Category Archives: Op-eds

Richard Flowers

Entitled Isn’t Exceptional: Why Brexit Will Fail, part 4

By Richard Flowers | Sat 30th November 2019 - 5:03 pm

For readers joining this series late, here are parts one, two and three…

So far this week, I’ve discussed the lies and indecision at the heart of Brexit that make it impossible for Johnson to deliver on any of the grand promises he makes.

The biggest lie of all is British Exceptionalism, the lie that we tell ourselves that Britain is somehow special, because of our history, because of the Empire, because of the ubiquity of our language, because of the “special relationship”. The dangerous delusion of “Empire 2.0”.

Johnson in particular, refers to Britain in towering, cod-Churchillian terms, forgetting …

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Caron Lindsay

Jo’s best bits from the BBC Debate

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 30th November 2019 - 8:25 am

Seven leading figures from the various parties competing in the election took part in a televised debate from the National Assembly of Wales.

We are a site made up of Lib Dem supporters. Of course we are going to back our leader. But she surpassed even our expectations.

Her opening statement offered hope, and a country where everyone is valued regardless of religion, who they love or the colour of their skin, working with our closest friends to save the planet, nurturing the bonds in our family of nations, protecting the vulnerable.  A proper liberal vision.

She had the line of the debate.

She didn’t mention that it was a horror show, though…

And here’s her closing statement:

She highlighted why Lib Dem spending plans were not only effective, but added up.

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Richard Flowers

The Singapore Delusion: Why Brexit Will Fail, part 3

By Richard Flowers | Fri 29th November 2019 - 5:04 pm

In this third part of the series (part one is here, and part two here), Richard looks at the Singapore-on-Thames concept…

Singapore has seen extraordinary levels of growth over the last decades.

Where Western countries have long-term average growth rates in GDP per capita of around 2% a year, Singapore saw nearly a decade of real gdp growth of 12.7% per year from 1965-1973.

Who could not want that, the average citizen seeing their income double every six years, above inflation. Even the worst off would see substantial increases in income, services, wellbeing…

But the idea that a mature economy like the …

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Caron Lindsay

Conference Early Bird Discount extended until 7th January

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 29th November 2019 - 1:26 pm

Last month, when registration opened for York Conference, I noticed that the discount for booking early finished just one week after the election and before Christmas. I felt that this was unfair:

Now, most of us are knocking ourselves out campaigning for the General Election. We’re out in the cold and dark on a daily basis. Campaigning is not cheap. You have to pay to travel -and many of us are travelling to our nearest target seats. And we’re all getting asked to contribute to local and national campaigns.

This election is an unexpected and added expense just before Christmas. If you add to that the cost of registering for Conference as well, it might mean that some people just can’t afford to go.

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Patrick Maxwell

Election Diary 3: Into the final stretch

By Patrick Maxwell | Fri 29th November 2019 - 11:55 am

Harold Wilson stated more than fifty years ago that a week was a long time in politics, and in a general election campaign this is especially true. There are just under two weeks left until the country goes to the polls, and a huge proportion is still up for grabs in this most divisive election. It is also the most important since Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979, which fundamentally changed Britain, for better or worse. 

It is therefore little surprise that two main parties have recently shifted their focus going into the final weeks and days of the campaign. Labour, despite Jeremy Corbyn’s increased poll ratings, has not garnered enough support to pose a real threat to Boris Johnson’s plans for majority rule. His party has now focused its attempts on retaining its Northern Leave-voting seats, which could give the Lib Dems an opportunity to heavily target previously Labour-supporting Remainers. The huge spending pledges have not caught the public’s imagination as much as Corbyn and Seumas Milne would have wanted, nor have their plans for large-scale renationalization. Or, for that matter, the party’s disgraceful failure to combat, let alone admit to, its anti-Semitism. 

A new poll, employing a method that accurately predicted the 2017 election result claims that the Lib Dems are on course for thirteen MPs if the election were held today. If true, this would a disastrous. After the recent successes in European and local elections, such a poor showing would mean that the Remain voice would have virtually no voice in Parliament, and would, I fear, mean the final failure of the Remain campaign as a whole. 

The party’s pledge to revoke Article 50 is one of the main reasons for this slump. Speaking to even the most ardent Europhiles, I have found a disquiet about the policy. For Jo Swinson to succeed, she needs to position herself as the moderate, opposing both the extremes of Corbyn and Johnson. Supporting revoking does exactly the opposite. It presents the Liberal Democrats as un-democratic, ignoring the first vote and not allowing even a second. Much anger in the public at this extreme turn has meant that a rethink is needed if the current poll figures are to be reversed. 

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: The Laffer Curve

By Tom Arms | Fri 29th November 2019 - 8:55 am

It is an economic model called the Laffer Curve and it reeks of common sense and good economic stewardship. It is also being studiously ignored by the Labour and Conservative parties in their headlong race to buy votes with expensive election promises.

