Category Archives: Op-eds

Chris Perry

Cutting waiting lists and the Budget

By Chris Perry | Sun 30th November 2025 - 11:38 am

In her Budget Statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated one of her aims was to cut waiting lists in the NHS.

According to a survey by the Times newspaper earlier this year it was estimated that there were on average 13,600 older people in hospital every day who did not need to be there awaiting social care, costing the NHS £2.9m per year. Therefore, one cannot resolve the problems of the NHS in isolation of social care.

The NHS and social care are in crisis and in need of radical reform, restructuring and cultural change to liberate the professionals from the constraining contract culture into an enabling leadership one. This requires the creation of whole task right sized multi-disciplinary teams aligned behind outcome able to plan, do and evaluate their own work which completes the learning cycle of constant improvement.

There is a wealth of empirical evidence into the social determinants of health which has demonstrated the correlation between income and demand upon the health services. One cannot go on throwing more money at the first aid camp at the bottom of the cliff without building a fence at the top. Treating the symptoms not the cause. A whole systems approach is required.

If the Chancellor really wanted to save money she would increase and not reduce the income of older people. Before the COVID19 pandemic killed 223,396 mainly older dependent people, 80% of the expenditure of health and social care was on older people. Britain has one of the lowest state pensions in the developed world with 2m older people living in poverty. To increase the state pension to lift all older people out of poverty would reduce demand upon the NHS and social care. It would also improve the quality of life of many and if older people did need long term care, applying the same financial assessment which has been in place since 1948 (when few people owned their own house) they would be able to pay more without having to take their house or capital into account which would also increase government revenue from inheritance tax.

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Lord William Wallace

Are we witnessing the end of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the US

By Lord William Wallace | Sun 30th November 2025 - 9:14 am

Ever since 1941 the fundamental assumption of British foreign policy has been that the ‘special relationship’ with the USA is the foundation of our international security and status.  Winston Churchill reimagined Britain as America’s ‘Ango-Saxon’ partner, and as ‘the bridge’ between North America and continental Europe.  Huge numbers of US forces were based in Britain during the war; 10,000 US personnel, in several USAF airbases and intelligence stations, still remain.  Access to US intelligence, nuclear missiles and defence technology is crucial to our defence and security.  The UK has of course become more and more the junior partner in the relationship, but still – policy-makers have argued – sufficiently valuable to Washington to continue to give us privileged status.

What if the special relationship is now over?  President Trump has said he looks forward to Germany becoming the leading power within NATO.  London has been left as much in the dark on Trump’s latest plan for Ukraine as Paris, Berlin and Rome.  Several generations after the shared experience of World War Two that created the special relationship, fewer and fewer Americans (in an increasingly diverse society) see themselves as part of an Anglo-Saxon world or feel any particular affection for Britain.  

Trump, Vance and others on the hard right see Britain as a territory to be gained, a country to be converted to their vision of free market capitalism and ‘Christian nationalism.’  Money flows into Britain from US foundations promoting ‘traditional values’ and patriarchal society.  The US ambassador in London intervenes in public procurement decisions to protest that our government ought to favour US companies.  But there’s little sense of partnership, only repeated denigration of today’s British society and liberal values.

Tony Blair saw Britain as America’s privileged partner because we also played a leading role in Europe.  Boris Johnson fantasised that we could regain a global role without Europe, only to find that we could not even send a carrier task force to the Pacific without support from other navies.  The UK outside the EU remains of some importance to the USA, if we dared to remind Washington.  We’ve just agreed to pay Mauritius £100m a year for the US base on Diego Garcia.  The US benefits from intelligence stations and access to bases in the UK, Cyprus, Ascension Island and beyond.  But US Administrations focussed on China and Latin America place less value on the sharing of other global assets.  ‘America First’ advocates on the right of the MAGA movement are now denigrating Winston Churchill as a warmonger, who took the USA into war in Europe when he should have made peace with Germany.  Even if the Democrats regain control of the Presidency this isolationist resurgence will block a return to Atlantic cooperation.

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Mark Pack

Mark Pack’s November report to members

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th November 2025 - 6:07 pm

What other Lib Dems can learn from County Durham

Ahead of the local elections in May, Liberal Democrats in County Durham were facing all-up elections on new council boundaries, requiring more candidates than the party had ever stood before.

They rose admirably to the challenge, standing a record number of candidates, making a net gain in the face of a Reform wave, becoming the official opposition on the council  – and continuing to make progress since, including with a by-election win off Reform.

A very impressive record of progress, based in part on flipping around one of our usual approaches. Often we talk about how growing our membership is important to help smaller local parties grow and succeed. But in County Durham they did it the other way round. They identified the most pressing need: for more local election candidates. Then they searched widely for people willing to take on the role, and only then, for those who were not yet members of the party got them to sign up. In other words, they prioritised specific recruitment of people to fit the most needed local roles, and membership growth followed from that.

People who had grown up in areas without any Lib Dem local election candidates were strongly motivated by their personal experiences to want to change that. Membership growth was the later consequence, rather than the initial focus.

Alongside that, they followed our best practice in how to get more members volunteering – breaking down big tasks into small steps people could take on, having a regular schedule of when help would be needed and advertising internally for ways people can help other than, or in addition to, leafleting and canvassing.

That is an important lesson for us to learn more widely, as there has been an odd duality of the story about grassroots strength in the last few years. On many measures, there has been clear and sustained progress – more councillors, fewer councils with no Lib Dems on them, more canvassing taking place outside target seats, fewer council wards going without a Lib Dem candidate and more extensive delivery networks. Yet alongside that our membership total is back to where it was before the (anti-)Brexit boom in membership.

Part of the reason for these contrasting pictures is that the immediate incentive across the party is to find people to help share the workload with. Hence, for example, asking a keen supporter on the doorstep to become a leaflet deliverer rather than a member, as helping get those leaflets out is the immediate priority.

What County Durham shows us, perhaps, is that rather than focusing on membership itself but instead focusing on recruiting people to needed roles may be the way forward – both to bigger local campaign organisations and higher party membership.

Good news for Lib Dem leaflet designers

A new version of Affinity – the software package widely used in the party to design leaflets – is out. Even better, it is now free. There are some advanced paid-for features, but you can do everything needed to produce cracking leaflets with the free version.

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Chris Perry

Taxing the poor to protect the rich?

By Chris Perry | Fri 28th November 2025 - 1:46 pm

The Chancellor’s budget speech was strong on rhetoric and good intentions. However, with the exception of the property tax, it was almost as though Rachel Reeves was unaware of the existence of the super-rich or the rising income inequality in our society which Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former Managing Director at Black Rock believes “threatens everything we hold dear: our democracies, our planet and our broader society…..”.  Much of her address appeared to exclude the top 10% of earners.

