Category Archives: Op-eds

Shas Sheehan

Global Disability Summit

By Shas Sheehan | Wed 11th July 2018 - 2:40 pm

People with disabilities account for 1 billion of the world’s population. Too often they are among the most marginalised and discriminated against groups – and too often international development efforts have continued to leave them behind.

The upcoming Global Disability Summit, held in London on 24th July, is a chance to change this by building on the work of Liberal Democrats in government to promote disability-inclusive development. The Summit, hosted by DFID, the government of Kenya, and the International Disability Alliance will be the first of its kind with attendees from governments and NGOs from across the world.

A liberal worldview recognises the inherent value of every individual, and as Liberal Democrats, we must challenge the inequalities faced by people with disabilities in developing countries.

In government, the Liberal Democrats helped lead the change on disability-inclusive development. Lynne Featherstone championed the rights of people with disabilities during her time at DFID. Her work led to the ground-breaking Disability Framework – putting disability at the heart of what DFID does and ensuring it moved from a ‘tick box exercise’ to being mainstreamed across all of DFID’s work.

It’s common sense that all programmes should reach people with disabilities – schools should be accessible, healthcare inclusive, stigma challenged – the individual recognised and given the opportunity to flourish.

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Why Lib Dem Conference should debate UN Nuclear Weapons treaty

By Kevin White | Wed 11th July 2018 - 12:30 pm

This coming Saturday the Federal Conference Committee will meet to choose motions for inclusion on the Agenda for Autumn Conference. Earlier this year a motion was submitted for Spring Conference signed by 137 members calling for the UK to Sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. FCC chose not to include it on the Agenda then. It has been submitted again, this time with 157 members supporting it :

SIGN THE UN TREATY ON THE PROHIBITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Conference notes that

(a) in July 2017 the United Nations voted on and approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear

…

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Wera Hobhouse MP

As MPs jostle for power, Tories take eye off house building

By Wera Hobhouse MP | Wed 11th July 2018 - 10:23 am

Construction output has continued its recent decline, the third consecutive fall. In May alone construction fell by 1.7%, mainly driven by a sharp decrease of 2.5% in new work.

Commenting on the statistics, Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Housing said:

“These figures show the Government’s complete failure to tackle the housing crisis. Last year social housing numbers hit the lowest since records began while the numbers of people sleeping on our streets rose dramatically.

“If we are to build the houses so desperately needed, smaller-scale builders must be given access to finance to break the stranglehold of big developers, and the borrowing

…

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Tahir Maher

Rees-Mogg: Back Seat Driver

By Tahir Maher | Wed 11th July 2018 - 7:38 am

Jacob Rees-Mogg Jacob Rees-Mogg

I remember the first time I heard about Rees-Mogg, it was on Have I Got News For You where they were joking about Rees-Mogg taking his nanny with him when he went out canvassing. I was a PPC during the last election, and I remember when the results were coming in through the night when North-East Somerset results came in Rees-Mogg was standing there with a huge Tory ribbon. Even the Tories were disappointed when the BBC announced he had won. So how did a man who is a backbencher, considered eccentric and not particularly popular come to be in a position that he can threaten the Prime Minister?

Rees-Mogg was a minor player during the referendum but now as Michael Gove, and Boris Johnson (who has recently left government) are/were restricted to what they can say (believe it or not), It created a vacuum for Rees-Mogg to step into. Nigel Farage seems to be busy cultivating his relationship with the American President after failing (seven times) to get into parliament and is not seen on television commenting on Brexit as he once was.

The European Research Group (ERG) was set up In July 1993 by Sir Michael Spicer, in response to growing concern about Britain’s continued integration into the European Community through the Maastricht Treaty and its members include David Davies, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Iain Duncan Smith and Sajid Javid among others. Jacob Rees-Mogg took over from Suella Fernandes as the Chair this year (Suella Fernandes resigned as a junior minister on 9th July as she was not happy with the Chequers agreement reached by the Cabinet on 6th July).

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David Becket

The Brighton Declaration?

By David Becket | Tue 10th July 2018 - 5:15 pm

There is no leadership from the government, the Labour Party and we are not getting through. We are letting a golden opportunity pass by.

