Category Archives: Op-eds

Tobie Abel

No deal, no way

By Tobie Abel | Thu 11th May 2017 - 11:33 am

There isn’t going to be a free trade deal before we leave the EU.  Theresa May was advised as much by the civil service back in November when it became clear that there is no-where near enough time to negotiate a deal.  In any case it is not in the EU’s political interests to come to an agreement until after we’ve actually left the club so as not to encourage further euro-scepticism on the continent.

Ending free movement will not reduce migration to the tens of thousands.  The government will still have no control of the number of people leaving the country, nor the skills and experience they take with them.  In any case migration in the UK is driven by economics and the government will be in no position to risk a labour shortage and consequent rise in wages and fall in tax receipts.  Economics will take priority above migration, as it has done for each of the last seven years.

Britain is not going to become a low tax, low regulation global trading hub outside the EU.  Any such moves would be classed as fiscal and regulatory ‘dumping’ and would lead to retaliatory measures not just from the EU but the US as well.  That would cripple the global supply chain that underpins our most successful industries.   In any case the government is already spending £50 billion more than its earning, even after 7 years of austerity, and with billions more needed for education, the NHS and infrastructure investment slashing taxes is the last thing on the agenda.

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Joe Otten

On deals and no deals

By Joe Otten | Wed 10th May 2017 - 4:14 pm

Tim Farron was challenged this morning on the radio whether the decision by the local party to stand down in Brighton Pavilion respresented some sort of deal. It isn’t, and nor should it be.

For all my long standing political differences with the Greens, I, like Tim, am relaxed about this decision. We weren’t going to win in Brighton Pavilion, and it is only fair that the Greens have a voice in parliament. Their politics are really quite bad in some ways but it is better they have a voice than are silenced. And tactically, I’d rather see a remainer …

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Caron Lindsay

Canvassing in the sunshine

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 10th May 2017 - 2:55 pm

The idea of knocking on strangers’ doors and asking them how to vote can be a bit daunting. Even those of us who are experienced at it can feel a bit nervous about doing it sometimes – but the good news is that as soon as you are out and you have knocked on a few doors, you really start to enjoy it.

Last night I headed out for my first big canvassing session with the fantastic Edinburgh West team.

We were in an area of the constituency which is not part of Alex Cole-Hamilton’s Scottish Parliament seat. It was a beautiful evening, with warm sunshine and pink cherry blossom. It’s an area where we have in the past successfully persuaded people who support other parties to vote tactically for us. With the Tories surging in Scotland, would they still be willing to do so?

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Paul Walter

Tim gets aboard a hovercraft. What could possibly go wrong?

By Paul Walter | Wed 10th May 2017 - 9:16 am

This (above) is a slide show courtesy of Getty Images. Click on the arrows to see all five photos of Tim’s glorious descension into Burnham-on-Sea yesterday

Well, you have to admire the pluck of Tim Farron. As a keen student of Liberal History, I am sure he is aware of the intimate details of Jeremy Thorpe’s 1974 hovercraft adventure. That was the year of two elections – one in February and one in October. In fact, if you ask the great Paul Tyler, he will tell you all about this, because he was MP for Bodmin (but, crucially, not actually “Going Bodmin”) from February to October and then had to wait until 1992 before returning to the Commons as MP for North Cornwall. Jeremy Thorpe was the charismatic leader of the Liberal Party at the time. He hit upon a marvellous idea to campaign to the populace during the summer hiatus before the October election, which was long anticipated.

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Chris Bowers

We need to be smarter in the battles we choose

By Chris Bowers | Tue 9th May 2017 - 5:40 pm

The frantic and febrile environment of a general election isn’t always conducive to clear-headed thinking, but I fear we Lib Dems are guilty of some serious fuzzy-headedness that even a general election shouldn’t excuse.

This is the background. We tumbled from 57 seats to 8 at the last election. This election is all about limiting Theresa May’s majority, and under a voting system that doesn’t help us. If we’re smart about it, we could boost our seats to the point where we have a healthy bloc that will recapture the oxygen of publicity needed to push liberalism to a wider audience. If we’re not smart, our number of parliamentary seats could actually go down.

Against this background, the Greens have offered to stand down in about a dozen seats if we stand down in one. Sounds like a good offer, eh? Except the local Lib Dem party in the one seat we’re being asked to stand down in has said no.