In the Spring of 2025 Oxfam published its report “Takers not Makers” which suggested that global billionaire wealth had increased by £1.5trillion in 2024, a significant jump compared with the previous year. In contrast, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) the median household disposable income in the UK for the financial year ending 2023 was £34,500. This was a 2.5% decrease on the financial year ending 2022 when median household income was £35,100.

According to figures released by the Equality Trust, the UK is the sixth most unequal country by income of the 38 OECD countries. (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Many employees are paid the minimum wage to pay for this. The challenge is to address pay differentials within organisations so that everyone gets a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

Unless Government tackles pay differentials, chasing inward investment in search of growth will make the rich richer and create low paid jobs for the masses as it has since the 1980s. The Equality Trust continues that “high income inequality weakens the social fabric and sense of cohesion between us. We are more likely to live, work and socialise in socially and economically segregated ways which can aid misunderstanding, resentment and undermine the sense of shared identity and purpose needed for a cohesive society”.

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Jack Carter

Labour’s economic programme: hoodwinking, self-limiting, and failing

By Jack Carter | Fri 28th November 2025 - 11:18 am

If you had asked me in July last year whether I had much hope for Labour’s plans for fixing our stagnating economy, our underfunded public services, and chronically weak social investment, I might have (cautiously) said “maybe”. But a year and four months later, I think I’d like to change my answer to “absolutely not”.

You would think that after fourteen years of being stuck in opposition, whether that be due to bacon sarnies or the Brexit bonanza, they would have had time to think. I, personally, at that time went to school, college, got a job, and fell in and out of love (much like the Parliamentary Labour Party does with their leadership), went to university (and somehow ended up as a Liberal Democrat), but I always thought about what I wanted to do.

However, much like a university student who procrastinates right up until deadline day (pre-ADHD meds me), they’ve put forward something that would barely get a “pass”. They came into government, telling us they would fix the dire state of our economy, but if anything they’ve done the opposite. They spent months handwringing about the importance of work, and intimidating vulnerable people with loss of benefits if they didn’t, but now unemployment is rising – due to their own policy. They promised there would be “no new taxes on working people”, and just as Keir Starmer hoodwinked Labour members in 2021, he’s hoodwinked the public with more stealth taxes.

Rachel Reeves has put in place her “fiscal rules”, and while she may claim to be pro-investment, her very own rules discourage borrowing to invest. She talked about Labour being the “Party of Work”, but by failing to borrow to invest in infrastructure projects, she’s left working people far worse off, with less opportunities, and worse social mobility. Labour are just incoherent, self-contradictory, and seem utterly unable to deliver for Britain right now.

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Brandon Masih

A Labour budget that does not back the savers, investors or working people

By Brandon Masih | Thu 27th November 2025 - 5:47 pm

The follow up to Rachel Reeves’ huge raid on employers last year was expected to be more subdued, after all a 3% increase in employers National Insurance Contributions (NICs) did have the expected effect of slowing wage growth and a slowdown on new jobs, what we couldn’t have expected until a few weeks ago is that she’d come back again for it. Not for employers NICs, mind you not directly, but via the limit on Salary Sacrifice. When we have a Pension Commission ongoing on outcomes for current workers saving into private pensions, and have had an excellent piece by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) stating “39% of private sector employees are not on track to meet their target replacement rate”, it seemed unfathomable that this government would actually go for raising billions off Salary Sacrifice schemes. 

Sure enough, budget day comes, and Reeves has done exactly that, with a damning description from the OBR saying this measure would both reduce their employer contributions into pension pots and reduce future wage growth and bonuses. Hardly the message we want to send for the working age person trying to save for retirement. Even more foolhardy is that this reduction in wage growth comes when companies are faced with more employment pressures for hiring, with minimum wages creeping up above inflation, leaving less room for wages to grow and less jobs on the market. The tax choices this week will mean less growth and more unemployment for younger workers, whilst subsidising an ever unsustainable triple lock that benefits from double dipping on high inflation one year and higher nominal wage growth the next in response to inflation, this is not a budget that treats the savings of working age people well.

This budget confirmed the announcement on the Government following the US’ lead (and the EUs position this month) on removing a de minimis threshold on imported items. Paraded as a way to avoid high streets being undercut, it is dipping into the same protectionist rhetoric that the US is using on its tariffs, unconcerned on their policy measure responses on the cost of living. Liberals should never celebrate the imposition of tariffs and find it regrettable the new direction of travel is for new tariffs rather than liberalisation, a burden on the individual to collect items rather than ease, just another way this government is harming productivity. 

The past couple weeks briefed this budget as a Smörgåsbord, that conjures up a well presented Swedish table, but the tax pickings here are anything but. 

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Tom Reeve

Threshold freezes are a stealth tax on the poor

By Tom Reeve | Thu 27th November 2025 - 3:16 pm

The Chancellor hopes no one notices. Voters are starting to realise.

There is no getting around it. The NHS and social care need more money – this is the lion’s share of the budget and is where the government is experiencing the greatest growth pressure. Every serious analysis from the IFS, the OBR and the Health Foundation says that demand, staffing pressures and rising clinical complexity make extra funding unavoidable. If we want a system that works, the state will need to raise more revenue.

The question is not whether we need to pay more. The question is how.

The government’s preferred method is to freeze income tax thresholds for year after year, pushing more of people’s wages into taxation without ever having to announce an explicit rise in basic or higher-rate tax. It sounds painless. Nothing changes on the payslip. No parliamentary vote. No headlines. But it is one of the least fair ways possible to raise revenue and it hits ordinary workers far harder than the wealthy.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been unusually blunt about this. Their latest analysis of threshold freezes states that the impact is equivalent to raising all income tax rates by 3.5% by 2029. The Chancellor hopes no one notices that she did this, but people are starting to realise because their real living standards are not improving and the tax take continues to rise.

The numbers are stark, according to figures from the IFS. In 2021, around 59% of adults paid basic rate income tax. By 2029, that will be 72%. In 2021, 8% of adults paid higher-rate tax. By 2029, that will more than double to 17%. These are not people suddenly earning more in real terms. They are people whose wages are simply keeping pace with inflation while frozen thresholds quietly shift them into higher bands.

The Chancellor has also found another way to push people into paying more tax. By increasing the minimum wage faster than the personal allowance, she guarantees that even part-time workers are drawn into paying income tax for the first time. The IFS calculates that if the freeze is extended again, a full-time minimum wage worker will pay £137 more per year in tax compared with current policy, and £759 more than if thresholds had risen as normal. 

