Category Archives: Op-eds

Martin Roche

Electoral expenses allegations may have deep and game-changing implications

By Martin Roche | Mon 20th March 2017 - 11:05 am

 

Last week we heard that 12 English police forces have sent papers to the CPS, in response to concerns about electoral expenses matters in up to 20  seats won by the Conservatives at the 2015 General Election. Four other forces, including Kent Police, which is investigating what happened during the election in the Thanet constituency, have yet to say where their investigations have led them.

Thanet was won by the Conservative’s Craig McKinley, much to the disappointment of UKIP’s candidate, Nigel Farage.

So, and allow me to indulge in pure wishful thinking, what would happen if the courts said that some or all of these contests must be re-run? Would that not go straight to the heart of the legitimacy of the Conservative government and any legislation passed since that administration was formed?

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Caron Lindsay

The other songs the Lib Dems could have chosen at the end of Tim’s speech…

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 19th March 2017 - 9:55 pm

This was the song that played as Tim Farron left the hall today.

An inspired choice.

The performer is referenced in his speech here:

Patriots love their country, nationalists hate their neighbours.

I am a patriot.

The fact that in 1990 I kissed the TV when David Platt scored against Belgium in the last minute of injury time doesn’t mean I hate Guy Verhofstadt…or Tin Tin…or Plastic Bertrand, or any of the other large number of very, very famous Belgians.

Of course, looking at this list of Top Ten Famous Belgians, it would have been equally appropriate to have something from the musical My Fair Lady, as its star, Audrey Hepburn, was born in Brussels.

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The Voice

Cole-Hamilton: Greens have no mandate to call for second Scottish independence referendum

By The Voice | Sun 19th March 2017 - 8:55 am

This week, the Scottish Parliament will vote on whether to seek a Section 30 order, the device in the UK Parliament’s power that would give it the right to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence. The SNP Government is expected to win with the support of the Greens. However, Lib Dem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton has made it clear that the Greens do not have a mandate to call for a referendum given that the three conditions in their manifesto have not been met. He has challenged Greens leader Patrick Harvie – who could easily merit being called “Pushover Patrick” for voting with the SNP on these critical issues, to explain his actions.
Alex  has asked Mr  Harvie why the party has turned its attention away from public service reform, back-tracked on its requirement that opinion polls should indicate support for a new referendum, and scrapped its requirement that a million-strong petition should be the trigger.

Alex said:

The Scottish Greens had three criteria to allow a referendum from their manifesto. None has been met.

The Greens have no mandate for a referendum. They should respect that and decline to vote for a referendum at Holyrood next Wednesday.

Scottish Liberal Democrats had a manifesto commitment against a referendum and we will stick to that.

With education performance slipping, the mental health strategy abandoned and the economy sluggish, Scotland needs its Parliament working on these issues instead of a referendum.

Alex has written to Patrick Harvie saying:

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John Pugh

John Pugh MP writes: Campaigning for your local school

By John Pugh | Fri 17th March 2017 - 12:30 pm

Its Spring and much is stirring as people look cheerfully ahead at prospects new. Every well informed individual in the schools sector though looks ahead with scarcely disguised pessimism.

There is one very obvious reason for this. School funding is scheduled to nose dive. Heads know it,teachers know it and gradually parents are getting to hear about it. Today we have seen a new report published by the Education Policy Institute underlining the same grim statistics that troubled everyone from the National Union of Teachersto the National Audit Office. https://www.nao.org.uk/report/financial-sustainability-in-schools

The message is stark. Rejigging pupil funding on a national formula within a budget falling in real terms by £3 billion spells gloom for all. Nearly every school they suggest will lose and on average that will cost two teachers to primary schools and six to secondary schools. In many places the impacts will be worse.

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Caron Lindsay

Good vote share gains for the Liberal Democrats in last night’s by-elections

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 17th March 2017 - 10:39 am

No seats changed hands in last night’s by-elections but there were some solid rises in vote share for the Liberal Democrat candidates.

The Conservatives may have held on to Walton-le-Dale East ward in South Ribbble but it was Liberal Democrat candidate Alison Hesketh-Holt who was the real winner, gaining 14.6% of the vote. We didn’t stand last time the seat was fought.

An even bigger vote, 15.1% was similarly won by Andrew Thorpe in the Saham Toney ward of Breckland Council.

And Chris Boyle got us an 11.5% rise in the South Heaton ward in Newcastle – another strong performance in that area.