Pointing fingers at the government and repeating,  “Exit from Brexit” is not enough. We need a full programme that offers hope.

I am reminded of the golden memories of he most successful campaign I was involved in, the Newbury by-election. This took place when the Tories were in trouble.

A key to this campaign was the Newbury Declaration. a summary of the then current mess and  an offer of hope.

We need a similar declaration now. I give an example below. I call it the Brighton Declaration, ready for Conference, though maybe this is too late.

This is a draft attempt, it could be better but it is a start.

THE BRIGHTON DECLARATION

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Ruth Bright

RAF 100

By Ruth Bright | Tue 10th July 2018 - 1:43 pm

Think about it. Have you ever seen graphic footage of the Blitz? Not cheery chaps sifting through some light rubble with the WVS serving tea nearby. No, nothing like that. But bodies and horror.

The footage exists. A little was shown in the 1970s in the series “The World at War” but generally we are much more familiar with appalling images of the Holocaust than we are with the facts of area bombing either in Germany or Britain. The scale is hard to grasp now. Over 600 dead and nearly 900 injured in two nights of bombing in Southampton alone.

A few weeks ago Royal Mail issued a series of stamps to mark the RAF’s centenary. Inevitably they show chocolate box images of bright blue skies, fighter planes and Red Arrows without a wartime heavy bomber in sight. Perhaps the Royal Mail felt that images of the Lancaster had been “done to death” already. Done to death indeed.

People like my late Dad, AC2 W H Clark, an RAF wireless operator during WW2, knew exactly what area bombing meant. What is rarely realised today is that there was a massive backlash about the carnage at the time. In the current sentimental climate it is hard to believe but both during and after the war in many quarters Bomber Command was an embarrassment and so were its veterans. Like many of his generation Dad felt that stigma. He did not collect his service medals. Also, like many of his generation, he frequently messed up his life in an era when there was little sympathy for “combat stress” and little compassion about the lost opportunities of survivors who had given up precious years of youth to war service.

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Mark Argent

Abandon Tory #BrexitShambles…

By Mark Argent | Tue 10th July 2018 - 10:03 am

Harold Wilson once said “a week is a long time in politics”… The last few days make that sound like an understatement.

On Sunday I offered something to Liberal Democrat Voice suggesting that it’s time to switch the language on Brexit into an explicit attack on “Tory Brexit”. The resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson take that a great deal further. I’m writing this now wondering whether there will be another resignation before it is read on Liberal Democrat Voice, and whether we will be in another Tory leadership contest, or hurtling into a General Election.

There’s been forceful posturing about “getting a good deal” and “how these negotiations work” and “abandonment of Brexit”. On the other side of the Commons, Jeremy Corbyn quipped that May’s Brexit deal took “two years to form and two days to unravel”.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dem, Green and Labour LGBT organisations condemn transphobic protest at Pride

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 7th July 2018 - 9:39 pm

This morning I said I was excited about Pride in London today. Unfortunately, it has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons after a small number of transphobic protesters were allowed to march at the front and hand out transphobic literature to the people lining the streets. From the Huffington Post:

Organisers of the most “diverse” Pride event in London have hit back at accusations it allowed a group of anti-transgender activists to lead the parade through the capital on Saturday.

The small group, which reportedly only consisted of about 10 people, are believed to have carried signs with slogans such as “trans activists erase lesbians” and distributed leaflets stating “a male can never be lesbian”.

And here’s some more reports from Twitter:

The idea that someone’s rights must be the expense of someone else’s comes straight from the divisive rhetoric of the likes of Nigel Farage. And like Nigel Farage, a relatively small group of trans-exclusionary radical feminists are getting a disproportionate amount of air time, much of it complaining that they are being cut out of the “debate.” There’s a lot of their rhetoric which puts me in mind of the horrid homophobia I came across in the 80s.

A recent Stonewall report into trans people’s lives found that 40% had suffered hate crime in the last year and a third had suffered discrimination in their daily lives. These figures should worry liberals and we should be doing our best to stand up against it.

