | Thu 4th December 2025 - 4:56 pm

The Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, conducted by The Rt Hon Lord Hughes of Ombersley, has concluded that Vladimir Putin, along with “all those who sent them (the Russian agents who delivered the poison in Salisbury)”, is responsible for Dawn Sturgess’ death.

This is a conclusion that many in Britain had already reached long before the Inquiry reported. It is not the first time the Russian state has used chemical or radioactive agents on British soil, nor is it the first time Putin’s regime has assassinated those it deems inconvenient.

In 2006, former Russian intelligence official Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium-21. Beyond our borders, journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in her apartment block’s lift, following her reporting on Russian war crimes in Chechnya, and Russian liberal opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot dead in Moscow, following his condemnation of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its invasion of Donbas. These are not isolated incidents, but are the operating logic of a state that sees murder as a foreign and domestic policy.

The ruling reached in the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, however, is not just confirmation of what so many knew. It is assigning moral responsibility to the highest level of the Russian state. It asserts, plainly and publicly, that a British citizen died because a hostile foreign power decided that chemical weapons were an acceptable instrument on UK streets.

This flies in the face of our liberal values. Valuing life, liberty, and the rule of law is vital to maintaining liberal democracy. When a dictatorship feels it can export such gross political violence onto our streets, it is not only an attack on individuals, like the late Dawn Sturgess and her family, but on our very democracy.

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Tagged vladimir putin | 11 Comments

Disabled people are under attack

By Katharine Macy | Thu 4th December 2025 - 9:52 am

We’re often a forgotten community, yet I’d almost rather we would be forgotten again at the moment.

It’s clear to me that there’s been almost no communication or engagement with disabled people from the current government – and certainly none from the budget.

We’ve been hit hugely hard by first the cost of living and now the most recent budget, and too many conversations are framing us as layabouts, despite how challenging simply existing often is with a disability.

With a broken Access to Work system, a rejected Lib Dem motion (despite the amazing work by Tom Gordon!) on allowing disabled people to travel on their bus passes in commuting hours, and frozen tax brackets eating into an already more expensive life – the energy to find work is dwindling, when it disproportionately involves self-advocacy and challenges.

The Liberal Democrats have done great work, but could and must do more to lead the conversation around disability. We are being scapegoated as fraudulent claimants, when closing tax loopholes on large businesses would be both easier and cheaper and bring in far more income for the government. The £2 billion of fraud claims may sound a lot to an individual, but when it comes to the funding of a government is a drop in the ocean, and barely worth the admin time to deal with.

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Tagged disability and disabled people | 6 Comments

Berlin reminded me how loud we must be for Ukraine

By Jack Meredith | Wed 3rd December 2025 - 11:55 am

From last Wednesday to Sunday, I visited Berlin with my girlfriend. From the museums and Christmas markets to the people and the general atmosphere, I loved it, reminding me why we must seek to rejoin the EU as soon as possible.

But one thing that struck me, almost immediately, was the continued and vocal support for Ukraine in its fight to defend itself against Russian imperialism. From the moment I stepped out of my hotel, which was only a stone’s throw away from the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, the support was evident. A huge Ukrainian flag adorned the top half of the museum, with a message of support in both English and Ukrainian emblazoned across it, while the Soviet Flag Was wrapped up, and the NATO, US, British and French flags flew.

Around the corner, there stood a mural for all to see, condemning the political prisoners Russia has taken hostage, along with the Christmas tree sat outside the museum, adorned with Ukrainian flags.

On every lamppost, there were “Slava Ukraini” stickers. On our first night in the city, we saw a man carrying a flagpole with a Ukrainian flag at the end. Government buildings flew the Ukrainian flag. Museums had fundraisers for Ukraine. The general mood wasn’t one of fatigue or apathy, but anger towards Russia for its attack, and hope for Ukraine’s victory. It was inspiring, to say the least.

No doubt, someone will point out that, while admirable, this was only one city out of an entire country and may not reflect the general mood across Germany. But regardless, it stirred in me a sense of frustration with our country’s lack of continued enthusiasm for supporting Ukraine. There will be many reasons for this, and I imagine some will revolve around difficult personal circumstances relating to the cost-of-living crisis, which will no doubt leave no time to worry about anything else – and that is understandable.

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Tagged international and ukraine | 17 Comments

Jury trial is not a luxury or a quirky tradition

By Kamran Hussain | Wed 3rd December 2025 - 8:55 am

For over 20 years, I have stood in cramped cells and worn-out courtrooms, watching the state line up against the individual. I’ve seen frightened teenagers, exhausted mothers, people who made bad choices and people who were wrongly accused. Throughout it all, one thing has kept our justice system feeling fair: when it really mattered, ordinary people had the final say.

Twelve strangers, chosen from the community, sitting together as a jury.

Now, a Labour Government that claims to be “on the side of the many” is quietly pushing that safeguard towards the exit.

Last week, more than 100 lawyers warned the Ministry of Justice that Labour’s plan to drastically cut jury trials is a serious mistake.

In simple terms, the proposal is this: keep juries only for the very worst crimes—like murder and rape—and move a huge range of other serious offences to be decided by a judge alone. At the same time, they want to give more power to magistrates’ courts, which we already know produce some of the most unequal outcomes, especially for Black and Minority Ethnic Defendants.

And the reason given? The backlog of cases.

Yes, the backlog is real. Cases drag on for years, witnesses move away, memories fade, victims lose hope. But let’s be clear: juries didn’t create this backlog. It was created by political choices—court closures, crumbling buildings, cuts to legal aid, and fewer sitting days. Now, instead of fixing the problems, Labour wants to remove one of the foundations of our justice system.