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Manchester Gorton: We need YOU!

By Elspeth McCobb | Thu 16th March 2017 - 7:44 pm

The Manchester Gorton by-election can change things for the whole party – and we need you to come and help to make that happen.

Look at what we achieved in Witney. We sent a message loud and clear that the Lib Dem fightback was on. We proved we could take a serious number of votes from the Conservatives, angry at their former party’s backing for a hard Brexit.

If we can do to Labour in Manchester what we did to the Tories in Witney or Richmond Park we will send shock waves through British politics.

We have an amazing story to tell in Manchester Gorton.  From our great candidate Jackie Pearcey who has a proud 20 year record as a local councillor, to our party’s positive message of hope for an open and tolerant Britain.

And that’s not to mention the failure of Labour in Manchester and nationally. Labour have sided – and voted – with UKIP on Brexit – letting down the 62% of people in Manchester Gorton constituency who voted Remain. And at a local level they take Manchester and its voters for granted.

But we need your help to get that message across.

Only last Wednesday we walked into an empty shop on Stockport Road in Levenshulme for the first time to set up our new Lib Dem HQ. Within hours of getting the office keys, it was bustling with activity as we unloaded the party’s by-election kit – fresh from its triumphs in Witney and Richmond Park.

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Joan Walmsley

Baroness Joan Walmsley writes…Can’t we agree to agree on funding health and social care?

By Joan Walmsley | Thu 16th March 2017 - 3:03 pm

A sight that all of us will have seen since the Autumn is ambulances queuing at A & E and patients waiting on trolleys in hospital corridors. Some of us will have seen the situation at first hand, waiting with a relative or waiting for treatment. Bed occupancy has been dangerously high in many hospitals, with senior managers and doctors having to take decisions that, in some instances, are literally life or death.

Upsetting as these images are, they show only the tip of a very large iceberg that is threatening to sink an NHS and the social care system unable to cope with demand.

Three reports have been published this week which expose the crisis in other key services.

The Kings Fund’s report “Understanding NHS financial pressures: How are they affecting patient care?” looked at the impact on four services that rarely make the headlines: genito-urinary medicine (GUM) services; district nursing services; elective hip replacement services: and neonatal services. The report states:

The growing gap between demand for services and available resources means that staff are acting as shock absorbers, working longer hours and more intensely to protect patient care. ….
Our findings create a fundamental challenge to the direction of travel set out in the NHS five year forward view ……the NHS appears to be moving further away from its goal of strengthening community-based services and focusing on prevention, rather than making progress towards it.

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Toby Keynes

An end to religious discrimination in our schools

By Toby Keynes | Thu 16th March 2017 - 12:37 pm

This Sunday, Conference will decide our party’s policy on state-funded faith schools – and in particular on whether schools should be able to select children on the basis of their religion or belief.

I would like to think this would be an uncontentious issue.

Surely we are defined as a party by our rejection of discrimination, and by our determination to oppose entrenched privilege and inequality.

And yet there are some within this party who believe that our children should be segregated by their religion – so that Catholic children only play and learn with other Catholic children, Jewish children only play and learn with other Jewish children, and so on.   And that the Jewish child whose local state school is in the same road but happens to be a Catholic school should be barred from that school because they are Jewish.  

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Joe Bourke

Irish Liberal Democrats and LDV St Patrick’s Day fringe at York

By Joe Bourke | Thu 16th March 2017 - 10:18 am

Theresa May dealt a blow to Ireland in her Brexit white paper when she said she wanted in effect to leave the EU customs union, confirming Brexit poses a huge threat to frictionless cross-border trade on the island of Ireland, the mainstay of the Irish economy.

The Irish Ambassador to the UK, Daniel Mulhall said last month that comprehensive customs and border checks between Ireland and Northern Ireland are not remotely possible

Northern Ireland polled more europhilic than other regions in the UK before the election. Its Remain vote of 55.7 per cent was the third strongest in the country. Nationalists wanted the UK to remain in the EU, but unionists generally wanted to leave. Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Ulster Unionists, Alliance and the Green Party wanted to stay. The Irish government also wanted a remain vote. The DUP, the TUV and the left-wing People before Profit party backed Brexit.

As Sinn Fein and the DUP jostle for position in a new power sharing agreement at Stormont the Brexit divide has come to the fore. If the parties are unable to agree an accommodation, we may yet see a return to direct rule of the province from Westminster.