There is no conflict between women’s rights and transgender rights for the very obvious reason that women can be any combination of cis, trans, lesbian, heterosexual, of all races and religions (or none of the latter). Most women just work together for the good of everyone but there are a few who want to spread hate and there should be no place for that in any organisation which advocates equality.

LGBT+ Liberal Democrats condemned the protest and Pride in London’s reaction to it:

And there was a bit of cross-party consensus:

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Katharine Pindar

Trump’s awful, but we need to put our own house in order

By Katharine Pindar | Sat 7th July 2018 - 11:55 am

We expect President Trump to turn our long-held values on their head. Whether it’s banning Muslims or building a wall against Mexican migrants, withdrawing from the world’s agreement on limiting climate change, cosying up to Russia’s President Putin and doubting if NATO is still valuable, Trump’s Presidency seems like a bad dream from which we, and America, will only awake when his term ends.

But that will be years hence, Meantime he will visiting Britain next week. Has America changed so much that this presidency is not an aberration but a consistency?

Britain has to stand strong against that fear with Europe, with the EU and with our NATO allies. Our rocky, deplorable government has to be made by the progressive forces to stand up for our national values and our continued security.

So, when we hear that the government is to give ‘careful consideration’ to calls for a renewed judge-led inquiry into our country’s involvement in human rights abuses after the Iraq invasion, Liberal Democrats must assert the necessity for that enquiry until it is granted.

The necessity arises from the two reports published by Parliament’s intelligence and security committee. They show a shameful slippage of our own intelligence services’ values when assisting American operations in Iraq after the 9/11 attacks. It is reported that the UK had planned, agreed or financed 31 rendition operations. In addition, on 15 occasions, British intelligence consented to or witnessed torture, and there  were 232 occasions when the intelligence agencies supplied questions to be put to detainees whom they knew or suspected were being mistreated.

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Caron Lindsay

Enjoy this exciting weekend!

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 7th July 2018 - 8:37 am

Well, there’s plenty to distract us from the awfulness of Brexit this weekend. I’m probably most excited about the sheer joy, fabulousness and sparkliness of Pride taking to the streets of London. The first time I ever came across a Pride march was in London in 1992 when I was down for a Women Lib Dems Policy Committee. It was one of the happiest things I had ever seen. So much progress has been made since then, but, like all things we hold dear, we have to keep fighting. While LGBT people face hatred and discrimination on the street, in employment, in healthcare, at school, it is the liberal way to stand up for them and change things for the better.

I’m loving that the party has changed its social media avatars to go along with the Pride flags everywhere.

So, happy Pride everyone. For the first time, the Pride flag flies proudly over Richmond, thanks to the new Lib Dem Council there.

There is also the not so small matter of some football match in Russia. I have managed to avoid almost all of the World Cup so far. I mean, if football isn’t Inverness Caledonian Thistle, I generally don’t see the point of it. However, there is hope for me yet. Belgium’s defeat of Brazil last night brought an involuntary smile to me. I won’t feel the need to watch it, but good luck to England. Hope all our readers get the result you want and that you still have fingernails at the end of it. Vince is predicting that it’s going to be tense:

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Miranda Roberts

Federal People Development Committee report – 28th June 2018

By Miranda Roberts | Fri 6th July 2018 - 11:55 am

This was a rather unusual meeting, in that it was dominated by one very large agenda item, discussing the idea of a registered supporters scheme. In fact, for the first time, we applied our 9pm meeting guillotine and postponed some other discussions to our July meeting.

We started in the normal way with staff reports. The committee was enormously impressed by the retention rates the Membership team have achieved this quarter, currently standing at 94.5%. That’s a fantastic achievement, and a credit to the team’s hard work. The Membership team have also started tracking Exit data – reasons why people have decided to leave. This is a really helpful innovation. It will be shared with State Parties but not beyond that for now, as it is obviously quite sensitive data. The team agreed to consider whether there was a way to share the data with local parties, but we need to find a reliable, secure system to do that and this is a brand new metric we are monitoring. I’ll let you know if that starts to be filed somewhere that local parties can view it. 

We did also note the changes to the Membership Incentive scheme – essentially this model gives a percentage of each member’s joining subscription back to the local party they live in. The system is being changed to reward renewal as well as recruitment, with a portion of subscription fees being paid to local parties in the second and third year of a person’s membership.