That seat is the Isle of Wight, and it’s important to stress that the local party there is being very honourable. Its brief is to fight for liberalism, and as we had the MP there until 2001, it’s potentially fertile ground for us. So IoW Lib Dems have quite reasonably said this is an election where we need to rebuild the Lib Dem base, and in principle we should support that.

But given where we’re starting from, given how much is at stake, given that it could make the difference between having a single-digit number of MPs and a number in the 20s, someone should be guiding the Isle of Wight party about the wider implications their decision could have.

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Katharine Pindar

The country goes a-Maying now, but is being led a merry dance

By Katharine Pindar | Mon 8th May 2017 - 7:54 pm

England has a long tradition of May Queens, but never before had a May who sometimes acts like a queen. ‘This is the most important election in my lifetime’ she insisted to Andrew Marr on one of his Sunday-morning BBC 1 shows.  ‘It’s about the future of the country and about the national interest’. She made plain her belief that to get the ‘tough’ Brexit negotiations right the country needs her in charge, which will also ensure a strong economy and ‘a country that works for everyone’.

She put over the same message even more explicitly on a visit to Scotland on April 30, stating that ‘every vote for me and my team will strengthen the Union, strengthen the economy, and the UK and Scotland together will flourish’.

Her messages are evidently working, as the local election results seem to show. The tide of approval and trust evidenced by comments of ordinary people who may never have voted Tory before almost suggests a developing cult status for her. When she held that queenly audience outside No.10 to announce that ‘some in Brussels’ want to sabotage Brexit, try to affect the election result and harm the UK, she was not noticeably received with incredulous laughter. Her words were not generally regarded either as paranoid or manipulative, but instead brought solemn head-shaking about our erstwhile friends apparently becoming enemies, in a newly Manichean view of Europe.

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Callum Robertson

Speculate to accumulate – why we should support devolution

By Callum Robertson | Mon 8th May 2017 - 6:29 pm

On the doorstep I have lost count of the number of people I’ve spoken to, from the chap who was voting remain because he preferred “white immigration” to the person who was telling me that he “wanted his country back”. These people all have one thing in common, they feel let down. If they feel their politicians aren’t listening to them and they want change they vote for reactionary parties.

This has been the case as long as representative democracy has been around. Capitalising on people’s fears is how Mussolini got in, the same can be said for the advance of UKIP, the Front National and Trump. Offering change with meaningless sound bites is how reactionaries get in.

We’ve seen the decline of UKIP in the past year, this, in my opinion, can be attributed to three things. Firstly UKIP’s job is done per se, their raison d’être has passed. Secondly the Tories have outplayed them by using the same meaningless sound bites and undermining their support base. Thirdly, this is the important one, if you look at the communities that voted in UKIP representatives, they want to be listened to and they want the country they know back. Most importantly they want their politicians to care.

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John Hefford

No deal may be better than a bad one, but it’s still very bad

By John Hefford | Mon 8th May 2017 - 3:39 pm

In a recent blog on Prospect, Peter Lilley, the former Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, explained his support for Theresa May’s statement that “no deal is better than a bad deal”. Although a ‘bad deal’ would be more disastrous than no deal at all, the ‘no deal’ scenario should not be viewed through rose-tinted glasses. It is worryingly implied that a Conservative majority would already accepted that it will not be possible for the UK and the EU to come to an agreement in time, and have lost interest in serious negotiations.

The flaw in Peter Lilley’s argument is the belief that in a ‘no deal’ or ‘Hard Brexit’ scenario, that the UK will be able to export to the EU on WTO ‘most favoured nation’ terms.  This is improbable for the first argument that the UK is not currently a member of the World Trade Organisation, so there is no legal basis for an expectation to trade on any WTO terms; and for the second argument that it won’t be in the political interests of the EU to consider the UK a ‘most favoured nation’. Peter Lilley himself concedes that for the EU, “politics trumps economics”.

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Layla Moran MP

Science at risk – BREXIT and the dangers to Britain’s nuclear industry

By Layla Moran MP | Mon 8th May 2017 - 11:30 am

One of the biggest fallouts from Brexit is the future of EURATOM, the European Atomic Energy Community, which manages the procurement and movement of all nuclear materials and waste across the EU, and JET (Joint European Torus), which is a nuclear fusion facility based in Culham, Oxfordshire.