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Caron Lindsay

Updated for York 2017: Caron’s guide to the craziness of Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 16th March 2017 - 8:45 am

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.

1. Plan your days

The Conference day has a huge variety of things to do. As well as the debates in the hall,  there’s a comprehensive training programme.  There are spokespeople Q & As. There are competing fringe choices to be made, even though the overall selection has reduced in recent years.  You can guarantee that you will never be bored and that several things you want to see will be on at the same time.

Be aware as well that you can eat quite well for free by choosing the right fringe meetings – look for the refreshments symbol in the directory.

Believe me, it’s much easier if you sort out your diary in advance. The best laid plans will always be subject to a better offer or meeting someone you haven’t seen for years randomly in a corridor, but it’s best to at least try to get some order into the proceedings. The Conference App is a real help for this. You can download it from whichever App store you use on your phone (search for Lib Dem Conf). It allows you to add events to your schedule and is pretty flexible. 

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Tim Farron MP

Tim Farron writes: A nuclear weapons-free world?

By Tim Farron MP | Wed 15th March 2017 - 3:56 pm

 

I recently revisited an article that I wrote ahead of Autumn Conference in 2015. My article opened with the line, “Another Lib Dem conference and we find ourselves talking about our nuclear deterrent once more.”

And they say politics has changed in the last eighteen months!

In York this week, we will again debate the future of the UK’s nuclear deterrent. At conference’s request, the FPC has commissioned a policy paper on nuclear weapons (pdf). The paper, written by party members after long consideration, advocates a step down the nuclear ladder by moving to a medium-readiness posture, and proposes an end to continuous at-sea deterrence. It also calls on the UK to become a leader in the disarmament and control of nuclear weapons. This position reflects the UK’s continued need for a minimum nuclear deterrent, suitable for the 21st century, which sits alongside the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to working for a world free of nuclear weapons, working within international institutions, particularly the UN.

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Jonathan Hunt

Make cheating employers pay, not lone entrepreneurs

By Jonathan Hunt | Wed 15th March 2017 - 2:39 pm

 

Many politicians protesting, quite rightly, about the unfair hike in National Insurance contributions for the self-employed have missed the real solution.

The important contribution is the one paid by employers, at 13.8 per cent of wages for abroad middle range of employees. It is an expensive outlay on workers, and often claimed to be a deterrent to increasing the payroll.

More unscrupulous companies, mostly but not all US-owned multinationals, are evading this tax. They do not employ most of their workforce, but engage people labelled as self-employed.

As one who has been self-employed for many years, even while holding such executive positions as business editor on national newspapers, I recall that becoming self-employed was beset with hurdles. A principal test was to prove that you decided how the task was to be performed, not those paying you.

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Stephen Harte

The emotions of constitutional change

By Stephen Harte | Wed 15th March 2017 - 12:24 pm

 

Here we go again – Scotland is (if Westminster grants a S30 Order) being treated to yet another bitter, divisive and emotional constitutional referendum where lies and spin will confuse one and all and we will likely end up with a narrow result that satisfies no one. What joy!

I voted No before.  This time we are told that circumstances have changed (thus the SNP and the hyper-nationalist Scottish Green Party are demanding the re-vote that they would have demanded whatever happened) and some of my LibDem friends say that Brexit means they will now vote Yes.

Willie Rennie promises to make an “emotional case for the Union”.  I find it hard to get any more emotional about staying with the Union then separating from it.  Where can a liberal find that emotional call?

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Tony Lloyd

This time we should be firmly pro-Independence

By Tony Lloyd | Wed 15th March 2017 - 9:00 am

 

At the last conference Alex Cole-Hamilton explained his opposition to Scottish independence by noting that he was a UK citizen, an EU citizen and wanted to remain both.

It is a fine sentiment.

The time, though, is fast arising when he and others may have to decide which is more important. When no amount of campaigning against the decision will prevent the outcome, when the Tory backbenchers melt and when the Labour leadership get behind the Brexiteers, then then people of Scotland are faced with a choice. It is a stark choice, it is a difficult choice and it is a choice, no doubt, that people do not want to make. But it is a choice they will be forced to: “UK or EU”, “both” will not be on the ballot paper.

So which to choose?