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Samuel Jackson

Addressing the cost-of-dying crisis

By Samuel Jackson | Thu 27th November 2025 - 11:57 am

Our party is dedicated to resolving the cost-of-living crisis, where inflated prices and insecure or short supply are affecting our ability to afford life’s necessities. However, there is a part of life being negatively impacted by inflation that goes undiscussed: death.

Death is never an easy subject to talk about, nor is it one that many of us want us to seriously contemplate. We will have experienced bereavement at some point in our lives, with many of us having organised the final farewells of family members and loved ones. However, ignoring such issues ignores the problems that inflation is causing during such fraught times.

Between 2004 and 2025, inflation rose by 75% overall, but the cost of funerals increased by 134%. Today, the cost of dying averages £9,797 – covering funerals and associated professional fees and send-off costs – while simple funerals cost £4,285 and direct cremations cost £1,597. These cost the same regardless of household income, meaning that those at the lower end of the scale must spend a greater proportion of annual income than those at the higher end.

Such financial difficulties are compounding the emotional toll of bereavement. While support can be provided in the form of the Funeral Expenses Payment, this only amounts to a maximum of £1,000, with all excess costs being paid out of pocket. Under such conditions, purchasers do not exercise the same consideration for funerals as they would with any other service, often relying on the first funeral provider they encounter, guided by expectations of what funerals should entail and consensus among family members rather than intended wishes or preferences.

Such considerations have led to significant changes in British funereal practices. With cost being a major factor, cremations constitute nearly 80% of final dispositions in the UK annually and public health funerals – services provided by local authorities – have increased. However, these changes entail problems of their own. Depending on where you live, local authorities can deny attendance by family members and loved ones, the inclusion of burial markers or the return of ashes at their discretion when providing public health funerals because of costs which they must bear.

Communities such as Jews and Muslims face disproportionate funeral costs because of their faiths. As Judaism and Islam prescribe burial and prohibit cremation, adherents must pay the higher costs incurred by the former practice.

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Judi Conner

Giving Palestinians support, strength and hope

By Judi Conner | Wed 26th November 2025 - 10:25 am

On Sunday a friend and former colleague in Gaza called Mamdouh wrote to me, “By the grace of God, we’ve just prepared a delicious meal of falafel using all the traditional fresh ingredients – chickpeas, garlic, parsley and green pepper. It was a truly delightful experience, especially since it’s been a year a half since we last enjoyed falafel made from authentic ingredients rather than canned ones.” His photos and a video show Mamdouh using a hand-mincer to prepare the falafel mix.

Mamdouh was a librarian in one of Gaza’s universities. In the past two years he’s lost his livelihood, his family home, and, most tragically, one of his five children, killed in an Israeli strike only hours before the “ceasefire” was announced. So it’s all the more moving to hear him counting his blessings.

He also takes a great interest in the activities of Lib Dem Friends of Palestine, commenting in detail on photos I’ve sent of, for instance, Conference marking the Recognition of Palestine, or Lib Dems taking part in the regular London peace marches. He’s aware of the Lib Dems’ commitment to justice, the rule of law, human rights and self-determination and nationhood for the Palestinian people. I privately think of him as an honorary Lib Dem himself!

In response to his photos this week, I told Mamdouh that Lib Dems would be out on the streets again this Saturday on International Palestine Solidarity Day. He quickly replied, “I’m moved to hear about the upcoming march in London for the Palestine Solidarity Day – your support gives us strength and hope. May our shared voices bring about meaningful change and a brighter future for all. With heartfelt gratitude, Mamdouh.”

He went on to send me some background on this special day which I didn’t know. It can be tempting to thing these ‘named days’ are just randomly created at the whim of  a marketing director somewhere. But Mamdouh sent this:

The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is observed annually on November 29th.

This day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1977 and is commemorated each year to express global support for the rights of the Palestinian people and to mark the anniversary of UN Resolution 181, which was adopted on the same date in 1947 and called for the partition of Palestine.

Purpose of the day: To affirm the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to self-determination, national independence and the return of refugees.

Activities: Exhibitions, seminars, solidarity gatherings, and the raising of the Palestinian flag at UN offices worldwide.

Symbolism:  This day serves as an opportunity for nations, organisations and individuals to express their support for the Palestinian cause.

In fact that Resolution 181 was no cause for celebration at the time, since Palestinians were, understandably, opposed to the partition of Palestine, and their leaders and their Arab neighbours voted against it. But I’m not going to quibble about this with Mamdouh now, because almost 80 years on from 1947 events have of course panned out very badly for the Palestinians, and at this point it seems appropriate for liberals to take any opportunity we’re given to stand up for the rights of this long-suffering people.

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George Turner

Wealth tax: leading the war against inequality

By George Turner | Tue 25th November 2025 - 5:12 pm

Since the founding of the Liberal Party, we have held that taxation must do more than fund the state: it must correct the injustice of extreme wealth. As John Stuart Mill wrote in his Principles of Political Economy, “The State should use taxation as a means to mitigate the inequalities of wealth.”

Across the UK today, campaigners, economists, and MPs from several parties are calling for a modern Wealth Tax. The current proposal is a 2% annual tax on all wealth above £10 million, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population but raising billions to support public services, reduce inequality, and strengthen the foundations of our society.

Many worry that taxing wealth could reduce incentives to invest or innovate. This small Wealth Tax is intended as a starting point—it allows individuals to retain vast sums before taxes apply, and in the future, there may be more required to ensure fairness and shared prosperity.

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Larry Ngan

Mutual Benefit for learning from each other: My thoughts on the success of our sister parties, and the Liberal International Executive Committee 2025

By Larry Ngan | Tue 25th November 2025 - 11:00 am

You know, the Dutch, they are so liberal, they’ve got two liberal parties… And one of them, the one that’s most like us, D66, were the smaller party in a coalition, and then in 2006 they got stuffed. 2%, 3 MPs, they came ninth.… But you know what, just scroll forward to last year at the European elections. Ninth? No. First. First. … There’s a model we can copy. Survival and revival is in our grasp. Have hope. Have belief.

– Speech by Tim Farron, our former leader, on 2015.

Fast forward to 29th October 2025, D66 became the largest party in the Dutch parliament for the first time, with the vote share of 16.9%. No political pundit predicted this happening when the election was called. According to most opinion polls, they were only on 5-6%. D66 was not even invited to the TV debate between the major parties.

Meanwhile, VVD suffered from a setback at the early stage of the election campaign after a mishap of their party leader Dilan Yeşilgöz MP. However they recovered very quickly and retained 22 seats (A loss of only 2), which is quite an achievement considering they had been in the last government with the populist PVV.

