Category Archives: Op-eds

Rob Parsons

What should we do with the Palace of Westminster?

By Rob Parsons | Mon 4th February 2019 - 8:16 am

The Houses of Parliament currently function as the location in which Parliament expresses and exercises its sovereignty. It seems obvious that they no longer fit that function well: archaic logistics, terrible accessibility, lack of office and meeting space, and chambers designed perfectly for the cheap game show otherwise known as PMQs, but not for deliberation or wise governance.

Soon the buildings are to have a very expensive makeover during which time MPs and Lords will have to decamp. Perhaps we should make the decampment permanent. Build a site suitable to house the legislative body of a modern democracy.

Some argue that such …

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Caron Lindsay

At what point do we call for Article 50 to be revoked?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd February 2019 - 5:30 pm

At what point short of the cliff edge do Liberal Democrats say “Enough!” When in this utterly bonkers trashing of our economy do we call for the immediate revocation of Article 50?

We know that the UK can do that without requiring the consent of the other 27 EU member states.

We also have it as  part of our policy to call on the Government to suspend Article 50 to legislate for a People’s Vote or to avoid no deal and, if that suspension isn’t agreed, to call for the revocation of Article 50.  Here’s the motion we passed at Conference last year.

Conference reaffirms the Liberal Democrat commitment to:

Fight for an “exit from Brexit” referendum to be held once the outcome of the UK-EU negotiations is known, for the public to choose between “the deal” or Britain remaining a full member of the EU.

Campaign for Britain to remain a full and active member of the EU.

Enable all UK citizens living abroad to vote for MPs in separate overseas constituencies, and to participate in UK referendums.

Introduce votes at 16 for all elections and referendums across the UK.

Conference calls for:

The Government to release full impact assessments of all options, prior to any meaningful parliamentary vote, thereby demonstrating that there is no Brexit deal on offer that will deliver the promises of the Leave campaign.

The Government to seek to extend Article 50 if required to legislate for a referendum on the deal, or to provide enough negotiating time to avoid a catastrophic no-deal scenario, and if such extension is not agreed to withdraw the Article 50 notification.

The right to full participation in civic life, including the ability to stand for office or vote in UKreferendums and General Elections, to be extended to all EU citizens not already entitled tovote as Irish or Commonwealth citizens, who have lived in the UK for five years or longer.

The UK Government to guarantee unilaterally in law, including in a no-deal scenario, the rights of all EU citizens living in the UK, ringfencing the Withdrawal Agreements’ Chapter on citizens’ rights.

The bit about the revocation was put in as an amendment, but was not opposed by the leadership. It’s not as if Conference forced them into something that they didn’t want to do like we did over the immigration motion.

So the motion commits us to fighting for a People’s Vote and to campaign for Remain in that referendum. We are obliged to do that, therefore, until that becomes impossible.  I agree with Vince that there is a route to getting it, but the deal will have to be rejected by the Commons again first.

At that point, if the Government refuses to ask for the suspension of Article 50, or if that suspension was refused. then we should without doubt call for it to be revoked. 

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Caron Lindsay

Philip Hammond talks about second referendum while Corbyn approves “unholy alliance” to deliver Brexit

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd February 2019 - 3:35 pm

There’s some interesting nuggets in the Sunday Times reports on the Brexit chaos and ongoing shenanigans. It’s not the headlines, which are about the Royal Family being moved out of London if there are no deal riots, or the supposed new party to be formed on Valentine’s Day as Labour MPs resign the whip. It’s what else is in the article.

Earlier this week, Christine Jardine talked about the Labour Party became the “handmaids of Brexit” after their votes blocked Yvette Cooper’s amendment and helped pass Graham Brady’s time-wasting one calling for unicorns on the Irish border. Well maybe unicorns weren’t explicitly mentioned, but it all amounts to the same thing.

Labour’s role in facilitating Brexit was highlighted in an article in the Sunday Times today. Tim Shipman and Caroline Wheeler wrote(£) about how

An “unholy alliance” has formed to force through a deal consisting of May’s allies, a member of the shadow cabinet, the trade unions and Labour MPs, with Jeremy Corbyn’s tacit approval.

A recent poll suggested that Liberal Democrat support would go way up, even overtaking Labour, if Corbyn’s party helped deliver Brexit.

