Category Archives: Op-eds

William Francis

Towards a national land value tax

By William Francis | Wed 4th March 2020 - 6:00 pm

To quote our party’s anthem “Why should we beg for work and let the landlords take the best? Make them pay their taxes on the land; we’ll risk the rest”.

Aside from voting reform, no one policy is as central to the Liberal Democrats as a land value tax. This should be a key policy for any platform our party promotes.

As of 2018 half of the UK ‘s net worth is tied up in land, amounting to some £4.9 trillion of wealth. More so than in many rich democracies. Given the large-scale wealth inequalities facing the country today, the adverse effects of artificially high land values (such as higher cost for entry for starting businesses, and the promotion of rent-seeking), and the growing need for more public spending (be it on existing institutions like the NHS, schools, local government or the Police or bold new projects like a Citizens Income) a land value tax kills many birds with one stone.

The question remains what form it should take, to which I have a few ideas.

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Jasneet Samrai

Why the Lib Dems’ ‘School Toilets’ Bill won’t work

By Jasneet Samrai | Wed 4th March 2020 - 3:00 pm

School toilet access in lessons is an issue that I, as an individual, am very passionate about. Not being allowed to go to the toilet, due to a teacher saying no as a blanket school policy; is something that I have spoken out about publicly on my social media platforms, as seen here. Not only am I a member of the party, but I also hold a role at Centre Think Tank and have been researching this issue as part of my work. While I do have some questions about the origin of this campaign, this isn’t the reason as to why I wouldn’t say I like this parliamentary Bill. Instead, my hesitations come from the serious practical issues this Bill will encounter, both in terms of its implementation in schools and its ability to be passed into law.

The current Bill itself isn’t designed to change the law and each curriculum, but instead act as a ‘show-motion’; which is one that carries weight and can shape opinion on this issue, yet doesn’t actually make letting students go to the toilet during lessons mandatory. Instead of giving students the ‘right’ which has been spoken about, a lot by the party on social media, this Bill does the opposite. The Bill itself even says that it relies on teachers ‘common sense’, which means that students aren’t legally protected. The power to decide whether students are allowed to go to the toilet during lessons still relies on teachers; this Bill doesn’t change the current issue of teachers not allowing their students to go to the bathroom. This has obvious consequences, such as students bleeding through their clothes when on their period (as happened with me) or even students being in pain due to holding their pee, perhaps even wetting themselves in some circumstances.

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Obituary – David Hughes

By Gavin Grant | Wed 4th March 2020 - 8:30 am


David Hughes died suddenly at a Party meeting last Saturday. David spoke with his usual with passion, eloquence and good sense. But there was far more to my old friend.

In 1973 the St Paul’s School pupil left London for Lincoln. Labour MP Dick Taverne had resigned to fight a by-election as a pro-European, Independent Social Democrat. Taverne won, and David’s lifelong commitment to liberalism began.

In 1975 he was elected Student Union President, one of only four Liberal Presidents.‎ I was one of the others.‎ As Presidents-elect, we sought each other out. …

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Mark Johnson

Why the Conservative Party can no longer be considered the natural party of business

By Mark Johnson | Tue 3rd March 2020 - 8:30 am

Our market economy is certainly far from fair but as a result of a series of poor Government decisions, it is going to get a whole lot worse, for businesses and private citizens. The Conservative Party has often been considered the natural party of business, but a raft of policy outcomes on the horizon means this may no longer be the case.

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Suzanne Fletcher

Food for thought on “the brightest and the best”

By Suzanne Fletcher | Mon 2nd March 2020 - 2:34 pm

In the Guardian letters columns recently, there were good letters from Michael Meadowcroft, Mike Cashman, Malcolm Pim, and Guri Singh on the new points based system for migrants.

All expressed views on those that the Government is saying it would welcome, such as doctors and highly skilled people, but however making points that we do need to think about encouraging them to leave countries where their skills are needed.

Another issue is that we have many asylum seekers in the UK, who are not welcome in their own countries, to put it mildly, and have fled here for sanctuary and safety. …

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David Warren

After Orpington

By David Warren | Sun 1st March 2020 - 10:38 am

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In 1962 the best days of the Liberal Party must have seemed like a long way behind them. Decline had been the order of the day for decades, byelections were not scenes of success, a lone win in 1958 at Torrington being their first gain since 1929! The National Liberals who had split way remained a separate force propped up by the Tories and despite a new leader breathing some life into the party the national share of the vote at the previous General Election had been less than six per cent with only six MPs returned.