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Tom Reeve

Stand up for poor people: the Chancellor’s Budget must not make things worse

By Tom Reeve | Tue 25th November 2025 - 9:12 am

As the Chancellor prepares to deliver the Budget tomorrow, those with the most to lose are the poorest in our society.

Many of you reading this can hardly imagine living on £20,000 a year before housing costs, yet that is the reality for millions. It is roughly 60% of the median income, the level officially defined as “poor.” While the cost-of-living crisis hurts everyone, it hits low-income households hardest. Food, rent and fuel now swallow almost all their disposable income. Far from helping, the government has made life harder.

About 14 million people – one in five – live in relative poverty after housing costs. That includes 4.3 million children, 8.1 million working-age adults and nearly two million pensioners. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that child poverty has risen from 27% in 2010-11 to 30% in 2022-23. More than two-thirds of poor children live in households where at least one adult works. Poverty is no longer confined to those out of work; it has become an everyday feature of low-wage Britain.

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Mathew Hulbert

Mathew on Monday: time to end the triple lock and finally give younger generations a fair deal

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 24th November 2025 - 6:00 pm

On Wednesday the Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver her long awaited (long feared?) Budget at a critical time for Britain’s economy and society.

As liberals committed to inter-generational fairness, we must seize this moment to call for a major reform: scrapping the state pension “triple lock.” The triple lock – the guarantee that the state pension increases each year by whichever is highest of inflation, average earnings growth, or 2.5% – was introduced with good intentions. Yet today it is deeply unfair to the many younger people facing stagnant wages, rising housing costs and insecure careers.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies warns …

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Vince Cable

What happened to wealth tax?

By Vince Cable | Mon 24th November 2025 - 2:10 pm

There are few issues which animate both the super-rich and the political Left more than the notion of a wealth tax. The idea has been championed by the French Left: a 2% levy would be levied on the roughly 0.01% of household assets worth over 100 mn. Euros. Britain’s Green Party has also adopted it as a signature policy. There is a global version of the same idea promoted by Brazil’s President Lula.

For populist politicians, a wealth tax has a double appeal: it can, in theory, promote greater equality and ‘fairness’, and, also in theory, raise a lot of money for public services. Theory and practice have however diverged.

A wealth tax is unlikely to be in the coming UK budget despite advocacy by Neil Kinnock, leading trades unions and others. Indeed, it is being abandoned by governments including those with a social democratic, redistributive agenda: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Sweden. They found that the tax was difficult to operate, easily avoided and raised disappointing amounts. Only Norway, Spain and Swiss cantons retain a comprehensive wealth tax.

Political demands for wealth taxation are energised by extreme and growing inequalities at global and national level. The world’s wealthiest man is Elon Musk, and his personal fortune appears to be around $500 billion. He has recently negotiated a pay settlement which could earn a further $1000 billion (a trillion) over the next decade: equivalent to the combined salaries of all primary school teachers in the USA.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 23rd November 2025 - 9:52 am

Sudan – and gold

Gold is currently selling at $4,038.05 an ounce. It has increased in value 121 percent in under five years.

It is also financing a civil war in Sudan which, according to the UN, has killed 150,000 civilians, displaced 25 million people and left 30 million facing acute hunger.

The two main Sudanese warring parties — the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — now rely heavily on gold as a source of income.

In 2024, gold production reportedly generated $1.7bn for Sudan via official channels. But then there are the unofficial channels, and, according to a UN Sanctions Committee Report, illicit smuggled gold is worth many times more than that which leaves the country through legal official channels.

The conflict over gold isn’t just a domestic issue. It is tied into a regional ecosystem with armed Sudanese actors with both camps connected to smugglers, refineries and foreign governments. All of which allows the two armies to convert gold into cash to buy weapons, fuel, food and other war needs.

Gold is the ideal money source for Sudan’s warring parties. For a start, Sudan has a lot of it. It is in the world’s top five for gold production. And geologists reckon that because conflict has prevented full exploration, there could be a lot more glitzy minerals in the Sudanese hills.

Next, it is relatively easy to mine, especially if you have no compunction about using environmentally dangerous and toxic mercury. The Sudanese warlords are not known for their green credentials.

Then, there is the fact that it is easily transportable. You can melt it down and mould into any easily smuggable shape, paint it black and carry it out to the gold markets where there is a constant and strong demand which means that the gold can be quickly converted into cash.

The biggest market is Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The Dubai Gold Souk has been a major gold trading hub for centuries. In addition to the traditional souk with its hundreds of bullion shops there is a major free trade zone known as the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre. There is also a major gold refinery—Emirates Gold. In 2024 $186 billion in gold passed through the UAE.

More than 97 percent of Sudan’s gold is sold on the Dubai markets after being smuggled out through Egypt or Chad. Some of it is perfectly legal—about $1.52 billion. Just how much is illegal can be guessed at, but Swissaid, which monitors gold transfers, reckons that 60 tonnes of illegal smuggled gold is sold in Dubai. This could be worth up to $7 billion.

The UAE authorities say they follow OECD Due Diligence Regulations for Responsible Mineral Sourcing to ensure that the gold that they sell is coming from legitimate sources and is not being used to fund war. But this is challenged by Swissaid, Chatham House and the Financial Action Task Force, which was set up to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

If the UAE authorities can be persuaded to stop the flow of illicit gold then it will sever the pipeline which is financing the fighting in Sudan and—hopefully—lead to its end.

Ukraine

Details of Trump’s latest peace plan for Ukraine are starting to leak out. The plan basically calls for Ukraine’s surrender.

Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk would be “recognized as de facto Russian, including by the United States.”

“Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be frozen along the line of contact, which will mean de facto recognition along the line of contact,” the proposal states. “Russia will relinquish other agreed territories it controls outside the five regions.”

The proposal also states: “It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and NATO will not expand further.”

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Four-sided Asia Conflict

By Tom Arms | Sat 22nd November 2025 - 9:42 am

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has re-ignited the tense Sino-Japanese relations that underscore the region’s volatile politics.

The roots of these tensions go back centuries and will doubtless last for centuries more. At the moment the main players are China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan with America playing an important peripheral role.

Korea and Japan have a long history involving cultural links, wars and cruel colonisation. According to many historians, the Japanese imperial family originated in Korea. It is a fact that many prominent Japanese have Korean genetic roots.

Much of Chinese culture reached Japan through the Korean Peninsula. This included Buddhism, Chinese writing, laws, government models, horsemanship, metallurgy, iron-working, architecture, construction and agricultural techniques.

From the Japanese point of view, Korea offered an invasion route into China. In the 16th century the Japanese fought a four-year war against Korea and were only defeated when the Chinese joined the fight on the side of the Koreans.