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Howard Sykes

£8 billion funding black hole by 2025 will swallow up popular council services

By Howard Sykes | Sun 3rd February 2019 - 8:55 am

Communities may suffer the loss of leisure and cultural facilities, fewer bus services, unkempt parks and green spaces and see fly-tippers go unpunished without government investment in under-pressure council services.

On Friday the cross-party Local Government Association launched its campaign to influence the forthcoming government Spending Review by warning about the growing risk to vital local services if the Government does not take action to secure the financial sustainability of councils.

However, the LGA said that, with the right funding and powers, councils can continue to lead their local areas, improve residents’ lives, reduce demand for public services and save money for the taxpayer.

Between 2010 and 2020, councils will have lost almost 60p out of every £1 the Government had provided for services. 

Some councils are being pushed to the brink by this unprecedented loss of funding and an ongoing surge in demand for children’s services, adult social care services and homelessness support. This is on top of having to absorb other cost pressures, such as higher national insurance contributions, the apprenticeship levy and the National Living Wage.

More and more councils are struggling to balance their books, facing overspends and having to make in-year budget cuts.

Councils provide more than 800 services to residents in their local area – some of these are legal duties they have to provide whilst others are optional powers they can use depending on local priorities.

Money is increasingly having to be diverted from these optional services, which help build communities people want to live in, to plug growing funding gaps, while some councils have already been forced to cut their services back to the legal minimum “core offer”. 

With councils in England facing an overall funding gap of £8 billion by 2025, local government leaders fear many more will have to take similar action.

That could mean many cherished local – but discretionary – services such as the maintenance of parks, improving food hygiene and safety, certain bus services, cultural activities and council tax support for those in financial difficulty – face being drastically cut back by councils across the country.

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Caron Lindsay

Lynne Featherstone: Lib Dems must fight oppression so no LGBT person has to live in fear

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 2nd February 2019 - 1:45 pm

It’s LGBT History Month and to mark its start, Lynne Featherstone, who as Equalities Minister, kicked off the process that led to same sex marriage in England and Wales, wrote a blog on the party website:

We must fight oppression in every form so that no LGBT+ person has to live in fear.

Our members make our policies, and incredible LGBT activists and allies have written comprehensive policies that will make our society a kinder and more equal place than it is today.

Our MPs, Peers and members are fighting for these rights every day:

  • Trans people being able to change their legal gender and streamlining the Gender Recognition Act to make it easier.
  • Businesses with more than 250+ employees to monitor and publish data on BAME and LGBT employees, not just gender.
  • A standard curriculum addition for Sex and Relationship Education (SRE), which will include in SRE teaching about sexual consent, LGBT+ relationships, and issues surrounding explicit images and content.
  • Gender neutral bathrooms, gender-neutral school uniforms, and ‘X’ option on passports, official documents and forms for those who do not wish to identify as male or female.

Let us celebrate our identities and our freedom of expression. Let us embrace people from all communities and be proud of who we are.

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David Warren

Parking the bus or total football?

By David Warren | Sat 2nd February 2019 - 11:56 am

For those football fanatics among us tactics are something we study closely in our desire to enhance our enjoyment of the beautiful game.

Some of us marvel at a defensive approach where a team plays an unadventurous formation designed to avoid conceding goals and then nicking one at some point in the game to come away with a 1-0 victory. This is often called parking the bus and despite his protestations to the contrary it is the favoured approach of the self styled Special One Mr Jose Mourinho.

Others prefer a purist method, the most advanced version being the one used by the Dutch national team in the past and christened total football by admiring commentators. A number of teams have deployed a variation of this philosophy but few have gained the plaudits earned by Rinus Michels the coach of the legendary Netherlands 1974 World Cup team playing in those fabulous bright orange shirts.

So what does this have to do with politics I hear you ask?

Well as in football, politics is about tactics and for our party the Liberal Democrats the way we deploy our key players will be crucial to our fortunes at the next General Election.

Do we take a cautious approach and look to retain the seats in the House of Commons that we currently hold, extend ourselves a bit by trying to win a handful of target seats or be really adventurous by running campaigns wherever we are able.

There are of course many factors to consider in making a final decision, not least the strength of the opposition and the willingness of members of our team to be deployed ‘out of position’. We also have to bear in mind the fact that politics has become much more unpredictable post Brexit.

Success may well come in some unusual places.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: The Elite

By Tom Arms | Fri 1st February 2019 - 8:55 am

In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church called them heretics. They were excommunicated or burned at the stake.