The Training team are doing great work too. The Autumn Conference training schedule is in the last stages of being finalised. They have slightly changed the process for allocating training sessions this year. All providers were asked to bid for courses, and given themes that the training should focus upon. Then everyone’s ideas were collated and where more than one provider wanted to run a course, they were asked to join forces, collaborate and present a joint course. We are also welcoming some new providers, to expand the training offer that members can enjoy at conference. It’s exciting to see this coming together so well and we will be monitoring feedback closely after conference to see if participants enjoy these co-presented sessions.

The Diversity and Candidates team are currently without a “Head”, as the recruitment of a replacement for Arfan Bhatti is not yet concluded. However they still submitted a report, and we were delighted to hear of some very pro-active ideas for measures that could improve diversity among our approved candidates. We look forward to more concrete suggestions once the team leader is in place.

Then we came to the largest agenda item, the idea of a registered supporters scheme.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Cunning plan needed

By Tom Arms | Fri 6th July 2018 - 8:55 am

The British cabinet is preparing to retire to Chequers for a country weekend of Pimms, strawberries and footie and tennis on the telly. There may even be some croquet on the prime ministerial lawn and perhaps late night bridge in the drawing room.

Miss Marple and/or Hercule Poirot, however, should be on hand for a rapid intervention. The likelihood of blood on the vintage Axminster is high.

The stated purpose of the meeting is to finally reach an agreement on the British negotiating position for Brexit negotiations. Will they agree? Unlikely. The Brexiteers red lines are finally hitting the brick wall of reality. A growing coalition of business, trade unions and a hard-nosed Treasury are blocking Boris and Co at every turning.

However, they can’t back down. That would be political suicide. On the other hand, the Brexiteers can’t play their trump card and resign in protest. That would collapse the government and result in an election win for a left-wing Labour administration.

Prime Minister Theresa May is said to have devised a compromise solution which Downing Street sources say is “the best of both worlds.” Both Brexiteers and EU negotiators have dismissed it as the “worst of all worlds,”

So the likely result of the coming make or break weekend is a fudge falsely portrayed as a breakthrough. In short, more shambles with the likely final result of a no deal Brexit with all the nightmarish consequences that entails.

Of course, this exponentially increases the chances of a second referendum. The problem is that the Remainers are almost every bit as clueless about Britain’s national direction as the Brexiteers.  Other than saying they want a second referendum on Brexit with the implied aim of a reversal of the 2016 vote, they have offered no clear alternative set of policies.

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Mary Reid

Happy Anniversary!

By Mary Reid | Thu 5th July 2018 - 5:01 pm

Embed from Getty Images

It’s hot, and our regular supply of posts from you, dear readers, seems to have melted away. But we can’t let today go by without acknowledging the 70th Anniversary of the NHS.

Of course, we can’t do it justice in a short piece, but we can be proud that, for all its faults, we do still have a system that is not only valued at home but also admired by other countries. Indeed, many nations now have systems of health care which are universal and free at the point of delivery, even if they differ in the methods used to achieve that.

Yes, of course there are anomalies in the NHS – dental care and prescriptions are often not free, social care is still not integrated properly with medical care, treatment is rationed by Clinical Commissioning Groups, too many services are outsourced.

But what has always astonished me is the fact that this blatantly socialist project, vilified by many at the time (including the majority of doctors), is now seen as an essential component of British life by people from across the political spectrum. And what saddens me is that the American right still don’t understand why we love it, and have dismantled the progressive systems that Obama carefully constructed.

The challenge over the last 70 years has been for the NHS to keep in step both with research and with societal changes, and that challenge will go with it into the future.

So it is appropriate that Vince Cable has chosen today to highlight quite a niche subject – access to fertility treatment for female couples.  He has written to Sir Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, about ‘shared motherhood’. This is a treatment that involves one partner donating an egg which is then carried by the other partner, so that both women are physically involved. At the moment it is only available privately at a cost of £6000 per cycle.

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The Voice

Lib Dems force action on empty houses

By The Voice | Wed 4th July 2018 - 9:25 pm

Research by Liberal Democrats in 2018 identified over 11,000 homes that were empty for over ten years. Vince Cable called it a “national scandal”, at a time when “the homelessness crisis is worsening”. Statistics also show that across the country houses empty for six months or more equate to more than 200,000.