Then came Orpington, a suburban constituency whose Conservative incumbent had been appointed to a judgeship causing a byelection. The Liberal candidate was the young Eric Lubbock who had been elected as a local Councillor a couple of years previously. The Tory government was going through a period of mid term unpopularity not a surprise given they had been in office for some time. However nobody expected them to lose but they did lose in a spectacular fashion. A swing of over 20% saw Lubbock turn a Conservative majority of over 14,000 into a Liberal one of more than 7,000.

After the result there was much talk of it being an indication of the changes that were place in British society and the existence of a new type of voter Orpington man who shunned the class based politics of the two major parties. The expected Liberal revival didn’t quite materialise but the 1964 General Election an election which Labour won with a wafer thin majority did see an increase in both the share of the vote and the number of MPs.

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John McHugo

Idlib – time for some Liberal guilt

By John McHugo | Sat 29th February 2020 - 3:58 pm

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Why do we forget about Syria so easily? The answer is probably that, most of the time, it does not matter to us. After all, Lloyd-George (a Liberal prime minister) shamefully agreed to the Anglo-French partition of the former Ottoman provinces into mandates in April 1920 and handed Syria over to France – even though this was not what most Syrians wanted.  Since then, it hasn’t been our problem, has it?

After the Arab Spring reached Damascus in March 2011, the West assumed Bashar al Assad would soon be gone, and let Syrians think we would support them if they managed to throw him out. No formal promises were made – just hints – but Syrians looked to the West and some may have been encouraged to join those rising in rebellion as a result.

I remember how our party conference voted against military intervention after the chemicals weapon attack in August 2013. From talking to people who voted down the motion, “we’ll only risk making things worse” seemed to be the general view, despite the passionate urgings of our leadership. As someone who loves Syria and has some knowledge of the country, I wondered why we were worried about a few hundred deaths from chemicals. Well over a hundred thousand had already been slaughtered by the country’s army. The answer, of course, was that chemical weapons might one day be used against us – so we didn’t want Bashar al Assad to have them. But it was relatively OK for him to bomb his own people.

Then, of course, came the flow of refugees to Europe. Germany provided moral leadership, but would the UK and most of the rest of Europe step up? Not on your Nelly!

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Richard Whelan

Support requirements for disabled candidates with complex needs

By Richard Whelan | Sat 29th February 2020 - 12:41 pm

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While much has been made about the success the Liberal Democrats have had in getting more women and BAME activists approved and selected as Parliamentary Candidates in winnable seats, little, if any, progress has been made in the approval and selection of winnable Parliamentary Candidates with Disabilities who, because of the complex needs that many of them have, require a significant amount of support just to reach the same levels of attainment as their able-bodied counterparts.

From my own experience, as an approved candidate with a physical disability, part of the problem, I suspect, concerns the lingering worries that persist among many local party members over whether a person with a physical disability, like myself, could carry out the duties that would be expected of them as a Parliamentary Candidate, and later MP, should they get elected at the subsequent General Election.

These worries are only natural, especially if a local party has never had such a candidate stand for them before.  What though has to be realised is that any support will depend on the duties that a particular local party will expect that candidate to perform, which will only become apparent once they have been selected, and an agreed campaign plan has been formulated, that sets out their role and their relationship to the other roles on their campaign team.

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Larry Ngan

The Carrie Lam report exposed how the ‘Executive Dominant’ political system failed Hong Kong

By Larry Ngan | Sat 29th February 2020 - 10:11 am

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Throughout 2019, Hong Kong was in midst of a political crisis. The non-consulted Extradition Bill triggered protests against the government, then entrenched by police brutality. At the dawn of 2020, the city was hit with the Coronavirus crisis, and the government created a crisis of its own by mismanaging its economic, health and homeland security policies.

Instead of concentrating on protecting the citizens, Chief Executive Carrie Lam seemingly put her effort in filing a complaint on the performance of her own government to the Beijing authorities. The report was leaked to Apple Daily (a Hong Kong-based Chinese language newspaper) and it caused an uproar in the mass media towards her character.

Apple Daily reported on 22/02/2020 that Carrie Lam laid the blame not only on opposition parties and “radical elements” of the protest movements, she fiercely attacked her Executive Council for being incompetent and pro-government parties for being unsupportive, while some pro-government legislators even criticised her with personal attacks. She also asked Beijing to allow those from Hong Kong who were stuck in Wuhan to return home, so ‘the Hong Kongers can feel Beijing actually cared about them’.

