Category Archives: Op-eds

Tahir Maher

Telling Tales

By Tahir Maher | Wed 27th June 2018 - 7:38 am

The government is keen to play up the supposed benefits of Brexit. We are now getting to the ‘business end’ of the negotiations and as expected all is not as it seems. The government is talking up walking away with no deal instead of an accepting a bad deal (a bad deal would be an admission of its failure to negotiate with the EU) with the Brexit dividend that will be used to provide the NHS with a birthday present. Regarding the dividend, the Institute of Fiscal Studies made it clear that this was twaddle.

Just over a year ago the Office for Budget Responsibility (the governments’ official forecaster) estimated that as a result of lower economic growth because of Brexit tax revenue would fall by 2020/21 by £15 billion. It should also be noted that UK’s growth has gone from the faster-growing economy in G7 to the lowest other than Italy’s. This fall in revenue significantly surpasses our net contribution to the EU. The Institute of Fiscal Studies notes that there will be less rather than more money for the NHS and other services.

If we take our commitment to pay the agreed £45 billion plus a long-term obligation to pay pensions identified (until the need is exhausted), government’s commitment to support agricultural and the scientific research in universities – where then is the dividend for the NHS?

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Paul Walter

A dose of reality in the heart of one of the states that swung it for Trump in 2016

By Paul Walter | Tue 26th June 2018 - 6:06 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Last year I had the privilege of boarding the Amtrak Hiawatha special from Chicago, Illinois to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to enjoy a visit to friends there. “Don’t mention politics” warned my host beforehand “My husband voted for Trump”. A lovely time ensued with only a tangential mention of Bernie Sanders, followed by a hasty subject change onto the safe topic of the excellence of Milwaukee’s many and varied beers.

But, of course, my host’s husband was not alone in Wisconsin. Whereas Obama won the Badger State by a handsome 205,204 votes in 2012, Clinton lost its ten juicy electoral college seats to Trump by 22,748 votes.

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Joe Otten

IFS announces: peak pensioner and falling inequality

By Joe Otten | Tue 26th June 2018 - 9:27 am

An article by Paul Johnson at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and also published in the Times, begins

It can take a while before policy responds to new realities, in part because it can take time before those new realities are recognised. Policy has nothing like adapted to the collapse in home ownership among the young. We continue to treat pensioners as though they need free travel, winter fuel allowances and the like, despite the fact they are on average now the best-off demographic group in the country. The squeeze on middle earners that started in the early 2000s was barely noticed at the time.

This is so obviously and painfully true to any Liberal Democrat who may have dared to point out that income inequality fell during the coalition and is now (as Johnson points out) no higher than it was 30 years ago. The left wing grievance industry decided in 2010 that inequality was going to rise and has stuck to that line ever since, indifferent to the truth.

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Judy Abel

With more money coming to the NHS do we need to rethink how it’s spent?

By Judy Abel | Mon 25th June 2018 - 12:42 pm

While some of the major health think tanks such as The King’s Fund say the announced 3.4% increase in annual NHS spending is not enough – and I would agree with that – can we at least use the additional NHS funding more efficiently? I would say it might be worth looking at changing some long-established patterns of patient care.

Let’s start by looking at primary care. Currently it is estimated that around half of all GP appointments are for just two kinds of conditions – musculoskeletal (MSK) problems (accounting for a fifth of all GP appointments) and mental health problems …

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David Thorpe

Labour’s Bank of England plan is based on ignorance

By David Thorpe | Mon 25th June 2018 - 8:07 am

I am about 99 per cent less politically engaged now than was I was even three years ago, mostly because I think all parties lack true radicalism right now, so I find the endless rehashing of each party’s greatest hits albums tedious in the extreme.

But this week Labour did pop up with an idea that tempted my focus away from the books I’ve been meaning to read, and the friends I’ve been meaning to meet, when they proposed shifting the Bank of England to Birmingham and changing the central bank’s mandate to target productivity.

