Category Archives: Op-eds

Jonathan Fryer

Iran: War is not the answer

By Jonathan Fryer | Sat 4th January 2020 - 10:08 am


Embed from Getty Images

The assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad international airport, on the specific orders of US President Donald Trump, risks enflaming the whole Persian Gulf region and maybe beyond.

I am no supporter of what the deceased General’s Al Quds brigade has been up to in Iraq and Syria, but the extrajudicial killing of a such a senior Iranian figure is reckless beyond words. And counter-productive.

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Max Wilkinson

In praise of opponents – and a plea for the future

By Max Wilkinson | Thu 2nd January 2020 - 3:00 pm

I believe in robust debate and in holding our opponents to account. Those who have campaigned with me will know that despite my light-hearted personality, I’m not prone to giving much ground. Scrutinising our opponents is a vital part of politics and our democracy is worse off if the tough questions aren’t asked.

But after a divisive election, in a time of damaging and sometimes poisonous debate, I want to do something just as important as robust campaigning. I want to offer praise and thanks to my opponents. In Cheltenham we managed to squeeze a large number of hustings into the campaign. I spent a lot of time debating with Alex Chalk (Conservative) and George Penny (Labour), and I exchanged messages of goodwill with Tabi Joy (Green), who had stood aside as part of the Unite to Remain initiative. In what can sometimes be a dehumanising process, regular meetings with opponents renewed my respect for everyone who took part.

So here goes:

To Alex, I thank you for continuing your service in Cheltenham when many expected you to do a ‘chicken run’ to a safer seat. I will always respect you for engaging with pro-European campaigners who protested at your office, though I disagreed strongly with your stance on the Brexit debate. Others would have found an excuse to run away and it is to your credit that you engaged in face-to-face conversation. I also congratulate you on campaigning on schools and the environment. We won’t always (or even often) agree on the way forward, but I want you to succeed.

To George, I admire your bravery in standing for parliament so soon after leaving university. You mastered the craft of debating at the hustings remarkably quickly and clearly have a gift for communication. You did not deserve to become the first ever Labour candidate to lose a deposit in Cheltenham. I know that when you stand in a winnable seat you will make a fine MP.

To Tabi, I owe you huge thanks for being part of the Unite To Remain initiative. Stepping aside was a huge political and personal sacrifice to make. I’m only sorry your big-hearted gesture and our campaign didn’t help deliver more MPs from our two parties. When we did share platforms before the election in events focused on the EU and the environment, you spoke with great passion and knowledge.

And onto the future:

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Lord William Wallace

Lord William Wallace writes…We should welcome a Constitutional Commission, and do everything we can to influence it

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 2nd January 2020 - 11:55 am

The 2019 Conservative Manifesto promised that ‘in our first year we will set up a Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission…to look at the broader aspects of our constitution.’   The Queen’s Speech confirmed that promise.  We should welcome this with both hands, and use it to challenge the government’s agenda with our own. 

Boris Johnson wants to reassert executive power against parliament.  The manifesto’s criticism of ‘the failure of Parliament to deliver Brexit’ shows impatience with criticism and debate.  Dominic Cummings wants to cut through the cautious policy-making of the civil service and impose radical changes to central government.  Right-wing think tanks have attacked judicial review and the Supreme Court.  He manifesto wants to maintain our current voting system, but tighten up on postal voting and voter identification.  We have a very different agenda – but a Commission will give us the opportunity to press our case against theirs.

The British constitution desperately needs critical examination and reform.  Johnson has broken several of its accepted conventions, and now that he has a majority wants to break more.  Popular alienation from Westminster politics is widespread. The Tories’ manifesto promise that ‘we will ensure…that every vote counts the same’ refers to redrawing constituency boundaries, not to any adjustment of the voting system.  Liberal Democrats, along with any NGOs, have called for a constitutional convention.  We’re not being offered exactly what we want – but we should grab hold of what is on offer and do our utmost to reshape the government’s assumptions.

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Mark Valladares

Boris offers us a petrol station bouquet as a peace offering…

By Mark Valladares | Wed 1st January 2020 - 9:41 am

I’ve watched the Boris Johnson New Year greeting to the nation – feel free to take a look if you’re so inclined – and am as unimpressed as I am unsurprised.

