Category Archives: Op-eds

Mike Ross

We can win in Hull and East Yorkshire. But only with your help 

By Mike Ross | Wed 2nd April 2025 - 11:55 am

Lib Dems in sunshine with Mike Ross, Mark Pack and Shaffaq Mohammed

If you were at our recent Spring conference, you will hopefully have heard all about my campaign to become the first Mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire. 

Last weekend, we were joined by Party President Mark Pack in Hessle, East Yorkshire, to formally launch our campaign for the mayoralty. 

It was an honour to be joined by Lord Pack and by so many activists, both from across the region and further afield, such as Lord Shaffaq Mohammed and a team from Sheffield. We’ve also had a visit from Ed Davey and many front-bench MPs. 

It’s clear the momentum is with us here, and it’s clear that local people want to send the Labour Government a message on 1st May. 

But we must not be complacent. The region is vast, comprising the city of Hull with the mostly rural East Riding, which spans almost 2,500 square kilometres, with hundreds of thousands of people registered to speak to. We must deliver to and speak with as many people as possible, as many times as possible, between now and 1st May. 

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Jack Meredith

Liberals and socialists – a response

By Jack Meredith | Wed 2nd April 2025 - 7:30 am

Last week, I came across an article by Chris Whiting on Lib Dem Voice, which you can read here. Chris makes a compelling case for why liberals and socialists should collaborate, and I highly recommend it. Nevertheless, I would like to offer an alternative perspective.

I want to focus on a line from Chris’s article in which he states, “If you follow the principles of liberalism to their logical conclusion, you arrive at socialism.” I disagree. Socialism aims to establish a society where private property has been abolished, and the working class owns the means of production. In contrast, liberalism places less emphasis on who owns the means of production and more on issues such as freedom of speech, liberal democracy, freedom of the press, and, most notably, freedom of enterprise.

While socialism is primarily an economic theory, liberalism emphasises individual freedom. Both socialism and liberalism support economic freedom as one of the most critical forms. However, while socialism focuses intently on this area, liberalism views it as merely one aspect of a broader framework.

Another specific issue when rereading this line is the established history of liberalism and socialism. Although I was born in the UK, my cousin’s family is of Polish descent. My cousin’s family were hunted down and executed on Joseph Stalin’s orders. Those who managed to escape fled to the UK and made new lives for themselves. Those who did not were taken into a forest, shot in the back of the head, and buried in a mass grave in a series of mass executions now more commonly known as The Katyn Massacre.

Stalin’s theories, particularly “Socialism in One Country,” came at a significant cost: mass deportations, state-sanctioned murder, and the complete dismantling of civil society. One might argue, “But this is merely an extreme example.” In response, I urge you to consider China, North Korea, Vietnam, or Cuba. To uphold socialism, these nations abolished liberal democracy, committed crimes against humanity, and ignored any semblance of freedom. Where socialism has emerged as the dominant ideology, bloodshed has followed.

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Caron Lindsay

LDV and AI – a new venture

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 1st April 2025 - 6:55 am

Last week, Conference in Harrogate passed a wide ranging science and technology paper, Victoria Collins MP contrasted our approach with that of Labour and Conservatives.

Liberal Democrats take a different approach, one grounded in our values of internationalism, respect for individual rights, and challenging concentrations of power.

One issue the policy paper looked at was how we should deal with AI.

In accordance with those values, our new policy calls for us to develop a legally binding code of ethics and a “Lovelace Oath” which would be similar to the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors.

Recently an author friend of mine posted on social media that the Meta AI had uploaded four of her novels to train its AI. I observed at the time that this seemed more like stealing than training. Our new policy says that we need to

Strengthen rules around copyright so that creators are treated fairly, with record keeping duties and robust, independent auditing of data and content use for AI developers.

In the run-up to the debate in Harrogate, the LDV team mused amongst ourselves about how we could best utilise AI. Running this site takes a phenomenal amount of effort and we decided to harness the potential of this new technology.

To that end, with help of the boffins at the Lib Dem Coders Group, we developed our own AI tool, Packed, which we trained by feeding it:

  • our entire archive
  • all the comments left on the site
  • all the emails LDV has ever received and the replies from the team
  • all the speeches ever made by parliamentarians
  • all policy papers passed since 1988
  • the constitutions of the Federal, Scottish, English and Welsh parties with all amendments since 1988

Someone observed that this was very close to the knowledge of the Party President, hence how our tool got its name.

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Donald McIntosh

Is the tax system shafting Gen Z and Millennials?

By Donald McIntosh | Mon 31st March 2025 - 5:45 pm

The tax system in the UK exacerbates age inequality and puts an increasingly unsustainable burden on Gen Z and Millennials.

A millionaire like Rishi Sunak pays an effective rate of 23% tax on his £2.2m income. And yet, someone in their late 20’s earning, say, £55,000 will pay 51% of every extra £ they earn (40% tax + 2% NI + 9% Student Loans). And we wonder why younger voters are disengaged and demographic time bombs arise.

In percentage terms, the tax burden rises, falls hardest on the struggling middle income, and then reduces, as wealth becomes sufficient to afford tax advisors. Once a level of wealth is achieved, the UK has some of the most generous tax relief schemes in the world. These need pruning.