Every now and then we have governments making promises to do something about this, but in practice, they have done little to tackle this problem. MP’s reported, last year, that more than 78,000 families were living in temporary accommodation in England alone.

The Liberal Democrats have taken the lead on this. They have today claimed victory as the Conservative government bowed to pressure to take decisive action on empty houses, by giving new tax powers for councils.

The government has accepted the principle of an amendment from Lib Dem Peers (Baroness Pinnock and Lord Shipley) to set in place an escalator of council tax charges. This would mean that the longer a property was left empty, the more council tax would have to be paid.

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Tahir Maher

YouGov Polls

By Tahir Maher | Wed 4th July 2018 - 3:24 pm

Since the Brexit referendum media and politics seems to have turned anti-European but it seems that the public opinion is slowing starting to shift towards being more pro-European. There is increasingly despair among the public about the lack of leadership and success with the Brexit negotiations. Two years on from the referendum vote and we really don’t know where we will be and what will be agreed over the next 5 months. A YouGov poll has consistently found that about two thirds of those polled feel the negotiations are going badly.

Below I have collected a number of YouGov polls around Brexit. They make for interesting reading.

Surprisingly, a recent YouGov poll found that 31 percent of Tories say the government’s Brexit decision is wrong. This compares with 73 percent of Labour voters and 83 percent of Lib Dem voters. Because some voters think that the government now has a duty to implement the referendum 30 percent of Remainers want the government to go ahead with Brexit. Although, those who were undecided, during the referendum, are beginning to gradually favour staying in the EU.

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Bernard Aris

The D66 version of Priestley’s “An Inspector Calls” in Brexit Days

By Bernard Aris | Wed 4th July 2018 - 12:15 pm

Today, Dutch VVD (NatLib; car driver-liberal) prime minister Mark Rutte, the only statesman who while visiting Donald Trump in his Oval Office dared interrupt a Trump rant against the EU during the press & photo-op moment, is receiving British Prime Minister Theresa May in the garden of the Catshuis, the The Hague meeting point and residence of Dutch coalition cabinets.

At the same time, D66, the Dutch version of the Lib Dem Social Liberals, is publishing a Facebook video of the visit Kees Verhoeven MP, our EU/Brexit and ICT/Privacy parliamentary spokesman, recently made to the doorstep of Downing Street 10; another coalition residence (since 2010 and 2017…).

Like a famous Bob Dylan video, Kees has a stack of large pieces of paper in his hands, which while he peels away one paper at a time, form a clear message from Dutch Remain supporters of al hues (but most of all: us D66 activists) to Mrs May, her squabbling Cabinet (including Heathrow Commons vote deserters), and Brexiteers everywhere, including those being investigated by the FBI Special Counsel for illegal Putin-Trump connections and Cambridge Analytica Fake News manipulation.

Like the bookseller said to Saint Augustine: “Tolle, Lege”; read and take on board, take with you as you continue on your way…

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Tahir Maher

Cabinet Playing Whiff-Whaff with Theresa May

By Tahir Maher | Wed 4th July 2018 - 10:41 am

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians passed on through generations, says that “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”

Ministers are under pressure to spell out the type of relationship we should have with the European Union. The crunch summit at Chequers is for the Tories to settle their differences although they are strong views on both sides, this Tory summit is supposed to provide an agreed way forward. Michael Gove has alleged ripped up a document that explained the customs partnership proposed by Number 10. The Defence Secretary has told his department that if he doesn’t get the £20 billion he is asking for he will remove the Prime Minister (PM) as he made her, he can break her. The MoD budget for 2016/17 was £35.3bn, and because of the weak position of the PM we now have the US Defence Secretary, James Mattis, warning us that France would replace the UK as America’s closest ally in Europe if we don’t increase our defence spending. Moreover, then there is Boris with his bog roll comment and even worse his inflammatory private and a rather coarse dismissal of business concerns about Brexit.