The Laffer Curve is basically a bell-shaped curve which starts at zero on the left , rises to an optimum figure in the middle and then drops back down to zero on the far right. The zero on the left is the expected tax revenue that would be raised if the tax rate was zero, which is fairly self-explanatory—no taxes, no revenue.  Halfway up the left side of the curves means taxes are too low and revenue is insufficient.

The zero on the far-right may appear at first glance to be counter-intuitive.  The higher the price (taxes) the higher the revenue. But if we use the shop analogy the fallacy of that argument is exposed.  If a shop charges more money than the customer can afford than they just go elsewhere. In the case of taxes they vote with their feet and move to another country and refuse to invest in an economy which fails to give them a return with the result that the pool of money from which taxes are drawn shrinks.

The key is to find the happy median. This is the highest point on the Laffer Curve where the tax rate—like Goldilocks’s porridge—is neither too high nor too low but set just right so that it draws in the maximum tax revenues.

The Laffer Curve is named after American economist Arthur Laffer from the Chicago School of Economics. Professor Laffer did not invent the theory. But he did popularise it during the Ford, Reagan and Bush Senior Administrations. The theory actually has its antecedents in 14th century Tunisia; was popular in 19th century American economic planning and a cornerstone of the policies of US Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon during the Roaring Twenties.  Even John Maynard Keynes made some admiring references to it, but it was largely forgotten in the 30 years after World War II.

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Richard Flowers

Decision Impossible: Why Brexit Will Fail, part 2

By Richard Flowers | Thu 28th November 2019 - 6:30 pm

Yesterday, in part 1, Richard looked at the issue of trust. Today, his attention turns to the internal contradictions of Brexit…

Brexit is going to fail. We know that.

That doesn’t mean that the Quitter side isn’t going to be able to take Britain out of the EU. Although the internal contradictions have been a big part of what has kept us in – and way past first Mrs May’s leaving date and now Boris Johnson’s leaving date, both of which were set in stone, both of which went past without us leaving – we have to face the possibility that if the Tories win, or possibly even if Labour win the 2019 General Election, we will finally leave the EU, either in January 2020 or later.

But we can be sure that the promises made by the supporters of Leave and the Vote Leave campaign will not, cannot be fulfilled.

Because to govern is to choose, but the heart of Brexit is a refusal to make the difficult choices over what Brexit Britain wants.

Some three-and-a-half years after the Referendum campaign there is still no clear consensus on what Brexit actually means. The fatuous slogans “Brexit Means Brexit” and “Get Brexit Done” cover up this key indecision at the heart of Britain’s government and the Leave movement itself.

While there are almost as many Brexits are there were voters, with Vote Leave’s Cambridge-Analytica-driven campaign customising a Brexit to virtually each voter, it’s clear that among them are three big strands:

  • First, the Faragist “no immigrants” Brexit.
  • Second, the sovereignty-first “take back control of our laws” Brexit.
  • And third, the deregulate everything economy Brexit (often linked with the “no deal” or “World Trade Organisation Terms” brands, although those things do not necessarily lead to deregulation).

It ought to be obvious at a glance that these three are all incompatible. We cannot deregulate and at the same time highly regulate our migration. We cannot take charge of our own laws and at the same time sign away sovereignty to the WTO or to Trump in a UK-US free trade deal.

To avoid this contradiction, government and Leave spokespeople pick one and pretend all Brexit is about their one. The media complicity in this, by setting any “debate” between Remain and one-at-a-time versions of Brexit, has left Remainers struggling to land consistent blows when fighting this many-headed hydra of a Brexit.

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James Gurling

James Gurling writes…What should Liberal Democrats learn from the MRP?

By James Gurling | Thu 28th November 2019 - 4:57 pm

Every General Election campaign has a ‘hold your nerve’ moment.

And last night’s YouGov MRP polling announcement is one such moment.

It’s a wake-up call for anyone who doesn’t want to see a Tory Brexit being delivered in two weeks’ time.  And we can’t pretend it doesn’t have challenges for our position.

But the situation is always more complicated for Liberal Democrats. Our national seat campaigns are being rolled out in a heavily focused way.

We can see from recent seat polls in places like Finchley & Golders Green and Wimbledon that, when voters in those specific constituencies are asked how they are voting, we are doing much better than this model suggests.

Because our target seat campaigns are so focused in key areas, it makes it hard for data modelling like MRP to pick up our activity. What is clear is that our local seat activity is shifting significantly more votes our way in these seats than across the UK as a whole. And we know from 2017 that the number of doorstep conversations is the greatest indicator of electoral success.

A General Election isn’t a single UK-wide poll. It’s 650 separate races, and modelling like MRP will not necessarily identify the differences in what is going on in communities up and down the country, where people are struggling to decide how best to simultaneously stop Brexit, avoid a Corbyn Government and deny Johnson a working majority.