EURATOM predates the formation of the EU but they are now legally entangled. The main sticking point for the Tories is their insistence on leaving the European Court of Justice which oversees the agreement. The hard Brexiteers’ obsession with the ECJ meant that while exiting the EU did not have to include leaving EURATOM, the Brexit White Paper made it clear that this is definitely going to happen if the Tories are in power.

This an important issue in Oxford west and Abingdon locally as the prospect of closing the £60m a year JET facility would lead to a direct loss of 1000 jobs in the area. But it goes well beyond that. JET itself it vitally important the UK as a whole. It is not only the centre for research into fusion technology which one day may be a massive contributor to the fight against climate change, but also includes cutting edge research that has led to breakthroughs in engineering and material science. Estimates suggest we make three times the UK’s investment back on the project thanks to spin offs and locally grown expertise.

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Samuel Skubala

The Liberal Democrats must remain the party of the Open Society

By Samuel Skubala | Mon 8th May 2017 - 9:27 am

Throughout the world, the defining cleavage in elections has largely become that between those advocating the Open Society, against a new wave of parties and movements strongly propagating the Closed Society. In the UK, this is at the forefront of the current election, embodied in the debate around Brexit.

Here we see many of the standard clashes in the Open-Closed debate, including on the virtues of globalisation and of international institutions, strong disagreements on immigration, and a debate on whether to take society back to the communities of the past, or forward to the future.

In addition, with the rise of those advocates of the Closed society – Marine Le Pen in France, and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines among them in what appears to be a global phenomenon – there has been a return of authoritarianism, and strong law-and-order values where freedom and liberty have been seconded in importance to the mercurial concept of “collective security”. Carrying this message are the aforementioned populist figure, with the most notable figure within the UK having previously been Nigel Farage, although the Prime Minister has done well politically in co-opting much of this rhetoric.

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Caron Lindsay

Rennie, Cole-Hamilton and Campbell launch Christine Jardine’s campaign to take back Edinburgh West

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 6th May 2017 - 7:58 pm

You know that wonderful post-election Saturday morning feeling, that you can lie in bed for a bit longer and you don’t have to rush off and do anything? When you can lie about all day reading trashy novels and drinking gin and tonic in the sunshine?

Well, it will be lovely when we get it in 5 weeks’ time.

Today, we had to drag our weary limbs out of bed sooner than we would have liked and head out campaigning.

In my case, it was to the Edinburgh West campaign launch. Regular readers will know that last week, the Edinburgh West campaign moved into the old SNP office next door to what is now Alex Cole-Hamilton’s constituency office.

Some considerable pleasure was taken in removing the giant poster of Nicola Sturgeon on the window. It has now been replaced with this:

So, this morning the office was jam packed with party members, including our new councillors Kevin Lang, Louise Young and Hal Osler, a film crew making the party election broadcast, a bunch of photographers and Tom Gordon, political editor of the Sunday Herald.

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Toby MacDonnell

We can learn from UKIP!

By Toby MacDonnell | Sat 6th May 2017 - 1:24 pm

https://twitter.com/WestmonsterUK/status/860421238149328897

UKIP is dead in the water. Their voters have swung to a Tory party committed to Brexit with no final consultation and the opening new grammar schools, both signature policies of UKIP: their task is done.

Meanwhile, we Lib Dems are bigger than we’ve ever been; and yet in spite of a 2% swing to us, we are not making the gains we deserve. Both Labour and the Tories have sticky voters who aren’t coming over to us: if Corbyn was as much of a dead weight as people say, I would expect a bigger swing from Labour; and Tory voters seem optimistic the consequences of Brexit can be weathered in a safe pair of government hands.

We need to learn from UKIP. To be victims of our own success would be a great pleasure. As most people see it, we are victims of our own stupidity; the one totem policy people associated with us got dropped. The ins-and-outs of policy do not matter to the man on the street. The strides we made in government, of which we are rightly proud, simply aren’t important.

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Lord William Wallace

A pointer towards the future of British Conservatism?

