Category Archives: Op-eds

Trudi Hancock

Brecon and Radnorshire – a real test for the Liberal Democrats

By Trudi Hancock | Sun 14th July 2019 - 8:55 am

I didn’t know when I joined the Liberal Democrats aged 15, that it would change my life dramatically. I’ve lived in Brecon and Radnorshire my whole life, which means I am incredibly lucky to have had at least one Liberal Democrat representative for my life so far. 

However that day in 2015, when we lost Roger Williams as the Member of Parliament was one of the worst days. It was not what he deserved for being a devoted MP for fourteen years. However Liberal-voting to its core, I knew then that Brecon and Radnorshire would be orange once again.

I don’t know about anybody else but, I am certainly so grateful to have been given this opportunity – the opportunity to have another Liberal voice in the House of Commons, fighting to remain in the European Union. This could not have been done without the recall petition and the 10,000+ people in Brecon and Radnorshire that supported it. We’re also very lucky to have a candidate like Jane Dodds, she is unapologetically a Welsh Liberal and will make an excellent MP for the area, something we are desperately in need of.

To top it off, the Liberal Democrats are currently polling at their highest percentage in a long time and the whole country is watching us. The results will be hugely important in showing that the Liberal Democrats are back, a legitimate political force again. A win at this by-election will prove that the fightback is real.

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Stephen Harte

Reprise: Managing staff – a chance to show liberalism in action

By Stephen Harte | Fri 12th July 2019 - 8:55 am

Editor’s Note: Two reports published this week highlight bullying and harassment of staff in both Houses of Parliament. There are some horrific stories. Gemma White QC described the situation in the Commons. Naomi Ellenbogen QC did the same for the Lords. . There are some serious issues with the culture in Parliament.

This seems like a good moment to rerun an article written by Edinburgh Lib Dem member Stephen Harte who makes some suggestions about how we as a party can make sure we live our values in the way that we treat our staff. 

There has been much in the news about MPs and, in Scotland, MSPs behaving inappropriately towards staff – whether this be bullying or inappropriate sexualised behaviour. Many of the current examples relate to other parties but most of us will be aware that we too have had our problems and can be no more complacent than any other party. For example, I can think of one former Parliamentarian (who, to this day, I greatly admire) who, when stressed, could shout at staff in ways that fell far short of good HR practice. There are many other stories within our party of much worse behaviour from other Lib Dems towards staff and volunteers. This is simply not good enough.

This all makes me wonder if every Lib Dem who employs or engages with staff (whether at a party level, directly as their own staff or as staff of the body on which they serve) or manages volunteers should undertake a training course on how to manage staff in accordance with the law, good HR practice and, importantly, our liberal values.

The late, great Maya Angelou told us “When people show you who they are, believe them.” What we do is a showcase for what we believe liberalism looks like in practice. While no one is perfect and we all have times when we fail to live up to our ideals, how we behave shows people what we truly believe.

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Bernard Aris

The unstoppable Rise and Fall of “Tony” or “Pony” Johnson

By Bernard Aris | Thu 11th July 2019 - 10:30 am

Will the Dutch Mark Rutte stay on being the only European Prime Minister who, sitting alongside President Trump during an official White House visit, dared to loudly and unambiguously contradict The Infallible Donald, and on US-EU trade relations no less? The Women’s Football World Championship showed that resisting (longer than others) an American onslaught is a Dutch speciality, but we would like some allies.

The British political reactions to the affair of the ambassadors leaked email comments about the Trump White House showed outsider Tory leadership contender Jeremy Hunt standing up for the ambassador sending his candid “long telegrams” just as George Kennan did in 1946, while Boris Johnson continued appeasing Trumps tender ego, the ITV debate being the clearest demonstration (see the Guardian and the BBC). Boris even almost-supported Trump disqualifying a British prime minister. Hopefully the discrete Mr. Johnson will do the same when he is PM; Trump spares no ally whatsoever when doing his early morning twitter fusillades.

If that doesn’t remind the British electorate of Tony Blair playing the “Iraq poodle” to president Bush junior (with foreign minister John Bolton pushing the WMD myth), the fact that Boris & Raab like Charles I and Buckingham still see proroguing Parliament as a normal way to push through European policies, should reinforce that analogy. In his Guardian interview about creating an “Boothroyd parallel parliament”, Rory “Realist Tory” Stewart reminds us that when Blair wanted to evade a vote on starting the disastrous Iraq War by prorogation, MP’s threatened to reconvene in Church House to demonstrate their opinion that a “War Powers vote” (my term) was obligatory.

The only difference between the Blair-Bush and Johnson-Trump relationship is that Boris, in his liberal mayorial affectation in 2015/6, was more forceful in disqualifying presidential candidate Trump, than Blair ever was about Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Boris will absolutely hate being identified as a second Blair (wanting to put the UK “at the heart of Europe”, after defending the 1983 eurosceptic Labour platform); all the more reason to start calling him “Tony Johnson”.

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Kirsten Johnson

Government under increasing pressure to fund social care

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 11th July 2019 - 8:30 am

This blog is a week late – but I’ve been busy! I wanted to highlight the Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee report published July 4th. This cross-party group of Peers calls for an immediate investment of £8 billion pounds into our care services “to restore social care to acceptable standards”.

North Devon, as many areas of the country, has an ageing population. Many move here to retire, and then as they enter their twilight years increasingly rely on stretched care services. I have been meeting with care providers and care users – there is a lot that needs improving in North Devon and it comes down to funding. £8 billion more for our care services nationally would make a real difference in North Devon.

In England, over a million vulnerable older people do not have proper care support. However, in Scotland, where health and social services are a devolved matter, care is free for the over 65s.