This report exposed a few weaknesses in Hong Kong’s political system:

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Katharine Pindar

“Society has stopped improving”

By Katharine Pindar | Fri 28th February 2020 - 4:58 pm

That is the bleak message of Professor Sir Michael Marmot in his major new report on health inequality. Entitled ‘Health Equity in England: the Marmot Review 10 Years On’, it assesses lack of progress in the last decade, since his review in 2010 entitled ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’.

He writes:

Since 2010 life expectancy has stalled: this has not happened since at least 1900. If health has stopped improving it is a sign that society has stopped improving.

This damage to health has been largely unnecessary.

Health is closely linked to the conditions in which people are born, live, work and age, and inequities in power, money and resources.

He repeats the well-understood expectation that, “The more deprived the area, the shorter the life expectancy”, but finds that inequalities in life expectancy have increased. “Among women in the most deprived areas, life expectancy fell between 2010/12 and 2016-18.” For both men and women, he continues, the largest decreases in life expectancy were seen in the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods in the North-East, and the largest increases in the least deprived 10% of neighbourhoods in London.

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Tom Arms

Viral conspiracy – Observations of an ex pat

By Tom Arms | Fri 28th February 2020 - 11:55 am

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Every week I do a programme for American radio. It is an hour-long midweek discussion of world affairs. The other half of the discussion is dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter Lockwood Phillips. I am the loony London liberal, and I am assured that a large number of radios are splattered with rotten tomatoes every time my dulcet tones waft over the air waves.

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Geoff Reid

Getting beyond “All politicians are liars”

By Geoff Reid | Fri 28th February 2020 - 10:37 am

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The most dangerous of political myths in a still functioning democracy is  “They’re all the same”.  It goes hand in hand with “All politicians are liars”. I believe that we have to be explicit in insisting that in our country a small number of our politicians really do tell lies but most do not. There are plenty whose ideas, values and political aims we can disagree with but that does not mean they are liars. Someone’s interpretation of an issue may appear to be false but that is not about telling lies.

There is of course a grey area between truth and deceit. If people are to be equipped to make democratic choices there is inevitably going to be a place for the simplification of some issues. In a representative democracy people make their choices in the ballot box and the people who get elected carry on the debate in more detail. That’s why we pay them and give them really good research facilities.

There is even a limited case to be made for seeing “spin” as a positive so long as there are competing spins. But that is not lying. Tom Barney in the latest Liberator rightly questions the extent to which our campaigning depends on a PR model. We need to clean up our act but we cannot get away from deliberately shaping messages than can communicate clearly and effectively.

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Rob Davidson

Liberalism has almost lost – we must act before it’s too late

By Rob Davidson | Thu 27th February 2020 - 4:56 pm

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Today I learned about the ‘anti-Greta’, a 19 year old climate change denier that is being promoted by right-wing think tanks in an attempt to diffuse, equivocate and derail the traction that Greta Thunberg and her message has gained in the global press. This is a proven tactic and there is a right-wing network that is engaged in this strategy all the time. There isn’t anyone doing it on behalf of liberalism and that’s a major reason behind why we’re losing.

The recent Australia bushfire crisis is a case in point. There have been several reports that show mainstream actors like Rupert Murdoch deliberately equivocate and obfuscate the strong, science-backed narratives about how climate change increases the bushfire intensity.

I’ve been researching these campaigns too.

Within days of the first major climate-change news stories breaking, armies of Twitter bots and fake agents had coordinated behind an #ArsonEmergency counter-narrative, supported by Murdoch and the unchecked proclamations of right-wing politicians, as well as a network of spurious ‘news’ websites, supposed ‘think-tanks’ and well-nurtured right-wing pundits and commentators.

The DeSmog website shows several articles highlighting the networks of ‘think tanks’ and ‘institutes’ on the right that promote climate-change-denial and, often, Brexit and other right-wing agendas. Take, for example, 55 Tufton Street – a Westminster office address that on its own hosts a network of right-wing influencers from the Tax Payers Alliance to the Global Warming Policy Foundation and which once hosted Vote Leave and Leave Means Leave.

The process is simple: what pseudo-legitimate ‘think tanks’ say, teams of ‘news sites’ report which armies of bots and pundits then promote, amplify and normalise – then significant percentages of voters trust.

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Ben Rich

Politics as an Article of Faith

By Ben Rich | Thu 27th February 2020 - 12:26 pm

For tribal politicians the primacy of one’s party is an article of faith but the 2019 election must give many loyal Lib Dem a dose of political agnosticism, if not atheism.  Even the most committed party member should be asking themselves what the party is for or if it still serves any purpose at all.