The first idea is based on the …

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Caron Lindsay

We’re all horrified at Trump’s treatment of immigrants and children but let’s not forget the UK is pretty terrible too

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 24th June 2018 - 5:32 pm

I tried to avoid hearing the recording of the children crying after being taken from their parents at the US border. I could only imagine their despair and fear at not knowing if or when they were going to see them again. Tiny children, who had no way of understanding what was going on, were thrown into turmoil.

No wonder there were comparisons to torture. Vince had strong, but also salutary words:

It is particularly galling to think that we allowed the Tories to introduce an income requirement for British citizens who wanted to live here with their spouses and children if they came from outside the EEA.

By 2015, this had amounted to 15000 children forcibly living apart from one parent. At least they had the other parent, but even so, this is far from humane.

Since we left the coalition, the Tories have unleashed the full horror of heir anti-immigrant ideology with their “hostile environment.” But could they do the sort of things that Trump is doing. The answer, sadly, is, yes.

Writing in the Metro earlier this week, Celia Clarke, the Director of Bail for Immigration Detainees, described how one man was detained when he reported to the Police while his partner was abroad for a family funeral and his children were taken into care. This was against Home Office policies.

A few weeks ago, a former client of BID’s who had been bailed and reunited with his partner and four children went to report as normal.  His wife was out of the country attending her mother’s funeral.  On reporting the Home Office official told our client that they were going to detain him.  He pleaded with them not to, explaining that he was currently his children’s sole carer.  They detained him anyway and the children were taken into the care of social services, in breach of their own policies and despite BID making representations urging them not to.  In another case, the Home Office sought to justify the deportation of a parent on the basis that the child had already been separated from his parent on several occasions as a result of immigration detention. In other words, they used detention to try and weaken the bond between a parent and child. Unlike the criminal justice system where an independent court has to sanction the incarceration of someone charged with a criminal offence, a decision to detain an individual under immigration powers is taken by an immigration officer and is not subject to judicial oversight.  There is currently no time limit on immigration detention in the UK and no automatic legal representation.

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Caron Lindsay

How Lib Dems have made the news this week – Gosport, upskirting, trains and cannabis oil

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 24th June 2018 - 1:38 pm

It’s worth noting that Lib Dem MPs have featured in some of the top headlines this week.

What does that tell us about the kind of things we do and the people we are?

Well, Norman Lamb spoke about how he ordered the review into the deaths of elderly people at Gosport War Memorial Hospital after the NHS closed ranks.

Lamb told BBC Newsnight: “I just think it’s horrific and there has been a real systemic failure here, a closing of ranks in my view and a sense that ordinary people just weren’t being listened to at all, and an unwillingness by

…

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Chris Bowers

Co-operation with the Greens – debunking the arguments against

By Chris Bowers | Sun 24th June 2018 - 8:55 am

There’s something strange going in within the Liberal Democrats, and it isn’t helping us, or showing us up in a very favourable light.

Last month we had an astonishing success in the Richmond upon Thames borough elections. In 2014 the Conservatives won 39 of the 54 seats; this time we won 39, reducing the Tories to 11 and the Greens picked up four thanks in large part to an arrangement with us. It was an outstanding achievement for Gareth Roberts and his team.

But in the weeks since then, there seems to be a movement afoot trying to pretend that cooperating with …

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Dick Newby

Dick Newby: We will not rest until we have stopped Brexit

By Dick Newby | Sat 23rd June 2018 - 9:30 am

In the final throws of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, MPs were left focusing on just one issue – the significance of just two words in relation to a parliamentary Motion that the Government would bring forward in the event of ‘no deal’ with the EU on the term of Brexit.  

The two words were “neutral terms”—a phrase, incidentally, which most of us have never heard before. The view of the Lords was that “neutral terms” would prevent the Commons having the opportunity to express a view on the merits of the Government reaching no deal in the Brexit negotiations, and on what should be done next. The Government argued that their formulation was necessary to preserve the constitutional role of Parliament and that anything else would mandate the Government in completely unacceptable ways.

Between the Bill leaving the House of Lords on Monday evening and it returning to the Commons on Wednesday afternoon, the Government clearly thought deeply about this matter and realised that their understanding of parliamentary procedure on Monday was flawed. They produced a Written Ministerial Statement which, in lay man’s terms, says that it will be up to the Speaker to ​decide whether or not any government Motion would be amendable, and that, in any event, there is nothing to stop the Commons debating any Motion that they want to on this issue. We have since seen a battle of spin as to whether this represents a significant climbdown by the Government or whether winning the vote represents a victory. 