Then, of course, there is the Japanese colonial period from 1910 to 1945 with the bitter Korean memories of slave labour and “comfort women.”

Korea also has its problems with China with whom it has had a long on-off relationship which for centuries involved tributes and recognition of Chinese suzerainty. A key element in Korean foreign policy (north and south) is summed up by the word “sadae” which is interpreted as “serving the great” which in turn means that Korea will always prioritise good relations with China to secure protection and legitimacy.

Taiwan is a relatively more recent issue for both China and Japan. Its indigenous inhabitants—Austronesians—are neither Japanese nor Chinese. They are genetically and linguistically related to the Filipinos and Indonesians. It wasn’t until the 16th century that the Chinese started to take a peripheral interest in the island. Then the Dutch arrived and called it Formosa. This spurred the Ming Dynasty to action. They booted out the Dutch and shortly afterwards formally annexed the island.

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Samuel Jackson

The Liberal Democrats need policies for the North of England

By Samuel Jackson | Fri 21st November 2025 - 6:16 pm

In our internal federal elections for 2026, Josh Babarinde and Victoria Collins were elected as our President and Vice President respectively. I wish Mr Babarinde and Ms Collins the best of luck ahead of their tenures as their successes are our party’s successes.

In light of their victories, there is an issue facing our party which we need to address. Kamran Hussain, Ms Collins’ challenger for VP, stood as a candidate who would give the North of England a greater voice within the federal party. That is why I and members of my local and regional parties, among others in the North, supported Mr Hussain’s VP candidacy, and why I supported the Federal Policy Committee candidacies of Abrial Jerram and Andrew Haldane.

At present, our party is dominated by the South of England. Of our 72 MPs, nearly 82% represent Southern seats, with most senior party positions being held by MPs from this region. By contrast, the North of England has only four Lib Dem MPs, with the Northeast having none. While Lisa Smart, Tim Farron and Tom Morrison hold posts in the frontbench team, this continuing imbalance may portray us as a party of and for the South and put us bad stead electorally.

The North of England feels left behind in comparison to the rest of the United Kingdom. Yorkshire and Humberside and the Northeast are in the lowest third of English regions by GDP, with the former having a smaller GDP than the Southwest of England or Scotland despite all three having comparable populations (around 5,000,000 each). The North has rates of unemployment higher than the UK average and worse rates of poverty, deprivation, growth and investment than the South.

The North formed part of Labour’s Red Wall, but recent elections have demonstrated that Northern fealty to Labour is no longer a given. In 2019, the Red Wall collapsed to the Conservatives partly in rejection of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, with many seats in the region reverting to Labour in 2024 owing to vote-splitting by Reform UK. This year’s local elections were a clear rejection of the two-party status quo. While our party’s gains were concentrated in the South due to the continuation of our Blue Wall strategy, Reform’s were principally in the Midlands and North, with those in the latter including the councils of Lancashire, Doncaster and County Durham.

Reform’s performance in local government since May have been mixed. They have lost 38 councillors through resignation, defection, suspension or expulsion. Quarrels within Reform’s ranks have broken out. Spending has either been wasted through payouts for contract violations or cuts to vital maintenance works. Cases of ‘good’ Reform governance, such as Kent County Council’s call for more social care visas or Hull & East Yorkshire Mayor Luke Campbell’s support for his county’s renewables industry, saw breaks with party principles and emulation of the ‘establishment’ that they were meant to rail against.

Reform UK are not winning because of their policies but because of anger against the two major parties and their recent poor records in government. While we are picking up seats through by-elections following short-lived Reform stints in local government, we cannot rest on our laurels and assume that a lack of a plan will doom them by the time of the next general election.

Our policies of lowering prices, improving public services and investing in infrastructure theoretically have appeal in the North. However, we are not cutting through to voters, at least nationally. We must acknowledge that our policies do not address the specific needs of specific regions or communities, and we must recognise that Northern concerns are not purely economic in nature.

Viewed as a party of the South, we may by extension be viewed as a party of and for the middle class. Of the Northern seats we have won, they are usually centred on more affluent towns reminiscent of the Blue Wall, namely Harrogate & Knaresborough located within Yorkshire’s Golden Triangle. Having first seen the decline of heavy manufacturing which provided plentiful, proud work for unskilled and semiskilled workers, the boarding-up of high street and town centre businesses clearly marks another decline where fewer jobs are available. The university-level education now required in the modern job market is unaffordable or inaccessible to many and may be perceived as having little immediate benefit to afflicted communities. Within such environments, populist, anti-establishment parties calling for a return to ‘better times’ would have greater appeal.

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Paul Reynolds

Economic growth – simple but not easy. Reform summary

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 21st November 2025 - 1:08 pm

In a recent 3-part series (part 1, part 2, part 3) I set out some remarks about the pursuit of ‘beneficial economic growth’, and why it needs to be systematic, rather than tokenistic or riddled with ‘solutions looking for problems’. Below is a summary.

‘The economy’ is still the No1 policy concern of the general public, and it was the central ‘cure all’ of the current Labour government when it was elected. The government did not, however, set out its approach systematically, or tell us ‘how’, thus leaving everything to hard-pressed civil servants. The coming dire budget is but one consequence.

QUALITY OF GROWTH

Economic policy throughout government should focus on the quality of growth, not just the quantity. Key quality attributes include fiscal, environmental and social sustainability.

DYSFUNCTIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Economic regulation and promotion is spread across government, and can be harmfully contradictory and dysfunctional. The institutional set up for orchestrating beneficial growth aims, is confusing, and ineffective. The interdependence of reforms seems not to be taken into account. There are many lessons from overseas.

CONCENTRATED FINANCE AND FINANCIALISATION

Investment banks, banks and non-bank-financial institutions, should be providing services to businesses, which should be the master not the servant of finance.  Extreme concentration in international finance (eg via index funds) has led to excessive financialisation, opaque cartelisation, and systemic risks. De-monopolisation and reforms to transparency and capital market rules, are the main remedies.

SCLEROTIC STATE

Few in the UK would disagree that the UK state is sclerotic. But why so ? Excessive secrecy and a lack of transparency and accountability is one factor. The major hidden culprits are … excessive contracting out, appalling procurement practices and lawful conflicts of interest. Coupled with the culture of ‘generalism’ in government and obsessive ‘commercial confidentiality’, this is catastrophic. Transparency, and major changes in the parliamentary supervision of governmental employees/departments, with more accountable value-for-money criteria, are the first reform steps.