Voting choices that seem obvious in one seat are anathema in another.

MRP data modelling is very different in character to traditional polling which we tend to be more familiar with.

Multiple Regression and Post-stratification modelling is an extremely clever way of producing estimates of opinion for defined geographic areas by combining information from huge national samples (but very small constituency samples) with authoritative data from sources such as ONS and the Census.

The MRP authors themselves attach a significant caveat to their report stating “Our sample is large enough that we can identify patterns that occur across relatively small numbers of constituencies, but the largest model errors are likely to occur in constituencies with very atypical patterns of voting.  Some examples of these are seats where there is a high profile independent candidate (e.g. Beaconsfield) or where there appears to be a new pattern of local competition in this election (e.g. Kensington)”.

In short, to work properly MRP requires a high degree of interpretation by professional analysts.  And assumptions at the margins, can make huge differences when extrapolated out across a national position.

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Duncan Brack

What’s in a (Net Zero) date?

By Duncan Brack | Thu 28th November 2019 - 11:57 am

One of the questions that’s likely to be asked in tonight’s Channel 4 environment leader’s debate is about the target date by which the UK should reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions. In the summer the government legislated for 2050. In September Liberal Democrat conference voted for our policy paper Tackling the Climate Emergency, which argued for 2045. The Labour conference voted for 2030 (though that’s not in their manifesto). The Green Party has gone for 2030, and Extinction Rebellion campaigns for 2025. 

Against these targets, our policy can look rather cautious. 2045 seems like a long way away; doesn’t that mean that government will do nothing until a few years beforehand and then rush to hit it? I’m sure Lib Dem Voice readers know what’s wrong with that argument – although this was the approach that a Conservative minister genuinely suggested to Ed Davey when we were in government.

Arguing over the net zero target date in isolation is simplistic and misleading. In reality, reaching net zero will require enormous effort, stretching over decades and affecting all sectors of the economy; it’s not something you can leave to the last moment. The real debate we need to have is over how we plan to meet the target; what’s the policy programme that cuts emissions fast where we know how to, and lays the foundations for progress where we don’t yet know the right solutions? And when you start to think about what’s needed for electricity, heating, transport, aviation, industry, farming and land use – and how you persuade people to change the way they live their lives, because it isn’t only about government action – you start to understand why near-term targets like 2025 or 2030 are an unrealisable fantasy.

Liberal Democrats set out, in our policy paper and in the manifesto, how we can make rapid progress in cutting emissions from power generation, through accelerating the uptake of renewables, and in heat in buildings, through a massive energy efficiency programme. Between them we think we can cut UK emissions by more than half over ten years.

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Frank Brierley

Why we must stop Brexit Part 2: The costs of Brexit

By Frank Brierley | Thu 28th November 2019 - 10:25 am

The principal economic benefit claimed for Brexit is that Britain will become free to negotiate trade deals with non-EU countries independently of the EU, and that these will, at least in the medium to longer term, create greater wealth for Britain than we can expect from continued EU membership.  How likely is that?  

There is no evidence to make that supposition seem likely. Progress on trade talks has been minimal, with no indication that deals can be negotiated that could begin to equal the trade we currently do with the EU and through our membership of the EU. Moreover, there is strong evidence that the loss of our right to tariff-free trade with the EU will contribute to some £70 billion p.a. damage to the UK economy. A press release by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research published on 29th October 2019 contains some interesting statements, including the following:

  • We would not expect economic activity to be boosted by the approval of the government’s proposed Brexit deal. We estimate that, in the long run, the economy would be 3½ per cent smaller with the deal compared to continued EU membership.
  • the government’s new proposed free trade agreement with the European Union … customs and regulatory barriers would hinder goods and services trade with the continent, leaving all regions of the United Kingdom worse off than they would be if the UK stayed in the EU.
  • chronic uncertainty persists, but the terms of EU trade remain unchanged, we forecast economic growth of under 1½ per cent in 2019 and 2020
  • The economy is estimated to be 2½ per cent smaller now than it would otherwise have been as a result of the 2016 Brexit vote.

So, the very threat of Brexit, as well as having devalued the pound, has made the country poorer.  And leaving the EU upon the terms of Johnson’s latest Brexit deal is projected to knock 3.5% off the size of the economy compared to remaining in the EU. 

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Richard Flowers

A Certain Economy with the Truth: Why Brexit Will Fail, part 1

By Richard Flowers | Wed 27th November 2019 - 5:05 pm

It is a true maxim that cheats never prosper. Boris Johnson and the Tory Party have lied and cheated, and in the short term it has won them the keys to 10 Downing Street. It may even win them an election. But in the long term it spells ruin for all of us. Here’s why.

Brexit is toxic to even steady growth in the economy.

Economic growth rests on three things: optimism, stability and trust.

People need optimism to believe that they will get something back from the work or cash that they put into any investment.