I sincerely wish that Dominic Grieve had supported his own amendment on Wednesday. But if I am disappointed, neither the Government nor Parliament can take any satisfaction from what happened. 

This week’s events demonstrate the contempt in which the Government hold Parliament. First, they try to muzzle it by putting “neutral terms” into the Bill. Then, fearing defeat, they publish a Written Ministerial Statement just minutes before the debate in the Commons which rips up their earlier justification for using the “neutral terms” ploy. At every turn they demonstrated their only consistent characteristic: the determination to survive to another day. If there were a World Cup in kicking the can down the road, the Government would win it hands-down. But the can cannot be kicked down the road for ever.

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Caron Lindsay

Two years on….

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 23rd June 2018 - 7:30 am

So what were you doing two years ago today?

June 23rd will forever go down in history and not just for being Mary Reid’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Mary, by the way.

It was a beautiful day in Livingston. I spent the day handing out leaflets, wandering round the college doing what I could to persuade people to vote. We had a good reception. We’d spent the weeks leading up to it campaigning hard and were exhausted after a gruelling Scottish election campaign. The SNP, bless them, were knackered and barely lifted a finger.

The Livingston band of helpers went rogue in the last week. We had been told that we had to hand out leaflets and not knock on any doors. We completely ignored that instruction and actually did some talking to people and I think it was a productive use of our time because we did change minds.

We didn’t lose in Scotland. Every single constituency voted to Remain, but I think we could have done better than the 62-38 result we got. We wouldn’t have found 1.3 million but we could certainly have narrowed the gap by some margin.

While we were ahead reasonably comfortably at our count in West Lothian, results from elsewhere made us wince and swear. Every so often my friend would ring and there would be much mutual swearing. In every election result there are so many what ifs. What if it had been a nice day in London and the storms and floods hadn’t depressed turnout? What if the Remain campaign hadn’t been so eye-meltingly, frustratingly awful?

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Helen Flynn

Kate Pickett to speak at SLF Conference

By Helen Flynn | Fri 22nd June 2018 - 10:15 am

The Social Liberal Forum exists and campaigns to create a society where everyone has access to the wealth, power and opportunity to enable us all to lead full and rewarding lives, unfettered by social hardship.  We speak for and promote a vision for social justice.  So we are thrilled to announce that Kate Pickett, co author of The Spirit Level and the newly published book, The Inner Level, will be speaking at the annual SLF Conference on 28th July this year.

The Spirit Level, published in 2009, was a highly influential book, going on to sell 150,000 copies.  It demonstrated conclusively the pernicious effects of economic inequality. In more unequal countries, outcomes are worse for almost everyone in areas such as public health, education, obesity and social mobility.

In The Inner Level Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson posit that the growing level of anxiety in our society stems in larger part from increasing social pressures brought about by material inequalities—in effect greater status anxiety.  A recent meta-analysis of studies published in the Lancet Psychiatry concluded that rates of metal illness were higher in societies with larger income differences.  The UK and USA are at the top of the graph on both mental illness and income inequality.

We hope that this link between inequality and the growing tide of mental illness will be one of the focuses of Kate’s presentation at our conference.  However, there is much more crossover between the thinking behind Richard and Kate’s most recent book and the guiding philosophy behind the social liberal movement.  The co-operative model for workers, employee representation on company boards, and an education system that is inclusive and where the professionalism of teachers is respected are also discussed in The Inner Level.

We are sure there will be much food for thought and much to debate at this, our eighth annual conference.  

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat…Trumps immigration battle plan

By Tom Arms | Fri 22nd June 2018 - 8:55 am

Thank you Melania. Thank you Ivanka. Thank you also Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary for Homeland Security. Thank you for engineering a reversal of the inhumane policy that tore 2,842 children away from their immigrant parents.

No thanks for President Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly or shadowy prince of darkness Stephen Miller. They were responsible for the heartless decree that turned vulnerable children into pawns in the president’s immigration battle.