LAND AVAILABILITY

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Mo Waqas

Our care workers deserve better than a 15–20 year wait to belong

By Mo Waqas | Fri 21st November 2025 - 11:04 am

I write this not only as a Liberal Democrat, but as a frontline care provider responsible for multiple members of staff across Stockton and Hartlepool. Among them are seven remarkable care assistants from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Pakistan. They came here legally, at Britain’s request, to fill the gaping holes in our NHS and social care system. Today, they keep the elderly and vulnerable safe, fed, clean, and dignified.

They are the reason thousands of families sleep at night knowing their loved ones are cared for.

And now, the Government is telling them they must wait 15 years, or even 20,  before they are allowed to call Britain home.

The human price behind the policy

Let me tell you what this looks like in real life.

One of my care assistants from Zimbabwe works six days a week. She sends money home to her children because she cannot afford to bring them here yet. When she heard the new rules, she asked quietly, “Will I still be waiting when they are grown?” She will be 57 by the time she reaches settlement under the 20-year rule.

A Nigerian carer on my team works double shifts. She has held the hands of dementia patients through the night, comforted people in their final hours, and supported families who were breaking under pressure. Her client told me recently, “She is like a daughter to me.” Yet the country she serves now says: You are welcome to care for our elderly, but not welcome to belong for two decades.

A young woman from Pakistan, who works nights and studies during the day, looked completely defeated when she realised she will spend her entire youth waiting for settlement. “Fifteen years… I’ll be in my forties by then,” she said. “I just wanted a stable life.”

These are not isolated stories. There are thousands like them across the UK.

A policy that punishes the very workers Britain relies on

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Jack Meredith

If Labour speaks like Powell, then we must stand like Jenkins

By Jack Meredith | Thu 20th November 2025 - 12:22 pm

Immigration.

For many, it’s the issue that’s lasted a lifetime. While some, like me, view it as an extension of internationalism and the support of human rights, others view it as an idea to be feared and loathed, where they feel their cultures are set to be torn apart by “others” who are too barbaric ever to understand or accept Western societal views.

The fight for a respectful immigration policy is more prevalent than ever, with the current Labour Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announcing her ‘moral mission’ to tackle illegal immigration. This mission, which she claims is ‘tearing communities apart’, involves making refugee status temporary, enforcing a regular two-and-a-half-year review for their applications, and requiring anyone arriving “illegally” to wait 20 years before they can apply for permanent settlement. These policies not only affect the individuals seeking refuge but also profoundly impact the communities they become part of.

This is a far cry from the Labour Party’s stance on immigration from the days of liberal reforming Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins. While not a supporter of unlimited immigration or open borders, Lord Jenkins was an outspoken supporter of cultural integration in a multicultural sense, referring to it as ‘equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance‘.

There were, of course, the likes of Enoch Powell, who stood opposed to such tolerant and liberal views on immigration and espoused his own ideas, most notably his ‘Rivers of Blood‘ speech, comparing the rise in immigration to Britain preparing its own funeral pyre, calling for an immediate reduction in immigration.

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Caron Lindsay

Internal elections update: the results edge closer as gender and LGBT quotas disapplied

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 19th November 2025 - 8:06 pm

The Lib Dems moved closer to being able to count our election results this afternoon.

In an email to candidates, party Chief Executive Mike Dixon said:

We have now received legal advice from a second King’s Counsel who specialises in election law and discrimination cases. We asked them to review the recent Federal Appeals Panel judgement about the internal elections and recommend how to proceed at a detailed operational level.

The KC advice is that in the light of the Supreme Court judgement and our Federal Appeals Panel judgement, we must suspend rule 2.5 and rule 2.6(c) in the Federal Constitution for these counts.

We will now arrange with our supplier for the count to take place as soon as possible. (The date will now depend on their team’s availability.)

I want to say a huge thank you to everyone for bearing with us through this process. It has been important that we get this right, both to ensure the results are fair and to protect the party from potential legal risks.

This outcome breaks my heart. I worked hard for years to argue for these quotas and helped put them together back in 2016 as I wrote recently.

They have helped make our party more diverse over the years and I want to see them continue. And I will be fighting alongside many colleagues in the party to ensure that the law is changed so that they can be reinstated.  It’s so infuriating that anti trans groups with the means to take legal action have forced this on us. They have harmed women and LGBT people and, perhaps, when we see the outcome of the elections, the diversity of our party.

LGBT+ Lib Dems issued a statement this evening saying:

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Kamran Hussain

Labour has lost its moral and political compass

By Kamran Hussain | Wed 19th November 2025 - 11:55 am

I have been a Liberal Democrat for many years, and I never imagined a time when a major party on the centre-left would be celebrating its immigration policy alongside the very architects of anti-immigrant sentiment. Yet here we are. As Shabana Mahmood unveils her new asylum and immigration plans, the loudest endorsements are not coming from progressive voices, the NHS, or the communities dependent on migration, but from figures like Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage—men who have built careers on demonising and scapegoating newcomers.

​This applause is a siren call that should terrify the Labour movement, but for the Liberal Democrats, it is a clarifying moment.

​When people like Robinson and Farage applaud Labour’s direction, it sends a crystal-clear signal: Shabana Mahmood is moving the Labour Party so far to the right that the far-right ecosystem now views her as an active ally. For those of us who believe in the core Liberal values of fairness, compassion, and evidence-based policy, this is profoundly alarming.

​The very people keeping our social fabric intact—the hard-working individuals in the care sector—are the ones being betrayed. Under the previous, more humane system, many care workers were on a clear, five-year route to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). This gave them stability, dignity, and a predictable future.

​Mahmood’s proposal to stretch that pathway to twenty years is not a policy; it is a punishment. It translates to twenty years of insecurity, twenty  years of anxiety, telling dedicated workers, “Even though you care for our elderly, our grandparents, and our disabled loved ones, you still haven’t earned the right to call this country home.”

​And who cheered this punitive shift? Tommy Robinson, calling it a step in the right direction. Nigel Farage, claiming she was suitable to join Reform.

If they believe Labour has become their champion, then Labour has utterly lost its moral and political compass.

The tragedy is that Labour believes it is playing a clever political game. Mahmood thinks that by mirroring Conservative and Reform UK rhetoric, she can win over disillusioned voters who are looking for someone to blame.

But politics abhors a vacuum, and voters will always choose the authentic voice of the far-right over its pale imitation. Labour will never ‘out-Reform’ Reform.

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Paul Hindley

Labour’s inhumanity must be opposed!

By Paul Hindley | Wed 19th November 2025 - 8:56 am

Immigration and asylum have been dominant political issues since the general election last year. These issues have been amplified by Reform UK, the Conservatives and right-wing media outlets. However, Labour is in power, not the traditional right, not that you can recognise anything progressive about many of this Labour government’s policies, especially towards immigrants and asylum seekers.