Many family and friends in England have caring responsibilities as their loved one does not meet the criteria for social care. This is wrong. The report highlights that most unpaid carers are women. 63% of women who care are aged between 50-64 and care for at least 50 hours a week. Our society is being propped up by the unpaid work of millions of carers.

I welcome another recommendation of the report, notably that a further £7 billion a year should be spent to extend free personal care to all by 2025. This would include help with cooking, washing and dressing. We need an integrated health and care system, with care paid for out of taxes. Any of us could need care at any time – this should not be a lottery where some get good care and others not.

Key findings are here, and include that the lack of funding means “local authorities are paying care providers a far lower rate for local authority-funded care recipients than self-funded care recipients, and those care providers with a high proportion of local authority-funded care recipients are struggling to survive.” North Devon in a nutshell.

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Kirsten Johnson

Making a difference – the first Mental Health First Aid Impact Report

By Kirsten Johnson | Wed 10th July 2019 - 4:55 pm

I blogged several years ago about my experience of training as a Mental Health First Aider. Since then, I’ve lobbied and worked to bring equal parity of esteem to mental and physical first aid.

So I was keen to read the first Impact Report from Mental Health First Aid England: does MHFA really work?

The statistics which open the report remain shocking. An average of fifteen people per day took their own life in 2017. The approximate cost per year of mental ill-health in England is £105 billion. And that does not include the personal cost of lives changed and relationships altered forever.

Over 140,000 people were trained in Mental Health First Aid in 2018/19. That is from the beginnings of training 9,000 in 2009. To date, over 400,000 people have had mental health first aid training. This includes the full course as well as the bespoke Armed Forces course; the course for those working in Higher Education; and the course for those working with young people.

Many employers now use Mental Health First Aid in training line-managers and promoting well-being in the workplace. The evidence shows that 72 million working days are lost each year due to mental ill-health. Several testimonials in the Impact Report give strength to the argument that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Alan Millbrow of Three UK says,

Mental Health First Aid is an essential part of our well-being strategy…..It has had an immediate positive impact on our people….We are keen to continue to break down barriers.

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George Kendall

What I’d change about the coalition

By George Kendall | Tue 9th July 2019 - 11:55 am

Since 2010, I’ve been very loyal to the Liberal Democrats.

There were many things I disliked during the Coalition, but I kept silent for fear of feeding the ridiculous exaggerated attacks on our party. Deficit reduction was hard, but in the lifetime of the Coalition, the amount cut was similar to Labour’s 2010 plans.

After the Coalition, my party was in a dire state, so for the same reason, I kept quiet about my concerns.

Only now the party is surging in the opinion polls do I feel free to say what I wish we’d done in Coalition. This article is to encourage those who are thinking about joining the party but are worried about what happened between 2010 and 2015, that they will have friends in the party. I also want to reassure new members that it’s okay to disagree with party policy, as long as you agree with the broad principles laid out in the preamble of the party’s constitution.

Below are three of my concerns about the Coalition.

(1) The decision to raise the income tax threshold. It was expensive; for the low paid, much of the benefit was clawed back with reduced benefits; and without it, we could have cut a little less severely. The suggestion of the IFS, to increase the amount the low paid could earn without losing their means-tested benefits, would have been far better targeted at helping low-income families.

(2) The bedroom tax. On paper, it sounded sensible. The idea of reallocating large family houses from those who didn’t need them to those who did wasn’t necessarily a bad idea. But local councils weren’t required to provide suitable alternative accommodation. I’m glad that, in 2014, we changed our position.

(3) Local government cuts. These were far too deep. It’s a natural instinct for a central government that wants to cut expenditure to foist a disproportionate burden onto local government. I wish we had vetoed this.

However, I don’t want to give the impression that I have any sympathy for Jeremy Corbyn when he rails against the Coalition. We held the Tories back on some truly savage cuts. Cuts which were quickly introduced when the Tories won a majority in 2015.

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Mathew Hulbert

Being “tolerated’ is not enough

By Mathew Hulbert | Tue 9th July 2019 - 8:55 am

So, this past weekend I was reminded that there are still spaces where you’re vulnerable as an LGBT+ person and there are still people who believe that to be a gay man as I am, indeed to be any member of the Queer community, makes you somehow ‘wrong,’ somehow ‘broken,’ somehow not ‘normal.’This past weekend I was on a panel debating people who, because of their interpretation of their religion’s code, cannot ever accept, affirm and celebrate me for who I am and who I love.

I got told that I was to be ‘tolerated.’

I don’t wish to be ‘tolerated.’

‘Tolerated’ means that you’re not accepted or wanted, but people will put up with you if they have to.

I challenged these views robustly. ..and other tropes which I won’t repeat here, because of how offensive they are…but it reminded me that being publicly LGBT+, especially as an activist, can leave you in a very vulnerable position.

Now, other people at the event couldn’t have been more supportive, more gracious, more accepting.

I’m not sorry I took part.

Because if there’s no one there to challenge prejudiced views, how are they ever overcome?

But, I did come home and have a bit of a weep.

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Paul Walter

Was the diplomatic leak part of a plot to make Nigel Farage UK ambassador to the US?

By Paul Walter | Mon 8th July 2019 - 2:42 pm


Embed from Getty Images
There was a very interesting discussion on Radio 4’s Westminster Hour, last night, concerning the leaking of memos from the UK ambassador to the USA, Sir Kim Darroch.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems say Bollocks to Homophobia and Transphobia at London Pride

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 7th July 2019 - 1:00 pm

The first time I came across Pride in London was in 1992 and I was thoroughly captivated by the joyful and bright display.