The separation decree was in the making for well over a year.  John Kelly first publicly proposed it in May 2017.  Stephen Miller took up the baton with a vengeance. He has taken over from Steve Bannon as the ultra-nationalist, alt-right, anti-immigrant chief White House strategist with the ear of the president.

Miller has been whispering away: Immigration, immigration, immigration. That is the key to victory in the mid-term elections.

For President Trump immigration means Congressional funding for his “big beautiful wall”, laws to allow the speedy deportation of illegal immigrants and sweeping changes to legal immigration.  He is increasingly frustrated that that Congress has refused to cave in to his demands, especially as illegal immigration figures are climbing after a drop in 2017

In May the president launched a vicious and lengthy tirade against Homeland Security Chief Ms Nielsen in front of the entire cabinet. She, he said, was to blame for the rising immigration figures. Ms Nielsen sat there and took it on the chin, but according to sources, was close to quitting on the spot. She is reported to hate her job.

The much-maligned Attorney General Sessions saw an opportunity to weasel his way back into the presidential good books. On May 7th he told wannabe immigrants: “If you cross the border unlawfully then we will prosecute you…. If you are smuggling a child you then that child may be separated from you as required by law.”

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David Cooper

‘Not-Spots’: if the networks won’t fill them, should Lib Dems try to force them to?

By David Cooper | Thu 21st June 2018 - 12:25 pm

It’s mid-June and the time for London Technology week, a showcase for technological innovation. 5th generation mobile phones are almost upon us and along with the promise of blazingly fast mobile download speeds comes a renewed call for mobile phone operators to improve the rural coverage of their networks. In a conference sponsored by technology thinktank Cambridge Wireless, industry players gathered to discuss the issue in the high tech ambience of the Digital Catapult on the Euston Road.

Large areas of the UK, especially Scotland, still do not receive good quality mobile coverage. A report published earlier this year by Ofcom, the official body that regulates communication, found that 30% of the UK’s landmass lacks coverage from at least one of the ‘big four’ mobile networks, increasing to 60% in Scotland. Worse, there are many so-called ‘not-spots’ where there is no coverage at all. As one speaker explained to the assembled audience, planning rules don’t help: the UK has one of the most stringent height restrictions in the world for mobile phone masts, greatly limiting the coverage area each mast can provide.

Worried about the continuing ‘digital divide’, Ofcom proposes that new licences to operate networks should come with an obligation to provide 92% coverage of the UK landmass. They claim that this will benefit rural communities that otherwise would miss out if operators determined coverage on purely commercial considerations. This has powerful political support from lobbying groups such as the Countryside Alliance, and the 2017 Liberal Democrat manifesto committed to improving rural mobile coverage. I believe these calls are misguided and will create social injustices while reducing the quality of mobile networks in the UK, thus directly harming our economy.

There is no doubt that improving coverage in a rural area does indeed benefit the local economy since individuals and businesses that rely on good mobile and internet can occupy properties they would not have previously considered. This attracts more affluent persons to low-cost rural areas, providing them with improved lifestyle opportunities, and creating a demand for local services.

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Caron Lindsay

Review: Global Soul – Nick Clegg’s latest podcast with author Elif Shafak

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 21st June 2018 - 10:25 am

The latest in Nick Clegg’s Anger Management series of podcasts is my favourite in the series so far, by a long way.

He talked to writer, feminist and campaigner Elif Shafak. I was so impressed with her that I immediately went and bought a whole load of her books.

She talked about the importance of appealing to emotions, of the very real threat to democracy posed by populists across the world, of the threat of majoritarianism – where the rights of marginalised groups are ignored.

She talked of the importance of dialogue and not writing off people who have a different view, of …

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Luke Jeffery

Winning back former south-western strongholds: looking beyond Brexit

By Luke Jeffery | Thu 21st June 2018 - 9:37 am

As a member in the south-west of England I am acutely aware of how we have fallen behind in the rural areas of England where we used to be able to garner a large amount of support. The south-west has a quite rare mixture of very rural communities and a long liberal tradition. In fact, my own constituency of Tiverton and Honiton (now a deep blue Tory area) was once partly represented by Lord Palmerston who was the MP for Tiverton while Prime Minister. Given the past support in the south-west …

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Paul Walter

Theresa May – the Tories’ Harold Wilson?