Labour’s current political approach is completely contradictory. You cannot be in favour of economic growth and strong public services on the one hand and anti-immigration on the other hand. Where would our National Health Service, our social care sector, our education system or many of our small businesses be without the invaluable contribution of people from overseas? The answer is that they would be nowhere. They would not be able to function without the work and expertise of immigrants and would surely face collapse without them. Every immigrant that works and pays taxes is actively contributing to this country and making it richer, both economically and culturally. Anti-immigrant politics actively undermines both our economy and our public services. 

As bad and counterproductive as Labour’s approach to immigration is, it is its approach to asylum seekers and refugees that is especially disgraceful. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has outlined a series of hardline reforms to the asylum system. Amongst these reforms, refugees would have to be resident in the UK for 20 years before they could apply for permanent residence or indefinite leave to remain. During this period, asylum seekers would face continual review of their status every 30 months with the potential of being deported back to their home country at any moment if the government deems that country safe to return to.

It was also reported that asylum seekers could face the grotesque prospect of having their jewellery and other precious valuables taken from them to cover their processing costs. Although, ministers have since clarified that only valuable assets could be taken not personal belongings. A small improvement to a terrible policy.

Internationally, Labour’s reforms to immigration and asylum may have significant diplomatic consequences. As part of these reforms, the government is threatening “Trump-style visa bans” against Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. A model of visa bans that could be extended to many other countries and thus undermine Britain’s diplomatic standing in the world.

A final aspect that should concern liberals is Labour’s insistence on overhauling Britain’s approach to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Labour plan to change how British judges interpret the ECHR in an attempt to prevent asylum seekers from using the right to a family life to avoid deportation. This would set a very dangerous illiberal precedent. The ECHR does not just protect the political, democratic and legal rights of immigrants and asylum seekers, but the rights of all British citizens. It is a crucial pillar and safeguard of our liberal democracy. It also acts as a common democratic safeguard across the entire European continent, a safeguard that was forged in the aftermath of World War II. If Britain were to leave the ECHR, we would be one of only three European nations to be outside the Convention, the other two being the fascistic regimes of Russia and Belarus.

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Paul Reynolds

Economic growth – simple but not easy, part 3

By Paul Reynolds | Tue 18th November 2025 - 12:31 pm

This article concludes a three-part series on what the UK needs to do to manage ‘beneficial growth’ policy across government. This article briefly considers examples in banking, trade, commercial law and infrastructure.

De Jure Monopoly Banking – ‘Never a lender or borrower be’

A purposefully restrictive banking sector, dogged by regulatory capture, has done much to inhibit the UK economy. The monopolistic sector structure was designed to create high profitability and crisis resilience in the UK banking sector; but the 2008 crash did not change this justification! In effect the sector’s self-governed, cartelised approach, with multiple regulators, failed. Instead of reform, a permissive approach to ‘accounting tricks’ transpired. The remedies proved to be very profitable.

The sector thus remains largely unreformed. The dysfunctional UK banking sector has relatively few banks, absence of specialist banks, and weird over-extended anti-customer rules. The UK suffers unresponsive services, instability, lack of competition, and reliance on the taxpayer as a last resort. Over-dependence on derivatives and property lending means they hardly ever lend for real-world business development. Remedies include more effective prudential regulation, and a raft of measures to increase competition; for example, a regulatory path from small (eg credit unions) to large, among many steps to eliminate the protections afforded the big banks from smaller competitors.

Trade policy, promotion and facilitation – ‘The expert manufacture of bottlenecks’

There are three critical problems in UK trade policy. First, post-Brexit, the UK is notoriously bad at matching UK tariff demands with evolving strengths and weaknesses in the UK economy.

Second, the UK system of business promotion globally is amateurish compared to (for example), Japan, South Korea, Finland or the USA. Japanese sectoral development associations, global technology organisations such as JETRO, and the role of METI in supporting overseas manufacturing, are worth copying.

Third, trade facilitation within the UK is sclerotic. Consider international freight rail transport from London Gateway to the North, or the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Hull route, (and the permanent gridlock in S.E. Kent). The aims of trade reforms can be clearly stated.

Commercial Law – ‘Labyrinthine and outdated’

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Michael Taylor

The Supreme Court decision – End the Trappist-like silence now

By Michael Taylor | Tue 18th November 2025 - 10:29 am

The Supreme Court (SC) was asked to interpret what ‘man’ and ‘woman’ meant is respect of the Equality Act.

Their decision was that ‘with respect to the Equality Act and that Act only’ man and woman were to mean the biological gender recorded at birth and not that recorded on gender recognition certificates.

This was a very unwelcome judgement and it has been seized upon by all manner of anti-trans people to mean that the judgement applies in all circumstances and in every possible situation. Most notably, this interpretation was jumped on by Kishwer Faulkner, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights …

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Mathew Hulbert

Mathew on Monday: Labour’s Reform-lite immigration crackdown isn’t leadership – it’s politics by fear

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 17th November 2025 - 4:50 pm

Today the Labour government is unveiling what it grandly calls the “largest asylum overhaul in modern times”. In reality, it’s a Reform-lite crackdown designed to appease the tabloids and outflank the Right, rather than deliver a workable, humane, or genuinely thought-through immigration system.

Temporary refugee status, a 20-year wait for permanent settlement, harsher limits on family reunion, and tightened appeal rights-these aren’t the hallmarks of a compassionate, confident government – they’re the trademark of a party terrified of looking ‘soft,’ a government more interested in signalling toughness than addressing the real drivers of a broken system. Ministers coaching their MPs to fall into line or risk looking weak only reinforces that is pure politics, not sensible policy.

Liberals should say this clearly: You don’t fix the asylum system by making life harder for refugees. You fix it by creating safe, managed, humane routes to the UK; by processing claims efficiently; and by helping people (not forcing them) to integrate and contribute once they’re here, as the overwhelming majority of people do.

A genuinely fair system would do three things.

First, expand safe and legal routes so people fleeing war and persecution don’t have to gamble their lives on dangerous journeys.
We know this works – it’s the safest, most cost-effective, and most orderly way to protect people and maintain public confidence.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 16th November 2025 - 10:28 am

United States

The Epstein Files story is reaching a climax. Emails released by the estate of paedophile and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein have mentioned Donald Trump’s name, but little more than that.

However, the pathway to the more extensive FBI files on Epstein is now clear. Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn in this week and immediately cast the deciding vote in favour of releasing the Epstein files. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson now has seven legislative days to “ripen” the issue. He then has an additional two days to schedule the vote.