By Lord William Wallace | Sat 6th May 2017 - 10:53 am

In the middle of an election campaign, Liberal Democrats don’t have time to read books. But keep an eye out for reviews, and extracts, of The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, by Douglas Murray, which was published on May 4th by Bloomsbury. The Sunday Times gave us a full-page extract last weekend, indicating the Murdoch press’s approval of its author and his arguments. His opening sentence states that ‘Europe is committing suicide’: from loss of will, decline of Christian values (he calls it ‘existential civilizational tiredness’), lost commitment to reproduce enough children, and above all …

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Caron Lindsay

Some brief thoughts on today’s results

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 5th May 2017 - 8:06 pm

It’s that time on the day after an election where you know it’s not long until you can go to sleep. Your feet ache. Your eyelids feel like they are about to slam shut any second and there’s nothing you can do about it. When I’ve finished writing this, I’m going to have a glass of wine, something to eat and go to bed.

We would have liked Rallings and Thrasher’s predication of gains to be right. After all these years of traumatic election nights during the Coalition years, we just wanted to catch a break. We didn’t want to be losing people. For every one of the seats that we lost, a team has been working its backside off for months and has seen its dreams shattered.  The number we’ve lost is relatively small, certainly compared to previous years, but every one is painful. It equally hurts when you come close to making a gain but don’t pull it off. Spare a thought for poor Daniel Coleman who lost out in the Strathmartine ward in Dundee by just 9 votes. Behind every result is a long series of nights door-knocking in the freezing cold, of weekends given up to leafletting, of all your free time being taken up with casework.

Now, though, there is a lot of good news. We have had some great results that bode well for our short term objective of a decent performance in the General Election. On the basis of today’s results, at least 6 seats in Scotland are most definitely in play – and then you look at places south of the border like St Albans, Lewes, Eastbourne, Eastleigh, Bath, Cheltenham. There is direct, recent evidence that we are the main challengers in these seats. In Edinburgh West, North East Fife, Argyll and Bute, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, Ross Skye and Lochaber and East Dunbartonshire, we can confidently say that we are the main challengers to the SNP.

One of the advantages, if you can call it that, is that Theresa May can’t pretend any more that there is the slightest possibility of Jeremy Corbyn hanging pictures of Che Guevara all over Number 10. We all know she is going to be the PM on 9th June. We just need to make sure that Parliament has the chance to exercise its authority and stop her from doing things that are clearly not in the national interest like drag us out of the single market. There needs to be some sort of safety mechanism that can get out out of their hard brexit once it becomes obvious what a disaster it is going to be. The people must be allowed to vote on the deal and remain if they so wish. 

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Caron Lindsay

Let’s say no to a Coronation of Chaos

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 3rd May 2017 - 9:38 pm

Strong and stable leadership is not always a good thing. I mean, the government of the former soviet union was pretty strong, and for decades, stable. And May’s press team is not exactly behaving like it thinks it is in a democracy.

Seriously, though, what do we expect of our Prime Minister when approaching a negotiation of such complexity as managing Brexit so that we ordinary people don’t end up suffering dire consequences for decades? How should she and her ministers behave as we try to rebuild trading relationships with the world from scratch, as we find ourselves isolated and disadvantaged. Frankly, standing in the middle of Downing Street and whining that those nasty Europeans are out to get us is about as irresponsible as it gets.

That is just window dressing at the end of the day. Ramping up tensions ahead of negotiations with cavalier disregard is one thing. Once they get in the room, if there are sufficient grown-ups around, this mess can be cleared up. There is a bigger worry, though. Our lot seem to be approaching this without a realistic strategy of what they can achieve.

I was interested in this translation of the FAZ story about the Juncker/May dinner. Basically, our government seems to be saying “we’ll pretend to leave, and pay you nothing but we won’t really leave and it’ll all be fine.’

The article is worth reading in full, but here is one of the key points. Theresa May apparently wants Brexit to be a bit like the Boris having and eating cake scenario:

Protocol 36 is an addition to the Lisbon Treaty, the last of the great reforms of the European contracts. It summarises various special provisions, on of which concerns the Brits. They had reserved the right to opt out of all domestic and legal policies. Back then, this agreement was sold as a defence of British sovereignty. However, London had immediately opted back in to two thirds of the fifty affected acts of law — out of pure self-interest. This had been kept fairly quiet. May imagined future relationships with the EU in a similar way. While she wanted Britain to make an official hard cut she wanted the country to still be included in matters of its own interest.

Juncker saw two options now — either remain silent and thereby possibly support May’s illusions, or to hit back at her. He decided for the latter.