Yesterday, Liberal Democrats gathered to celebrate the LGBT+ movement 50 years after the Stonewall riot. We were part of a huge and diverse march.

Brian Paddiick won the brilliant t-shirt competition

And new MEP Luisa Porritt had the best hat.

Both leadership candidates were there and very much in the spirit of things:

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Lord William Wallace

Lord William Wallace writes…Fighting for liberal values

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 5th July 2019 - 11:55 am

Putin has paid us a compliment.  He’s defined politics as a conflict over values, with liberal values as the enemy that authoritarian regimes like his define themselves against.  He’s full-throated in defending autocracy against democracy: government by diktat, authoritarian leader as father figure, leaning on nationalist myths and ‘traditional’ values for legitimacy. A regime underpinned by force, disguising huge gaps between the privileged rich, close to power, and the poor.  Viktor Orban (in Hungary) and other rising authoritarians haven’t yet gone quite so far: he defines his style of government as ‘illiberal democracy’, retaining some of the outer structures of popular participation while bringing media, universities, and much of the economy under state control.

Many 19th century liberals were optimistic about progress and education leading almost inevitably to enlightenment, tolerance of diversity and minorities, the rule of law and an open society.  The 20th century taught liberals that these achievements can never be taken for granted, and have to be promoted and defended by every generation.  And that’s not an easy task: it’s a complicated argument to defend minorities and minority rights, to talk about the importance of law and political processes, when much of the population is more concerned about economic insecurity and more attracted by the easy promises of charismatic populists.

Britain, like many other countries, has made enormous advances in recognising liberal values over the past fifty years – in opportunities and rights for women, in attitudes to ethnic diversity and to sexual and gender diversity.  But the populist appeal to ‘traditional values’ blows a dog whistle against all this.  Populist attacks on ‘elites’, often described as ‘liberal elites’, dismiss reasoned debate in favour of gut feelings.  Michael Gove’s attack on ‘experts’ was an encouragement to the public to follow their guts and stop listening to reason or detailed argument; his efforts to return the teaching of history to ‘the national story’ would have pleased Putin.  Boris Johnson’s campaign is becoming more illiberal by the day. His dismissal of his own party’s reasoned policy on the sugar tax is a classic example of an appeal to prejudice against enlightened self-interest.

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Katharine Pindar

The problem of sustaining Liberalism in Britain today

By Katharine Pindar | Fri 5th July 2019 - 10:25 am

The joke of Conservatism in Britain today being defined by Boris Johnson is not much funnier than the joke of Socialism being represented by Jeremy Corbyn. Hence the fractures in both main parties, and the gap left for Liberalism in the shape of the Liberal Democrats. Yet when the constitutional crisis is resolved, whether in the way we want or otherwise, can the Liberalism we represent flourish and our party continue to grow? For we will then be up against parties, even if diminished, representing the  great traditions of Socialism and Conservativism, which will most probably be led by men and women of more centrist, moderate views – and this may well happen within a very few months.

Liberalism worldwide is threatened by populism, and it may appear to be the case here also, with the rise of Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, surely a classic case of popular sentiment being roused and directed by one strong and charismatic leader. However, there is no such thing as Brexitism. The Conservatives in choosing their own charismatic (if scarcely strong) leader hope to root out the alien growth, and if they succeed in achieving Brexit may do so. Or else, if we succeed in stopping Brexit through a renewed democratic popular vote, again it should wither. The British people are not attuned to populism, and if the proximate cause of this cancer is removed, they surely will mostly be relieved to have an amicable working relationship restored with our useful European neighbours.

Even so,  Liberalism in Britain and the continued growth of our party could still be threatened. That is partly because elements in British society have developed during this prolonged crisis a readiness to confront and go rapidly to extremes, even to violence, and there is greater public tolerance of these effects, for instance abuse of minorities, than there used to be. In the heightened atmosphere, Liberalism may perhaps not seem to convey a strong enough identity, to offer people security and some comfort and hope in their private lives.

For however much the main parties may fracture now, the ideas of Conservatism and Socialism retain their appeal to large sections of British society. And a Conservative party led by a more moderate figure than Johnson, once Brexit is resolved, will claim Liberalism, especially economic liberalism and freedom, as part of its DNA. Similarly the Labour Party, once Corbyn is replaced, through renewing the commitment to social democracy rather than Socialism will try to lure leftward-leaning social liberals away from our party and into theirs.

It won’t in those circumstances be much use to produce our traditional claim of strongly centralised top-down parties being different from ours and undesirable, because people have got used to the idea of strong central leadership being needed in these days of seemingly unending crisis. Yet there is still a way to show and continue the appeal of  Liberalism as exemplified by Liberal Democrats.

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Michael Berwick-Gooding

Ending relative poverty in the UK is easy

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Wed 3rd July 2019 - 1:30 pm

Recently I have seen a couple of comments on LDV which state that ending relative poverty in the UK would be a difficult and complex thing to achieve. They are mistaken.

The reason someone is living in relative poverty is because they don’t have enough money. The answer, therefore, is to ensure that benefit levels give them enough to pay all of their housing costs and have enough left over to be on the poverty line and not below it. As Philip Alston, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in his report points out “employment alone is insufficient” to lift someone out of poverty.

Already we have a system which reduces benefits by 63p for every pound earned, but 4 million workers live in poverty. This is because the gain from working is not enough to lift the person out of poverty. If they were already out of poverty when living only on benefits then no one working could be living in poverty.