The necessary legislation will have no problem passing the lower house. A simple majority is needed and it is reckoned that up to 100 Republican congressmen will vote in favour of release.

Many of them are facing constituents who voted for Trump in the belief that he would release the files as promised. They are angry that there appears to be a cover-up in the service of rich elites. Other representatives do not want to be seen as participating in a cover-up, especially with the threat of even more damaging information to come.

If it passes the House then it goes to the Senate. There may be a problem there as it needs 60 out of the 100 votes to pass. Senators are not as vulnerable to the whims of the electorate as they face re-election every six years whereas those in the House of Representatives go before the electorate every two.

The final hurdle is the president. He can veto the release of the files. But if he did it would be tantamount to an admission of guilt and would almost certainly be overturned by a two-thirds vote in Congress.

China

In the past six weeks Xi Jinping has purged China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of nine senior generals and admirals and several handfuls of lower officer ranks.

The stated reason is corruption. And there is no doubt that China has a problem with senior military figures on the take. It has had the problem for years with officers being purged after police raided their homes to discover refrigerators and microwaves stuffed with cash, jewels and valuable works of art.

But the quantity and quality of the latest purge victims indicates that at least in some cases the corruption charge could be a cover for political disloyalty.

General He Weidong, for instance, was not just a general. He was also vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and a member of the ruling Politburo. The charges against him were corruption and “loss of chastity.”

The latter phrase has nothing to do with celibacy—or lack thereof—but political chastity or loyalty to the Party line.

In today’s China the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are being increasingly conflated with the interests of Xi Jinping. Thus lack of loyalty to Xi is the same as disloyalty to the Party and disloyalty to the Party is disloyalty to the country.

The CCP has long operated on the principle that “the Party commands the gun”. Xi seems deeply concerned that the military remain absolutely loyal to him and the CCP, not just as an institution. Corruption purges within the PLA have been driven not just by efficiency concerns but by loyalty/political control.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: China’s Environmental Paradox

By Tom Arms | Sat 15th November 2025 - 9:25 am

China is both the world’s biggest environmental villain and – paradoxically– the greatest hero when it comes to the development and export of green renewable energy.

The Middle Kingdom is the world’s biggest emitter of CO2 gases—more than the US, India and EU combined. It burns more coal than the rest of the world combined and it continues to build coal-powered plants.

But at the same time it produces 80 percent of the world’s solar panels; 70 percent of lithium-ion batteries, 65  percent of the world’s wind turbines and the world’s most affordable electric vehicles.

China has vast resources of dirty coal and very little oil or gas. So when the Chinese Communist Party decided to go all out for industrial growth it made economic sense to exploit the energy on its doorstep. So it turned first to coal and then to imported oil and gas.

But by the early 2000s the Party leadership came to the realisation that the growing dependence on imported oil meant energy insecurity. Also the burning of coal and growing number of cars was creating dangerous pollution levels. Finally, they saw that the next big industrial revolution would be “Green.”

About the same time Europeans and large slice of Americans were also investing in renewable energy. Western governments were starting to provide tax breaks and other subsidies. China, however, has a command economy. So, it didn’t just subsidise green tech companies. The Chinese leadership made the decision to rebuild the country’s entire industrial base around renewable energy.

There were massive subsidies for solar, wind, electric vehicles, and batteries. Free or cheap land was provided for green industries. The state banks offered low-interest and local governments provided tax breaks and cash incentives.

Heavy emphasis was given to national dominance of the supply chain. So development went from mining of rare earths to development of batteries to production of electric cars. No country had ever industrialized a clean-energy sector at that speed.

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Paul Reynolds

Economic growth – simple but not easy, Part 2

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 14th November 2025 - 4:20 pm

The Labour government still has ‘economic growth’ as its cure-all remedy in the lead up to the Budget. However, without any systematic, coherent approach, expectations are low. What should the UK actually do ?

In Part 1, I argued that it was necessary to start from key principles; defining growth and where it comes from, and scoping out the landscape (and boundaries) for beneficial economic growth; at least to help all the relevant people know what is to be achieved. Part 1 also touched upon the ‘headline’ economic problems to be tackled, and institutional obstacles to be overcome.

In Parts 2 and 3 the aim is to comment on a few of the ‘levers for achieving growth’, starting with the two main inhibitors to growth, concentrated finance and its link to monopoly, and a sclerotic state.

CONCENTRATED FINANCE – ‘Make financial services, services again’

In the UK expressions like ‘capital markets’ and ‘institutional investors’ mask the extent to which control of the finance sector is concentrated in a few hands (eg Index Funds). Share prices rise due to manipulations such share buybacks rather than performance, creating vulnerabilities and systemic risks. De jure monopoly, and private cartelisation amongst supposedly arms-length investors are designed to keep share prices rising at all costs. Such institutions have become the masters not servants of productive businesses.  A range of complex measures are required to address cartelisation, and shift power back to ‘real businesses with long term plans’. That is, if these towering financial institutions do not collapse first.

SCLEROTIC STATE – ‘Parkinson’s Laws are Euphemisms’

In the UK over recent decades the path to riches is no longer seen as providing innovative goods or services that people want to buy. It is getting an extendable profitable government contract, or a favourable regulatory change, where the ‘client’ is none too bothered about the detail, or even concerned about value for (someone else’s) money. The ‘reach’ of the state has gone beyond critical mass, fuelled by conflicts-of-interest. Culturally, in the UK, on the political right and left, it has become unfashionable to demand accountability and transparency, especially in procurement, regulatory and civil servant integrity matters.

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Mary Reid

Good practice in palliative care

By Mary Reid | Fri 14th November 2025 - 12:05 pm

Note that this post includes end of life details which you may want to avoid.

The Assisted Dying Bill has raised questions about the quality of palliative care under the NHS. Whatever your views on assisted dying it should never be a substitute for good care at end of life.

Recently I and my family have had a positive experience of palliative care in an NHS hospital, and I am wondering how widespread this is.

My husband, Ian, died last month in Kingston Hospital. It was not unexpected – he had spent almost half of this year in hospital, six visits in total. During the year he was transferred to the Elderly Care (aka Geriatric) team, who took a refreshingly holistic approach to his multiple health conditions. However each time he was admitted his health and mobility dropped down a notch, so he eventually he became effectively bed bound.

Just before he was admitted for the last time he told me that he had had enough and it was time to go. From his hospital bed he made last minute changes to his funeral plans which he had drawn up under Covid. In fact he rather surprised some visitors by discussing it in some detail, asking them to contribute in some way.

Eventually it became clear that the treatment was no longer effective. Our sons were staying with me by that stage, and I asked if one of us could stay all night. They moved Ian into a single room so we could come and go as we pleased.

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