We are promised a decade of growth and innovation, a better NHS, safer streets, an improved environment, and so on and so forth. All very nice, after all, how could anyone disagree with any of that? But, despite the suggestion that we are being invited to pull together, that we now have “a People’s Government, delivering the People’s priorities” (yes, he really did say that… again), he said little that …

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Sal Brinton

Sal Brinton writes…A final thank you

By Sal Brinton | Tue 31st December 2019 - 4:00 pm

As my Presidency draws to an end on New Year’s Eve, I wanted to write to you with a final thank you for the extraordinary help that you have given the liberal cause over the last five years.

To have faced three General Elections and the EU Referendum during these five years – as well as the snap European elections this year – has been unprecedented, draining for everyone who has worked in them. Our candidates and teams, party staff and the many members and supporters who have continuously found that extra bit of energy and effort kept fighting the liberal cause.

Added to this, our local government teams, led by ALDC, have worked consistently hard in elections every year and their success has been rewarded with substantial growth in councillors and councils that we control or run jointly with others. And in Scotland our MSPs hold the SNP to account, and Kirsty Williams is a brilliant Education minister in the Welsh Assembly.

I have been really proud to campaign with colleagues across the UK over the last five years, seeing members building the party in their areas and I want to thank you for your warm welcome over my Presidency. In 2017 alone I covered over 4,000 miles, getting to every part of the country! I have also witnessed the party develop its use of online campaigning, not least honed on the Stop Brexit campaign over the last three years.

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Mary Reid

Bring back the Access to Elected Office Fund

By Mary Reid | Sat 28th December 2019 - 10:29 am

Many of our readers will remember speeches given at Conference by David Buxton. They were notable because they were given in British Sign Language. On each occasion a member of the wonderful BSL interpreting team switched roles and gave the spoken interpretation. At the end we all showed our appreciation with jazz hands instead of the usual clapping.

David was our Parliamentary candidate in East Hampshire, where he increased the Lib Dem vote by a very creditable 9%. But:

I’ve ended up having to pay £5,000 out of my own pocket for sign language interpreters, which has been very disappointing as the Conservatives abolished the The Access to Elected Office Fund, which helps disabled people with the costs of standing for election, in 2015.

So after multiple years of campaigning within the coalition – lots of campaigning for that – unfortunately that was abolished.

He appealed directly to Damien Hinds who was re-elected in the seat for the Conservatives.

I’m sure that most of us hadn’t realised that this fund had been cut. But now that we do know about the impact it has on candidates we should be campaigning with David to get it reinstated. A resolution for the New Year?

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Ed Davey

A Christmas message – the movie

By Ed Davey | Tue 24th December 2019 - 11:33 am

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Ed Davey

A Christmas message

By Ed Davey | Tue 24th December 2019 - 10:01 am

Happy Christmas! I’ve got three big tasks this Christmas.

First, my daughter’s present. Ellie wrote to Father Christmas with her present wish list.

The good news was Santa collected her letter. And he ate the mince pie! Although he did leave some tell-tale crumbs.

The bad news is I now have to get Santa to bring three live unicorns.

It’s my own fault – I bought Ellie this snow globe unicorn last year. But I’m not sure where to start looking for a live unicorn. So I’m thinking of ringing the Prime Minister. Apparently Mr Johnson does a good line in unicorns.

But my second task is easier. To celebrate my own birthday. I wasn’t born in a stable – my mum had me, at home, at ten past eight Christmas morning 1965.

Apparently my dad cooked the Christmas lunch. And my mum ate seconds. And afterwards, they all watched the Queen’s Speech – her Majesty’s Christmas message.

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Ruth Gripper

What’s on your Christmas reading list?

By Ruth Gripper | Mon 23rd December 2019 - 7:41 pm

A short post, prompted by a comment from one of our Lib Dem Voice editors. She was keen to read something other than Brexit and post-election analysis on these pages.

I haven’t read a proper book in what feels like months – the election campaign left little time or energy for reading. This is something I plan to put right over the Christmas break and there are two books in particular which I have in mind.