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Chris Northwood

What Trans Day of Visibility means to me

By Chris Northwood | Mon 31st March 2025 - 12:15 pm

Today is the Trans Day of Visibility. It’s a day I’ve felt cynical about in past years.

The discussion around trans rights gets seen a lot. Whether it’s philosophical or academic debates on “what is a woman”, we’re also seeing the persecution of trans rights currently being seen most visibly under Trump’s government, but also the slow and steady dismantling of trans healthcare (particularly for under-18s) from Labour and Wes Streeting and legal protections in the UK through the courts emboldening transphobia.

But seldom in that visibility are actual trans people. There are a number of names involved in “the trans debate” but very few of those names are actually trans people. What we need is for trans people to be seen too.

What I need is not only to be seen as a hot topic or debate item, but to be seen as a person, messy and imperfect as everyone else. Not as a predator undertaking a shady underhand attempt to erode women’s rights (which as a woman protect me as much as anyone else, why would I try to erode them) who wants to destroy western civilisation or whatever UK broadsheets are accusing people like me of today, but as a human being who loves skiing, sharing bottles of wine with friends, making terrible jokes and turning up at the pub quiz to have a go at winning the prize. A software engineer who got elected to represent her local area, motivated by making the world a tiny bit better every day.

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Suzanne Fletcher

The speech I didn’t make at Conference – Suzanne Fletcher

By Suzanne Fletcher | Mon 31st March 2025 - 9:47 am

With my thinking dulled with pain killers and not properly reading the emergency motion, Restoring International Development Assistance – Liberal Democrats I didn’t put a card in to speak.

The speeches were excellent, and it was one of those times when I was very proud to be a Liberal Democrat.

While increased defence spending is essential to support Ukraine and ensure the UK’s security, it cannot and should not be met through unfair measures like cutting our Official Development Assistance (ODA) from the 0.7% of GDP agreed under The Coalition, to 0.5% under the Conservative Government, to Labour’s proposal of 0.3%. …

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 31 March 2025 – reflections on where we are…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 31st March 2025 - 7:30 am

British politics, in its endless ebb and flow, has a way of entangling the most basic human instincts with the intricate mechanisms of power. There’s a sense of theatre to it, a drama that plays out not just on the grand stages of Westminster, but in the quiet corners of pubs, the buzzing of conversations in local shops, the heated arguments at dinner tables. It’s the stuff of everyday life, at once far removed from and deeply connected to the headlines that flood the national consciousness.

It’s hard not to feel, at times, that the British political system is a relic of an era long past, yet somehow still alive, kicking with a tenacity that defies explanation. The parliamentary rituals — those long speeches in the House of Lords, the terse exchanges in the Commons, the speeches that always seem to run a little too long — have a peculiar, almost quaint quality to them. They’re traditions, yes, but also part of a performative aspect of politics that serves as both distraction and diversion. At its best, the system can still produce moments of genuine insight, but more often than not, it feels like a carefully orchestrated dance, the steps known to all, the outcome often preordained.

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Mark Corner

Returning to the Single Market          

By Mark Corner | Fri 28th March 2025 - 2:46 pm

In his recent speech to the Lib Dem Spring Conference, Ed Davey reminded us of one way in which the Lib Dems stand out from other parties. He said the Lib Dems were ‘The only party that has consistently opposed the Conservatives’ damaging Brexit deal from the start. The only party arguing for a new deal with the EU, with a Customs Union at its heart – putting us on a path back to the Single Market.’

In this as in so many other areas of policy, the Lib Dems have the courage that Labour lacks. Returning to the Single Market might seem like too bold a policy, but in fact it is essential to the future of the UK.

It is essential to its economic future. As Rachel Reeves struggles with a terrible economic inheritance from the Tories, Brexit remains a part of that inheritance, though it is one she keeps rather quiet about. The dreams of economic prosperity free of the rules of the Single Market, mopping up lucrative trade deals with Australia, India and the USA (Trump’s America? Really?) and turning the country into some kind of Singapore-on-Thames have faded away. Instead, the UK must struggle with new rules and regulations interfering with the business it tries to do with its nearest neighbours now that it’s out of the EU. There’s a clear cost in terms of growth – just ask Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England and now Prime Minister of Canada.

Returning to the Single Market is also essential to the UK’s political future. The problems managing trade across a land border with Ireland, a country which is part of the Single Market, have not gone away.

Thirdly, a return to the Single Market will help the future of Europe. A larger Single Market will be a more effective negotiator and will be in a stronger position to resist the threat of a present or future tariff war.

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Amanda Clark

Not a typical empty nester!

By Amanda Clark | Fri 28th March 2025 - 11:44 am

Firstly, to introduce myself, I’m Amanda Clark and a proud mum of two adult children. Brooke, 26 and Archie, 22. I took early retirement from teaching three years ago and we moved up to Kinross, Scotland in 2022- returning to my husband’s homeland. He now runs a small manufacturing business in Fife. We love it here.

We really should be ‘Empty Nesters’ – kids independent albeit physically- not necessarily financially…… A bit more disposable income and more time on our hands…we could go to the pub with friends, travel to those bucket list locations and take advantage of cheap last minute city breaks except we’re not TYPICAL EMPTY NESTERS.