People need stability in order to predict whether what they put in over time will pay back the cost, in hours or money, of putting in the effort.

And they need to trust that what they are told about the situation is true, that the rules are not going to be changed arbitrarily on them, and that they are on a fair playing field, that some other people are not going to suddenly be given the profits that they have worked for.

Brexit is not an optimistic ideology. It is made of nostalgia and fear of change. A desire to turn the clock back to a time that never was is not the dynamism that you need to create opportunity for the new.

Boris Johnson himself may have optimism in spades (or may not; often, when challenged, he appears to be faking it), but no one at all trusts him. Twice in the election debates he has raised the idea of trust in his government and twice audiences have literally laughed in his face.

Brexit is built out of lies. From that bloody bus; via the disingenuous all-Brexits-to-all-people approach that short-term winning was more important than telling people true what they intended; through the use of “othering” minorities, blaming migration, breeding hate-crimes but also dividing the country; and up to lying to the Queen and refusing to publish the report into Russian interference.

That consistent lack of trust, that attitude of looking backwards not to the future fundamentally undermines our economy.

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Michael Berwick-Gooding

Restoring the benefit cuts – a look at our manifesto and the Labour Party’s manifesto

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Wed 27th November 2019 - 8:55 am

In 2017 we proposed spending more than the Labour Party on reversing some of the benefit cuts since 2010. This year the Institute for Fiscal Studies after looking at both of our manifestos concluded, that while we both increase benefit spending “to around its 2010 level … this money doesn’t go as far as it used to, because of underlying pressures pushing up benefits spending, including rising housing costs and a bigger population. Taking these into account, these pledges would only reverse around a quarter of discretionary cuts to benefits since 2010.”

According to the Labour Party’s costings they plan to increase spending on working-age social security by £8.4 billion by 2023/24 (page 4). (They just give a total without breaking the figures down.) In their manifesto they state they will scrap the benefit cap and the two-child limit, they will split benefit payments for couples, and they will restore fortnightly payments and paying the housing element directly to landlords (page 73).They will also end the ‘digital only’ approach for claiming benefits. All these reforms were suggested by Philip Alston the UN Rapporteur on extreme poverty in his report this year. Furthermore, they will scrap the bedroom tax and increase the Local Housing Allowance by an unspecified amount, end Work Capability and PIP Assessments and make sure these are done “in-house”. They will restore the extra money for those in the Work-Related Activity Group receiving Employment and Support Allowance cut by the Conservatives.

The Labour Party claim that they “will eradicate in-work poverty in our first term by tackling the structural causes of poverty and inequality, such as low pay and high living costs, while raising the floor provided by our social safety net” (page 59 of their manifesto). I couldn’t find in their manifesto what they would increase benefit levels to. I believe for a couple, one of which works 16 hours a week on Labour’s new National Living Wage of £10 an hour, for their income to reach the poverty line the couple’s benefit level would need to be increased by just over £46 a week (about 40%) even assuming work allowances were restored to their 2015 level for people without children. I estimate this would cost in the region of £11 billion a year.

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Michael Meadowcroft

The Guardian – a pro Labour propaganda sheet

By Michael Meadowcroft | Tue 26th November 2019 - 3:30 pm

I have read the Guardian just about every day since 19 October 1960 – the day after the death of the News Chronicle. From time to time it has, of course, been critical of Liberal positions but, by and large, over those sixty years, it has been the only fair and independent voice amongst the national newspapers. Alas, this is no longer the case. Under Katharine Viner, the current editor, it has become it has become a blatant pro-Labour paper. It carries weekly pro-Labour columns from Owen Jones and the openly Labour activist, Polly Toynbee. Their partisan columns are regularly supplemented by Gary Younge and Paul Mason. There isn’t a single Liberal columnist. As you might imagine, I have taken all this up with the editor.

Then, last Monday, 18 November, it carried a bizarrely tendentious column entitled “The Lib Dems helped wreck my 20s. Young voters beware.” I immediately wrote answering the column. A number of pro-Liberal Democrat letters were published but, significantly, all were apologetic about the past and none rebutted the arguments.  For the sake of arming colleagues, the text of my letter read:

It would be difficult to image a more tendentious article than that by Rhiannon Lucy Coslett, (The Lib Dems helped wreck my 20s. Young voters beware, 18 November). She completely disregards the circumstance at the time of the 2010 general election, just two years after the  banking collapse with the British economy in a precarious state following the taxpayers’ bailout of some £500 billion. The election produced a hung parliament and the stability of a coalition government was needed. Any possibility of a government including Labour disappeared when it stated it would not enter into a coalition that included the SNP. Labour’s decision ensured that the arithmetic was not there for a different coalition.

Certainly there were Liberal Democrat policies which were inevitably unpopular but Ms Cosslett ought also to look at policies which greatly assisted poorer members of the community. For instance, raising the basic tax threshold took over a million poorer people out of paying any tax at all. And the Pupil Premium was a considerable help to schools working in poorer areas.