When I talk to my clients about juries, even the most cynical ones understand. They might not trust judges or politicians, but they value the idea that “people like us” are in the room—a local builder, a teaching assistant, a retired nurse.

Take juries away from most serious cases, and you don’t just change who decides—you change how justice feels. It stops being justice with the public and starts being justice done to the public.

What’s especially frustrating is that Labour should know better. David Lammy’s 2017 review showed that juries were one of the few parts of the system that treated minority ethnic defendants fairly. The big problems were elsewhere—in policing, charging, magistrates’ courts, and sentencing. Having seen clear proof that juries work, Labour’s response seems to be: “Let’s cut them.”

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Tagged criminal, featured, justice and legal | 10 Comments

Liberal Democrats need to be honest when talking about Digital Services Tax

By Brandon Masih | Tue 2nd December 2025 - 11:30 am

Embed from Getty Images

The party has had a long standing policy, at least since 2021, on the Digital Services Tax (DST), whereby it has backed its use starting from Autumn 2021 through the “Towards a Fair Global Corporation Tax System” motion passed. Since then we’ve gone into the 2024 general election to triple it from 2% to 6% to fund mental health support in schools, and since then we have wanted to raise to 10% to fund our increases to defence spending in this critical time. All well and good but next fiscal year it’s projected to bring in £1.1billion, so an extra £4 to 5 billion, whilst nice on fiscal headroom scales, it really isn’t making a dent for investing into large departmental spends long term.

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Tagged digital services tax | 1 Comment

The Lib Dems are at a crossroads – an open letter to the leadership

By Rosemary Runswick | Tue 2nd December 2025 - 9:49 am

About a month ago I wrote a piece on my blog examining the rhetoric coming from Ed Davey about appealing to One-Nation Conservatives, and found that his words didn’t actually align with our current position electorally at all. This created a bit of a splash with it being featured on Liberal England, and even earned a response from political analyst William Lane detailing where we should go next. So imagine my annoyance when after the latest budget was unveiled by Labour Ed began speaking out against tax increases in a Tory-like fashion, most shockingly targeting the Mansion Tax of all things!

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Tagged mansion tax | 81 Comments

Mathew on Monday: Why the Lib Dems must be the credible alternative in a chaotic political landscape

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 1st December 2025 - 6:00 pm

The launch of “Your Party” over the weekend – the Jeremy Corbyn/Zarah Sultana-backed left-wing challenger to Labour – was hyped as being a show of unity, clarity, and a bold new politics. Instead, it descended into exactly the sort of chaotic spectacle that leaves most voters even more weary: factional infighting, activists and organisers being banned within hours, claim and counterclaim splashed across social media, and a level of internal turmoil that normally takes years, not mere minutes, to ferment.

For a party that’s mere days old, and that hasn’t contested a single election yet, it was an extraordinary, almost surreal mess.
And that matters – not because “Your Party” is posed to storm the political landscape (it isn’t), but because it reveals something deeper about the current state of British politics. Across the spectrum, there is a hunger for an alternative to a Labour government that – not even eighteen months into office – feels increasingly managerial, defensive, and exhausted far earlier than anyone expected.

There is a desire for something more hopeful, more principled, more genuinely radical than what Sir Keir Starmer’s team have delivered but equally, people want a party that is serious, credible, competent – not another protest movement that collapses into its own contradictions before it has even begun.

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Tagged andy chandler, progressive politics, reform uk and your party | 7 Comments

An OK budget, but it could have been much better

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Mon 1st December 2025 - 2:52 pm

Rachel Reeves’ second budget has some things which we should like plus some things we should dislike.

Ed Davey shouldn’t attack the government for increasing the tax burden. We as a party should accept that people want better public services and this means that the tax burden has to increase.

We should welcome the ending of the two-child benefit cap which has been our party policy for years. Ed has welcomed the changes to fund three-quarters of the cost of the increased use of renewable energy from the government rather than consumers, which will reduce energy bills. We should welcome the near doubling of the Remote Gaming Duty. I think we should welcome the extra 2% on the all three income tax rates for income from property and savings. However, should the income tax rates for dividend income have been increased by more than 2% particularly at the ordinary rate?

We should welcome the support for retail, hospitality and leisure by reducing their business rates. We should welcome the Mansion Tax on homes above £2 million. We should welcome the extension of Air Passenger Duty to private jets over 5.7 tonnes. We should welcome the £2,000 cap to salary sacrifice as it is mostly those on higher incomes who can afford to do this.

We should oppose the introduction of VAT on the Motability Scheme making the cost of having a suitable car more expensive for disabled people. Perhaps we should oppose the 3p per mile tax on Electric Vehicles. However, this had to be introduced at some time as the total revenue on petrol duties reduces because of the switch to Electric Vehicles.

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Tagged 2025 budget | 17 Comments

Ed Davey is wrong to U-turn on a Mansion Tax

By Paul Hindley | Mon 1st December 2025 - 11:58 am

There was much in Rachel Reeves’ Budget last week for Liberal Democrats to criticise. The freezing of the income tax bands is a stealth tax. It will gradually push many people over time into higher tax bands, something that will especially hurt low income earners. The new tax on electric vehicles is a retrograde step when we are facing a climate crisis and we need more car owners to go green. In addition, Labour failed to implement a windfall tax on the big banks, something that we have been calling for.

However, it was not all bad news for Liberal …

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Tagged mansion tax | 14 Comments

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Vince Cable writes…Labour and Fiscal Rules (Vince Cable)
Josh Babarinde writes…The Lib Dem Summer of Strategy (Josh Babarinde)
Mathew on Monday: “We need to be bold” (Mathew Hulbert)
As a party we must be better defined for the 2029 general election (Chris Bowers)
From national averages to local realities: inequality in our communities (Tom Walker)

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