The PM is getting bullied. How can we have a deal when groups within Cabinet are pulling in a different direction and believe they will achieve their objectives without any fear of consequence. Power is perceived and not something that’s tangible, a loss of that perception leaves the PM in a very vulnerable position and makes it very difficult for her to pursue an agenda and therefore lead. Talk about being pushed from pillar to post.

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Tahir Maher

US needs a birthday present 

By Tahir Maher | Wed 4th July 2018 - 7:34 am

Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Christine Jardine has called on the Conservative Government to give the American people a “proper birthday present” by standing up to President Trump on human rights.

Ms Jardine made her plea as the US celebrates Independence Day on the 4th of July. The Liberal Democrat MP wants the Conservative Government to use President Trump’s visit to the UK next Friday to “promote the shared values between British and American people” and “condemn Trump’s treatment of migrant families and his comments on torture.”

Ms Jardine said: 

“The British and American people have a long history of shared values. Among the

…

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Rob Parsons

Let’s not be the radical party

By Rob Parsons | Tue 3rd July 2018 - 2:09 pm

I find the word “radical” increasingly difficult nowadays. It has become a shibboleth. Whatever is being pitched has to be framed as radical. And everybody knows exactly what it means and says so with great authority. The trouble is that the next person will, with equally great authority, give it a different meaning.

And also, it doesn’t tell us anything about the liberalness of the policies being proposed. I think most people will agree that Iain Duncan Smith’s approach to welfare benefits was radical. But I don’t think any liberal wants a policy that vindictive. (Or that incompetent.)

When you look at the things we are in favour of, many of them are not radical at all.

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77 Comments

We need to make it easier to move

By Collingwood | Tue 3rd July 2018 - 10:08 am

We are all aware of the issues surrounding property in the UK. According to the Resolution Foundation, as many as one third of millennials will be renting from cradle to grave. This is a serious problem that no party has ever really got to grips with.

When Labour were in Government, house building was one of the fewer policy areas that didn’t get much attention. All of the attention was on reforming public services, especially post-2001, rather than on housing.

Under the Conservative’s we have seen the introduction of initiatives aimed at helping people get onto the housing ladder. These include Help To Buy and the Lifetime ISA. However, we need to go further to improve the housing market.

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Jean Davis

Why I became a Climate Reality Leader

By Jean Davis | Mon 2nd July 2018 - 1:42 pm

For the past 15 years I have been a Liberal Democrat activist. I’ve been a local Party Secretary and Chair, fought local, Scottish, Westminster and European elections (and various referendums) as a campaigner and candidate, most recently as a Highland Councillor and Parliamentary candidate for Ross, Skye & Lochaber.

Following last years election I took some time out to reappraise my goals. There are a lot of areas for concern in the world but the question was where can I make a difference and what am I passionate about.

I concluded that I’m passionate about making things better …

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Bringing your spouse to live in the UK shouldn’t be this stressful

By L D | Mon 2nd July 2018 - 10:25 am

As I write this, I haven’t seen my wife for six months. We have been kept apart unlawfully, me here in the UK and her stranded in South Korea, following a Home Office error which saw her denied entry into the UK for ten years. Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy in action.

Our story is a simple one; I moved to Korea to teach English in 2013, I met my wife there where she worked as a bar manager, and we fell in love. I proposed on a cloudy mountaintop in 2017 and we immediately made plans to start a life together in the UK. It seemed a sensible choice; a life together in a country with better working conditions, higher salaries, a free health service and fresh air. We even went to Seoul’s registry office to marry three months in advance of our planned wedding day, because we knew we would need our marriage certificate early to prepare for her UK visa application.
We quickly became acquainted with the rules, regulations and flaming hoops set by our glorious, Tory-run Home Office. Yet despite the many obstacles piled up in front of my right to bring my foreign spouse to my home, we managed to meet all of the requirements and submitted all of the necessary documents. Everything was double and triple checked and then tied up with ribbons (literally in some cases). Everything from the sincerity of our relationship, my income, my job prospects, my wife’s health and her English ability would be scrutinized. But we weren’t worried, there was no reason we should fail.