Firstly, I’m looking forward to re-reading Penhaligon, about David Penhaligon MP, written by his widow Annette. He represented the seat where I stood in the election, and it is remarkable how frequently his name still comes up on the doorstep more than thirty years after he died in a car crash. It’s a great read, and the lessons – about campaigning, and about what it means to represent the community – are still relevant today.

I’m also going to track down New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms which was making waves last summer. I’m interested in what it can teach us locally about how we organise and campaign.

What’s on your Christmas reading list? Share your tips in the comments.

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Martin Thomas

Wrexham and the rubble of the Red Wall

By Martin Thomas | Mon 23rd December 2019 - 4:26 pm

The article by the American BBC journalist,  Anthony Zurcher,  “Does UK hold clues to Trump’s Fortunes?” referred to by John Leaver yesterday, compares Wrexham,  recently much in the limelight, with the rust belt in Trump’s America.

I   have lived in Wrexham all my life and fought the seat five times as a Liberal candidate. Due to the defection of Tom Ellis from Labour to SDP in 1982 and his choosing to fight the neighbouring South Clwyd seat, 1983 produced the closest three way result in the UK, with less than 2000 votes separating the parties. I was third. By the 1990s, Labour had lost control of the Council, and for a time,  Aled Roberts led an effective Lib Dem administration. Currently, it is led by independents.

In my youth, there were still 12 collieries in the Wrexham area, not least the ill fated Gresford. There was a steel works at Brymbo producing the highest quality steel for Rolls Royce aero engines. There were numerous  brickworks, two breweries and a leather works and, on the former wartime ordnance factory on the outskirts of the town, the Wrexham Industrial Estate was developing.

The heavy industry disappeared. In 1980, ten miles down the road at Shotton, nationalised British Steel axed 6,500 jobs, the largest redundancy in a single day in Western Europe. Brymbo closed in 1990 with a loss of 1,100 highly skilled steelworkers.   The last colliery at Bersham closed in 1989. The breweries and leather works were long gone. Were these closures due to malign Thatcherism, or international economic pressures and influences?  Labour holds fast to the former explanation.

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Paul Fisher

No vision

By Paul Fisher | Mon 23rd December 2019 - 2:26 pm

‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’. The Lib Dems did not communicate a positive vision to the electorate because we have not created that vision for ourselves. Vision is derived from values and without a vision there is no plan. Our manifesto was wishy washy; no ifs, no buts, we failed to “Get it Done” and hence the General Election result.  Here are some ideas for debate. We need a Lib Dem vision and thereby a radical and progressive agenda.

  1. The Athenian leader Cleisthenes (507 BC) introduced demokratia, or “rule by the people”. Europe, its birthplace, and now, in the 21st century, the European Union (EU) embodies democracy. We need to resume our place at the heart of a flourishing EU to underpin the sovereignty of the citizen, underpinned by a common currency, universal security and democratic government which can ensure peace and security for our society.
  2. At the heart of global trade is money and that monetary system is out of control and injurious to humanity; it is not fit for purpose and must be reformed. The cause stems from the privilege enjoyed by private banking to create money from nothing in the form of demand deposits and lending it at interest. The solution is to correct the system by moving money creation to a public body working on behalf of citizens. A sound monetary system will underpin fair trade and thus ensure equality, liberty and freedom for citizens.
  3. Well-being is at the centre of individual and community health, happiness, and prosperity. Well-being pivots on the self worth of the individual citizens and their communities and is the foundation of an egalitarian society underscored by universal education and health care provision.
  4. There is limitless potential in the application of new technologies where advances in medicine, communications, power generation and food production can be exploited. We must rebuild our physical infrastructure. Cybernetics will be at the heart of this transformation. The purpose of technology is to free people from repetitive and boring jobs enabling them to become self fulfilled human beings.
  5. The long history of democracy and law enshrined in a written constitution is the underpinning of Human Rights. The Cyrus Cylinder (539 BC – religious freedom and racial equality), the Magna Carta (1215 – equality before the law), the First Geneva Convention (1864 – law of armed conflict), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Ruggie Principles (2008 Human rights in the international private sector) all provide the basis for a written constitutional and electoral reform necessary to become a 21st century democracy.
  6. Ours is the first generation to properly understand the damage we have been doing to the planet and probably the last generation with the chance to do something about it. Our divisive and degenerative behaviour undermines households, the commons, the marketplace and the state. It needs to be replaced with a sustainable distributive and regenerative model whereby we husband our planet so that we cannot only survive but thrive.
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Mohammed Amin