At the least it must be a mouthpiece for liberal ideals of openness, inclusivity and justice.  But it must be more than just a cry in the wilderness.   Politics need to deliver change, either directly in government or indirectly by influencing others.   At the moment the Liberal Democrats are capable of neither, nor do they look capable of reinventing themselves.

From 1945 onwards the old Liberal Party had little interest in direct political power nationally, instead seeing itself as a political think tank, churning out detailed policies to be adopted by others.

Only with the advent of the Alliance did the party once again take a serious interest in national power.  But when Blair adopted large parts of its constitutional agenda it was bereft of new liberal insights, while uniquely liberal ideas – such as a citizen’s income – were quietly abandoned in the name of political pragmatism.

By 1997, the party’s most prominent policy was to raise tax to help pay for education, a technocratic proposal.   Still it was a message that appealed to the campaigners, enabling them almost to double their Parliamentary representation despite a declining poll rating.  For this reason, the party assumed a pride in its campaigning  ability to deliver electoral success against the odds.

In fact, this remains a self-deception.  One has to look back to the 2001 election to find the party winning seats ‘against the head’ in rugby parlance and more often than not it failed to take advantage of polling advances.

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Stuart Bourne

A House of Specialists – A New House of Lords

By Stuart Bourne | Wed 26th February 2020 - 12:00 pm

House of Lords reform has been a cornerstone liberal democrat policy since I can remember and has been a hot topic in the country for the last year. Whether it’s the issues of unelected hereditary peers, promoting political cronies, or the many expense scandals. All parties now agree that if you had to design a second house today, you wouldn’t choose the one we have now. So if you could design the second house from scratch, what would it look like? Well, I’m going to have some fun and describe how I think it should be —my own House of …

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Michael Kitching

When tactics become strategy

By Michael Kitching | Wed 26th February 2020 - 8:45 am

The great strategist B H  Lidell Hart wrote: “The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.” We can take from this many of the problems facing our party today. Following a decade of relative failure, we face an existential crisis and are in dire need of a rethink.

Many, including me, have written here in recent months about specific failings we’ve made, things we’ve overlooked or miscalculations that have occurred. But I think that much about how we operate as a party is fundamentally flawed – because we fail …

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Alan Muhammed

The Next Lib Dem USP – Build More Houses

By Alan Muhammed | Tue 25th February 2020 - 12:30 pm

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In my last post on Lib Dem Voice I touched on the current soul-searching going on within our Party, focusing on future electoral strategy. However, a successful electoral strategy has no purpose if we have no vision of what we would do with any further power it may bring. Now that the fight to keep the UK in the EU has been lost, the Liberal Democrats are in need of a new mission.

I can think of none better than solving the country’s housing crisis. The current lack of housing in the UK contributes to a number of the country’s wider problems, and so to tackle the housing crisis would go some distance towards making our country greener, healthier, more productive, and more equal.

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Lord William Wallace

Revisiting Citizen ID

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 25th February 2020 - 11:50 am

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It’s deeply heretical for a Liberal Democrat to question our long-held opposition to formal verification in the relationship between the citizen and the state.  But there are at least three reasons why Liberal Democrats should now be considering a shift in our long-standing opposition to some form of citizen ID.

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Jonathan Fryer

Identifying the Party’s International Priorities

By Jonathan Fryer | Tue 25th February 2020 - 9:30 am

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Over the weekend the new Federal International Relations Committee (FIRC) met to discuss its priorities and strategy for the next three years.

The Committee’s prime purpose is managing the Party’s relations with like-minded parties, individuals and institutions in other countries, not least through our membership of the European (ALDE) and global (Liberal International – LI) Liberal families.

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Ruth Dombey

“Stop blaming local government for the housing crisis”

By Ruth Dombey | Mon 24th February 2020 - 5:22 pm

More than a million homes granted planning permission in the past decade have not yet been built, according to new analysis by the Local Government Association.

Latest figures show that 2,564,600 units have been granted planning permission by councils since 2009/10 while only 1,530,680 have been completed.

The number of planning permissions granted for new homes has almost doubled since 2012/13 with councils approving 9 in 10 applications.