That’s bad enough on its own, but our lot are playing silly brats over the money as well:

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Douglas Oliver

Fight where we can win

By Douglas Oliver | Wed 3rd May 2017 - 11:12 am

Canvassing on the doorstep in South London over the weekend, one thing was clear: despite the excitement of a “Lib Dem fightback” this will be a tough election for the party, and we must fight hard to beat the Tories and Labour where we can win on 8th June.

In Carshalton, where I canvassed for Tom Brake MP on Saturday, it is clear he is being ruthlessly targeted by the Tory Party. Next door the Sutton Tory MP Paul Scully – who has spent two years agitating for Brexit since beating us – is being buttressed by a similar CCHQ campaign, despite a strong national and local campaign on Brexit and the NHS led by our candidate Amna Ahmad. Meanwhile, in places like Bermondsey and Southwark, Labour are not, yet, falling away easily.
It is crucial we are more than equal to the Tory and Labour task and focus our fire on those seats where we remain strong, if we are to make a mark in Westminster after 8th June.

Whilst we rightly snigger at the vacuity of the Tories “Coalition Chaos”, there is no denying that it has some resonance around the country, and we must fight fire with fire. It is up to us to make the case for a return to the pragmatic politics which existed before 2015 – and be as unsentimental as the Tories and Labour about where we make our political case.

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Federal Policy Committee discusses the General Election Manifesto

By Geoff Payne | Wed 3rd May 2017 - 9:50 am

This report relates to the meeting of the Federal Policy Committee which took place on 2nd May 2017, some 20 years to the day since the Labour landslide General Election victory in 1997.

This meeting commenced at 2pm and went on well past 10pm. The reason for the length of that meeting was that the only item on its agenda was to agree our manifesto for the 2017 General Election.

I am afraid that there is very little that I can say about the contents of the manifesto or the work that underpinned it for reasons that I am sure people will understand.

Comments from the Leader

Tim Farron MP made some introductory remarks about the importance of our manifesto, and the vigour with which we are fighting this campaign.

He stated that we are going to need a very distinctive manifesto in order to differentiate ourselves from the other parties. He said that the message that will come through in the introduction will be different from that in previous manifestos but it is one that has solid evidence behind it. You will see what I mean when you read it.

Campaign Update

Shaun Roberts, the Director of Campaigns, went through the campaign as it stands.

He indicated that we are facing a number of battlegrounds and set out in detail the challenges that we are facing in each one. He said that our present election message is working where it is heard. The challenge is to ensure that it is heard as widely as it can be. The message from us has to be that we are a strong opposition.

Shaun went though some of the groups of voters that we would want to get back. We used to get significant numbers of voters from public sector workers because our policies, underpinned by our strong beliefs, were to stand up for our public services. Our policies as they stand should go a long way towards attracting that group of voters back.

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Callum Robertson

No Progressive Alliance please, we’re Liberals!

By Callum Robertson | Tue 2nd May 2017 - 2:12 pm

Recently there has been much talk of abandoning our principles and going in with the Greens and the Labour Party. Now my stance on this doesn’t come from some sort of archetypal hatred of them. In fact many of my friends belong to the Labour and Green movements. I have fond memories of standing side by side in Peterborough handing out leaflets and speaking to people about why we thought it was best to remain. I still keep cordial relations with the Greens and the Labour moderates. We campaign for Open Britain together and there is a lot to be said for cross party cooperation in this sense. Logic dictates when you believe in a common cause you should work as a team to achieve this.

However, the common cause on Europe is not a plan for government. We radically differ on policy with the Greens with regards to economic policy. With Labour, our Social Democratic wing undoubtedly has significant overlaps with the Labour moderate wing. However for every similarity there is a difference. I cannot honestly stand for election on a manifesto I disagree with, this is what would happen with the so called progressive alliance.

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John King

Remainers must not be silenced

By John King | Tue 2nd May 2017 - 9:45 am

In the aftermath of the referendum, the Remain viewpoint has been a still small voice. Too still and too small. There are a couple of reasons for this, the first to do with the character of Remainers and the second with how they’ve been treated.