Hitler branded them Jews or Jew lovers and sent them to labour camps or to the gas chambers. During the Cold War era they were derided  as the intelligentsia. In the Soviet Union they were pulled out of their positions as teachers, journalists  and scientists and despatched to Siberian Gulags. In China they were given a little Red Book and sent to “re-education camps”. In Cambodia they were murdered.

Why? Because these people sought answers by asking questions.  They challenged the accepted wisdom peddled by ideologues and entrenched interests.  They fought against false facts and simplistic prejudice-based solutions which used the time-honoured scapegoat method as a solution to social problems.

Nowadays such people are dismissed as “the elite”. They tend to live in cities because urban areas are the perfect incubators for the exchange of ideas and information. So, they are called the “urban elite” or “metropolitan elite”. Their opinions are dismissed even though they have devoted years of their life to study and travel and learned the value of working with different nations, races and cultures. They base their decisions on facts backed up by science, logic and mathematical proofs.

The problem is that this intellectual –“elitist”—approach to life’s problems is increasingly banging up against the brick wall of the “gut instinct” coupled with a deep-seated faith, strong prejudice and a growing fear of identity loss.  The result is a tendency of a growing number of people to dismiss the opinions of the expert elite because they clash with their “feelings”. As leading Brexiteer and Britain’s current Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, said during the Brexit campaign: “Experts? The public are sick of experts.”

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Caron Lindsay

Could Labour back May’s deal?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 31st January 2019 - 7:38 pm

Jeremy Corbyn is about to run out of road. He has to pick a side now. Does he go with the majority of his party and back a People’s Vote or does he enable a Tory Prime Minister to inflict a hard Brexit on the country by backing her deal.

Theresa May’s tweet about her meeting with Corbyn yesterday was interesting:

The 29th March date now looks to be a bit fluid as senior Conservatives seem to be coalescing around a delay of a couple of weeks. But if May doesn’t deliver Brexit in short order, she’s toast. And Corbyn wants it over as quickly as possible so his party stops banging on about a People’s Vote.

And when May met Lib Dems, it was Vince, Tom Brake and Alistair Carmichael who were in those meetings. Because it makes sense to have your Brexit spokesperson involved.

But Corbyn didn’t take Kier Starmer for his meeting with the PM. He took two members of his inner circle. HIs direction of travel is clear – out of the EU. And his mindset in not punishing those who voted with the Government when pro single market shadow ministers had to resign in earlier votes shows where his heart lies.

Robert Peston seems to think Corbyn could whip Labour MPs into backing a Brexit deal:

For what it’s worth, my understanding is that Corbyn sees the failure to secure a majority yesterday of the Cooper and Grieve motions – and Labour’s own one, which explicitly mentions the possibility of a referendum – as proof that MPs really don’t want a People’s Vote.

Even more striking is that those close to Labour’s leader tell me they can indeed envisage a moment in the coming weeks when it will be official Labour policy to vote for a Brexit plan.

Those at the top of Labour, and in the grassroots, who want a referendum should fear they are being properly outmanoeuvred.

If Theresa May can’t get the ERG onside, she will need more than the 14 Labour MPs who voted with her on Tuesday night. The hard core of Corbyn loyalists might just pull her through, even if the moderate Labour MPs defied the whip.

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Willie Rennie questions Nicola Sturgeon about restraint of vulnerable and disabled children

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 31st January 2019 - 5:30 pm

In December, Scotland’s Children’s Commissioner published a shocking report which stated that local authorities risked breaking the law and breaching vulnerable and disabled children’s human rights with the way they used restraint and seclusion.

Out of the 18 local authorities which record such incidents, almost 400 children were subjected to these procedures a total of 2764 times. And 14 local authorities gave no information at all so the overall figure may be higher.

The report made 22 recommendations to which the Scottish Government was to respond to by the end of January.

There was one particularly disturbing account of the seclusion of a child with the mental age of 3:

One time I was called and he was being kept in the cloakroom with the door shut on his own incredibly distressed and not allowed out until I arrived. He was 5 years old with the mental age of a three year old… X very traumatised re the holds and not sleeping well and screaming in his sleep, very reluctant to go into school…

The staff had even put him in a room on his own in a totally unregulated state and held the door handle from the other side and wouldn’t let him out. X. was Distraught.