While in some cases there will be a time lag between permission being granted and homes being built, new build completions have only increased by half as much in that time. Encouragingly, completions last …

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Johnny McDermott

The real north

By Johnny McDermott | Mon 24th February 2020 - 3:07 pm

I have been feeling grim about the prospects of the union, should there be another referendum. I’m trying to figure out what we can do to stop it breaking apart, beyond the empty soundbite of “working together for now, cross-party, towards a better Scotland, regardless of its constitutional state”. Basically making some progress on “the day job” stuff for a while. To do that, we need to figure out what it is nationalists want, because like it or not, there is no Scottish Parliamentary election result in 2021 that doesn’t see us having to find some common ground with …

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Mohsin Khan

Protecting travellers who miss flights because of airport security delays

By Mohsin Khan | Mon 24th February 2020 - 12:45 pm

Imagine you’ve turned up at the airport 3 hours early for your flight. It could be a much-anticipated and saved-for holiday for the whole family or a quick business trip.

You’ve taken out travel insurance which covers you for delays – but then, just as you are getting onto the plane, you’re stopped and questioned by officials for security reasons.

You’re not detained, all’s well, and you’re allowed to fly – but the length of time you were questioned for means you’ve now missed your flight.

You might think your travel insurer will cover you for losses in buying a …

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Alexandrine Kantor

When the caveats within the definition of the IHRA are misused

By Alexandrine Kantor | Mon 24th February 2020 - 9:15 am

I wanted to share my experience of submitting a motion defining the definitions of Antisemitism (IHRA) and Islamophobia (APPG). But I decided to not add the caveats (mentioned in this Liberal Democrat Voice article by John Kelly).

You can read my speeches and the motion here.

Firstly, the IHRA definition is clear that it is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel and lastly, I did not want to single out the Jewish community over geopolitics that they have no link with, no control over, and are not responsible for. As we did adopt the APPG definition of Islamophobia without clarification …

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Stuck in a car

By Tom Arms | Fri 21st February 2020 - 10:30 am

I have just spent two days in a cramped Vauxhall Astra chauffering my brother, his wife, her sister and her brother-in-law. It was an interesting experience. They are from the Bible Belt states of North Carolina and Georgia respectively and dyed-in-the-wool Republican Trump supporters. They regard me as a beyond redemption loony liberal.

The first day they were recovering from jet lag and weren’t up to political battle. But as we drove out to Oxford on the second day swords were crossed. The group’s champion was brother-in-law, Paul, a Christian missionary with a political science degree. We disagreed, but the disagreements were illuminating.

As expected, the discussion focused on Trump. Here are a couple of highlights:

Trump and the rule of law – I maintained that Trump is riding roughshod over the American constitution and the rule of law as evidenced by his refusal to allow White House staff to testify in the Senate Impeachment trial.

Paul’s response – The Democrats in the House of Representatives had their chance to call staff. They could have gone through the courts and forced the White House to respect the subpoenas. They chose not to, so they have lost the right to complain

Myself – If they had pursued the issue through the courts it would have taken months, perhaps even years.

Paul – That is the way the legal system works. You can’t complain that Trump is riding roughshod over the law and then deny him access to due process.

Myself – Hmm…

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Paul Reynolds

Assessing the Johnson Government’s new reform narrative

By Paul Reynolds | Thu 20th February 2020 - 5:19 pm

Over the last week the Johnson government’s narrative approach to reforms in the UK  has become more clear.

Johnson’s personal views on eugenics and poverty are a matter of record. ‘The poor being poor due to low IQ’ brings psychological comfort to those born into the luxuries of inherited wealth and private education. So blaming everything on Cummings might be unwise.

Policy more than personal views are however, our subject of concern. At last, the government’s underlying propositions can be clearly stated, as follows:

1. The UK’s low productivity problem is caused by a surfeit of unskilled migrant workers from Eastern Europe, enabling firms to avoid investment in new technology and avoid employee training.

2. UK poverty is the result of low IQ among sections of the population and of a self-perpetuating underclass, aided by single mums and teenage pregnancies.

3. Whilst UK unemployment is low, there are 8million ‘economically inactive’ citizens who, via further welfare reforms and eugenics, can be reduced in number and induced to take up the low paid jobs formerly taken by EU migrants, receiving training by employers who can no longer access low-skilled EU labour.

4. The core aim of a new immigration points system is thus to raise productivity and raise wage levels, and in the process reduce the cost of in-work benefits.