Brooke has flown the nest but our lovely Archie has a severe to moderate learning disability, Autism and ADHD and if that wasn’t enough at the age of 16 he developed Epilepsy. Archie needs constant supervision, the right meds and 247 care. Like other brave, selfless Parent Carers we have made the momentous decision to keep him living at home with us for as long as we can.

Trouble is where as much as Archie is mentally disabled, he is very physically able full of energy and bounce! He’s our very own 22-year-old Tigger toddler. Archie thinks nothing of jogging round the Lochs, running flat out on Fife beaches and striding up the Lomond Hills- often with his panting aging parents in hot pursuit. We are fortunate that three days a week he goes up in a minibus to Corbenic Camphill near Dunkeld to the Daycentre.  There they embrace the environment and often take him and his peers on six-mile hikes in the hills. Perfect for Archie during the day but sometimes I feel really trapped and depressed due to the lack of overnight cover for him.

I try not to get too jealous when our neighbours- with kids the same age set off in their camper van for three weeks touring Europe or my American cousins- both retired teachers- post endless pictures of their global tours.

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Chris Whiting

Why I’ve realised I’m a Socialist, and why Liberals and Socialists must work together

By Chris Whiting | Thu 27th March 2025 - 8:30 am

For a long time, I simply considered myself a liberal. I believed in personal freedom, a strong but fair economy, and the power of government to create opportunity. I wanted a system that worked for everyone, but I also thought markets, when properly regulated, could be a force for good. But over the years, I’ve come to realise that these values of equality, fairness, and a society that serves all its people are not just liberal values. They are socialist ones too.

This isn’t about abandoning liberalism. My liberal resolve has never been stronger. But, I have been forced to recognise that if you follow the principles of liberalism to their logical conclusion, you arrive at socialism. If you believe in fairness, then you have to acknowledge that an economy where billionaires accumulate wealth while millions struggle is inherently unfair. If you believe in democracy, then you have to ask why it stops at the ballot box. Why workers don’t have real power in their workplaces, or why people don’t have a say in the essential services they rely on.

For too long, liberals have sought to mitigate capitalism’s excesses rather than confront the system itself. They have pushed for fairer taxation, stronger public services, and better protections for workers. But these are reactive measures that attempt to manage inequality rather than prevent it. And the problem with inequality is that it isn’t just an unfortunate byproduct of capitalism. It’s a feature.

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Discrimination and autism: an analysis from a queer, autistic woman

By Anonymous Author | Wed 26th March 2025 - 10:55 am

Hello liberals.

LGBT+ Lib Dems recently made a statement about the safety of its members at Spring Conference. In it, they mentioned some incidents of harassment occurring at Autumn Conference last year. I am one of the people who was harassed by a supporter of Liberal Voice for Women while on the Plus stall.

I have been informed that LVW also made a public statement in response to Plus. In it, they attempt to persuade the reader that the man who harassed me was, essentially, too pathetic to be intimidating. This is an odd choice for a group who state they care deeply about the rights of women and girls, but we don’t really need to rehash all that here (although I will say that when sitting alone, a man who leans into your personal space so far you could count his nose hairs doesn’t need to be built like a bouncer to be intimidating).

No, my biggest concern with their statement is their ableism.

As both statements are publicly available, it’s OK to tell you that the man concerned was diagnosed as autistic after harassing me. The LVW statement implies that he shouldn’t be held accountable for his actions.

Let’s unpack that.

I’m autistic and dyspraxic. Dyspraxia is a specific learning difficulty which means a person struggles with sequences. It’s associated with coordination problems. Because of my dyspraxia, I find driving lessons much more challenging than the average person. Should I, as a disability accommodation, be offered a less rigorous driving test so I have a better chance of passing? 

Hopefully, reader, your answer is an obvious “hell no”. It would make the roads less safe for everyone, including me. Someone who hadn’t learnt to drive safely could just pass the simplified test because of a diagnosis that says they’re inherently slower to learn physical skills. The correct accommodations are those that don’t compromise everyone’s safety (including mine). These include learning to drive an automatic (which several dyspraxic people I know have done) but could also just mean doing more driving lessons than the average person.

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George Cunningham

No time to waste – Block a tsunami of far-right financing!

By George Cunningham | Wed 26th March 2025 - 8:00 am

In December 2024, Elon Musk planned to donate US$100 million to Reform UK via one of his British companies, an amount of money which would have swamped our electoral system. After falling out with Nigel Farage, he now seems to be expressing an interest to back an alternative to Reform UK.

However, the possibility of such a huge donation – which would turn British politics upside down – does not seem to sufficiently worry the Labour government which – no hurry – only intends to introduce legislation for some limited election financing reform in 2026. 

But now, potentially outflanking current UK electoral Law, we have the trans-Atlantic arrival on our shores of a newly-minted far-right Great British PAC (Political Action Committee) (which claims to be centre-right but its intention seems anything but once you read the website).

As stated in an accompanying article,  the PAC’s mission is said to be “resolutely British: to unite the right, fortify it, and prepare it to govern by 2029” when they would indulge in “torching EU laws, axing 400+ bloated quangos and NGOs, restoring judicial accountability, and building a new cadre of patriotic leaders through nationwide training academies.”