We need to ensure that those living on benefits have enough money to pay all of their housing costs. Scrapping the benefit cap helps, as would increasing Local Housing Allowance in line with local rents (both party policy). However, they don’t go far enough. Local Housing Allowance was introduced by the Labour government in 2008. It sets maximums for housing benefit depending on local rents, and sets out what type of accommodation different types of families can have.

It is not liberal for the state to tell people how many rooms they can have to live in. It is not liberal for the state to force tenants into debt arrears. It is not liberal for the state to force someone to move house when they experience difficult times such as when they become unemployed.

It is liberal for the state to pay 100% of the housing costs of those on benefit. Therefore we should have as our long-term aim scrapping the LHA and in the meantime increase its value above the bottom 30% of local rents. (I expect this is the main reason that 1.9 million pensioners are living in poverty). The least we should do is reduce the single person age down to 25 from 35, so a single person aged between 25 and 34 should no longer be forced to live in shared accommodation.

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Bernard Aris

How able is “negotiator” Hunt as compared to Johnson?

By Bernard Aris | Wed 3rd July 2019 - 10:15 am

The Tory leadership campaign of Jeremy Hunt is, according to himself and many supporting MPs in the media, based upon the premise that Hunt will be (far) more trusted and more easily welcomed at EU negotiating tables than Johnson. They say this is the case because the European players (national ministers, EU negotiators like Barnier) have come to know him as sitting Foreign Secretary, and that they would trust him more than Boris (who they also know from his accident-prone Brexit spell at the Foreign Office).

Hunt also insists he has experience as an entrepreneur, including negotiating deals, which Johnson lacks because he was a journalist, not a businessman, between his public school/Oxbridge education and his political career.

But right at the start of his term as Foreign Secretary, Mr Hunt made a massive negotiating gaffe while trying to use his personal background to curry favour with his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

At the start of his business career, Hunt had learned Japanese to be able to work as an English language teacher in Japan in the late 1980s; and minister Wang Yi studied Japanese and was a former ambassador in Japan (2004-07). As a minister in Cameron’s shadow cabinet, Hunt in 2008 met and married his Chinese wife, Lucia Guo. As the new Foreign Secretary negotiating in Beijing in July 2018, Hunt and Wang Yi had been speaking in Japanese, when Hunt, switching to English, made his gaffe when he talked about his wife and her parentage. According to the BBC, Hunt said “My wife is Japanese – my wife is Chinese. Sorry, that’s a terrible mistake to make.” The company at the table politely laughed it off, and Hunt went on to say that he and his wife had close ties with his in-laws still living in the Chinese city Xi’an.

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Josh R.

Not turning our back on Europe – why Bollocks to Brexit is the perfect message from Lib Dem MEPs to the rest of the EU

By Josh R. | Wed 3rd July 2019 - 8:30 am

We all believe in the power of words, else this blog post would be entirely pointless. How words are received versus their intent though can be the spark for division and result in endless dissection, rather than focus on the message.

This ended up being part of the discussion for LBC Radio’s James O’Brien phone-in show yesterday morning. James, who is widely known for his views against Brexit, took issue with Lib Dem MEPs wearing Bollocks to Brexit’ T-shirts at the opening session of the European Parliament, stating that they were “inappropriate” and “slogan politics”. He also rightly took issue with Brexit Party MEPs rudely turning their backs during the Strasbourg Philharmonic’s performance of Ode to Joy, adopted by the EU as an anthem.

I disagree with James’s view. Political parties need to smash the mould to get their message across in a world of 280 characters or less. I would much rather that we do ruffle some feathers by being crystal clear than prance around, twisting ourselves in knots about our position like HM Opposition.

‘Bollocks to Brexit’ is the perfect antidote to the Brexit Party’s own message of division. It’s also instantly understandable to anyone seeking to understand the Lib Dems’ position on Brexit and acts as a clarion call for those across the political spectrum to stand alongside us in opposing this national act of self-harm.

Given the Brexit Party, and their ilk, will brazenly ride rough-shod over-polite conventions, have no issue openly saying they will “disrupt” the business of the EU and operate a completely opaque structure when it comes to funding and candidate selection…wearing a T-shirt that highlights there’s an alternative is perhaps the least the Lib Dems can do.

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David Boyle

Time for a Broad AllIance to take power?

By David Boyle | Tue 2nd July 2019 - 12:53 pm

“We must be more than a political party or we will cease to be one,” said the great writer G. K. Chesterton, when he was a Liberal. “Time and again historic victory has come to a little party with big ideas: but can anyone conceive anything with a mark of death more on its brow than a little party with little ideas,”

I am writing about the man at the moment and I believe he was right, and especially perhaps in the first of the two sentences.

Nor are we such a little party these days, but the ideas we …

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Richard Kemp

What happens the day after the next General Election?

By Richard Kemp | Mon 1st July 2019 - 1:22 pm

In my last article for LDV I spoke about the end of two-Party politics. Since then we have had three more opinion polls with Lib Dems ranging from first with 30% to fourth with 19%. What doesn’t change is the fact that 4 Parties, Lib Dems, Brexit, Tory and Labour are bunched fairly closes around the 20s with the Green Party on 8-10%. I do like the 30% Lib Dem one though. Many people must have gone to bed dreaming of that magic moment of being declared an MP when they saw that.

Although I am not ‘Mystic Dicky’ with a …

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Larry Ngan

A global advert for the Hong Kong Anti Extradition Bill campaign – implications for the Remain Campaign

By Larry Ngan | Mon 1st July 2019 - 11:35 am

An advertisement to support the Hong Kong Anti Extradition Movement appeared in 14 newspapers around the world on 27th June. The press was puzzled by 2 questions: who created the campaign and how did they manage to execute it?