5. Increased national capital spending by the state will stimulate growth from construction contracts and compensate for the negative effects of EU tariffs and other barriers, creating demand for indigenous low skilled labour, (at least until such time as new global trade deals are in place)

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Michael Kitching

Listening to people about immigration

By Michael Kitching | Thu 20th February 2020 - 3:11 pm

When I wrote another Lib Dem Voice article a couple of months ago to share some thoughts following the General Election, I had one line in it that said we need to come up with Liberal answers to some people’s genuine concerns about how immigration has affected them, beyond calling them racist. Following that I was called racist myself and told that I shouldn’t be welcome in the Lib Dems.

So before this article I feel it necessary to say strongly, I support the free movement of people, and we should fight tooth and nail for it. In fact if anything, a freer and more open system that encompasses far more of the world would clearly be of great economic and social value to our country and our freedoms.

We cannot, however, deny that a large part of the electoral coalition the Conservatives have built, is around concerns about how migration has affected local communities. Many of these voters are undoubtedly people who in the past ten or twenty years, voted Lib Dem.

In many cases, particularly in rural communities where populations have increased by 20% over the last decade or so, there are very real issues. These stem from a lack of housing to take account of inward migration, a lack of investment in basic public services and a clash of culture and language in some cases, when previously entirely homogenous communities are changed so quickly. We should, of course, support the rights of individuals seeking to work and live in the UK. We should also work with communities to ensure that we invest to reduce the negative effects that some can see. Public service improvements should come alongside new migration, not in reaction to it twenty years later.

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Larry Ngan

Why we should do more to support the Hong Kong protest movement

By Larry Ngan | Wed 19th February 2020 - 6:30 pm

The 2019 General Election Liberal Democrats manifesto calls for standing to a peaceful world; not only because this is our value, but also everyone deserves a better world. When we jointly face challenges in our support for liberal democracies, stable partnerships are often fostered. One such alliance calls for “Honouring our legal and moral duty to the people of Hong Kong by reopening the British National Overseas Passport offer, extending the scheme to provide the right to abode to all holders”. Nonetheless, do words suffice in supporting the civilians in Hong Kong who are among those standing in defiance of brutal dictatorships?

Since the 2019 autumn conference, the situation in Hong Kong deteriorated substantially. By the end of December 2019, more than 7000 protesters had been arrested according to the figures from Hong Kong Police Force. For all that, it did not include those who disappeared after arrests, or those being transported to Mainland China. Two thirds of those arrested were between eleven to twenty five years old, and half of them were students. Some who were reported to have disappeared were later found dead under suspicious circumstances. New York Times investigations revealed police tactics on the day nearly caused a mass stampede as police deployed tear gas without warning, cornering civilians into a dead end. Demonstrators in that incident adverted mass injuries by shattering glass and forcibly entering an office building for refuge.

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Mark Pack

Getting our finances right – report back from February Board meeting

By Mark Pack | Wed 19th February 2020 - 5:15 pm

At our latest meeting, the Federal Board welcomed our newest member, Lisa Smart, who has been elected the new chair of the Federal Communications and Elections Committee (FCEC), taking over from James Gurling. Welcome on Board, Lisa!

We also welcomed back to the Board Tony Harris as Registered Treasurer and Chair of the Federal Finance and Resources Committee (FFRC) and Mike German as Federal Treasurer.

Details of the outcome of elections for other key posts around the party are available on the party website. Congratulations to everyone elected and thank you also to everyone else who applied, helping to give us a strong set of names to choose from.

After our January Board meeting agreed the timings and got the ball rolling on key elements for our success this year, such as an independent elections review and our leadership election, the Board concentrated this time in particular on the Federal Party’s budget.

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William Francis

What is our approach to Co-determination?

By William Francis | Wed 19th February 2020 - 3:40 pm

As a party, we have long advocated a cooperative relationship between labour and capital rather than an adversarial and hierarchical one, where the investor, the manager, and the worker are partners in the industry.
Such a vision was expressed in our 1964 manifesto, with the statement:
“Employees must be given a share in the decisions and profits of the companies in which they work. should be represented on the board of directors, or on a joint supervisory council”.

This vision has deeper roots in the Party’s history for in 1908, the Liberal government passed the Port of London Authority (PLA) Act, which mandated worker representation in the corporate governance of the PLA.
We should do more to revive this facet of ourselves, particularly with regards to co-determination.

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David Warren

Death In The Afternoon

By David Warren | Tue 18th February 2020 - 12:56 pm

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Just before I was born my parents made the decision to move from their home town of Reading to an isolated South Oxfordshire village which is where I grew up.

My widowed grandmother also joined us which was great as I was very fond of her. I attended the local primary school which on the whole I enjoyed, reading was a passion.

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