An “Operation Shield” will, in the meantime, mount “robust legal challenges and procedural interventions to halt the implementation of legislation that undermines Britain’s sovereignty, economy, and traditional values”. This would be coupled once in power with an “Ultimate Repeal Act” which would introduce “a comprehensive legislative package designed to roll back the layers of bureaucratic overreach and damaging regulations introduced by this socialist Labour government.” 

Now where have I heard something like that before? 

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Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett

Why we must protect non binary identities

By Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett | Tue 25th March 2025 - 9:13 am

Editor’s Note: This is the speech Adrian would have given had they been called in the heavily over-subscribed debate on the Free to be who you are policy paper in Harrogate

Firstly a big thank you to our mover Christine Jardine MP for spending the time in talking at length with so many of us to bring together a wide-ranging motion which covers many topics which for those of us who are at the core of campaigning for LGBTQ+ rights are extremely pleased to have one concise paper to refer to.

I want to speak particularly to lines 112-113 – about recognising non binary identities.

In our general election manifesto in 2024, we specifically highlighted the neglected legal area of recognising and putting into law through the equality act – explicitly the recognition of non binary identities. I also may add that this didn’t cause us any harm to a record haul of 72 MPS so for those in the room who believe there are only two genders…. I’m sorry but we’ve already stood on and won on a position that is diametrically opposed to that view.

Secondly, Around the world, many nations have already recognised non binary identities – including the likes of Germany, Spain, Malta, New Zealand, Argentina to name just a few etc which is one of the key reasons that the UK has slipped from being 1st in ILGA lgbtq+ rankings in 2015 (after the coalition brought in Same Sex Marriage (led by Baroness Featherstone) to 17th in the most recent 2024 list because we have fallen back and regressed on trans and non binary protections in particular.

As a non binary individual, though staunchly retaining my same-sex attraction the laws are vague, and there have already been cases which have affirmed non binary rights within the gender reassignment protected characteristic – however those are being challenged and we need a much firmer recognition in law to protect my gender position – thankfully here at Conference, I have the option of Mx and they/them pronouns but that as many of you will know in the DEI field is being withdrawn due to excessive interference from governments – particularly in the US.

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Mental health crisis, or mental health failure?

By Catherine Wilson | Mon 24th March 2025 - 4:30 pm

There is much talk about the crisis in mental health. A significant number of young people are not in employment or education, and there is a big rise in autism and ADHD diagnoses.

There is an odd dichotomy between the advice you read in newspaper problem pages, like Philippa Perry’s in The Guardian, and treatments offered on the NHS.

In the former, childhood experiences are considered, with links made to current problems. The unique complexity of each individual and their situation is recognised.

As a mental health professional, I found that this approach is the most helpful in bringing about positive change. It enables people to stay in work, and make good relationships.

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Cian Tynan

Young carers and SEND education

By Cian Tynan | Mon 24th March 2025 - 2:07 pm

I was pleased with the motion at conference on Sunday, where conference overwhelmingly voted to back the SEND education motion. The debate consisted of those who had experienced that system as a child, facing adversity at school, others were parents who had to navigate the system where waits for EHCPs are well over the legal limit, or schools simply do not provide support. In this article, I wish to highlight the issues that a third group face, our young carers.

We are the party of carers, and thus I was disappointed not to see any young carers voices emphasised in this debate, there is a fresh perspective to be had. The SEND education system, as it currently stands, places many more siblings in the position of a young carer. A lack of holiday provision, and a lack of wrap around care for school, plunges many more young people into the position of carers. My brother has a global learning disability, which makes life challenging, not as challenging as others, granted, but certainly not easy! He goes to a special school twenty miles from where we live. My mother is a GP, working until 6pm on certain days. School finishes at 3.15 pm. This is where the problem lies. There is no wraparound care whatsoever. We can feel bored sitting at a GP surgery, waiting, at the best of times. Now, imagine trying to do this as a 9 year old with special educational needs. The solution? I look after him as often as I can.

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 24 March 2025 – the Joni Mitchell tribute version…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 24th March 2025 - 11:41 am

“Stoking the star maker machinery behind the popular song”

And so, the massed ranks of the Party hierarchy, featuring an unexpected appearance from the Leader, swept aside virtually all reservations and moved responsibility for Westminster selections from the States to the Federal Party. Given the rumours of widespread opposition, the overwhelming nature of the vote in favour – and if anyone tells you it was close, it really wasn’t – gives the new regime some credit in the bank as the transition takes place.

I’d already outlined my concerns but, at the end of the day, the focus should be on making whatever emerges work.

On a final note, however, whilst a large vat of molasses was poured over English Candidates Committee and other key players in the candidate approval and selection system, the damage to that relationship will take a long time to be repaired, if it ever is. For volunteers are people too, no matter how far up the Party structure they are…

“I was a free man in Paris, I felt unfettered and alive”

I was pleased to be in the Conference hall for the debate on F9: “Free to be Who You Are”, and the vast majority in favour of the motion as amended will, hopefully, put further internal Party debate into abeyance for a while.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 23rd March 2025 - 9:18 am

Turkey

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on a high. His Syrian proxy is in power in Damascus. The Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan has called on his followers to lay down their arms and disband. Kurdish fighters in Syria are doing that and amalgamating their forces with those of the new Erdogan-backed government.