Discussing inequality requires precise language

By Mohammed Amin | Mon 23rd December 2019 - 12:30 pm

When mathematicians discuss categories such as groups, rings and fields, they are all agreed about exactly what they discussing. Unfortunately, much political debate today degenerates into a dialogue of the deaf, because we fail to define our terms precisely enough.

This is particularly true with the subject of inequality in society. Let me illustrate.

Country A – an unequal dystopia

In country A, the top 1% own over 6% of total wealth, and the top 10% own almost 49% of total wealth.

This contrasts dramatically with the bottom 50% of the population. They own only 1.5% of total wealth.

Indeed, the bottom 30% of the population own absolutely nothing, while the 1.5% of wealth mentioned in the previous sentence is owned by those in the population range 31% – 50%.

Who could possibly justify such an unequal society? Isn’t Country A is rigged against the poor?

Country B – an egalitarian utopia

In country B, there is no inheritance. Everyone has the same life expectancy.

Everyone attends university until the age of 21, without incurring a penny of debt, and then starts work.

Country B is so equal that every person starting work at age 22 earns exactly the same salary. Each year they get an identical pay rise.

Everyone saves exactly the same proportion of their income. They also achieve exactly the same return on their investments.

Everyone works until the age of 70 when, they die, and the state takes 100% of their assets because no inheritance is allowed.

This society is so equal that only the most extreme socialists would envisage creating imposing such equality by government edict.

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Euan Davidson

Why I’m angry that the Government has abandoned its commitments to child refugees

By Euan Davidson | Mon 23rd December 2019 - 9:05 am

On Friday night I was on my way home from a wonderfully festive day with amazing colleagues who spend huge amounts of time and energy helping vulnerable people solve their problems. I was feeling at peace with the world. Then I made the mistake of logging onto twitter and I saw some news that changed my mood completely.

Our new government had sneaked some amendments into their revised version of the Brexit withdrawal bill. Despite repeated promises to the contrary Boris Johnson has dropped the government’s commitments to work to reunite unaccompanied refugee children in Europe with their families here in the UK. 

Suddenly I found myself both blood boilingly angry and on the verge of tears. A year and half ago I spent three weeks volunteering with an educational charity in the refugee “camps” of Northern France. Whilst there I met numerous unaccompanied teenagers, some as young as twelve and thirteen. They had all experienced harrowing journeys to get that far often being exposed to traffickers, police violence and unimaginable destitution. These were our continent’s most vulnerable children; they had witnessed things that no one should ever see, especially as a child. They were alone in the world and facing hostile state authorities and abuse on all sides. We volunteers had one tool in our arsenal to get those children to safety quickly; the Dubs protections. 

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Zoe Franklin

Thoughts from Guildford

By Zoe Franklin | Sun 22nd December 2019 - 4:44 pm

The results of the GE have not been easy to digest. As one of the many target seat candidates who almost made it, the results hold a double dose of sadness. Sadness that in Guildford we came so close yet didn’t succeed this time and also for our nation that it’s ended up with a government so unrepresentative of the values that I still believe it holds at its core – fairness, openness, welcoming of diversity and a desire for integrity in its politicians.

Locally and nationally we will review the election campaign in due course, but I want to share two of my take-aways from this election.

Never underestimate the passion and resilience of Lib Dem campaigners!

In recent years Guildford have struggled to build a team. Yes, we took the leadership of Guildford Borough Council in May but when the election was called my campaign manager and I questioned how we could deliver the scale of campaign needed. Our action days have been poorly attended, our delivery network had shrunk significantly, and the team of active campaigners had shrunk to 10 maybe 15. We couldn’t envisage what happened once the election was announced.