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John Kelly

Royal indiscretion

By John Kelly | Tue 14th March 2017 - 6:55 pm

This week it was reported in the Times that President Reuven Rivlin of Israel had invited the Royal Family to send a representative to the country this year to celebrate a hundred years since the Balfour Declaration.  There is intense speculation in the Israeli press now that the Royal Family might break its longstanding reluctance to visit Israel officially.  It would clearly invite controversy to visit a country in such flagrant breach of international law – defying the United Nations with its illegal settlements, child detention, blockade of Gaza and marginalisation of its ethnic minorities.  The Balfour Declaration, as well as promising a home for the Jewish peoples, also promised that the rights of the Palestinians must be protected.  This was ‘a sacred trust of civilisation’ under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations which Britain took on when it accepted the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. We betrayed that sacred trust and, until that trust is redeemed, the Balfour Declaration should not be celebrated.  A petition to the Queen’s Private Secretary to discourage such a visit is circulating.

The idea that the Royal Family would give any sort of endorsement or honour to the State of Israel this year sadly fits with a pattern of inadvisable steps that have been taken in the last couple of years.  The weekend before her infamous visit to the White House, Theresa May told Andrew Marr that it was up to the Queen whether President Trump was invited to Buckingham Palace this year.  Within days she had extended an invitation on the Queen’s behalf, which was of course accepted, to great public outcry in the UK.  American presidents crave the publicity that goes with a State Visit to the UK – remember Ronald Reagan on horseback with HM at Windsor.  Normally US Presidents must wait until their third year in office – if indeed they get one at all.  That gives them a chance to show that they are a good friend to the UK and frankly deserve it.  George H Bush never had one at all.  Donald Trump hasn’t done anything for the UK yet, and is a major potential threat to the world order.  His visit, if it happens anytime soon, will be highly controversial and will embroil the Royal Family in politics.  It was unwise of the Palace to go along with Theresa May in approving Trump’s visit in his first year.

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Caron Lindsay

Lorely Burt calls for help for girls in “period poverty”

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 14th March 2017 - 5:30 pm

Every time I remember when I’m in the supermarket, I try to buy a packet of sanitary towels to stick in the food bank donations trolley because I know how difficult it is for women facing poverty to deal with the additional cost that periods bring. The BBC reports this week that girls are missing school because they can’t afford sanitary protection.

Girls in the UK are missing school because they cannot afford sanitary protection, a charity has said.

Freedom4Girls was contacted by a school in Leeds after it became concerned about teenage girls’ attendance.

The group provides sanitary products to women in Kenya – but is now doing the same in West Yorkshire.

One teenager told the BBC she taped toilet roll to her underwear and missed school “every month” because of her period.

Two teenage girls spoke to BBC Radio Leeds about how they tried to cope without tampons, sanitary towels or pain relief.

A discussion on Women’s Hour this morning also highlighted the problem.

It’s good to see that our Equalities spokesperson, Lorely Burt, is bringing this up in her speech in the Budget debate in the House of Lords.

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Martin Roche

Drive the wedge

By Martin Roche | Tue 14th March 2017 - 3:08 pm

The weekend’s media was full of reports of bitter disputes between No 10 Downing Street and The Treasury. Hitherto buried tensions have surfaced publicly, following the Chancellor’s NI debacle. Hard Brexiters, we learn, want to see Hammond off and have him replaced by one of their own. The Tory party is as split on Europe as ever it was. It is up to us to exploit those divisions. It is up to us to remind the public that the ruling party is a split party. Split on EU policy, economic policy, foreign policy and social policy.

In the very near future …

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Keith Legg

Why I’m supporting Yes this time

By Keith Legg | Tue 14th March 2017 - 1:41 pm

In September 2014, you could well be expected to have thought that it was all over. The “no” vote to independence – including mine – was 55%, the SNP broadly accepted the result, and it looked like there was no way the Tories would win an overall majority in 2015, effectively ruling out an EU referendum.

How things have changed.

In 2014, I started the referendum relatively open-minded but leaning towards a “no”, but by the end (and having been firmly put off the idea by Alex Salmond) I was quite firmly in the “no” camp.

But in my head I was clear about one thing. My priority was to remain a European citizen. I would prefer to do that as part of the UK, but if that wasn’t possible then other ways had to be considered.

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Aude Boubaker-Calder

The United Kingdom is my country and I will fight for it

By Aude Boubaker-Calder | Tue 14th March 2017 - 10:15 am

Dear House of Commons,

This evening, I have heard that you voted in a majority to be a place where the unrepresented are being devalued and brushed aside like piece of dirt on your suit. You, the country of one of the first parliamentary democracies who gave a voice to the people you represent. You, who decided that the absolute monarchy and aristocracy were unfair and a voice should be given to everyone. You just tarnished the name of democracy and multiculturalism.