Two million Hong Kong citizens participated in the Hong Kong anti extradition bill protest on 21st June. The protesters made three demands:

  1. the amendment of the bill to be retracted;
  2. the definition of the clashes between police and civilians on 12th June as ‘riot’ to be retracted; and,
  3. an independent commission to be formed in order to investigate the police behaviour on 12th June.

The Hong …

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Fred Mackintosh

The people who will make the new party complaints system work

By Fred Mackintosh | Sun 30th June 2019 - 8:55 am

As  Lead Adjudicator for the new party complaints system I am writing to introduce the people who will make it work. 

The great strength of successful political parties lies with their members.  In our party it is the members who campaign, make policy, choose our leaders and, to a great extent, run the party.  We have more than 100,000, but all our members are human beings and subject to human frailties.  As a result, it is a sad reality that members will from time to time do things and be accused of things that bring the party into disrepute.

After years of debate a new system for handling complaints has been created.  You can read about it in Alice Thomas’s excellent post, and I wanted to introduce you to the volunteers who will make the new system work.

The first thing to make clear is that there is no ‘complaints supremo’.  The new system breaks up the tasks involved so that each decision in the process of determining complaints is made by an independent person appointed in a way that ensures that there is no perception that panels are hand-picked or results pre-ordained.

The largest number of volunteers are the Adjudicators.  All are members of the party and they have a wide range of experiences.  At various points in the process of each complaint an Adjudicator will assess the severity of a Complaint and how it is will be handled and in most cases a different three Adjudicators will later sit on a Complaints Panel to decide whether to uphold or dismiss the complaint.  Adjudicators are permitted to stand as candidates for the Party or hold office at a Local Party level, but are barred from holding office elsewhere in the Party.

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Alice Thomas

The new complaints process goes live on 1st July

By Alice Thomas | Fri 28th June 2019 - 11:55 am

It’s a good year to be a Lib Dem: we’ve gained thousands of new members, hundreds of council seats and 15 new MEPs because we are united while the Tories and Labour tear themselves apart from within. No party is immune to mistakes though and that’s why I’m proud to say that – from 1 July* – if a new complaint is made against a Lib Dem member, it will be handled under our new complaints procedure, which is consistent, clear and fit for purpose.

Federal Conference voted for this procedure at Brighton in Autumn 2018 and it has since been accepted by each of the state parties in England, Scotland and Wales. It is now time to implement it.

No complaints procedure can work without people to run it. That is why I am proud to say that more than 400 people responded to call for volunteers and we will be ready to hit the ground running. 

From 1 July 2019, complaints should be reported to the Standards Officer at LDHQ who will record the details in the case management system and send it on to the Senior Adjudication Team or “SAT”. The SAT comprises a Senior Adjudicator from each state party and our brilliant Lead Adjudicator, Fred Mackintosh.  The four members of the SAT have many years’ experience in the party and a background in making decisions and dealing with complex problems.

When a case is first raised Fred will randomly assign it to one of at least forty trained and impartial Adjudicators, who will assign any case which is more than frivolous to one of either the formal or informal routes.  At the same time the SAT will decide whether the member complained about should be suspended from membership whilst the complaint is resolved.

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Caron Lindsay

Stonewall 50 years on

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 28th June 2019 - 8:56 am

“The first Pride was a riot.”

So said many signs at Pride, Edinburgh last Saturday.

It’s 50 years today that a community, after much discrimination and harassment, finally said it had had enough. Yet another Police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City, pushed its customers over the edge, with trans women of colour leading the fightback.

Pink News has the story of how Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera threw things at the Police, sparking 3 nights of rioting and the birth of a movement that has won rights for the LGBT community. Back then, you could be sacked for being gay, you couldn’t marry and you had no rights if your partner died or took ill. Imagine what it must have been like to have your partner dying in hospital but his or her family won’t let you anywhere near them and you have no power to stop them. That was the reality for far too many people.

If Stonewall happened today, it would be all over Twitter in seconds. There would be rolling news coverage. 28th June 1969 was my husband’s 18th birthday.  I asked him if he was aware of what was happening and he said it was years later, through music, that he first became aware of Stonewall.

The Stonewall riots led to the joyous, colourful Pride celebrations we have today when the LGBT community celebrates and looks to advance its rights. At the moment, it’s trying hard not to see rights rolled back as the toxic atmosphere over Gender Recognition Act reform frightens legislators.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the BBC reported this week about the surge in hate crimes against transgender people. And when I say surge, I’m talking an 81% rise. We can’t stand by and see that happen.

Both our leadership candidates have been very vocal in calling out transphobia and supporting Gender Recognition Act Reform and you get the feeling from both of them that this is important to them.

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Caron Lindsay

An island by-election as Tavish Scott steps down for job at Scottish Rugby

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 27th June 2019 - 11:42 am

Former Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Tavish Scott has announced that he is leaving the Scottish Parliament to take up a job as head of External Affairs with Scottish Rugby.  He’s one of a handful of MSPs remaining who were first elected in 1999. Anyone want to have a go at naming the rest?

Tavish led the Scottish Party from 2008-2011 and had three ministerial posts in the Labour/Liberal Democrat coalitions. In 2001, he resigned as a Minister for Parliament after refusing to support the Executive in a vote on fishing because of the impact on his constituents.

He came back into Government in 2003 and served as Deputy Minister for Finance, entering the Cabinet as Minister for Transport after Jim Wallace’s resignation as Deputy First Minister in 2005.

Tavish said:

Representing the people of Shetland has been my life for 20 years. It has been an enormous privilege and honour to have been Shetland’s MSP since the Scottish Parliament opened in 1999.