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Mathew Hulbert

Why the Centre must hold

By Mathew Hulbert | Sun 22nd December 2019 - 2:20 pm

It’s easy, after an electoral setback such as that we suffered last week, to look for easy answers and quick solutions.

The truth is, there are none.

We need a proper analysis of what the raw data tells us and, yes, we need some soul searching about the prospectus we put to the people and the personnel (behind the scenes and in front of the cameras) that came up with and sold-or failed to sell-the message.

But on one thing, I argue, we can be clear. The Centre must hold firm.

As I prepare to enter my fourth decade (I turn forty on Leap Year Day 2020…or just ten in actual birthdays celebrated!), I’ve shifted my political thinking from when I first joined this party almost a decade ago.

Though my values and principles absolutely remain broadly Centre-Left, I no longer believe that ‘the Centre’ is-at best-some meaningless phrase or-at worst-a mushy middle which appeals to only a few. I now understand that the broad Centre (Centre-Right, Centre, and Centre-Left) is still where most voters are.

Of course, in elections, especially this one, given who the leaders of the two main parties were, it can feel as if the extremes are the new status quo. But most voters still want a government that’ll run a sound economy, deliver investment into public services, be a responsible player on the world stage, and do what’s right by the Climate.

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John David Leaver

Watching an old country shoot itself in the foot from south Georgia, good ol’US of A

By John David Leaver | Sun 22nd December 2019 - 11:26 am

With things calming down approaching what in 1980s UK terms used to be called Chrimbo in North Bury (Labour seat turned Tory), I thought I’d share some US-UK cheer in the spirit of Trump, the Brexit salvationist. Your author teaches in a Title 1 school in Hinesville, Georgia, USA. Title 1 offers extra Federal Funding for school’s students disproportionately in poverty. Our school, because Hinesville is an Army base, gets generous federal funding.

Statewide 2015-16, Georgia paid 46% of education spending. The Georgia Department of Education (GaDoe) ranks us on a 100-point scale. We are a 75.3 CCRPI (College and Career Readiness Performance Indexes) school. The average is 77. This, as sometime Lib Dem supporter, Alistair Campbell (campaigning for Luciana Berger) had it, is a ‘bog standard (American) Comprehensive School’.

GaDoe for our school – non-ironically one administrator calls it Godot – reports 55.1% African-American, 66.2% economically disadvantaged, 19.7% white and 14.4% Hispanic students. Last month, waiting for Godot ended: we managed a 2-point CCRPI improvement. CCRPI rank us by complex metrics against unattainable goals.  After a decade here, an achievement given staff churn, your author, teaching 12th English has some observations.

I notice a vogue for predicting US politics based on the UK’s general election and visa versa. The BBC’s Anthony Zurcher recently asked Does UK hold clues to Trump’s fortunes?. The answer is no. The US has a constitution; the UK does not: well, not a modern, European style written constitution anyway. But that, as so many Brexiters appear to believe, makes the UK better, since “We didn’t lose World War Two” – a bit of an obsession of theirs, no?   “We” didn’t win it either – not without the USA. There won’t be trans-Atlantic salvation this time, whatever Johnson flunkies think. Contrast what I hope will still be in the UK with what has existed here for decades.

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Ed Moisson

Glass looks half full to me

By Ed Moisson | Sat 21st December 2019 - 2:29 pm

Trawling through the general election results, I see that the Liberal Democrats finished second in 91 seats.

Disappointed they didn’t finish first in all of these? Of course. Disappointed they didn’t finish first in even 10 of these? Yes, that too.

But the disappointment should be set in relation to the progress the party has made since 2015 and not just compared to expectations from earlier in the summer this year. For this, I’ve been crunching some numbers to see how Liberal Democrats have fared over recent general elections.

Following the 2015 election, there was a general expectation that it would take many years for the party to recover. That’s still the case. Remember, in 2015 the Lib Dems came fourth or worse in 524 seats. And in 185 of these seats the Lib Dems actually finished fifth, sixth or seventh.

So the party could potentially claim a respectable result in barely 100 seats across the UK four years ago. By contrast, in the 2019 election the party finished in the top three in 443 seats.