Remainers on the whole are civilised people, reflective and self critical, inclined to see the other person’s point of view. They are not given to elbowing their way to the front of the bar shouting their order for a drink; they leave that to the Nigel Farages of …

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Caron Lindsay

Wera Hobhouse to fight Bath for the Lib Dems

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 1st May 2017 - 9:19 pm

Wera Hobhouse has been selected to fight Bath for the Liberal Democrats.

The candidate selected last year, Jay Risbridger, stepped down last week.

The BBC has the story:

Wera Hobhouse was selected by members during a lunchtime meeting at Bath City Football Club,

The seat is currently held by the Conservative MP Ben Howlett but was previously a Lib Dem stronghold, held by Don Foster for 23 years.

The original prospective parliamentary candidate, Jay Risbridger, picked last autumn, stood down last week due to family and work commitments.

Paul Strasburger, from the Lib Dems’s campaign in Bath, said: “It’s important to the party nationally because it’s a very winnable seat, and therefore it’s a central part of our desire to stop a Tory landslide.”

The Bath Chronicle quotes former Bristol West MP Stephen Williams:

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Caron Lindsay

That May/Juncker dinner leak – what does it all mean and what has Tim Farron been saying about it?

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 1st May 2017 - 8:19 pm

So the May and Juncker dinner leak is all over the papers. “Brussels gossip” says the Prime Minister. What she didn’t say was that it was untrue.

A very useful summary of the main points appears here on The Economist’s Jeremy Cliffe’s Twitter feed. In essence, it sounds as though the Prime Minister has no clue about how Brexit is going to work. They don’t even seem to understand the basics. That already puts our country at a significant disadvantage. If you are going to have to go into a negotiation like this, it helps if you understand what you are doing.

When the story first emerged, Tim Farron had this to say:

These reports have blown a massive hole in the Conservative Party’s arguments.

It’s clear this government has no clue and is taking the country towards a disastrous hard Brexit.

Theresa May chose a divisive hard Brexit, with Labour’s help, and now has no idea what to do next.

This election offers us a chance to change the direction of our country, keep Britain in the single market and give the people the final say over what happens next.

After May had spoken this afternoon, he added:

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Rob May

Jo Swinson interview: part 1 – an introduction and life before politics

By Rob May | Mon 1st May 2017 - 6:15 pm

Prior to this interview, I obviously knew who Jo Swinson was and was aware of some of the issues she has championed over her 10 years in office but, while researching her, I was surprised to find that a relatively young politician had been actively involved in so many campaigns. Jo’s avid use of social media combined with her willingness to openly and energetically support these causes has clearly enhanced her profile. Jo was one of the first politicians to take new and modem forms of technology seriously. She joined Twitter shortly after it went live and a simple YouTube …

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Paul Pettinger

A Lib Dem route to victory: a case for a Progressive Alliance

By Paul Pettinger | Mon 1st May 2017 - 12:26 pm

The recent Richmond Park by-election was a huge victory for Liberal Democrats, further boosting our credibility and standing in the country with voters and the media. But it was also a great success for Progressive Alliance campaigners, who supported Sarah Olney’s excellent campaign.

The decision by the Green Party to stand down and endorse us, along with calls from a group of leading Labour figures for Labour to do the same, helped to recreate the conditions where we could win back the seat by leading a non-conservative bloc of voters to victory. These moves – by Labour figures and the Greens – were made in support of progressives in different parties organising together more generally.

The cross-party pressure group, Compass, is currently publishing a series of essays from members who would like to see a Progressive Alliance from each of the different progressive parties. Written before the announcement of the Election, I’ve set out some of my thoughts from the perspective of a Liberal Democrat about why we need a Progressive Alliance, which are published on the Compass site today. Drawing upon psephology, demography and historical precedent, I believe a Progressive Alliance presents by far our best route to implement electoral reform at Westminster, our best chance to prevent a hard Brexit, and best opportunity for liberals to sustain influence over the long term. I’ve not reproduced many arguments here, and hope you will take some time to have a look, when you take a break from the campaign trail.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: China at the crossroads

By Tom Arms | Sun 30th April 2017 - 1:55 pm

China is at a political crossroads with a nuclear-tipped Mack truck driven by a suicidal North Korean juvenile threatening to plough into its side with disastrous consequences for Beijing and the rest of the world,

President Xi Jinping can avoid the crash. It is not inevitable. But to do so requires a major change of direction in Chinese foreign policy—with some help from America

Korea’s 38th Parallel is the Asian relic of the Cold War. It is also a highly visible and symbolic border which determines whether China or the United States is the major 21st century power in the Asia-Pacific region.