By Paul Walter | Wed 20th June 2018 - 5:30 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Mark Pack recently tweeted:


It is a very interesting parallel.

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Paul Tyler

What’s happened to the “Official Opposition”?

By Paul Tyler | Wed 20th June 2018 - 1:50 pm

We have all got used to the Labour leadership opting out, abstaining, even penalising their MPs who actually vote to oppose the Conservative Government. So I suppose we should not be surprised when they stay mum, sit on their hands and pretend it is not important to investigate whether the Russians interfered with the 2016 EU Referendum.

This was the issue I raised with the Minister in a Topical Question in the Lords on Tuesday. I warned that the “piecemeal approach” currently adopted could prove dangerous; I had in mind the lack of effective protection of our electoral system if …

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John Kelly

Compassion and Trust in Politics

By John Kelly | Wed 20th June 2018 - 12:37 pm

What is the matter with Theresa May?  Is she really the untrustworthy and uncompassionate minister she has been portrayed, or does she just surround herself with advisers who are like that?

This morning on the Today programme Dominic Grieve spoke with barely veiled anger at the way he and others were let down by the PM last week over Europe amendments.  Well, that’s politics you may say.  But this interview followed soon after John Humphreys interviewed a mother who had been trying to get special cannabis oil for her epileptic child.  Not the mother who was interviewed by him yesterday who had just got Sajid Javid to relent and let her keep the cannabis oil she had brought back from Canada. Both families had spent tens of thousands of pounds having their children treated abroad and met uncompassionate and callous resistance from ministers and officials – especially in the Home Office.

Coming back to Theresa May – she apparently met the mother interviewed this morning, in March, and promised her that she would sort it so that her child could use the oil.  Her officials have still not approved the special licence and been deeply unhelpful to the mother concerned.  Theresa May’s flash of compassion has not been followed through – again showing she can’t be trusted.

Who presided over the Home Office and is responsible for the Windrush debacle: the families split up, the heartbreak of so many mistreated people?  This was no isolated case as readers of the I newspaper, and the Guardian know from reading week in and week out of bad uncompassionate decisions being made by Home Office ministers and civil servants.  The Law Society recently published a report that didn’t get nearly enough attention, in which it highlighted that the Home Office loses over 50% of immigration appeals.  This is a scandalous waste of public money.  Meanwhile, so many individuals and families are put through while uncompassionate civil servants mount ridiculous challenges to the most deserving asylum seekers for example.  The Law Society suggested that there might be institutional racism at the Home Office. That has been rather obvious to me for a long time.

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Tahir Maher

Radical Drugs Reform Needed

By Tahir Maher | Wed 20th June 2018 - 7:30 am

“The case of Billy Caldwell who needed cannabis oil for his severe epilepsy again highlights legalising cannabis not only for medical but recreational use. Although the Home Secretary (Sajid Javid) made an exception for Billy (by allowing cannabis oil use for 20 days) cannabis is still banned for recreational use. Sajid Javid said this week in the commons the position “We find ourselves in currently is not satisfactory”. Cannabis contains active ingredients called cannabinoids. These are used to relieve the pain of muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis or used to relieve sickness in people having chemotherapy for cancer. Other ingredients from cannabis help children with epilepsy. Cannabis does have medical benefits.

Some countries have regulated legal markets for the non-medical use of cannabis. There are Cannabis Social Club, sometimes called a Teapad, that control the cannabis market as non-profit organisations for the purpose of relaxing or for social communion that are only accessible to members. These can be found in Spain and also in the US. There are also cannabis coffee shops that are operating as coffee shops where cannabis is openly sold. These are usually found in the Netherlands.

Also in the US to regulate cannabis they have cannabis enterprise set up like businesses that are tightly controlled and sell cannabis. Uruguay’s has the government-controlled system for cannabis regulation. These are some examples of models for regulating non-medical cannabis being used around the world.