I want to thank people the length and breadth of the islands for their support over the years. The bread and butter of representing people is helping solve problems and making their case to government, organisations and businesses. I have always enjoyed the challenge of serving Shetland and it is the part of the job that I will, without doubt, miss the most.

There have been many highlights, wonderful moments and intense political drama that I would not have missed for anything. I leave the Liberal Democrats at an exciting time in the party’s development. There have been excellent recent results in the recent European elections, improved poll ratings and there is genuine optimism about the future for the party.

So on this, the 20th anniversary week of the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament, it is the right time for me to change direction.

I am absolutely delighted to be joining Scottish Rugby at this incredibly exciting time for the sport in Scotland and across the world.  To have the opportunity to work for Scottish Rugby is a huge challenge and one that I cannot wait to begin. I will miss the cut and thrust of politics and the people I have met and represented for 20 years, but there can be no better new beginning than working for Scottish Rugby.

Willie Rennie paid tribute to his decades of service:

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Bernard Aris

Boris thinks Widdecombe and Non-payment will sway EU his way….

By Bernard Aris | Wed 26th June 2019 - 10:45 am

In his BBC interview by Laura Kuensberg (interview text here), Tory leadership contender Boris Johnson said he had a far better chance of realising an agreed Brexit than May had, because the political situation both in Britain and on the Continent, in Brussels, has been fundamentally transformed since the March 2019 Brexit Deadline (and the British European elections).

Johnson says that the EU leaders are scared because the newly elected Brexit Party – and Tory MEPs – are a new, powerful Eurosceptic force, putting pressure on the European Commission and Council from within the Euro Parliament (EP). I think Johnson’s argument is that now that Ann Widdecombe sits beside known Euro-haters like Farage and Daniel Hannan, EU leaders have started quaking in their shoes and want to lose (or “liberate”) these MEPs soon by agreeing any October 31 Brexit, with or without a deal.

Johnson forgets Brussels has seen off worse anti-system politician threats, like J.-M. le Pen MEP calling Sobibor’s gas chambers a “detail in history”; and prime ministers like Berlusconi suggesting a German Socialist playing KZ Lager guard; or Orban, expelled from the biggest EP party for infringing basic EU principles. Adding Widdecombe isn’t a threat; the Christian and Social Democrats simply include “Renew Europe” Liberals (with new LibDem MEPs!) and the Greens in EP politics; Orban, Tories and Brexiters (who insist the EU is a Gulag Soviet Union) are kept shouting outside.

Johnson’s second point: he’ll use “creative ambiguity” about paying the £39 billion alimony to pressure the EU into a “May deal without nasty Backstop bits” (my paraphrase of his sketched deal). But what if Brussels uses “creative conditionality” about refurbishing the deal: “if you won’t pay the first instalment on the £39 billion, we keep the Backstop in”. And giving EU citizens (many who couldn’t vote for the EP, the hostile environment persists) legislative security as UK inhabitants was already offered by May, so won’t elicit EU leniency around any Brexit Deal.

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Ruth Bright

Leadership and the C-word

By Ruth Bright | Wed 26th June 2019 - 8:45 am

Venn diagram of Lib Dem/Tory influence on Coalition policies“Two non-entities” – the curt analysis of historian David Starkey on the Lib Dem leadership race seems unduly harsh. But as a semidetached

Lib Dem looking for an excuse to reattach I have at the very least been struck by just how similar the two Lib Dem leadership candidates are.

The Lib Dems are now a very new and fresh party in the sense that most members have joined in very recent years or even months. For those of us with decades of libdemmery under our belts, Ed Davey and Jo Swinson almost feel like extended family. They are resilient folk who have been around for ages. Both of them are very much to be admired for withstanding the humiliation of losing their seats and then clawing those seats back.

White, middle-class, Oxbridge/Russell group, neither at first sight really exude life’s hard knocks. In fact, both have put forward moving accounts of just how searing real life can be. Jo Swinson’s speech in Parliament on combining politics and early motherhood was an astonishingly frank tour de force. Ed Davey’s poignant radio interview on his experience of early bereavement was truly memorable.

But, and it’s a very big but, how do we process their work in coalition? There is a poverty of debate in the party about the Coalition and about… err… poverty. The Lib Dems dropped austerity unceremoniously in 2015 (almost as suddenly as it was adopted back in 2010) and by 2017 it was almost as if the Coalition had never happened.

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John King

Escape from Brexit

By John King | Tue 25th June 2019 - 8:55 am

When I asked my son why he had voted Leave, he replied “because the country must be independent and stand on its own two feet”. My son is severely handicapped and the concept of independence is especially important to him. That’s fair enough, but independence is important to everybody, which is why it was so powerful an idea driving Brexit. “Independence day!” was Boris Johnson’s joyous cry as the referendum result was announced, and it resonated with many people.

Independence is fundamental to all of us, inbuilt into our lives from the moment we are born and our bodies must start to fend for themselves. We grow up knowing we must leave the bosom of the family and make our way in the world. We welcome this change because it means freedom.

Britain broke away from its mother continent eons ago, giving its inhabitants freedom to shape their own culture and customs, in which we rightly take pride. America likewise broke free from Britain at the Boston Tea Party, to become a free and independent nation, and in both cases relations between the mother nation and its offspring have remained friendly; particularly so in the case of America, rather more ambivalently in the case of Europe. But then Brexit arrived.

Brexit arose as the culmination of an intense, prolonged and ferocious propaganda campaign against the European Union by Britain’s right wing press.  They painted Europe as the enemy, with vivid metaphors of “throwing off the shackles” and severing the tentacles of an evil oppressive force, often harking back to the Second World War. Brexit would be the Great Escape, not from Stalag Luft lll, but from its modern equivalent, Brussels. Who would not thrill to the glorious saga of the British people claiming independence? Certainly the cohort of elderly Tories now electing the next Prime Minister, though some of them are still fighting the First World War.