Willie Rennie asked Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister’s Questions what the Government was going to say.

Watch the exchange here. The text is below:

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Kirsten Johnson

Today is Young Carers Awareness Day

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 31st January 2019 - 12:42 pm

How many of you know a young carer?

Today we are celebrating the contributions many of our young people make as carers. It is Young Carers Awareness Day.

Caring can take many forms – a sibling caring for another sibling with a learning disability, a child looking after a parent, a young person helping aid a grandparent.

The world of care is diverse and often misunderstood, and many of our young carers are overlooked. They are balancing their care responsibilities with school work and sometimes have little time left over.

One issue I wanted to explore here is the symbiotic value of care. Yes, young carers are taking time to look after their relative, but what do they get in return? Not pay, in most cases. But they do get relationship.

Spending time together, in a care situation, creates an intimacy not found elsewhere. The relationship that develops can be deeper than it would have been without the aspect of care. The dimensions giving and receiving care adds to a relationship are profound.

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Kirsten Johnson

Being a PPC: The Work/Life Balance

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 31st January 2019 - 8:34 am

Following last week’s blog on why I’m a PPC, I’m reflecting this week on the conundrum facing every PPC: how to manage a healthy work/life balance.

I’m starting from the premise that I am a much better PPC when I’m living in a balanced way, finding time for family, walks, reading books and (in my case) going to church. If all I did was politics, 24/7,  I don’t think I’d have perspective.

For many PPCs, it is a real struggle to balance work, downtime and the demands of being a PPC. I can relate. I’m self-employed, so in some respects it’s easier for me as I set my own schedule, and in other ways it’s more difficult in that I keep sacrificing work time for the never-ending asks coming my way.

I’ve managed to record two discs of music since being selected as a PPC in June. It has not been easy. But I am happier because of it. Until I am gainfully employed as a Member of Parliament, I need to keep up my day job – not only as a job, but also because it is who I am at the moment.

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Bernard Aris

Part 1 (of 2): The “Dunkirk” myth, and Andrew Marr’s facts about that

By Bernard Aris | Wed 30th January 2019 - 7:35 am

This is a two-article set; the first looking at the real “Dunkirk” mentality in 1940-’45 up to 1954; the second at Dutch and British present-day politics.

My first point is: no-one can use opinion polls in proving that the “Dunkirk Spirit” about “surviving without flinching” structural shortages, even: rationing, of daily necessities like fresh “fruit and veg”, medicine, etcetera, was as widespread or as solid in 1940-’44 as the postwar legend has it. Opinion polls were a new thing; the first big Gallup polls in British politics and society only started being conducted from 1944-’45 onwards (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll ). Moreover, …

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Paul Walter

Is this the most powerful person in the USA? – and the quaint parlour game of American politics

By Paul Walter | Tue 29th January 2019 - 3:18 pm

Photo above by Gage Skidmore on Flickr CCL

A Floridian recently said to me that Nancy Pelosi is the most powerful person in America. I had to do a double-take. I thought she said that Nancy Pelosi was the most powerful woman in America. I thought this because people have been saying it for years. But, no, my American acquaintance actually said that Nancy Pelosi is the most powerful person in the USA.

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Paul Walter

If you eat or have a pulse, a “no deal” Brexit is unconscionable and dangerous insanity

By Paul Walter | Tue 29th January 2019 - 1:25 pm

Over the last six months, I have come to see part of the British medical supply chain at close quarters. I have had a couple of mild medical complaints which have necessitated repeat prescriptions.

I won’t bore you with descriptions of endless mucking about on the patient website, trips up to the surgery and down to the pharmacist. Suffice it to say, being only slightly ailing in this country virtually demands taking on a second career to work the health system to your advantage. You become adept at queuing and sheer bloody-minded tenacity.

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Helen Flynn

Education, education, education

By Helen Flynn | Tue 29th January 2019 - 11:55 am

I think we all remember who came out with this well-known phrase?  Tony Blair made a speech outlining his three priorities for Government in 2001, explaining that each of them was in fact education!

The Liberal Democrats have long claimed to be the party for education, with some justification.  If you ask a Liberal Democrat member who has been around in the party for at least 24 years what they think the party’s best policy has been, the chances are they will sweep you back to Paddy Ashdown’s day with “a penny on income tax for education”.