EU expatriates might be your friends, your neighbours, the ones who serve your coffee in the morning before your session, …

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Joe Otten

Article 50 is not the only or the best way to leave

By Joe Otten | Tue 14th March 2017 - 8:33 am

Now that the invocation of Article 50 is imminent, I thought I would reflect on how we managed, as a country, to gain such momentum for such a bad way of leaving the EU.

Firstly, it should be understood that before Article 50 was agreed, it was not impossible to leave the EU. Greenland did so, by agreement, and without that agreement being subject to an arbitrary one-sided deadline. The point of agreeing Article 50 was not to make it possible to leave, but to make it harder. Article 50, like Trident, is not meant to be used; that is not …

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Caron Lindsay

Heartbreak

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 13th March 2017 - 10:30 pm

I’m feeling pretty heartbroken at the moment. Like Charles Kennedy, I’m a highlander, a Scot, a Brit and a European, with the first and the last most important. Now my rights as a European citizen (though I will be one no matter what) and a British citizen are under threat.

As I write, the Labour Party, the so-called opposition, is about to crumble  and let the Government have its way on the Bill that will pave the way for our exit from the European Union. It beggars belief that the Government has been able to get this through without any serious opposition. It’s the greatest issue of our time, and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party might as well have been part of the most right-wing, isolationist, dangerous government we have  had in my lifetime.

I’ve been fairly sure that the country has been headed to hell in a handcart before. There was the 80s, for a start, when Thatcher destroyed the industrial fabric of our country and championed selfishness over community. You thought things could only get  better with a Blair Government but he ended up ruining the country’s standing with the folly of Iraq.

I thought I had felt heartbreak in 2011 when I saw so many of my friends lose in the Holyrood election, when we lost our MEPs and the turmoil that followed, in 2015 when the General Election result was the worst we could have anticipated. None of that, tough that it was, comes close to my sadness and fear for the future.  I feel like we’re throwing away our safety net in so many ways. What will be left of workers’ rights and human rights in ten years’ time?

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Caron Lindsay

Rennie and Farron react to Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement on the second independence referendum

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 13th March 2017 - 9:09 pm

It looks like either a second referendum on Scottish Independence in 5 years is on its way. Either that or an indefinite stalemate between the Tory Government in London (who must give permission for the vote) and Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalist government in Edinburgh.

This was inevitable ever since the Brexit vote. That a large majority of Scots voted to remain in the EU was always going to lead us to this place. Nicola Sturgeon built a very big tent in the hours after the result was declared but she and her ministers spent the rest of the Summer dismantling it piece by piece. They talked about independence incessantly. Now, they’re a nationalist government. They are not going to give up on independence because they lost a vote any more than I’m going to give up on the EU.

You have to govern for all of your people, though and, at the moment, there is no sign that anything like a majority of the  Scottish people want an independence referendum. For many, relationships from the division and polarisation of the last one are only just healing over.

Willie Rennie and Tim Farron have both been reacting to today’s announcement. Willie said:

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David Grace

Is Trident’s successor a white elephant?

By David Grace | Mon 13th March 2017 - 6:30 pm

On Saturday afternoon Spring Conference debates motion F11 “Towards a World Free of Nuclear Weapons” which actually endorses the government’s plans to replace Trident with Successor at a cost of £200 billion, twice the original estimate.  The motion also talks about developing multilateral negotiations and ending Continuous-at-sea Deterrence (CASD) but in essence it supports a like-for-like deterrent, which we opposed through the coalition years.

I was on the working group which drafted the report which this motion approves, but I don’t agree. I’m tabling an amendment which agrees with most of the motion’s analysis and call for beefing up negotiations but also calls for Trident to be phased out and NOT replaced.

Many party members have long supported ending the UK’s nuclear weapons but others have placed their faith in nuclear deterrence on balance.  People may feel the global security situation inclines them more than ever to support replacing Trident with the Successor programme.  The argument can be summarised as “Oh my God, Putin !, Oh my God, Trump !  We better have our own nukes”.  I originally felt that the party’s latest working group on the subject was a waste of time.  Nothing had changed.  But I was wrong.  

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What’s the REAL state of the parties?