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Joe Otten

Freedom of movement and liberal overreach

By Joe Otten | Tue 19th June 2018 - 5:54 pm

Not every nuanced political point is a dog whistle for it’s crude cousin, and case in point is Nick Clegg’s recent column in the FT, arguing that the EU needs to consider wider caveats to the principle of freedom of movement that already exist, for its own sake and not just to improve the prospects of rapprochement with the UK.

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Tim Farron MP

Tim Farron MP writes: Lib Dems would restore decency and dignity for refugees

By Tim Farron MP | Tue 19th June 2018 - 11:55 am

The sight of refugees arriving on the Greek coast in 2015 will never leave me. It’s not the sort of thing you forget.

Parents and children were packed onto makeshift boats in search of safety, fleeing Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and other brutal conflicts around the world.

This isn’t a ‘refugee crisis’, even if that is what we have ended up calling it. It is a crisis of violence and persecution, with dictators and murder squads killing and displacing families across the world. Refugees are the human face of what has gone so badly wrong. 

Refugee Week is underway (it is World Refugee Day tomorrow), which is a timely reminder of Britain’s role supporting people who have been forced to flee their homes, both in the work we do in refugee camps around the world and in how we treat asylum seekers who make it to our shores and ask for help.

The current system lacks decency and dignity. The Lib Dems would restore these values.

Firstly, and crucially, the quality of asylum decisions is nothing short of a national scandal. The Home Office wrongly refuses people sanctuary so often that around 40% decisions are overturned on appeal each year. The result is that people who have already endured so much are left scared and uncertain, when they should have been promised safety here much more quickly. 

This can’t be allowed to continue. The whole process needs reform, from top to bottom.

We shouldn’t just focus on decisions, though. Even as the government focuses on improving integration in our country, for example, asylum seekers are barred from working. 

Work helps people integrate, learn English, and contribute to society – all things asylum seekers badly want to do.

So let’s join-up government a bit better and give people the chance to work if their asylum claim is delayed. There is nothing liberal about forcing people who can work to sit around all day doing nothing. 

Plus we should celebrate what we already do well, and plan for how to do more of it.

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David Boyle

Unpicking the great mish-mash of policy wheezes

By David Boyle | Tue 19th June 2018 - 10:04 am

The trouble with HM Treasury is that it “is simultaneously short-termist, obsessed with controlling spending, but unable or unwilling to do anything to boost growth … fixated on ‘policy wheezes’, short-term fixes and initiatives, and over-centralised”.

And don’t take my word for it. This was the innovation thinktank Nesta’s judgement in 2014, as quoted by Duncan Brack in his essay on Greening Government in the SLF book Four Go in Search of Big Ideas.

I became fascinated by why the government machine creaks so badly, and takes such poor and contradictory decisions, during the coalition years. And particularly during period I was working for the Cabinet Office in the Treasury, on public service choice.

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Mark Valladares

The decline of local journalism may mean more than just a lack of transparency…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 18th June 2018 - 2:42 pm

Amidst the drama of Brexit, the Guardian covered a report from the US which may well have gone unnoticed by many. “Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Local Newspaper Closures on Public Finance.”, published by academics from the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois at Chicago on 8 May, might not, on the face of it, seem of great import, but I would suggest that it gives those of us who care about local government some cause for concern.

The authors summarise their report as follows;

The loss of monitoring that results from newspaper closures is associated

…

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Mark Valladares

A gentle ramble through Mrs May’s arithmetic…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 18th June 2018 - 8:24 am

I’m a mathematician by training, and work professionally with numbers. And, because I find testing arithmetic projections entertaining, I thought that I might play with the proposed “£20 billion for the NHS”. See what you think.

Firstly, I should note that that £20 billion isn’t for you, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although the Barnett Formula might mean that there is more money available for you too.

I’ll assume that the BBC’s figure of £114 billion for NHS England’s budget is accurate, and note that the Office for Budget Responsibility is predicting that inflation will be fairly constant at 2% per annum …

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Caron Lindsay

Theresa May shamelessly takes up discredited Leave campaign slogan

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 17th June 2018 - 7:07 pm

Most of my memories of the Leave campaign involve the blatant lies it told. 77 million Turks, we were told, would pretty much be here the day after we voted Remain, according to their literature. And the biggest lie of all was emblazoned on the side of a bus. £350 million a week for the NHS.