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Katharine Pindar

Here is what counts – our country needs the Liberal Democrats

By Katharine Pindar | Sat 21st December 2019 - 12:37 pm

Change will come and change will go, but the Liberal Democrats just keep going. Hopefully, usually forward!

We have been successful enough this year to attract both alarm and attempted derision from our rivals. Now we are being blamed for the defeat of the anti-Johnson alliance of smaller parties. Yet our leader did make us a force to be reckoned with in the Election by leading the anti-Brexit drive with the strong unique policy of possible Revoke.

However, in the over-confidence Jo showed in suggesting she could be prime minister she fired a rocket which, like the November 5 ones, shot up with a thousand stars – and then was extinguished. She lit the touch-paper herself and suffered the burn from it. But thousands of her colleagues in our party are still standing, and a few made it to the House of Commons.

So what? – disillusioned voters may say to us. You are irrelevant again – and more distrusted because it seemed by adopting the Revoke policy you threw away your one concession to Leave voters, that you would give them a chance for reconsideration in another referendum. You can apparently be as tricky as the biggest parties, voters may say, especially when the voting record of your departing leader in the Coalition is considered.

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Mary Reid

It’s a long game

By Mary Reid | Sat 21st December 2019 - 10:38 am

If you are recovering from a hard fought campaign which did not produce the results you were hoping for, then you do not want to read ‘how we did it this time’ from one of the few successful constituencies. And this is not one of those posts.

Instead I want to offer encouragement and hope, reflecting on our history. In Kingston & Surbiton, we’ve been there before and we got through eventually, but it was a long game.

We first took the Parliamentary seat in 1997 on revised boundaries, which had worked in our favour. Lib Dems (and the Alliance before that) had spent many years building up our seats on Kingston Council.  I should explain that the constituency of Kingston & Surbiton covers 12 of the 16 wards on Kingston Council.

Until the early 80s we had no seats at all on the Council. The Tories had always won, with Labour always in opposition.

Our breakthrough came in 1982 when the SDP-Liberal Alliance won 7 seats. In 1986 we pushed that up to 20 seats and the Council went into No Overall Control for the first time. By 1990 the Tories were once again in control but we held a healthy 18 seats.

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Nigel Jones

General Election 2019 – campaign positives and negatives

By Nigel Jones | Fri 20th December 2019 - 8:13 pm

Here are what I think were some positives and negatives about our campaign messages and strategy. They are based largely on the points made to me as a candidate by voters or members and other party activists have endorsed the points I make. They are not in any particular order of priority. Some of the negatives were to some extent beyond our control, but they are matters we need to face better in future.

Positives

  1. We said correctly that we are by far the strongest party for Remain.
  2. Our manifesto was full of excellent proposals and was the only credibly costed

…

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Mark Paine

Why I won’t be re-joining Labour

By Mark Paine | Fri 20th December 2019 - 7:00 pm

Currently I have a lot of people on my Twitter feed asking ex-Labour members like me to re-join the party to wrest control back from the Corbynites. For a fleeting second, I do feel a tiny pull, the old vestigial loyalty flickers for a moment but then just as swiftly dies.

Since I joined the Liberal Democrats just over a year ago after a long (too long) time in Labour, I have discovered that this party is the true home of radical, progressive politics. As someone on the Centre Left, I feel far more comfortable here than I ever did in Labour.

Why? First, because I feel that I have an equal voice in this party and a real say in policy rather than just being the canvass fodder I was in Labour; party democracy in the Lib Dems is real rather than a vague aspiration. Second, linked to the first point, I have been able to set up an official group within the Party (the Liberal Democrat Autism Group). As far as I am aware this is the only party Autism group in the UK; a great example of both the freedom we have as members and of our party’s inclusive values. Third, this party is a truly broad church – left-wingers like me can happily co-exist, debate and work with those on the Centre Right; in the Labour Party the different factions exist in a permanent state of cold war, hating and distrusting each other almost, if not more, than they hate the Tories and us.

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Sebastian Field

Hard work and optimism will be our party’s salvation

By Sebastian Field | Fri 20th December 2019 - 3:35 pm

So it’s happened again. Despite hoping against hope that the polls were wrong, and that we were having an impact in the target seats way above our polling levels, we’ve been left with a diminished parliamentary party for the third successive general election.