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Imaduddin Ahmed

What have the Lib Dems ever done for Britain?

By Imaduddin Ahmed | Tue 26th November 2019 - 8:35 am

What besides leading the campaign against Brexit have the Lib Dems ever done for Britain?

John Stuart Mill, a Liberal MP, was the second of his House to call for women’s suffrage, in 1832. He also warned against tyranny of the majority against minority groups, and advocated both for necessary individual rights to be protected as well as constitutional checks to enforce those protections.

John Maynard Keynes, a Liberal peer, saved capitalist economics by contradicting conventional thinking that free markets would automatically provide full employment. Implementation in the United States of his advocacy of …

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Caron Lindsay

Remembering Charles Kennedy on what would have been his 60th birthday

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 25th November 2019 - 10:57 pm

On 25th November 1959, Charles Kennedy was born. He was raised near Fort William and went on to be elected as the SDP MP for Ross, Cromarty and Skye when he was just 23 in 1983.

He went on to become the second leader of the Liberal Democrats and was one of the most popular politicians in the UK. His easy-going public persona and his immense political courage won him many friends across and outside politics.

He was a passionate internationalist and European and totally committed to social justice. He talked about being a voice for the dispossessed who were being ignored by other parties.

He was one of the few to emerge from the deeply divisive referendum on Scottish independence with the respect and admiration of both sides. He argued with wit and wisdom for what he believed in and always showed respect for the other side. He was a great role model in the art of disagreeing well.

He had to show grace in the most vicious of situations. When he led the Liberal Democrats to oppose the war in Iraq in 2005, he was villified for it and treated with utter contempt in the Commons. A decade later, politicians from all sides paid heartfelt tribute to him when he died, too soon.

It was only afterwards that we learned of the close friendship he had built with Alastair Campbell, the chief spin doctor of the Blair years.

Just after he died, Channel 4 news produced this snapshot of his life. It certainly brought a tear to my eye.

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Geoff Reid

The Skeleton in the Cupboard

By Geoff Reid | Mon 25th November 2019 - 11:15 am

On Referendum Night in 2016 I did a tour of the polling stations in Eccleshill Ward to get a late indication of turnout. I had done virtually nothing in the campaign since I had recently started a sabbatical from active party politics. It was our turn to have the Lord Mayor and the Council Group decided it should be me. However I felt that I could offer the campaign this small contribution because I would not be talking to voters.

What I saw at all the polling stations gave me a shock. I returned to the Lib Dem office and said,“There …

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Caron Lindsay

Two things we learned from last night’s Question Time

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 23rd November 2019 - 8:38 am

Jo Swinson had the hardest job out of all the leaders on the BBC Question Time special last night.

First of all, the audience was stacked against her:

While all the leaders took some tough questioning, at least Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn had somewhere in the vicinity of a third of the audience backing them. For some reason UK audiences seem to like Nicola Sturgeon, but they don’t have to live with her chaotic government’s neglect of pubic services. Trust me, the grass is not greener up here.

The audience was never going to back Jo – but people watching would have seen a leader who was absolutely crystal clear about her position. And, uniquely, she was also prepared to admit where we and she had got it wrong in the past. Compare that to Corbyn’s failure to acknowledge that he had failed to tackle anti-semitism in his own party and Johnson’s failure to accept the consequences of the casual racism with which he peppers so much of his writing.

So it’s hardly surprising that much of the right and left wing press are using up their column inches attacking Jo instead of promoting their own candidate.

Jo was very clear that she was the Remain candidate on the ballot paper.

The first thing we learned last night, if we didn’t know it already, is that Labour is not a remain party. Jeremy Corbyn announced he would stay neutral on this deal that he’s going to negotiate. That is an astounding failure of leadership. By refusing to take a position, he lets everybody down.

The second thing we learned is that Jo Swinson shows grace, candour and passion under pressure. She has the hardest job last night and answered with kindness, empathy and clarity.  She made sure that she is the unequivocal voice of remain in this election.

Her performance will go down very well in the seats we hope to gain to deprive Boris Johnson of a majority. Don’t just take my word for it:

https://twitter.com/mattforde/status/1197993709272489984?s=20

Diamonds are formed under pressure. Our Lib Dem diamond did us proud by going into that fire pit and handling the tough questioning much better than anyone else.

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Caron Lindsay

Some interesting features of Lib Dem ad targeting

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 22nd November 2019 - 1:30 pm

I have not had one single ad on Facebook encouraging me to vote for the Liberal Democrats. Not one.

But, when you think about it, what a waste of money it would be if I had.

Let’s face it, my vote for the party was never in doubt, and this one will be the proudest I have ever cast for the Liberal Democrats. Not only are we right on the biggest issue of our time, I’ve learned over 15 years’ acquaintance that Jo Swinson is ideally suited to be our Prime Minister. 