It is the perfect time for the Turkish president to go after his domestic opposition. And that is exactly what he has done.

This week he arrested his chief political opponent—Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu– on charges of corruption and aiding and abetting terrorists. Funnily enough, the arrest came just before Imamoglu was due to be nominated as the candidate for the presidency by the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

The elections are not due until 2028, but the opposition wanted to give Imamoglu the maximum campaign time to break the stranglehold that Erdogan has on the media, courts, police and electoral processes.

Erdogan shouldn’t be worried about the Istanbul mayor simply because he has announced that he is retiring in 2028 when his term of office ends. In fact, he has to retire. Unless… he changes the constitution.

The current constitution limits the president to two terms in office. Erdoğan was first elected in 2014, but changed the constitution so that he was able to serve three consecutive terms instead of the two under the old constitution.

Erdoğan has made statements in the past indicating that he would retire in 2028, but there’s also speculation that he might seek to alter the constitution or push for an extension of his term. Both of which are possible given the dominance of his Law and Justice Party (AKP). And his chances are improved even more by the elimination of the only personality presenting a serious challenge.

Putin

In 2007 President George W. Bush declared: “I looked into the soul of President Putin and found a man I could trust.” He later admitted that that he was wrong.

In 2014 Putin denied that Russian troops were in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. They were “local militia” or “volunteers,” he claimed. He also denied any intention of annexing Crimea. He lied about the “volunteers” and annexed Crimea.

In July 2014 Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over Eastern Ukraine. Putin blamed the Ukrainians. A multinational investigation determined it was the Russians.

At Helsinki, the Russian leader told Donald Trump that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 US presidential elections. The Mueller Report and every one of the US intelligence agencies said it did. Putin dismissed the allegations as part of a wider conspiracy against Russia.

In 2018 former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with novichok in the quiet English town of Salisbury. Putin said it had nothing to do with Russia. British intelligence determined that he ordered the attempted assassination and identified the assassins.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: First Shots Fired

By Tom Arms | Sat 22nd March 2025 - 10:14 am

The first shots were fired this week in the war between the White House and the American judiciary.

As expected, the courts have moved to block Donald Trump’s disregard for the constitution and the rule of law and to nudge him toward legality.

Not so expected is the Republicans response: The threat of impeachment.

So far four judges have either been threatened with impeachment or have had articles of impeachment lodged against them in the House of Representatives. They are:

  • Judge Paul Engelmayer issued an order preventing DOGE from accessing the federal payments system.
  • Judge John Bates ruled that health agencies must restore data related to gender-affirming care,
  • Judge Amir Ali granted a temporary restraining order that halted Trump’s 90-day suspension of foreign aid.
  • Judge John McConell ordered the White House to lift a freeze on federal spending.

But the bulk of the White House’s venom has been saved for and directed against Judge James Boasberg. He had the temerity to challenge the administration’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected Venezuelan gang members to an El Salvadorean prison.

The deportation was wrong on so many counts. For a start, the deportees were suspected criminals. They had not been convicted in a court of law. Furthermore, the Alien Enemies Act allows for the deportation of citizens of countries with which the US is at war. America is not at war with Venezuela. Finally, the administration ignored the judge’s ruling not to land the deportees in El Salvador and to return to the US.

Trump has chosen his fight well. Immigrants are unpopular. Immigrants who are suspected members of a violent Venezuelan gang even more so. So, MAGA—and the Republican Congress—is standing four-square behind Trump.

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Mark Frankel

Just because you’re paranoid …

By Mark Frankel | Fri 21st March 2025 - 11:23 am

I suggested in the LibDem Voice the other day that the collision in the North Sea was Russian sabotage. There were some sceptical comments. But was it just a coincidence that the captain of the offending vessel was Russian and most of his crew were too? The police are investigating and are discouraging such speculation. But I’m writing this when the headlines are ‘Major disruption as Heathrow closed all day after nearby fire causes power outage’. The Fire Brigade are investigating. I wonder what they will find?

The US-based Centre for Strategic & International Studies says Russia is conducting an escalating and violent campaign of sabotage and subversion against European and U.S. targets in Europe led by Russian military intelligence. The number of Russian attacks nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024. Russia’s targets are transportation, government, critical infrastructure, and industry, and its main weapons and tactics have included explosives, blunt or edged instruments (such as anchors), and electronic attack.

Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, says Nato believes Russia is waging an undeclared war, something called “hybrid warfare”, and that the target is Western Europe itself, with the aim of punishing or deterring Western nations from continuing their military support for Ukraine. Russia and the Soviet Union have a rich tradition of conducting this type of warfare. Hybrid warfare, also called “grey zone” or “sub-threshold” warfare, is when a hostile state carries out an anonymous, deniable attack, usually in highly suspicious circumstances. It will be enough to harm their opponent, especially their infrastructure assets, but stop short of being an attributable act of war. Gardner highlights in particular the threat to the UK lurking on our sea beds, from Russian sabotage of submarine cables. In January the Defence Secretary John Healey MP told parliament about a Russian spy ship, the Yantar, which is gathering intelligence and mapping the UK’s critical underwater infrastructure.

I believe the collision in the North Sea and the fire at Heathrow are part of an emerging pattern. I may be paranoid but doesn’t mean Putin is not out to get us.