Back then raising the standard rate of income tax by one penny to fund more spending was a radical and distinctive policy, both in its tax-raising element and in its direct hypothecation of the money for education. It helped carve out a strong point for the party on education.  

Similarly, the Pupil Premium policy, enacted during the coalition era was a fabulous Lib Dem education policy, and is yielding some positive results in terms of offering disadvantaged children more opportunities during their education.

So what next?  The Lib Dem Education Association (LDEA) continues to innovate on education policy and offer fresh perspectives and policy ideas to the Federal Policy Committee and the leadership of the Lib Dem party.  Every year the LDEA holds an annual conference (in conjunction with the LGA), for Lib Dem members and others with a strong interest or affiliation to the world of education to come together to share ideas and discuss “what next for education?”

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Caron Lindsay

Another day’s Labour for the Government

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 29th January 2019 - 8:12 am

Hot on the heels of failing to kill the Government’s truly egregious Immigration Bill, which rolls out the Hostile Environment on an industrial scale, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party approaches the Brexit votes tonight in disarray.

But first, a reminder of last night.

I mean, really. A reminder of that happened. Labour were originally down to abstain but after cries of disbelief from senior Labour figures on Twitter, they decided to make it a one-line whip on Twitter. Hardly a face-saving exercise.

You might remember that Mr Corbyn has been loudly refusing to meet Theresa May unless she takes No Deal off the table.

So, when one of his own side comes up with an idea that would prevent us from leaving without a deal on 29th March, you would think he would support it. That was certainly the mood music over the weekend.

But no. The Guardian reports this morning that they are growing cold on that idea.

Opposition? Not so much. 

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Caron Lindsay

“Pathetic”

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 28th January 2019 - 9:06 pm

It’s not often you get a one-word quote from a politician.

“Pathetic.”

This was Ed Davey’s reaction to the news that Labour were to abstain on the Government’s Immigration Bill.

This Bill ends freedom of movement, rolling out the Hostile Environment on an industrial scale to EU nationals, not just those who are already here but those we desperately need to come here and work in the future.

A £30,000 salary requirement to take up a job here will obliterate our health and social care services. It is so short sighted.

This Bill is brutal, inhumane and exactly what you would expect from the Tories. It is to be opposed with passion.

We’re obviously voting against it. Labour initially said they were going to abstain. When a number of Labour MPs said that they would vote against, this was revised to a one-line whip. A one-line Whip is pretty much “turn up if you feel like it.”

This does not save Labour’s face.

Part of the reason we are in this mess is because people didn’t robustly stand up to the Daily Mail and UKIP and their revolting prejudice against immigrants. Nobody was making the positive argument for immigration and challenging the awful stuff in the media. Labour’s equivocation is disgraceful.

This Bill needs to be opposed. The Immigration Rules as they are are horrific. They need to be ripped up and we need to start again and build a system that has fairness and dignity and respect at its heart. It needs to welcome the fact that people fall across with people from the other side of the world and celebrate the fact that they want to live together in this country. It needs to enthusiastically welcome the workers we desperately need to keep our farms, hospitals and care homes, our universities, our businesses and our hotels and restaurants.

This government gets away with such egregious things because Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party lets it. On Brexit, on immigration, on everything, Labour should be piling on the pressure. Tory Whips should be tearing their hair out on every vote. They shouldn’t be putting their feet up knowing that they are not seriously under threat. No minority government should ever feel so comfortable.

You can certainly see where Mitch Benn is coming from.

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Jon Andrew

The 3 Arguments I wish Remainers would stop making (and I’m a Remainer!)

By Jon Andrew | Mon 28th January 2019 - 4:35 pm

We may not have got much credit for it in the polls, but the growth of the People’s Vote Campaign is a Lib Dem success story. Our policy broke into the mainstream, caused a march of 700,000 people, and gained supporters from every major Party (other than UKIP, that would be weird.)

The reason for the growing popularity of the People’s Vote is because – I believe – the central argument for it is compelling, and goes something like this:

Britain voted for a departure but not a destination. We now have a much clearer idea of what

…

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Caron Lindsay

What did you think of the Jeremy Corbyn’s backbone meme?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 27th January 2019 - 10:00 pm

Over the weekend, some imaginative people from our campaigns Department wandered around with a replica of a spine, with a label on it saying “property of J Corbyn” on it and took photos of it on a bus (where it actually got a seat) in a bookshop, in a cafe and having a lovely greasy vegetarian breakfast (only one egg – surely some mistake).