Yesterday the BBC’s Rory Cellan Jones offered an insight into how we were targeting our ads in individual seats:

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Patrick Maxwell

Election Diary No 2: The third week

By Patrick Maxwell | Fri 22nd November 2019 - 11:55 am

It would be accurate to say that this mid-point is destined to be the hardest part of the election campaign for the Liberal Democrats. After being blocked off the head-to-head leaders’ debates, they have seen the avaricious spending pledges of the two main parties taking much of the headlines. Labour are trying to capitalise on the issues of the NHS, and the Tories on how much money they plan to spend. It leaves Jo Swinson in a difficult position, before the crucial issues of Brexit, on which the party is strong, and the image of a brighter future, come to the fore in the days before December 12th. Or, at least that is what many will hope for. 

A recent poll suggested that voters like Swinson less as they see her in this campaign. This is extremely puzzling. On the one hand there are the extreme figures of Corbyn and Johnson, who have both spent their careers cosying up to shadowy, racist, and crooked figures, and are both highly establishment figures. On the other hand Swinson shows a new vision that is energetic and radical. Of course, any poll at election time should be taken with a large barrel of salt, but it is worrying news all the same. 

This leaves the party with a challenging question: how to cut through to voters angered at the disastrous policies of the right and left. When ‘Cleggmania’ erupted in 2010, it was the offer of an alternative to the two-party system that made the most traction, but the popular support did not transform into more seats in Parliament. Research has suggested that this time around Lib Dem support is more concentrated, and that offers hope that the archaic electoral system won’t hinder the real political gains possible.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Egos

By Tom Arms | Fri 22nd November 2019 - 8:55 am

Say what you like about Tricky Dicky Nixon. And you can say a lot. He was an egotistical, toilet-mouthed politician who abused the office of the presidency for his own personal political gain. He was also one smart cookie when it came to foreign policy.

His major saving grace, however, was that when faced with the inevitability of defeat, he resigned. For most of his five and a half years in office Nixon acted as if his personal interest and the national interest were one in the same. But in the end, he came to realise that the US constitution, the …

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US trade deal will mean higher drugs bills for NHS

By Duncan Curley | Wed 20th November 2019 - 10:25 am

President Trump is apparently to be told by Boris Johnson that the NHS is “off the table” in any negotiations with the UK Government over trade, but there are other ways in which a trade deal can be exploited by the USA, which will inevitably result in a higher drugs bill for the NHS.  

In February 2019, the USA published its specific negotiating objectives for a post-Brexit trade deal with the UK.  They include the following: “Seek provisions governing intellectual property rights that reflect a standard of protection similar to that found in U.S. law”.  Intellectual property rights were then the subject of the US-UK trade discussions on 25th July 2019 (which are the subject of redacted documents produced after a freedom of information request to the DTI).  In the context of medicines, the USA will therefore no doubt be asking the UK to implement a link (in law) between pharmaceutical patents and the drug regulatory approval process (“patent linkage”), such as the Americans have.  

The US experience shows that patent linkage can seriously delay the time at which cheaper generic drugs enter the market, whilst any patent disputes are resolved.  It is not supported in the European Union and we currently have no such system in the UK.  Bear in mind that a generic drug may be priced at a small fraction of the price of the same drug before generic entry and one gets an approximate flavour of the millions currently saved by the NHS through its use of generic pharmaceuticals.  

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Chris Howden

A defence of liberalism

By Chris Howden | Wed 20th November 2019 - 8:55 am

“Socialism is the only ideology fit for the working class”

These were the words I was told the day after the 2017 General Election- and to an extent, they were true. For as far as the eye could see across South and West Yorkshire, the only real option voters had was to vote for Labour. ‘My patch’ was nothing more than a patchwork quilt of safe red seats, Trotskyist CLPs, and statist, unambitious, complacent Labour-run councils. As you may have imagined, I rejected this dogma. I saw nothing optimistic about Corbyn’s left-populism and his commitment to the growth of the state, whilst the arrogance of which my local Labour Party machinery had governed these one-party states had instilled in me a great suspicion of their supposed attachment to progressive politics.

Instead, I turned to liberalism. Ambitious, confident liberalism- an ideology that can enrich and empower the lives of all citizens. I’d be lying if I said I could remember the single event that tipped me into this decision, but the quiet dignity and humility of Nick Clegg’s concession speech ensured that days later, I was a signed-up member of the Liberal Democrats. By rejecting Labour’s state-socialism, I was committing myself to the fundamental values of freedom, liberty and democracy which can only ever be found in the Liberal Democrats. I was supporting a party that would stand up for individual rights and freedoms; that would radically transform our unfair, broken politics; that believed in free markets and free trade as a force for good; and that recognised the state can be used as a tool to ensure opportunity for all. Instinctively internationalist and green to its roots, the Liberal Democrats remain the true radicals of British politics, and the only credible alternative to the statism and small ‘c’ conservatism of Labour and the Tories.