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Dorothy Thornhill

Dorothy Thornhill writes: We need to modernise our approach to candidate selection

By Dorothy Thornhill | Thu 20th March 2025 - 10:07 pm

People who know me well know I always say it as it is. So I won’t mess about.

For me, there is some unfinished business at conference this weekend – and that’s why I’m asking you to support Motion F10 on Saturday.

How many more reports do we need before we modernise the party’s approach to candidates?

The 2015 General Election Review called for serious changes to candidate selection and support. And so did the 2019 General Election Review that I chaired.

And three years ago yet another report by my colleague Alison Suttie spelt out the real changes that needed to happen.

Yet here we are. A decade later, three major reports on – and there are still people arguing we don’t have a problem, and there’s no need for change.

I know that a lack of change is wrong – and so do many members up and down the country.

The need for speed

There has been a lot of information flying around about F10 over recent days, some of it not always completely accurate.  We need to face facts. What we’re currently doing on candidates isn’t working. For a start, it’s just not fast enough. In the last parliament we had virtually no candidates selected for two years. In the end, time ran out to run member ballots – with only just over 200 candidates in place.

That meant members in over 400 constituencies didn’t get to choose their candidate. They were all appointed, many right at the very last minute. It also meant that there was no time to train and support those candidates properly after selection, and no time for them to grow their constituencies.

Any campaigner worth their salt knows that having a candidate in place, building a team and showing leadership, drives up campaigning activity. That’s just common sense, and we have clear stats to prove it.

Yet we insist on sticking with a system that delivers too few candidates, and too late on in the election cycle.

Clarity and diversity

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Caron Lindsay

Caron’s Guide to the craziness of Conference – Updated for Harrogate 2025

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 20th March 2025 - 12:43 pm

Spring 2024 voting passConferences in Harrogate have, so far, been very special for me. The first time I went there, in 1992, I saw a message on the Wednesday for me on the noticeboard to contact the main desk. They told me to ring my parents. I had to go across the road to a payphone and feed coins into it – something that some people reading this will probably never have done. Obviously I was very worried, as my Dad had just had surgery. But the news was brilliant. My sister had given birth to her first child, the gorgeous Laura, two whole days before. And I had been too absorbed in Conference to realise. That Wednesday was in fact Black Wednesday too.

Seven years later, I was back in Harrogate with my own baby son. He was then just 3 months old and he came all over Conference with me.

This year, I should get in just in time to go to the Social Liberal Forum lunch at the Crowne Plaza. Last year’s event was fabulous and I met Bobby Dean and Victoria Collins for the first time. I was so impressed with them and I am thrilled that they are both now MPs. This year, they have local MP Tom Gordon, Pippa Heylings and Bobby is back for a repeat performance.

I have revamped my Guide to the Craziness of Conference for this year. Enjoy. And if you have any questions, ask away in the comments.

Federal Conference is probably the best fun that you will ever have in your life. You will thoroughly enjoy every exhausting moment. If you’re new, it can be a bit overwhelming until you get used to the sensory overload. I had a long break from going to them and when I returned, in 2011, I spent the first day wandering round in a state of wide-eyed amazement,  like a child in a toy shop. Spring Conference is smaller than Autumn, but a look at the agenda tells me that there are at least two things going on that I want to go to at all times.

So, with that in mind, I thought I’d throw together a fairly random list of tips and hints for getting the best out of the annual cornucopia of Liberal Democracy. If you have any other Conference survival tips, let me know.

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George Sykes

Making the cement for the yellow wall – how candidate selection reform will make us stronger

By George Sykes | Wed 19th March 2025 - 1:48 pm

On May 22nd last year, I watched Rishi Sunak announce the general election. Little did I know that a few hectic weeks later, we’d be celebrating having 72 MPs, an enormous achievement that is a testament to the hard work of volunteers and staff across the party.

However, we did not achieve that success by continuing to do what we had always done; we did it by ruthlessly introspecting and improving. Just because we have won does not mean we should stop our self-reflection. By my calculations, if we introspect as hard as we did last time, we should end up with 468 MPs at the next election…

As the chair of a Local Party that covers ten constituencies (with two being shared with other local party’s) in a labour facing area I had a few key aims at the election:

  • Stand a candidate in every constituency
  • Campaign in the seats we had existing campaigns in to ensure our voters had their views represented in the general election debate
  • Win in our designated local target seat

I’m proud to say that with the hard work of a team of volunteers across Leeds and the whole region, we achieved all of those. However, all was not entirely rosy for the following reasons:

  • Failed to stand a single women candidate across all ten seats
  • Lost our deposit in all but two seats (costing the party £4,000)

This is far from ideal, and if we are serious about being a diverse, representative, national party, we need to fix it.

Firstly, we need to enable our amazing volunteer teams to focus on what they can do best, identifying the members in their areas who can be recruited as parliamentary candidates. We know that proactively identifying and talking to potential candidates rather than waiting for them to come to us is key to increasing diversity. Who is better placed to do this than volunteers drawn from and embedded in our local parties?

By offloading the administration element of candidate recruitment, we can enable our volunteers to focus on building connections with potential candidates. This will develop a deeper pool of potential candidates more representative of the communities we seek to represent.