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they did that. They surely must have got some really weird looks. And if they didn’t there is something a bit wrong with the world.

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Caron Lindsay

Holocaust Memorial Day matters more than ever

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 27th January 2019 - 10:55 am

I must have been about four when my Grandma told me about the Holocaust, about the millions of Jewish people taken from their homes and families, starved and subjected to the most brutal treatment in concentration camps. The utter horror of the mass executions shocked me and helped spark in me a lifelong regard for human rights and commitment to making sure that nothing like that could ever happen again. Later on, I realised that Roma, gay people, trade unionists, disabled people and pretty much anyone else whose face didn’t fit were also persecuted.

My Grandma had lost her Dad, who had been on HMS Courageous, in the first fortnight of the War. She ended it in Germany, where my Grandad was a doctor with the forces and where my Dad was born in December 1945. The horrors of the Nazi atrocities were very real to her and she was keen to make sure that future generations understood the dangers and horrors.

It’s worrying that 1 in 20 UK adults, according to a poll reported by BBC News think that the holocaust didn’t take place and 1 in 8 think that it has been exaggerated.

In an article for the Guardian last November, Hope not Hate’s Joe Mulhall looked at how holocaust denial is changing as the alt-right rises. It’s belittled, mocked and joked about on social media.

For many young far-right activists the Holocaust is shorn of historical significance, diminished by time and absent from their collective consciousness, as it was not for previous generations throughout the postwar period. Far-right Holocaust denial is changing and if we are to be ready to fight back against those who seek to rewrite history for their own political ends, we have to understand how they are trying to do it.

So what can we do about it? As ever, support education about this grim moment in human history and stand up when we see people being targeted with prejudice and discrimination based on who they are. We can’t ever put up with anti-semitism, islamophobia, transphobia, misogyny, prejudice against immigrants, attacks on disabled people. All of these are increasingly prevalent in our society.

This video from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust sums it up:

Senior Liberal Democrats have been marking Holocaust Memorial Day:

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Paul Walter

Puzzling and concerning events in the USA which mark, perhaps, a watershed

By Paul Walter | Sat 26th January 2019 - 3:33 pm

Embed from Getty Images

One has to ask what has been achieved by the longest partial government shut-down in US history. Thousands of devoted federal workers had a grim Christmas and January, many of them resorting to food-banks and second jobs.

And now it is over – Donald Trump has hoisted the white flag. His stalwart supporter Lou Dobbs observed that Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, “has just whipped the president of the United States”.

It has all been complete madness. The video below shows Senator Michael Bennet (Democrat – Colorado) making perhaps the most passionate speech I have ever seen. It is worth listening to at least the first ten minutes. It perfectly captures the insanity of the Donald Trump’s shutdown. It is such a brilliant speech that the video has now had more than 11 million hits and is the most watched congressional speech in the entire 40 year history of C-Span!

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Cameron Paton

Scotland’s way out

By Cameron Paton | Fri 25th January 2019 - 4:48 pm

No deal is better than a bad deal.

Theresa May

My prediction is that the UK is heading for a no-deal Brexit. If Theresa May thinks what she had was a good deal, then all other deals must be a bad deal, so if all other deals are bad deals, then by her logic, we’d all be better off with no deal.

No one will get a deal that suits the majority because you can’t have the Customs Union without freedom of movement. One side don’t care about the Customs Union as long as freedom of movement is cancelled, and the other side don’t want a deal without the Customs Union.Therefore, a majority in the Commons will never be achieved no matter what deal is brought to the table by whoever – leaving this country in a situation where disaster contingency plans are being put in place and businesses are relocating their HQs.

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George Kendall

Why I call myself a Social Democrat

By George Kendall | Fri 25th January 2019 - 11:55 am

I have lots of friends who call themselves Liberals, and I agree with almost everything they stand for. So why don’t I call myself a Liberal?

If I did, perhaps I wouldn’t be called an “authoritarian”. It’d be nice to avoid the insult, but I can’t call myself a Liberal if I don’t know what it means

Much of the time, politics is a battle between the rights of the individual and the needs of the wider community. To be useful, I would want liberalism to help me pick a side in these battles.

I think the need of the community to avoid mass killing by a rogue gun owner trumps the rights of individuals to own guns. Does that make me an authoritarian?