I came back to the UK in January, ahead of my wife  and while we waited for her visa, so that I could take up work (as is necessary for such an application to be successful) and to set up our first home here. But then in March, inexplicably, an anonymous ‘Entry Clearance Officer’ from the Home Office declared our marriage certificate to be “not valid” and my wife was informed that she would not be allowed entry into the UK for a decade. Bearing in mind I was already in the UK and my wife was all packed up and ready to leave.

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John King

Options to Remain

By John King | Mon 2nd July 2018 - 8:10 am

An option to remain in the EU is an essential part of any people’s vote. But should it be just one option? That immediately creates a disadvantage compared to the Brexiters, who habitually have at least two options on the table – for example, a negotiated settlement or leaving with no deal.

On the surface of it, a 3-way vote might seem workable:

  • Remain in the EU
  • Accent the negotiated settlement
  • Leave with no deal

Indeed, some might argue this would favour Remain, since the Leave vote would be split. If the alterative voting system …

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The Voice

Wishing David Ford a happy retirement

By The Voice | Sun 1st July 2018 - 11:45 am

David Ford is enjoying the first day of his retirement today. He’s been such a wise, sensible voice in Northern Ireland politics for over quarter of a century.

He explains to the BBC why he’s decided that now is the right time to step down from the Assembly.

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Caron Lindsay

What chance for British people to retain their EU citizenship?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 30th June 2018 - 10:04 am

I guess it is unsurprising, but there has been a jump of more than six times in the number of British people seeking citizenship of another EU country. 

I look at these figures with more than a touch of envy. One of the worst things about Brexit is losing my EU citizenship. It’s not just about freedom to travel. It’s about belonging to an organisation that has democracy, peace and human rights at its heart. The EU flag is the only one I have ever felt comfortable wrapping myself in. There is somewhere on the internet a video of me …

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Lord Navnit Dholakia

How transgender people are treated in prison

By Lord Navnit Dholakia | Fri 29th June 2018 - 10:25 am

One of the questions that has been voiced on Twitter recently in the debate about trans women has been the case of the Soham murderer, who in 2002 as Ian Huntley murdered two ten year old school girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and was jailed for 40 years. A number of tabloid newspapers have reported that Huntley is transitioning, and wishes to be called Lian. Incidentally, the prison service has said several times that Huntley is not planning transition.

There are those who say that giving any trans prisoner with a violent past the rights to move to a woman’s prison and mix with women puts women prisoners at risk. They have even tried to say that the Liberal Democrats in supporting trans rights, do not care about women’s rights in prison.

I see that Sal Brinton has written about the Liberal Democrat policies on trans matters, and I wanted to write about the formal process that the National Offender Management Service insists on for the care and management of transgender offenders, designed to both recognise the rights of trans people in prison, but also ensuring the safety of other prisoners and staff. Their policy can be found here,

Pages 12-13 sets out the protocol relating to sentenced prisoners. It says that there will be an initial Local Transgender Case Board after a prisoner declares, and can provide evidence, that they are living in the gender the offender identifies with, and will, as appropriate, make arrangements for transfers to other parts of the prison estate.

With prisoners who might also be deemed a risk to other prisoners, there then has to be a Complex Case Board called for Transgender Offenders, which will look at the complexity and specifically assess the risk of harm prior to making decisions about prison location. The views of the offender must be presented to the Board, but there are a number of healthcare and psychology leads there to ensure that any move to a women’s prison would be safe.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: F-*-*-k Business

By Tom Arms | Fri 29th June 2018 - 8:55 am

F-*-*-k Business”. That was the response of Conservative British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson when told that one of Britain’s biggest employers—Airbus—was planning to move out of the UK if his country left the EU Customs Union. The expletive was actually uttered privately, but the mercurial Boris has refused to deny it and in politics absence of denial is the same as claiming ownership.

The shocking thing is not the foreign secretary’s choice of words. His audience is used to the colourful language of this self-confessed admirer of Donald Trump. It is the sentiment behind it and the axis shifting policy change it represents.

The British conservative party has always been the party of business and financial probity. The Labour Party has been the big-spending, squeeze them til the pips squeak, conscience of the nation. It is the traditional home of the social ideologues who are more concerned with correcting perceived social injustices than they are worried about securing the source of the money which pays for their corrections.