We started with such high hopes, but end with the cause of Remain now surely lost, and a hard-right Tory government with a majority big enough to do more or less what it likes.

Are there any reasons to be cheerful?

The seeds of our possible regrowth are contained in our defeat. We must start by holding this government to account, exposing their lies and broken promises. Boris Johnson will surely get the Withdrawal Agreement through parliament now, but that is the easy part. The protracted negotiations that follow will be a major test for Johnsons’ government, and may well provide opportunities to score hits.

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Jack Davies

No. The Lib Dems should not disband, but we have got to change strategy

By Jack Davies | Fri 20th December 2019 - 1:01 pm

I’ve been involved in politics for five years – although it has felt a lot longer – and experienced three General Election campaigns. Each one has been disappointing for the Liberal Democrats and each has led to a lot of soul-searching after polling day about what went wrong. The answer is almost always the same: the Lib Dems got squeezed out by the playground bullies of the British political system and failed to stand out from the crowd.

That sort of answer then seems to lead directly to the usual articles in tabloid newspapers about the relevance of the Liberal Democrats as a political party. These articles, usually calling for the Liberal Democrats to disband entirely and be absorbed into the author’s preferred choice of either Labour or the Conservatives, rest on the idea that a political party which is not one of the two parties most likely to form a government in its own right is not relevant to political debate. This is nonsense perpetuated by columnists who fail to understand that it is the voting system, not the parties themselves, which dictates the government which is formed after an election.

While I could spend the entirety of this article explaining the reasons behind my support for a proportional voting system which would give political parties a share of the seats in the House of Commons which more closely aligns with their share of the popular vote, I want to focus instead on the Liberal Democrat platform which is so often derided as being centrist.

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Christopher Curtis

What should we do first?

By Christopher Curtis | Fri 20th December 2019 - 10:15 am

I am reeling. It’s not just the catastrophe of this election, but what feels like our country sliding inexorably into darkness, to which we’ve been turning for more than a decade and which, despite our good intentions, could not have happened without LibDems.

One of the few benefits of disaster, is that it forces you to take stock and examine things you might never question otherwise. It drives you to redefine and rediscover what is really important to you: to find a firm foundation on which you can rebuild when everything else has been swept away.

We are in a new world with no way back. I don’t think this is a time to move a bit to the left or right, tweak a few policies, start co-operating with Brexit or Labour or whatever else. It’s certainly not a time to try to “get our old party back” to when things were marginally better than they are now. There’s no possible leader who can magically solve all our problems.

It is a time to revisit our core values and beliefs.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: That time of year

By Tom Arms | Fri 20th December 2019 - 8:56 am

t’s that time of year again. No, I don’t mean the season of good will, holly, mistletoe, reindeer, white-bearded elves, and midnight mass. I mean the time to look back and forward at the world political scene. And there is so much to write and so little space.

Britain has just had its Christmas election. America has had its Christmas impeachment. Hong Kong is still in turmoil. Latin America is going through another of its political crises. The Chinese economy is shrinking. America’s Democratic Party cannot decide which way to go. Iran, Iraq and the Lebanon are rioting, so are the French. The Eurozone has had a terrible year. Putin is as belligerent as ever. Turkey is becoming more obstreperous and Israel can’t reach agreement on a coalition government.

Boris Johnson’s landslide victory has for the moment put paid to the Brexit debate. He claims that his historic 80-seat majority on the sound bite slogan “Get Brexit Done” is a massive mandate for leaving the EU. That is an over-simplified misrepresentation. Opinion polls report that the country continues to be split almost 50/50 between remain and leave. The election result was as much—it not more—of a reflection of distrust of an ideologically-driven Labour Party than it was a vote on Brexit.

So Brexit is likely to remain a big issue with the focus shifting to the prime minister’s renewed No Deal threat if free trade talks are not concluded by this time next year. They are other worrying messages coming out of 10 Downing Street: A review of the relationship between the government and the courts and the role of the media are two indications that Boris Johnson will use his enhanced power to stifle dissent and move Britain to a more presidential style of government.