It was China that saved North Korea from defeat at the hands of the American-led UN forces in the early 1950s. It was China that signed a mutual defence treaty with North Korea in 1961 and it is China that provides the food and energy that enables the hereditary communist country to continue oppressing its 25 million citizens and threatening the world with nuclear holocaust.

Why? Not because of any love for Kim Jong-un or his ancestors or because North Korea is communist.

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Callum Robertson

Lib Dem members must all do their bit in this election

By Callum Robertson | Fri 28th April 2017 - 2:02 pm

As I write this I am filled with pride as the party of rational thinking, the party of evidence based policy not knee-jerk reactions reaps the rewards of our stance on Brexit. Our membership is soaring, our poll ratings are creeping up and our results in by-elections both council and parliamentary are truly a sight to behold. However just beholding the wonders of our achievements since the General Election in 2015 isn’t enough. We have a General Election on the horizon!

While some may have the “Brenda “reaction of “not another one” we cannot be complacent. We must win as many seats as we can in order to show Mrs May we mean business! This means we have a number of Richmond Park campaigns to run.  We’ve got to win big in South London and return Sir Vince Cable and Sir Ed Davey to parliament. In Cambridge we’ve got to get the phenomenal campaigning machine who is Dr Julian Huppert back. But, we can only achieve this if we pull together and enthuse our newfound membership base.

To paraphrase Nelson, Tim expects every activist to do their duty! I am what we would call a “newbie” to the party. I joined during the local elections last year from Labour.They had a membership surge too  they they  haven’t motivated their new people. They obsess about internal matters and  not about who really matters, the public. We have so far engaged the membership, now we must motivate all of them into action.  Remember every vote counts. What this means is that we have target seats where we really must win. If you’re unsure where your nearest target seat is then bug your local party chair and they’ll let you know. We can only be an opposition truly worthy of the title if we take seats. Votes in all constituencies are needed but we won’t win them all (this time). Therefore targeting is key.

So remember:

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Ben Westwood

Campaign contrasts: land of hope and fears

By Ben Westwood | Fri 28th April 2017 - 12:36 pm

“Be afraid, be very afraid”. Hardly an inspiring rallying call in progressive politics, but scaremongering is a strategy that often wins elections, and we cannot ignore that.

The Labour party used that very slogan in the 2001 general election, depicting William Hague on a campaign billboard resplendent with a Margaret Thatcher hairdo, It worked and Hague’s Conservatives took a humiliating beating at the ballot box.

Fast forward to 2017 and the party that wins the battle of hopes and fears is still likely to come out on top. Fear of the liberal elite, used so effectively by Trump in last year’s US election, is going to be a big factor in the coming weeks. The Conservatives and UKIP would have us believe that the liberal elite is trying to defy democracy through the courts and in Parliament. This Conservative narrative is helped hugely by the massive machinery of big money donors and media moguls are backing this message. The Tories outspent all the other political parties put together in 2015, and with the daily artillery fire on whingeing liberals and dangerously deluded Corbynites from Paul Dacre’s Daily Mail and Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, the odds are stacked heavily in their favour.

So between a heartless right wing machine and a clueless left wing opposition led so ineptly by Jeremy Corbyn, where does this leave the Liberal Democrats? With our yellow ‘liberty bird’ emblem, we have never been an angry party, but now is the time to harness fear and righteous indignation because our principles are under attack.

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Paul Walter

Tim Farron commitment to end homelessness – reason to be proud, but also conscious of a great challenge

By Paul Walter | Fri 28th April 2017 - 11:25 am

A party press release yesterday said:

The Liberal Democrats have committed to ending the scandal of rough sleeping in Britain, as the Homelessness Reduction Bill enters into force today.

Following a campaign visit to the Hundred Houses Society, a charitable housing association in Cambridge, Tim Farron announced a series of measures the party would put in place to help end rough sleeping.

These include introducing a Housing First provider in each local authority, to put long-term homeless people straight into independent homes rather than emergency shelters. Other policies include increasing funding for local councils for homelessness prevention, reinstating housing benefit for under-21s and reversing planned cuts to Local Housing Allowance rates.