By Brian Milnes and John Grout | Mon 13th March 2017 - 1:49 pm

Frequent Opinion Polls since May 2016 show one picture; Conservatives way ahead, Labour & Liberal Democrats suffering, UKIP hanging on.

But when we look at “Real Votes from Real People”, from a 310,000+ sample size, from 3 countries since May 2016, we get a much different picture:

 

Local government by-elections may not be translatable into General Election results, but they show a remarkably different position – and one that is much more attuned with feedback from the doorstep.

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Keith Aspden

Welcome back to York and join us campaigning!

By Keith Aspden | Mon 13th March 2017 - 12:37 pm

As the countdown to party conference continues, I would like to say how pleased I am to be welcoming Spring Conference back to York.

Visit York estimate that the weekend will boost the city’s economy by more than £600,000. And I know that pubs, hotels, B&Bs, guest houses, and restaurants will be reporting soaring demand. Added to the short-term economic boost is the long-term impact that the continued national exposure will bring. It is a showcase for York as a destination for conferences and events. York is a beautiful, well-connected city with the potential to hold many more big political and business conferences.

It is also a chance for our members in York to meet our MPs and peers as well as councillors and campaigners from across the country. And as we all know, a chance for local party members to actually debate and decide national party policy.

In York, our councillors and members have been working hard since we formed a joint administration in May 2015 to run City of York Council.

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Katharine Pindar

Now we must stand firm, and proclaim our own powerful vision.

By Katharine Pindar | Mon 13th March 2017 - 11:25 am

So we come to the crunch. We have voted against triggering Article 50 in both the Commons and the Lords. We are being attacked, as Tim Farron was on Radio 4’s Any Questions last Friday night, for being anti-democratic.

I have read this accusation many times here on Liberal Democrat Voice. I have occasionally heard it on Copeland doorsteps too, during the recent by-election. No amount of pointing out, as Tim did again that night, that the people who voted Leave in the Referendum had not voted to leave the EU Single Market has cut much ice with those voters who simply demand, ‘We voted to leave – get on with it!’  Theresa May’s government will shortly obey them.

Were we wrong in what we insisted on? And if so, are our electoral chances being harmed by that public perception? Maybe the latest Tory wins in local elections, maybe the commanding Tory lead in the opinion polls, maybe the too-few votes for us in the recent by-elections – perhaps they all had some small connection with public disagreement over our known stance. Could that be the case?

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Caron Lindsay

Rennie’s independence referendum risk: why it may well be a good thing

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 12th March 2017 - 1:35 pm

There’s a phrase that goes “Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.” I have sometimes said to Willie Rennie that I think he’s being too safe and that he needs to take more risks. He’s taken a pretty big one this morning by saying in no uncertain terms that Liberal Democrat MPs at Westminster will vote against a Section 3o order, the mechanism that would allow the SNP to hold another Scottish independence referendum. Certainly, the Tories will no longer be able to say, as they have been falsely alleging for the past year or so, that we have gone soft on independence.  Showing Scots that they have a progressive pro UK party prepared to stick by its word is a good thing.

So why is this a risk? Well, there’s nothing more likely to get Scottish backs up than being told by Westminster that they can’t do something. If that actually happened, it might drive people to support having another referendum, even if they didn’t want to leave the UK. At the moment, though, every poll suggests an increasing number of Scots who don’t want to go through the divisive trauma of 2014 all over again. Willie’s announcement is very much in keeping with both our principles and public opinion. That’s actually a point that the didn’t make in his Sunday Politics Scotland interview, but worth pointing out.

Our party is and always has been a pro UK and pro EU party.  We are against leaving the UK  for all the same reasons that we are against leaving the EU – we believe in partnership and collaboration and see nationalism and isolationism as a recipe for disaster. We explicitly ruled out supporting another referendum on independence in our Holyrood manifesto last year and there is no way we could go back on that. Reneging on key manifesto promises has not gone so well for us before. It’s therefore entirely logical and consistent that we would oppose independence at every opportunity to do so.

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Rob May

Lynne Featherstone interview part 3: Same sex marriage and life as a Minister

By Rob May | Sat 11th March 2017 - 8:46 am

In the hours following the icy gales of Storm Doris, I caught up with Lynne at Taunton’s most distinguished hotel, The Castle. This is the final instalment of our chat. You can read the others here.