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Tony Paterson

Let Lib Dems, not Farage, “Reform UK”

By Tony Paterson | Wed 19th March 2025 - 11:55 am

At this time of crisis, the Lib Dems must seize back the `Reform UK’ initiative from Nigel Farage and his ramshackle party. Freedom is at stake.

Voting intentions (polling data from 10 March) are 15% for the Lib Dems and 23% for Reform UK (from 11% and 25% last December). Here’s how to build on this poll hike.

Farage’s stated belief in electoral reform contains an inherent contradiction: while he ostensibly champions PR, his dream of being PM in 2029 hinges on First Past The Post being maintained.      

To be recognised as the real party of reform, the Lib Dems must recapture the initiative. First, use PR as a protest vehicle for appealing to voters disenchanted with a system which gave 2/3 of seats to a party with only 1/3 of the votes. 

Secondly, keep flagging up Farage’s championing of Putin during the 2024 GE campaign, when, pointing to NATO’s and the EU’s eastward expansion, he claimed that ‘we provoked this war’. Already in 2014, in an interview with GQ magazine, Farage had named Putin as the world leader he most admired. And let’s not forget his many appearances on Russia Today, at least three of them after Putin invaded Crimea in 2014.

But more recently, Farage has been presenting himself as the voice of moderation within his party. We must highlight Farage’s volatility, contrasted with our consistent liberalism.

Ed Davey, who is stalwartly supporting Ukraine, has proposed large increases in our defence spending as a percentage of GDP and, over the past few weeks, has used many of his PMQs to back Ukraine, is best placed to challenge Reform UK over UK military reform. Farage’s well publicised association with Trump makes it hard for him to follow suit. Polling data shows how deeply split Reform voters are over whether their party would do better with or without Farage.

World War III, using modern means of warfare to undermine Western freedom and democracy, has already begun. (See Economist `Want to stop a third world war?’, 30.5.24). Warfare today is hybrid: insidious, dangerous, but not always obvious. It includes ‘grey zone’ warfare: ‘salami-slicing’ (as Putin did to Crimea in 2014, severing it from Ukraine while causing little Western reaction), cyber warfare, sabotaging crucial infrastructure, etc. 

Ideologically, the strategy involves harnessing populism to build up far-right parties across Europe, including in the UK. How can we jolt the country as a whole into recognising that we, on the other hand, stand for freedom and democracy?  

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James Baker

The Independent View: We need to shine a light on attacks on encryption.

By James Baker | Wed 19th March 2025 - 8:30 am

Save Encryption Practice safe text next to speech bubble in progress pride flag coloursLast Friday, journalists and civil liberties organisations waited outside London’s High Court while inside a secret court hearing took place. Despite efforts to petition the court, they were denied access even though the outcome impacts people in the UK and around the world.

Leaks to the press suggest that Apple may have been appealing a Technical Capability Notice (TCN) issued under the Investigatory Powers Act — often dubbed the Snoopers’ Charter. The TCN is believed to have instructed Apple to introduce a capability that would allow the company to access encrypted data stored in the cloud. We say believed because Apple are not permitted to disclose the detail of the TCN.

These secretive actions by the Home Office have already had real-world consequences. Apple has disabled its Advanced Data Protection service in the UK — a move that undermines the security of users’ iCloud backups and their overall digital privacy.

Liberal Democrat MPs have rightly written to the Home Secretary, warning that any government-mandated “backdoor” to end-to-end encryption (E2EE) introduces vulnerabilities that bad actors — including criminals and hostile states — could exploit. They also raised concerns about the lack of scrutiny surrounding such notices.

Discussing issues such as E2EE can often seem technical. I like to use a really simple analogy of locks to explain things. Most of us use locks every day — on our homes, cars, or devices. Criminals, of course, use locks, too, for example, to secure stolen goods. But we don’t respond to that by banning locks. That would be foolish as we understand the benefits to the law-abiding majority outweigh the benefits to criminals. 

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Larry Ngan

Liberals are leading in calling out Beijing’s distortions in UN Resolution 2758

By Larry Ngan | Tue 18th March 2025 - 5:30 pm

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has sidelined Taiwan from participating in the United Nations and the related NGOs since UN resolution 2758 was adopted in 1971. China claims the legitimacy of its actions based on the resolution and its distortion of the actual meaning of the UN resolution. In recent years, parliaments in the free world took a tougher stance in calling out Beijing’s distortions in the Resolution’s actual wording. This included The Canadian House of Commons, where the Liberals hold a majority, passing a motion on November 2024 stating that UN Resolution 2758 does not establish the People’s Republic China’s (PRC) sovereignty over Taiwan and that UN2758 has not determined Taiwan’s future participation in the UN or other international organisations.

In my opinion, it is beyond doubt that the PRC mischaracterised the meaning of UN resolution 2758. Through these distortions, Beijing holds the view to legitimise its expansionism into Taiwan.

The resolution reads as:

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Stephen O'Brien

Labour has abandoned disabled people – the new nasty party has arrived

By Stephen O'Brien | Tue 18th March 2025 - 3:58 pm

The Labour Party has officially abandoned disabled people. Worse still, they are trying to spin it as a success story, framing cuts to vital support as an increase in employment. But we see through it. This is not a genuine attempt to support disabled people into work. It is a cold, calculated attempt to cut costs at the expense of those who rely on support to live independently and contribute to society.