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The Voice

Jo’s ITV interview – the highlights

By The Voice | Tue 19th November 2019 - 11:07 pm

Here are the higlights of Jo’s ITV interview:

On uniting the country by tacking the issues that made Leave voters feel so dissatisfied in the first place:

And on tackling the climate emergency and how the EU helps us:

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The Voice

Jo’s take on the #itvdebate

By The Voice | Tue 19th November 2019 - 9:23 pm

Jo Swinson has taken to Twitter to make her points in the Leaders’ debate from which she has been excluded. A shout out to the people who so quickly cut together excerpts from the debate and clips of Jo putting the alternative view for people to share on social media.

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Rajin Chowdhury

You need to eat lunch and make mistakes

By Rajin Chowdhury | Tue 19th November 2019 - 10:25 am

One of the lessons I try to convey to junior doctors (or in my case and after nearly a decade, more junior junior doctors) is the importance of getting lunch. If it’s 11am, the ward round has finished and you don’t have urgent jobs to do, I don’t care if it’s the morning – go and have your lunch. 

The nature of a hospital is that you never know what is round the corner. If you don’t eat now, you might not eat again until you leave and if it’s busy, that might not be until 7pm. That is bad for you and bad for your patients. It is a dereliction of your duty of care to them. 

It is just over 3 weeks until polling day. You need to ensure you, your candidate, your staff, your volunteers and everybody involved is healthy and not going hungry. It is bad for you and your campaign if you do not eat when you get the chance. It is a dereliction of your duty of care to it.

Imagine turning to current or former healthcare workers, paramedics, firefighters, police officers, members of the armed services, or members of the security services and saying “this is an emergency and lunch can’t wait”, about whatever it is you think can’t wait and imagine their reaction. I have told people their loved ones are not going to leave hospital, attended so many cardiac arrests that I have forgotten most of them, and have had adults and children literally die in my hands. Imagine telling me what you’re about to do is an emergency.

This doesn’t mean the committee room on polling day should turn into a place to have a conversation. It isn’t – go stand outside if you want to just have a chat and stop asking the people who are putting the data in “how’s it going?” (even if you’re the candidate). Let staff and volunteers do their work.

But if you’re a person with authority in the party, your volunteers and staff are going to make mistakes. Perhaps you think the best way to get things done is by shouting at people. Perhaps you don’t think people should be making mistakes. Perhaps you’re working full-time and nobody who works for you has admitted a mistake to you so far. If any of these are true, resign – you are incompetent and have no place in professional politics.

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Newsmoggie

Election fun: Campaign Trail companions

By Newsmoggie | Mon 18th November 2019 - 1:30 pm

Meet Tigger. He is helping Edinburgh North and Leith’s Elaine Ford write blue envelopes.

A cold, dark Winter election has its bright spots and many of them involve animals.

Alex Cole-Hamilton made a friend while out canvassing too..

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Jwamer Bakhtiar Mustafa

Many British Kurds will be voting for the Liberal Democrats on 12th December.

By Jwamer Bakhtiar Mustafa | Mon 18th November 2019 - 10:25 am

In recent years British Kurds have been increasingly interested in and attracted to the Liberal Democrat vision for a liberal, tolerant and open society. This trend continues to grow with many reaching out with questions on party policy and how they can help elect a liberal government.

The UK 2011 national census revealed that approximately 48,000 British people had identified themselves as Kurdish under the ethnicity self designation question, although the number of British Kurds is thought to be considerably higher today. Kurds constitute a significant diaspora in the United Kingdom and across the rest of Europe, Kurdish homelands are located in south eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, eastern Iran and northern Syria.

British Kurds have historically been politically active but often through necessity rather than choice, periodically taking to the streets of Europe’s capitals whenever Kurdish lives or rights  were perceived to be under threat in the Middle East. Recent examples include rallies in London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris in opposition to the Turkish military offensive against Kurdish administered area Rojava in Syria.

A pivotal factor in garnering support is our clear Lib Dem stance on foreign policy issues, formulated in part by members of Federal International Relations Committee, and the active support of legitimate Kurdish rights by prominent party leaders including the late Lord Ashdown who in 2014 called the UK to “Support the Kurds by all means we can”, and Liberal Democrat MEP Irina Von Wiese who worked on getting a strong EU response to Turkey’s incursion in 2019. This record has been and will continue to be key in winning votes, especially in London where the 2011 census informs us that over 20,000 Kurds reside.

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Caron Lindsay

Meet your new Federal committee members – internal election results declared

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 17th November 2019 - 10:58 am

Last night, after a long day of hard work by brilliant LDHQ staff, the Federal Committee results were declared.