It was the thought of more money for our beleaguered NHS that prompted many people to vote Leave, something confirmed by Vote Leave’s director, Dominic Cummings.

Within hours of the referendum result, that pledge was in tatters. Nigel Farage distanced himself from …

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John Marriott

The Thorpe Affair – What if?

By John Marriott | Sun 17th June 2018 - 8:55 am

I am one of those with a fascination for history, who sometimes indulge in the practice of ‘What if?’. Some of you may know what I mean; but, if not, here are a few examples. Let’s start with 1066. What if King Harald had actually defeated Duke William of Normandy at the battle of Hastings? Scroll forward some eight hundred years and ask yourself what if President Abraham Lincoln had not attended Ford’s Theatre on that fateful night in April 1865? What if Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s driver hadn’t taken a detour in Sarajevo in June 1914 or what if Adolf Hitler hadn’t shortened his speech at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in November 1939 and left early? And finally, more recently and perhaps nearer to home, what if Nick Clegg hadn’t accepted David Cameron’s ‘generous offer’ in May 2010? I’m sure you get the idea.

So, you might say, what has this got to do with Jeremy Thorpe and the Liberal Party? Well, what if, following a massive surge in support (around 20% of the popular vote) which, thanks to FPTP, resulted in only a derisory 14 MPs, he had managed to win over his colleagues and the party grassroots and accept the offer of Ted Heath to join a coalition government following the ‘Who governs Britain’ general election of February 1974?

The ‘baby boomers’ will surely remember the early 1970s, which started out with Heath’s surprise victory in the ‘70 General Election, when his government embarked upon a race for growth with the infamous ‘Barber Boom’, that, despite the inflation it eventually unleashed, especially in the housing market, appeared to many, even up to the summer of 1973, to be bearing fruit in economic terms, despite storm clouds on the horizon.

What really derailed the ‘project’, besides the Heath government’s inability to deal effectively with Trades Union militancy and ineffective management, was the OPEC oil embargo following the Yom Kippur War between the Arab states and Israel in October 1973 which saw oil prices quadruple in a matter of months, thus presenting unions such as the NUM with an open goal. Just to think that, only a few years earlier, the Economic Minister of the booming West German economy, Karl Schiller, had confidently claimed that “the future belongs to oil”.

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The Voice

Christine Jardine: Make medical cannabis available for all who need it

By The Voice | Sat 16th June 2018 - 9:00 pm

The Home Secretary should make medicinal cannabis available to all who need it, says Christine Jardine, after Sajid Javid granted an emergency licence for Billy Caldwell to be treated with the drug. His supply had been confiscated by customs earlier this week.

Christine is supporting her constituentKaren Gray, whose son Murray has Epilepsy and needs the drug to control his seizures:

Sajid Javid has done the right thing for a young boy enduring unimaginable pain.

These treatments can have enormous benefits for patients like Billy Caldwell and my constituent Murray Gray.

The Home Secretary should now take common sense steps to ensure

…

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: British shambles

By Tom Arms | Fri 15th June 2018 - 8:55 am

What a shambles! Theresa May is clinging onto the north face of the parliamentary Eiger by her finger nails while Remainers bay for her blood on one slope and Brexiteers on the other.

The only thing keeping the prime minister on her increasingly precarious perch are behind-doors conflicting promises that must be kept secret because if they leaked Mrs May, the government, the conservative party and Brexit negotiations would tumble.

The Labour opposition, meanwhile can’t decide whether to oppose or join the government, and is, if anything, more divided than the Conservatives. Anti-European Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn instructed his MPs to abstain in key amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill—the essential piece of legislation needed to take Britain out of the EU.

In an unprecedented party revolt, six members of Corbyn’s front bench resigned to vote their conscience and a total of 90 Labour MPs ignored their leader’s instructions. Rebel Hilary Benn said: “There comes a point when we have to stand up and be counted.”