At the most recent meeting of my campaign group, Stratford for Europe, I was asked for my suggestions on new initiatives we could pursue. Jokingly I proposed we establish an escape committee, dedicated to getting individuals out of Brexit Britain, along a lifeline that would take them to new opportunities in the free world.

In that idea, ridiculous though it was, there lies a certain truth. As the gloss falls off the promise of sunlit uplands awaiting us, an appreciation may develop of the rights and freedoms we are about to lose. The next referendum, when it comes, will be inspired by the freedom to live, love and work in 27 other countries, not the freedom to be bullied by President Trump. Far from buccaneering merrily round the globe, we may find ourselves confined to an Alcatraz Britain marooned off the coast of a Europe that regards us with pity. 

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Isabelle Parasram

Isabelle Parasram writes….Restoring the Rights of the Windrush Generation

By Isabelle Parasram | Tue 25th June 2019 - 7:25 am

This is a second chance to read this post, coinciding with today’s special event (see below)

As a child of the Windrush generation, Windrush Day is hugely important to me. I’m so glad that we, as a society, are marking it.

The term ‘the Windrush Generation’ stems from the arrival, on June 22, 1948, of the ship The Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks, just east of London, bringing with it the first immigrants from the Caribbean.

It denotes the large-scale influx of Caribbean immigrants during the years that followed.There’s been a lot of Press about the terrible treatment of people who came here from the Caribbean in the late 1940s and onwards, who now find that their very official existence has been denied.There’s also much discussion about the poor treatment of those Caribbean immigrants upon their arrival in the UK to date.

But there are also some positive stories and memories mixed in with those experiences.

I’ve recorded an 8-minute audio interview with someone who came to this country in 1962. She shared with me some of her memories and they were both good and bad. You can listen to the interview here via Soundcloud:

The memories shared in the interview are such as these:

I came to the UK after a one month journey from Trinidad by ship with my young stepson and my new baby boy. When we arrived it was the coldest winter they’d had in a long time and we only had summer clothes.

I remember having no furniture, no heating, no washing machine, no fridge, no winter clothes. We had to try to stay warm in one roomusing a paraffin burner. Then, on Christmas Day, someone gave us a bed for my stepson. I was so happy!

It was hard to find a job because no black people were allowed. The British people didn’t want immigrants –“…no black people”, they said.

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Denise Watkins

Why we should support the United Nations

By Denise Watkins | Mon 24th June 2019 - 12:45 pm

Mass migration was a concern for many who voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum. There are three reasons for mass migration: 1) poverty, 2) conflict, and 3) natural disasters. Each of these causes of mass migration is being tackled under the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs aim to ‘prevent conflict and maintain peace and security by ending poverty and ensuring access for all to basic services and human rights’. They were agreed in 2015 under the 2030 Agenda to improve on the progress made by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). They take a more holistic …

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Caron Lindsay

So what happens next in Brecon and Radnorshire?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 23rd June 2019 - 11:00 pm

Now that Conservative MP Chris Davies has been recalled and there will be a by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire, you might be wondering what happens next. Well, this evening he has been selected by the local Conservatives to fight the seat in the by-election despite having been convicted of submitting a fraudulent invoice and almost one in five of his constituents signing a petition to get him sacked.

The message from the Welsh Liberal Democrats is clear – people in Brecon deserve better:

Over 10,000 people signed the recall petition and decisively rejected Chris Davies because they had enough of an MP putting Brecon and Radnorshire on the map for all the wrong reasons.

By adopting Chris Davies again the Conservatives have demonstrated they can offer nothing more than an MP embroiled in controversy. People deserve better.

This by-election is a clear choice between the same old broken politics from the Conservatives, or a chance to demand better for our communities with Jane Dodds and the Welsh Liberal Democrats.

I’ve seen various people saying that it its he Speaker that calls the election and it will definitely be on 25th July.

That is not the case.

This is like any other by-election. It is up to the party who won the seat at the last election to decide when it will take place by moving the writ in the Commons. From the House of Commons website:

If the 10% threshold is reached the petitions officer informs the Speaker of the House of Commons that the recall petition has been successful. On the giving of that notice the seat becomes vacant. A by-election is then required and the recalled may stand as a candidate. The timing of a UK Parliamentary by-election is determined by custom of the House of Commons: the party that previously held the seat will usually decide when to trigger the by-election.

And what is the timescale?

A new Writ is usually issued within three months of the vacancy. There have been a few times when seats remained vacant longer than six months. Seats will be left vacant towards the end of a Parliament. They are then filled at the general election.

If there are many vacant seats by-elections can take place on the same day.

The by-election timetable is between 21 and 27 working days from the issuing of the writ.

If they do that tomorrow, then the by-election will likely take place on 25th July  but they could leave it till after the Summer recess if they wanted.

We shall just have to wait and see.

But whenever it happens, you do need to go if you possibly can. A by-election campaign at full pelt is a sight to behold. You get to see the pinnacle of best practice in our campaigns, you get to enjoy the fantastically busy atmosphere and, in this case, there will be gorgeous scenery.

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Paul Reynolds

Bungling Boris and his baffling Brexit bravado

By Paul Reynolds | Sun 23rd June 2019 - 10:55 am

Likely next PM, Boris Johnson, now has the unenviable task of facing disgruntled Tory party members at hustings across the UK. Worse, he has to do this side-by-side with the bland Jeremy Hunt.