Party members had been voting for 3 weeks to choose members of the Federal Board, Federal Policy Committee, Federal Conference Committee, Federal International Relations Committee and ALDE Council delegations. Principal councillor reps to Federal Board and Federal Policy Committee, the English rep to the Federal Board and Scottish reps to both Committees were also chosen.

You can see the full results including all the STV tables here.

Those elected were:

Federal Board

Alice Thomas
April Preston
Candy Piercy
Caron Lindsay
Elaine Bagshaw
Gerald Vernon-Jackson
James Gurling
Jo Hayes
Joyce Onstad
Kishan Devani*
Luke Cawley-Harrison
Neil Fawcett
Roisin Miller
Ruby Chow
Simon McGrath

* Note: This candidate was promoted into the list of elected candidates due to gender diversity requirements.

English Rep to Federal Board

Lisa-Maria Bornemann

Scottish Rep to Federal Board

Cllr Kevin Lang

Principal Councillor rep to Federal Board

Cllr Chris White

Federal Policy Committee

Alisdair Calder-McGregor
Alyssa Gilbert
Aria Babu
Belinda Brooks-Gordon
Catherine Royce
Christine Cheng
Duncan Brack
Elizabeth Jewkes
Helen Cross
Jeremy Hargreaves
Mohsin Khan
Richard Cole
Robert Harrison*
Sally Burnell
Tara Copeland
* Note: This candidate was promoted into the list of elected candidates due to gender diversity requirements.

Scottish Rep to Federal Policy Committee

Elinor Anderson

Principal Councillor reps to Federal Policy Committee

Cllr Peter Thornton
Cllr Susan Juned

Federal Conference Committee

Bex Scott
Cara Jenkinson
Chris Adams
Chris Maines
Geoff Payne
Liz Lynne
Joe Otten
John Bridges
Jon Ball
Joe Toovey*
Nick da Costa
Rachelle Shepherd-Dubey
* Note: This candidate was promoted into the list of elected candidates due to ability diversity requirements.

Federal International Relations Committee

Doreen Huddart
Hannah Bettsworth
Jonathan Fryer
Phillipa Leslie-Jones
Phil Bennion
Ruth Coleman Taylor

ALDE Council

Belinda Brooks-Gordon
Hannah Bettsworth
Jonathan Fryer
Joyce Onstad
Merlene Emmerson
Phillip Bennion

Congratulations to everyone who was elected and commiserations to those who missed out this time.

Some quick observations on the results.

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Caron Lindsay

Luciana: EU staff critical to our NHS

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 16th November 2019 - 8:14 am

Lib Dem Health Spokesperson Luciana Berger has spoken out about how Brexit would harm our NHS, emphasising how reliant we are on EU doctors and nurses. Analysis done by the Labour Party highlights that NHS staff work a million hours of unpaid overtime every week.

That doesn’t surprise me. When my husband was seriously ill three years ago, in the 51 nights he was in hospital, only once did I see one member of staff actually leave at the end of their shift. And the situation has got much worse since then as we lose thousands of EU nurses every year.

Luciana criticised Labour’s approach to Brexit:

A key reason NHS staff are working overtime is because of the serious shortages in the number of doctors and nurses working in the NHS. Part of that shortage is due to the net loss of 5,000 EU nurses in the last two years alone.

Only yesterday, Labour failed yet again to confirm their position on freedom of movement. With the NHS reliant on 10,000 EU doctors and 20,000 EU nurses, Labour’s support for Brexit is baffling as it will be so damaging for our NHS and hardworking staff.

In the past week we have learnt about the Conservative plan to impose a Nurse Tax on any new EU health professional coming to treat NHS patients. The stakes could not be higher. Labour and the Conservatives must stop being so irresponsible with our NHS.

The Liberal Democrats will stop Brexit to protect our NHS. We will build a brighter future by investing an extra £35 billion in our NHS by adding a penny on income tax. In addition we will implement a national recruitment strategy to ensure we never again suffer shortages of nurses, doctors and other health professionals.

If Labour are bad, the Tories are terrible. They would charge nurses who come to this country to use the NHS they work for. This would cost their families thousands of pounds.

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David Boyle

Is it time to exhume equidistance?

By David Boyle | Fri 15th November 2019 - 10:25 am

Anyone who was involved in Liberal Democrat politics in the early 1990s will remember what was then the controversial word ‘equidistance’.

It was excised from the party’s playlist in 1993 on the grounds that, only when the Labour Party is electable that Tory voters will feel safe enough to switch to the Lib Dems. We will see whether Paddy Ashdown was right about that next month.

But then, it may be that the situation is different these days. Equidistance between right and left could make a comeback when both Labour and Conservative parties are suddenly equally extreme.

But then, as far as the Lib Dems are concerned, there are three different kinds of equidistance.

#1. Political equidistance. This was the concept that Ashdown banned a generation ago. And you can see why. If, for example, Corbyn goes left, then the centre would move with him. This kind of equidistance arguably hands over your centrist positioning to the extremes.

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