For years, the Conservative Party earned the title of the “nasty party” when it came to welfare reform. Their cuts to benefits, their cruel and arbitrary assessments, and their obsession with slashing support for the most vulnerable have caused immense suffering. Yet now, Labour has stolen their clothes. Keir Starmer’s party, which once promised to stand up for working people and the most vulnerable, has become indistinguishable from the Tories when it comes to welfare.

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George Cunningham

Trump’s steal deal with Russia on Ukraine

By George Cunningham | Tue 18th March 2025 - 1:52 pm

This weekend, the party will be debating the F14 motion “The UK’s Response to Trump” at conference.

Recent statements by our party and the motion itself pretty much encapsulate the UK public’s feeling about the Trumpist revolution in the United States. The Lib Dems, as an opposition party, can more easily be the voice of reality, saying what the UK government dares not to say as it seeks in vain to seek some shred of common ground with Washington, especially over the future of Ukraine.

The reason for Trump’s partiality towards Putin is simply that the business opportunities are too tempting for making money for his family, associates and MAGA agenda.

Here Trump’s model is a reflection of Putin’s, with his entourage of compliant oligarchs. The US context however makes Trump’s oligarchs not quite as beholden to him, having mostly made their own money rather than looted it.

Trump’s long business relations with Russia are well-documented.  That they are alive and well was recently reinforced by the reported presence of long time Trump associate Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev acting as a go-between at the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia.

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Denis Mollison

The best democracy money can buy

By Denis Mollison | Mon 17th March 2025 - 5:08 pm

To take just a few recent examples: Musk offering $100 million to Reform, a Health Minister supported by substantial funding from private health companies, and – not quite so recent – millions wasted in Covid contracts given to party donors. The influence of big money on our politics is greater than ever.

Yet `The majority of the public support stringent measures to crack down on the perception that political influence can be bought, including capping, or even banning political donations. Politicians are out of step with the electorate on this issue.’

So says a recent report on Money and Democracy from the
Institute for Constitutional and Democratic Research (an offshoot of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy and the Constitution).

Liberal Democrats could reasonably protest that we are in step with the electorate on this – our 2024 Manifesto included a commitment to `Take big money out of politics by capping donations to political parties’. But what the ICDR report offers is a clear analysis of the fundamental problem, and some simple principled solutions. As they say ` The existing rules on political finance are excessively complex and fail to address the core problem’.

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Chris Bowers

We can solve the housing crisis without creating rural sprawl

By Chris Bowers | Mon 17th March 2025 - 2:33 pm

The two biggest issues that concern young voters are housing and climate change. Housing is the more hands-on challenge, as plenty of young adults just can’t get on the property ladder, whether buying or renting. The traditional rite of passage of children fleeing the nest when school ends now unravels three or four years later when they return to their parental home as their only financially viable living option – which can remain their home for several frustrating years. So if we want to be taken seriously by the youngest voters, we have to have a credible housing policy.

The option all political parties have chosen to tackle the housing crisis at the last few elections is to promise mass housebuilding. It has led to unseemly and meaningless auctions – one party promises 200,000 new dwellings a year, another raises that to 250,000, another to 300,000 – plus antagonistic debates about housebuilding targets at Lib Dem conferences. The developers love it, but the numbers of houses being built don’t really change. And anyway, do we really need to build our way out of trouble?

With the Liberal Democrats holding 72 MPs, many seats in the kind of small towns whose peripheries are threatened by the surge in housebuilding promised by Starmer’s government, we have something of a dilemma. We don’t want to be Nimbyist, but at the same time we don’t want our rural towns to become sprawling car-dependent suburbia.

The implicit assumption behind mass housebuilding is that there isn’t enough residential property. Yet for years suggestions have abounded that we do have enough living space – we just don’t use it well. Even if that’s technically true, to be ultra-efficient would result in a loss of freedom as the state would have to order people to live in others’ houses to maximise residential space. That would be a hard pill for Liberals to swallow, let alone the rest of society that remembers the centralised residential diktats of the Soviet bloc.

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Mark Valladares

F10: the right means to a desirable end?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 17th March 2025 - 12:15 pm

As a veteran of the Party’s candidates process – Returning Officer, candidate assessor, member of Regional and State Candidates Committees – over more than thirty years, you might not be surprised to find that I’ve been following the debate on this ornate, detailed constitution proposal with some interest.

And, whilst the General Election review published in January was, whether inadvertently or by design, somewhat bruising towards those who have been at the heart of running selection and approval processes over past years, what it stated as desirable outcomes had a lot of merit. Getting candidates in place earlier, finding and developing more Returning Officers and candidate assessors, and increasing transparency and consistency across the piece, are all obviously sensible.

The “solution”, however, appears to be to take responsibility from the structures that currently exist and replace them with a new Federal one, in the expectation that it will do a better job.

This may or may not be true. It does rather depend on who takes on the new responsibilities, how well they are resourced and how well they work with a core group of volunteers who will still be relied upon to do the “grunt work”. For very few people act as Returning Officers and candidate assessors “because it’s fun”. They do it predominantly because someone has to do it, and they fit in it around a range of other commitments.

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