Boris is surely aware that these disgruntled souls feel that way because, after 40 years of anti-EU and anti-immigrant campaigning by the far-right UK press, they were then promised (and voted for) a painless easy Brexit, and a grovelling EU. Once Brexit is implemented, the UK can then go about kicking out various foreigners, as they have been led to believe. Britain as a Great Power, they believe, would be able to trade with the EU on the same easy terms as now, and on better terms with the rest of the world … whilst ending free movement in the EU and severing all links with the European Court of Justice and its supposed terrorist-loving human rights regime.

The last three years has inevitably dented such ‘true faith’ beliefs as reality has set in. However the Tory members being faced by Boris in the coming weeks have been desperate to find a saviour who can restore their faith, and preserve their whole weltanschauung. Boris has found a very willing audience indeed for the view that the stalemate of the last three years is not due to inflated expectations at all. No. They are merely due to Theresa May, Olly Robbins and Mark Sedwill being weak negotiators. These Tories desperately want to believe in Boris and believe that all the promises can be kept and their patriotic beliefs kept intact.

Thus Boris has to give them what they want, and he has made it his raison d’etre. His audience must have hope to cling on to. Boris, though vague so far, does have a discernible plan for them to lap up. It will probably be presented to Tories like this.

He will say that Article XXIV of the GATT and Article V of the GATS (WTO conditions of membership) allow the UK to declare that after Oct 31st  they are ‘in the process’ of negotiating a new trade agreement and thus the EU is allowed to give the UK special treatment and continue the current tariff & regulatory regime as an interim agreement, giving the UK 10 years to negotiate a permanent deal. He will say that the EU will be forced to agree to this interim agreement, and allow the UK to exclude free movement and ECJ jurisdiction from it, because if they don’t accept all this, the UK will refuse to pay the £39bn EU exit fee.

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Richard Kemp

Is two party politics dead?

By Richard Kemp | Sun 23rd June 2019 - 8:55 am

We’ve now had four opinion polls in a row which have put the Lib Dems in second place behind Brexit and in front of both Tory and Labour parties. This is not a flash in the pan! Real votes have been cast in real elections. Of course, in the Euro-Elections we came second and gained 15 seats. In local elections yesterday we made major advances in 9 out of 10 wards contested and a gained a seat from Labour for a mediocre third place.

Does this mean a real change in the way that the UK does business? I suspect it does. With one exception – the election in 2017 there has been a move away from two-party politics. In the 50s 95%+ of the population voted Tory or Labour. The Liberals were a Celtic fringe Party and the Welsh Nats Scots Nats and the Green Party did not even exist.

Lord Wade who had been a Liberal MP in the 50s and 60s conjectured that there were basically three political spheres in all societies. A right-wing sphere; a left-wing sphere; and a centrist sphere. In the UK those spheres were most populated by the Tory, Labour and Lib (Dem) Parties. Even the nationalist parties can be located within these spheres as their Parties in or out of government make decisions which can be judged and verified.

 The big secret is that for much of that time there has been a huge overlapping of those spheres in this Country and to some extent that cohesion between the spheres still exists although it is weakening. All three big spheres overlapped for 60% of policy making but any of those spheres could in part, as per a Venn diagram, have two spheres overlapping instead of three. Thus, on some issues there would be agreement between Tory and Labour; others between Labour and the Lib Dems and others between the Lib Dems and Tories. The fact that this worked in a binary system of government is largely because of the overlap reduced tensions and differences.

The past three years have seen much change. The spheres have pulled apart as the Parties that were in two of them have pulled their spheres further away from the Centre. The impetus for both the Parties in them is Brexit. In the case of the Tories a new Party is pushing the Tories outwards. In the case of Labour, the Leader of the Party is pushing the Labour Party outward. Both Parties by moving outwards are leaving behind a proportion of people in who now feel more comfortable in the relationship with the centrist sphere or Lib Dems as we are now known!

I think that this has two possible outcomes because people in the UK are reasonably comfortable in the broad central area where the three spheres overlap. We are not, by nature an extremist country. For most people ‘muddling through’ and ‘getting on’ are the way that we have done things.

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Mary Regnier-Wilson

Why everyone who wants to win elections should go to Brecon this Summer

By Mary Regnier-Wilson | Sat 22nd June 2019 - 12:04 pm

I’ve had a pretty good couple of years as a Lib Dem – in 2018 I was part of the team that produced a “shock” victory in South Cambs, going from 14/57 to 30/45 councillors, and last month I helped organise our Chelmsford campaign, where we went from 5 to 31 seats, the highest gain in the country.  I know how to win elections.

But 3 years ago I didn’t.  Richmond Park by-election was great for our party and the remainer cause, but it was also great personally for me, because I got to learn from the best.

In December 2016 I had a free week so I offered to go and help out with the by-elections, and James Lillis said I could help with GOTV.  So on the Saturday before I turned up at HQ, and after a morning of delivery and canvassing reported for duty at the data bunker.

The next week was one of the most stressful, entertaining and fulfilling of my life.  It started with drawing out polling districts on a huge map on the floor whilst the rest of the team jumped over me (not deliberately, it was just a small space) and ended with me being responsible for the organisation of all the Polling Day materials that ensured our committee rooms could Get Out the Vote. But more importantly I was in a room with the best Lib Dem campaigners in the country – and I learned so much from just observing them.  I got to see the deliberations about what to say in literature, observe the candidate prep for hustings, watch data guru’s creating lists in connect, discuss whether we should include Bob Geldof saying “F*** Zac” in an online video and be part of the most finely tuned Get Out The Vote machine the party has ever organised.

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