Unfortunately, Boris won’t be facing much in the way of an official opposition. The Labour Party is set for a bitter civil war between the far-left ideologues of Momentum who blame Labour’s defeat on everyone but themselves, and the more pragmatic wing who want a return to the old New Labour. The current election rules as set down by the party constitution put the Corbynistas and Momentum in pole position. This means a longer and more vicious blood-letting than previous leadership battles and raises the spectre of a Labour split and an open goal for the conservative government.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump has this week become the third president in American history to be impeached. Because voting in both houses of Congress has become totally partisan, it is highly unlikely that Trump will be found guilty by the Republican-controlled Senate. But has his 2020 re-election been hindered or helped by impeachment? That question cannot be accurately answered until all the evidence has been presented in the Senate trial. So far everything that the House of Representatives has heard is second or third hand. This is because the president has refused to allow any White House officials to testify. There will be a battle royal to force into the Senate witness box.

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Chris Longstaff

Back to radical

By Chris Longstaff | Thu 19th December 2019 - 4:28 pm

A Radio 4 pre-election programme featured a ‘focus group’ which described the Lib Dems as “irrelevant” and “wishy-washy”. They were neither ‘left’, nor ‘right’, but somewhere lost in the middle. The Benny Hill tune was suggested as an appropriate Party theme.

This and the election result may be a distortion of the true representation of what the majority of people think, but for too many the Lib Dems are seen as stuck ‘hey-diddle-diddle-in-the-middle’ of nowhere, taking a little from both of the two major parties without constituting anything of great substance or profundity itself.

So, whatever the debate within the party might be about ‘centrist positioning’, for much of the electorate, Lib Dem positioning has little ‘relevance’; at best it insinuates a willingness to join a party coalition, and we know what a disaster that can be.

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Paul Walter

2019 was the party’s least efficient General Election campaign

By Paul Walter | Thu 19th December 2019 - 12:45 pm

If the objective of a general election is to win the most Commons’ seats we can (which I assume it is), then 2019 was the least efficient general election in the party’s history.

That is, if you define efficiency as garnering votes in such a geographical way so that we maximise the number of seats we win. The figures are as follows:

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Web Magpie

Nick Tyrone: At least the general election result has buried the UK’s flirtation with direct democracy

By Web Magpie | Thu 19th December 2019 - 9:45 am


Embed from Getty Images

On his website, writer Nick Tyrone has written a post entitled “Here’s one thing that was definitely positive about the general election result”.

In it, he argues that at least the general election has killed off the UK experiment with direct democracy and led to a resumption of our historical representative democarcy:

One of the things that has infected UK politics since June 2016 has been this clash between direct and representative democracy, with direct democracy often being given the greater nod by both the public and the media. The Leavers began to treat the referendum result as if it was the ultimate democratic event for all time, one that trumps every other election that has ever been and will ever be; Remainers played the same game for the most part, campaigning for a second referendum. It was as if we had changed the entire constitution without anyone being consulted.

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Ruth Bright

“Thank you!” – an open letter to Jo

By Ruth Bright | Wed 18th December 2019 - 6:32 pm

Dear Jo,

As many others have pointed out in the last few days a bit of masochism never comes amiss if one is a Liberal Democrat. Pain and sorrow come with the territory.

When my 70-year old Mum cruelly lost her hard-worked council seat in 2014, courtesy of the Coalition, we got separated slightly from our colleagues after the count. We are not prone to emotion but, two dumpy ladies of 5ft nothing, we clung together as her result was announced and Labour activists surrounded us and screamed their glee. One of them trod on me in the hubbub.

Later, back home, as …

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Stephen Tilson

Reasons To Be Cheerful

By Stephen Tilson | Wed 18th December 2019 - 4:48 pm

I am absolutely not feeling cheerful. I am gutted that my party has once again been drubbed at the ballot box, and the loss of Jo just 5 months into her leadership feels like a kick in the teeth. Watching her in this campaign I always felt that although it wasn’t her moment just yet, her moment would undoubtedly come. Now I just despair at the senselessness of it.

And Boris Johnson! There is a woman in an Iranian gaol because of his carelessness! What is it about this man and his continuous affairs and in-numerate children that the British …

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