Forcing drivers to wear seat-belts is certainly a restriction on individual freedom. But I think that’s a price worth paying for a substantial reduction in road death. Does that make me an authoritarian?

We have significant taxation in this country, and that restricts the right of individuals to spend their wages on what they think best. But reducing poverty is a higher priority for me. Does that make me an authoritarian?

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Paul Walter

How does Jeremy Corbyn compare to past Labour leaders?

By Paul Walter | Fri 25th January 2019 - 10:25 am

Embed from Getty Images

One of the frustrating things about the current Brexit episode is watching Jeremy Corbyn perform in the Commons. The other day, on the Twitterdome, I compared Mr Corbyn unfavourably with past Labour leader, John Smith. I think it is fair to say that if John Smith were currently Labour leader he would, by now, have delivered a rhetorical blow to Theresa May comparable to that which he dealt to John Major with this passage of one of his Commons’ speeches:

In response to the plummeting popularity of the Administration itself, revealed at Newbury and in the shire county elections, we have the Prime Minister’s botched reshuffle. If we were to offer that tale of events to the BBC light entertainment department as a script for a programme, I think that the producers of “Yes, Minister” would have turned it down as hopelessly over the top. It might have even been too much for “Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Them”.

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Mark Argent

Out of Brexit Chaos part 2: Government of National Unity

By Mark Argent | Thu 24th January 2019 - 10:45 am

In the preceding article, on the People’s Vote , I argued that the process should be given significantly more time.

However, we also have a real problem: both of the big parties are too fractured either to govern or to face a General Election. The unedifying results create the opposite of the sense of stability needed for such the People’s Vote.

This is the time for a Government of National Unity bringing people together from across Parliament, not as a formal coalition between parties, but as an interim arrangement, which would need a more collaborative way of working. The obvious person to lead this is Kenneth Clark. This is partly because of his considerable depth and experience. Age means he is also likely to stand down at the next General Election, so it would be clear that the Government of National Unity is there to provide stability in an exceptional time without being subsequently returned to power. He is also sufficiently unpopular with the right wing of his party to mean that MPs from across the Commons could support him.

The clear message from forming a Government of National Unity is that we are in exceptional times. Something exceptional needs to happen to enable the People’s Vote to happen fairly. Frustration with politics will have produced a different way of doing politics.

How can a Government of National Unity form?

Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, an election happens if the Commons passes a motion that it has no confidence in the government and doesn’t then pass a motion that it does have confidence within a fortnight. With sufficient agreement among MPs in advance, it would be possible for Tory MPs to vote with the Opposition “no confidence” in Theresa May’s government, and then “confidence” in the Government of National Unity.

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Kirsten Johnson

Being a PPC: what’s your motivation?

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 24th January 2019 - 8:34 am

Caron asked me to write a series a little while ago about being a PPC – and my response at the time was that a day-in-the-life blog might put people off ever applying to be a PPC!

Being a PPC is hard work – we are volunteers and unpaid, but expected to do a huge amount of work building our teams, supporting local elections, sending out press releases, attending local events, answering letters and emails, the list goes on.

However, I willingly signed up to the never-ending work. Why? In my case it was my anger at poor mental health provision coupled with my fury at the inequality in society. Those two issues pushed me over the edge from being an armchair activist to getting out and knocking on doors, trying to make a difference.

I didn’t like door-knocking the first time – I thought I was intruding on people’s privacy by interrupting whatever they happened to be doing. But I quickly found out that most people like being asked their opinion and listened to. What they don’t like about politics is the shouting of Westminster and the perceived lack of understanding about how the real world works. Someone knocking on their door, listening to stories about their world, the real world, means a huge amount to them.

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Duncan Brack

Gladstone’s first government

By Duncan Brack | Wed 23rd January 2019 - 11:15 am

Looking for something to take your mind off Brexit? The Liberal Democrat History Group can help! One hundred fifty years and six weeks ago, on 3 December 1868, William Ewart Gladstone took office as Prime Minister at the head of what can reasonably be accounted as both the first identifiably Liberal government and the first modern administration.

Gladstone was eventually to serve as Prime Minister on four separate occasions. The most famous, recognisable and enduring of all the Liberal Party’s leaders, he dominated British politics for more than thirty years. He brought to the leadership of the party and the labours of ministerial office a physical and mental temperament unequalled among former prime ministers. A voracious reader and bibliophile, who found leisure in his closely argued studies of the classical poets Homer and Dante, he also had a passion for physical labour, expressed in walking, estate work at Hawarden (his wife’s family home in north Wales), and tree-felling.