But Boris Johnson’s expletive indicates that the Tories are as ideologically driven as Labour has ever been. It is being steered by a coterie of European-hating politicians who are prepared to sacrifice Britain’s finances at the high altar of Brexit.   The ideologues have staged a coup in the British conservative party.

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Mary Reid

On feisty and ditzy women

By Mary Reid | Thu 28th June 2018 - 3:00 pm

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Helen Mirren once told the Daily Express:

Two phrases I hate in reference to female characters are ‘strong’ and ‘feisty’. They really annoy me. It’s the most condescending thing. You say that about a three-year-old. It infantalises women.

I’ve been pondering on a long list of words that are only ever used to describe women. ‘Feisty’ is top of that list, but there are many more that worm their way into our everyday conversations.

At work women in senior positions are described as ‘ambitious’, ‘bossy’, ‘strident’, ‘shrill’, ‘abrasive’, ‘pushy’, ‘sassy’, ‘bitchy’ or ‘bolshy’. In contrast, women lower down the pecking order are said to be ‘bubbly’, ‘airhead’, ‘cute’ or ‘ditzy’. These are all words that are rarely used about men and they all have negative connotations.

There is also that give away phrase ‘very intelligent, but …’ (a variant of which pops up in the Helen Mirren interview), which implies that bright women must have compensating features, such as a sense of humour, to be acceptable.

And of course, we all know that the word ‘hysterical’ derives from the Latin for a womb, so can only be used of women, along with ‘hormonal’, ’emotional’, ‘highly strung’, ‘sensitive’, ‘illogical’ and ‘irrational’, not to mention ‘menopausal’.

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Lord William Wallace

Brexit: It isn’t all over yet – not by a long way!

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 27th June 2018 - 3:00 pm

Several comments on LibDem Voice last week argued that we’re all too late to stop Brexit: ‘it’s a done deal.’  Except that it’s not: we have a government that still has no clear idea of what future economic relationship it wants to have with the EU after we leave, and no coherent proposals for managing our future borders with the EU.  9 months from the date on which the UK is committed to leaving, Theresa May is holding together a divided Cabinet by endlessly postponing hard decisions that would trigger resignations from one side or another. The odds are rising on a political crisis towards the end of this year, as hard Brexiteers call for Britain to crash out of the EU without a deal, the Prime Minister promotes a formal exit which will leave us still following EU rules for an extended transition period (‘Brexit in Name Only’, or BRINO), and business protests that they lack any guarantees about future rules to encourage investment in Britain.

Remember what No.10 was saying about the timetable a year ago?  To manage an orderly exit, we would negotiate a package of measures with the EU by June 2018, to be agreed at the June EU Council.  That would allow time for the necessary legislation in the UK, and ratification both here and in other EU states, to be completed before March 29th next year.  We are now reaching the June European Council, after months in which David Davis has assured us that the negotiations ‘are making good progress’, and find that there is no package and little attention to Brexit on the agenda. Number 10 is now briefing the media that there may be ‘serious’ negotiations at the October European Council, but that agreement on key issues may be postponed until December.

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Tahir Maher

Knife Crime

By Tahir Maher | Wed 27th June 2018 - 12:00 pm

Tories cheered when a reduction in Police budget was announced. Conservatives were going to cut funding, and the Police were going to keep their coverage and levels of activities by better utilisation of their resources. Even when the Police warned that crime would go up with the proposed cuts, the budgets were reduced. The consequence has been an increase in crime. Eventually, the Tories will have an epiphany that if they provide more funding to the Police, they will have more resources to fight crime. They never learn.

Knife crime went down from 2011 to 2015. But in 2017 alone it went up by 22% from 2016, and this was across the country, the 22% equates to just under 40,000 offences. There are many suggestions as to why there has been an increase in knife crime. Government critics have sited reduction in stop and search, closing down of children centres and cuts in the number of Police officers. In England and Wales, there are 21,000 fewer police officers now than there were in 2010 and in that same period council spending on Youth services has fallen by more than £750 million.

Others suggestions relate to drug and gang wars being the reason why youngsters carry knife. Social media is another reason given because these youngsters can have a massive following on platforms like Facebook and with significant followers backing down is not seen as an option.

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