This is a good reason to be very proud of our party. Making this commitment is a big deal. Housing is a basic human right, and we are right to base our policy on that.

Shelter advocate an approach based on the American “Housing First” model. I see that Tim Farron embraces that method.

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Teena Lashmore

Election diversity – as if by magic

By Teena Lashmore | Fri 28th April 2017 - 9:55 am

The Conservative Government has called a General Election for 8 June 2017 after its leader Ms May repeatedly said she would not do so.

We have responded with the truncated General Election process to ensure a full slate of candidates are in place by June 2017.  This has seen candidates up and down the country engaged with internal applications and shortlisting processes in a bid to become the PPC candidates for this election.

As if by magic, we may well see our biggest ever selection of visible ethnic minority candidates making it to PPC status – fulfilling a personal pledge of our Leader Tim Farron, who openly seeks diversity for both internal and external political positions.

Mr Farron has frequently articulated the importance of diversity and our party’s credibility.  No doubt he will be pleased with the current wave of candidates being announced as PPC  candidates who are also known as ethnic minorities.

So far we have in first name alphabetical order: Alexander Cunliffe for Ruislip Northwood and Pinner, London; Anita Day for Grantham and Stamford; Anita Prabhakar for Mansfield;  Amna Ahmad for Sutton and Cheam, London; Brian Haley for Tottenham, London; Dave Ravel for Hackney South, London; Dawud Islam for Middlesbrough; Gitanjali Gordon for South Shields; Glanville Williams for East Ham, London; Hina Malik for Feltham and Heston;  Humaira Sanders for Ealing North, London; Irfan Ahmed for Blackburn, Manchester; Joe Naitta for Derby South; Joyce Onstad for Hammersmith, Marisha Ray for Chipping Barnet, London; London; Michael Bukola for Camberwell and Peckham, London; Nigel Bakhai for Southhall; Rabi Martins for Luton North; Sarah Cheung Johnson for South Cambs; Suzanna Austin for Kettering; Tahir Maher for Milton Keynes South; Ukonu Obasi for Walthamstow, London; Zuffar Haq for Harborough Oadby and Wigston; and Zulfiqar Ali for Huddersfield.

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Caron Lindsay

Could Rachel Johnson stand as a Lib Dem candidate?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 27th April 2017 - 7:55 pm

First of all, Rachel Johnson, writer and journalist, welcome to the Liberal Democrats. Every media outlet is telling us that she has joined and some are even suggesting that she will be a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in this coming general election. The Guardian is feverishly speculating:

Johnson’s decision to join the Lib Dems is expected to infuriate her brother Boris, who has had a relatively marginal role in the post-Brexit negotiations so far.

She could not be reached for comment, while a spokesman for the Lib Dems declined to confirm her membership, citing data protection rules.

With just nine MPs,

…

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Adam Corlett

Raising tax for health and social care: National insurance or income tax?

By Adam Corlett | Thu 27th April 2017 - 11:55 am

Last month, the independent panel of health experts set up by Norman Lamb published its interim report on “a new deal for Britain’s Health and Social Care Services”. The panel were “unanimously of the opinion that it is necessary to raise additional revenue for health and care through taxation” and Spring Conference seemed to agree. Similar views may partly explain why the Conservatives have so far (sensibly) refused to rule out any headline tax rises in the next Parliament.

The interim report, which may influence the Lib Dem manifesto, concludes with three options: 1) raise Income Tax (e.g. raising all rates by 1p); 2) raise National Insurance (NI); or 3) introduce a dedicated health and care tax. All have their pros and cons, and in the grand scheme of things Income Tax and NI rate increases raise similar revenue and are both very progressive. But in this post I want to highlight a few reasons why the current NI system might not be the fairest vehicle for boosting health and social care – points that are also important for considering what a ‘dedicated’ tax should involve.

Don’t raise employer National Insurance

First up, there’s a question about what forms of NI would be increased under that option. In short, you would want to raise the personal forms of NI that individuals – employees and the self-employed – pay, but not employer NI. That might sound backward – hitting individuals but not companies (though in the long run both just reduce take-home pay). But the existing employer NI system already creates damaging and expensive distortions. Foremost, it creates a large incentive for companies (and you and me) to use self-employed labour rather than employees. No-one seems to be suggesting this but for the avoidance of doubt: unless/until that major problem is solved, don’t raise employer NI further.

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