As Chancellor during the 1850s, he established his reputation for prudent financial innovation by replacing taxes on goods and customs duties with a progressive income tax and established parliamentary accountability for government spending. He swept away import duties on hundreds of products and established free trade almost as an article of faith. Although firmly devoted to the Church of England, he won strong support from Nonconformists for his attitude to religious questions, which at that time affected basic liberties as well as such matters as education.

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Mark Argent

Out of Brexit Chaos part 1: People’s Vote

By Mark Argent | Wed 23rd January 2019 - 7:35 am

Introduction

The Brexit process began as an internal Tory party squabble, but its resolution has to move from there to mature thinking about the future.

This means asking the rest of the EU for a significant extension to the Article 50 period. This is not for significant further negotiation — if Brexit has to happen, May’s deal is pretty good — but to enable things to be done with considered thinking about the future.

I suggest that the process needs a People’s Vote, but on a longer timetable than people are proposing to allow adequate preparation. It requires a Government of National Unity to provide stability for this to happen, and for enough time afterward for political parties to draw up manifestos in the light of the result, on which to have a General Election.

I’ll pick up the idea of a Government of National Unity a the second article (published tomorrow).

People’s Vote

Downing St recently drew criticism for suggesting that it could take a year to organise a People’s Vote. In the present state of anxiety, it is tempting to accelerate the process, but my plea is for it to be given more time because it is more than just enabling people to put crosses on ballot papers. Several things lie behind this:

Preserving democracy

Referenda risk undermining representative democracy. Unless the question is very specific, they carry a sense that those elected can’t be trusted. Proceeding too quickly now risks compounding this it can be spun as “MPs couldn’t fix this, so the people had to”, and inviting an “anti-politics vote”.

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Malcolm Wood

Relax! Brexit is going perfectly

By Malcolm Wood | Tue 22nd January 2019 - 11:55 am

If you were hoping to see Britain make an orderly and dignified exit
from the EU on 29th March this year then I imagine you think that the
Brexit process is going very badly indeed. But if, like me, you hope
that Britain doesn’t leave the EU at all, then I think you should be
delighted with how things are progressing.

Some of the problems currently besetting the Brexit process were
predictable from the beginning. It was clear even during the 2016
referendum campaign that people were voting Leave for a wide variety
of reasons, which (being generous) could not all be satisfied at once.
To put it another way: regardless of the eventual terms of exit, when
asked “Do you want to leave on *these* terms”, a majority of British
people would say “No”.

But a lot of the things that are crippling the Brexit process now were
not nearly so predictable. The unexpected result of the 2017
election, which suddenly gave huge influence to the DUP, thwarted the
only obvious way to satisfy the exit conditions laid down by the prime
minister – which required some divergence between Great Britain and
Northern Ireland – and helped to ensure that the resulting withdrawal
agreement was unpalatable to many MPs. The legal ruling secured by
Gina Miller ensured that MPs got a “meaningful” vote on the withdrawal
agreement – and roundly rejected it. And the legal ruling that the UK
can unilaterally revoke article 50 meant that MPs *could* reject the
withdrawal agreement without fear of it automatically resulting in a
“no deal” exit. As a Remainer, you couldn’t ask for a more perfect
combination of events!

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Caron Lindsay

Fee waived for EU nationals – but that doesn’t make the process right

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 22nd January 2019 - 10:25 am

The 3 million EU nationals in this country may no longer have to pay a fee for settled status but that doesn’t mean that we can have any confidence in the process. It doesn’t mean that we should be any less angry that our friends and neighbours and family and partners are being put through this. They were citizens, free to enjoy pretty much the same rights as us. Overnight they become people who are subject to immigration control.

If we could trust the Home Office to make humane, reasonable, rational decisions about people’s lives, it would still be insulting to these people that we are putting them through it, but we could at least have reason to believe that they would be treated fairly.

The thing is, the Home Office often makes heartless, inhumane and unreasonable decisions that defy any sort of fairness.

The most recent example is that of an elderly Iranian couple who have owned a house in Edinburgh for four decades and who are an integral part of the support system for their grandson with autism. There is, by the way, a petition to the Home Office which I would urge you to sign. Adverse publicity can sometimes help, so do what you can to spread the word. 

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