You were and still are a campaigner against important issues such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), child abuse and violence against women. However, perhaps your greatest achievement is being the originator and architect of the equal marriage act, which was passed into law in 2013. No party had equal marriage in their 2010 manifestos nor was it part of the coalition agreement. Why did you take this issue on and why is it important to you?

When we entered into coalition, 20 ministerial posts had to be filled. After two days, I received a call from Nick Clegg offering me the post of Equalities Minister. In fact, I ended up with three-quarters of me as a Home Office minister and one-quarter as Equalities Minister. So I’m a minister in the coalition, we have Liberal Democrats in government, and I’m thinking to myself ‘I’ve got to do something to make sure everyone knows that there are Liberals in this government’. It never crossed my mind that it wasn’t in the manifestos or portfolio because to me it was an obvious piece of equalities work that needed doing. Labour were great with civil partnerships, but I thought they were a kind of apartheid – one rule for gay people and one rule for straight people. My view is that you should have marriage and civil partnerships for both gay and straight, both for both. The state’s job is to facilitate that union, not to judge if one is good or one is bad.

We were all new Liberal Democrat ministers and didn’t have a clue what we were doing, so the Institute for Government put on a morning instruction for newbie Liberal ministers. They invited Michael Heseltine and Andrew Adonis to advise us. Heseltine said ‘you are going to be really busy. You do not understand the tsunami of work that will hit you when you become a minister. You will have debates, orals, speeches, correspondence and endless other things. Your diary will be full from morning to night. If you do not ruthlessly prioritise one or two things you want to get done in your time in the sun, you will not achieve it. You will be a very good minister doing very important things but you won’t have done anything you went into politics for’. Adonis encouraged us to trust our civil servants. He said it wasn’t like The Thick of It or Yes Minister, although, I have to say, I thought it was quite like Yes Minister! He told us  ‘If you don’t direct your civil servants, they will fill your diary from first thing in the morning until midnight, all with very worthy things but you’ll just be executing what they want you to do. If you trust your civil servants, you have to direct them. They will go to the ends of the earth for you’. As I walked back from the Institute for Government to the Home Office, it just crystallised in my brain that I wanted to do same sex marriage because it was a piece of equalities legislation that needed doing. I came back into my office and said to one of my assistant private secretaries ‘I want to do same sex marriage, what do I do?’ That is literally how it started.

If I hadn’t had that morning, we would not have same sex marriage. It’s really strange how things happen.

Can you explain the process? What did you have to do?

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Chris Carubia

Lib Dem councillors on a fact-finding trip to Brussels

By Chris Carubia | Fri 10th March 2017 - 5:34 pm

On the 2nd March at 7.50 am I boarded a Ryanair flight from Manchester to Charleroi in Belgium. It is an hour and a half train journey from Charleroi to Brussels and the first thing that you notice is the friendliness of the people and the matter of fact way they switch from one language to another without pause. The next thing is the extent of the industrialisation of the landscape as it flashes by.

I was travelling to join Catherine Bearder at the EU Parliament in Brussels on the European Information Program in the hope of finding out how Brexit will be affecting us here in the Wirral. I was not surprised in the least to find that Brussels knows as little about Brexit as we do here in the UK.

The visit lasted two packed days and I found it very informative during the conversations I had with colleagues, from across the UK, and the question and answer sessions with MEP’s.

I found out, for instance, that the only country to have left the EU so far is Greenland who had only one treaty to negotiate (fish).  It took over seven years to complete their single negotiation, whilst here in the UK we have over four hundred agreements to unravel.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: The Brexit elephant

By Tom Arms | Fri 10th March 2017 - 1:27 pm

 

There was a massive elephant in the British House of Commons on Wednesday. It was rampaging back and forth across the chamber, overturning tables, loudly trumpeting and waving his trunk from side to side.

Its name was Brexit.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Phillip Hammond did his level best to ignore the distinctly unfriendly pachyderm. In fact, he did not utter the B-word once during his 45-minute budget speech.  But the Brexit elephant was as plain to see as the chancellor’s traditional red box.

Growth forecasts for 2017, said the Chancellor, have been upgraded from 1.4 to 2 percent.  Employment forecasts are rosy, and predictions for government borrowing are down, down, down. The pound remains at rock bottom levels against the dollar, but the economy has not fallen off the cliff as some pro-European campaigners said it would do on the 24th of June.

But then Britain is still in the phoney war period. Article 50 has not been invoked. Details of the government’s negotiating position remain shrouded in mystery. Details of the European Commission negotiating position are a total enigma.

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