Then there is the Scottish National Party. Parliament allowed only 15 minutes to debate the government’s plans to take control from Brussels of legislation related to Scottish fisheries and environment  instead of devolving them back to the Scottish Parliament. The SNP leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford, was expelled for refusing to sit down and shut up. The other 55 SNP members of parliament walked out with him and a ton of grist was poured into the Scottish independence mill.

Why is there such a chaos in the Mother of Parliaments? Is it because of Mrs May’s paper-thin majority? Is it because of Corbyn’s spinelessness on the overarching issue of Brexit?

No. It is because the Brexit policy is built on a false premise. It is a sandcastle built in a thunderstorm by political figures wearing nostalgia-tinted spectacles.

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Caron Lindsay

Alistair Carmichael: Voting for what the SNP wanted would have left Scotland weaker

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 14th June 2018 - 7:21 pm

There’s been a lot of ill-informed nonsense on social media about the way the Liberal Democrats voted, or in fact didn’t vote, on devolution in the Commons the other night. I was going to write a post to explain it all but then found I didn’t have to, because Alistair Carmichael had done it for me, and better.

What I think was the problem is that we didn’t really get our story out in good enough time and allowed the SNP to put it about that we had somehow not stood up for Scotland. We need to learn from this and explain it all beforehand.

Actually, and unsurprisingly, the situation is very different. As Alistair explains here, if we’d voted the way the SNP wanted and had won that vote, we’d have gone back to the original clause of the Bill, which was awful because it would have repatriated all the EU powers to Westminster to be doled out from there. No thanks.

So, Alistair now takes us through what happened and comments on the extraordinary PMQs session yesterday.

There was a single motion voted on which was a government motion to agree with an amendment from the House of Lords (apologies some jargon is unavoidable here but I shall try to keep it to a minimum). This amendment related to the inclusion of a new clause in the bill dealing with the transfer of powers coming back from Brussels post-Brexit. I was not going to support that motion as there is not yet any agreement between the Scottish and UK Governments – the reason why Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament quite rightly voted against granting the legislative consent motion for the Bill.

At the same time, however, the Welsh Government HAVE reached agreement with the UK Government and that is what is now contained in the bill. If it is wrong to vote against the Scottish Parliament’s view then surely it is wrong to vote against the view of the Welsh Assembly. There was an amendment to the government motion from the Labour Party on the order paper that reflected the true position and it was originally my wish to vote for that. Unfortunately, however, that amendment was not put to the vote so, in the circumstances described, an abstention seemed like the appropriate thing to do. In this view we were joined by the Labour Party.

One further consideration. It may not have been what they intended but the actual effect of the SNP vote (if successful) would have been to restore the Bill to the position that it was in when it left the Commons – a much weaker position for Scotland than the one that the Bill currently provides!

There are serious points at issue here :

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Kirsten Johnson

Parity of esteem for mental health – petition to change Health and Safety legislation

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 14th June 2018 - 12:30 pm

Back in 2016 I wrote a blog explaining my efforts to raise awareness of mental health first aid which led to an Early Day Motion being submitted by Norman Lamb MP.

There is now a further campaign led by MHFA England to change health and safety legislation so that there is parity of esteem between mental and physical first aid. Where’s Your Head At? is calling for every workplace to provide Mental Health First Aid as well as physical first aid.

The call is simple:

By law, all workplaces, schools and colleges must make provision around physical first aid. Why not the same for mental health?

Mental health issues including stress, anxiety and depression are the biggest cause of sickness absence in our society. Mental Health First Aid courses teach people to spot the signs of mental health issues, offer initial help and guide a person towards support. When support and treatment is accessed early, people recover faster and have better outcomes for their health.

Training people in mental health awareness and skills also helps to build an open and supportive culture around mental health. This can stop preventable health issues arising in the first place, and empower people with mental health issues to thrive in work.

We believe that mental and physical health should be treated equally – because we all have mental health. Let’s change the law to reflect this.

Besides the profound benefit this will have to those suffering mental ill-health but remaining unsupported and undiagnosed, changing this legislation will also save businesses an estimated £35 billion per year.

Please consider signing the petition. It can be found here.

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