Category Archives: Op-eds

Jon Andrew

Predictions for 2017: How the Lib Dems can stay one move ahead

By Jon Andrew | Wed 4th January 2017 - 11:25 am

Anyone who watched politics, the Premier League or Strictly in 2016 will know that making predictions can seem like a fool’s game. As much as you might think you’ve got the future mapped out, sometimes bizarre things happen and those who thought they were in the know end up with egg on their faces. This is part of life and part of politics. However, the unpredictable nature of 2016 should not mean that we refrain from thinking ahead to what might happen in 2017. If a chess player decided that he or she had no idea what the next ten moves would bring so didn’t bother planning ahead, they would find themselves checkmated pretty quickly. With that in mind, here are my top three political predictions for 2017 and how I think the Liberal Democrats can capitalise on them.

Jeremy Corbyn will still be Labour leader come 2018

There has been plenty of speculation lately, as has been the case since day one of his tenure, about the future of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Fabian Society and Unite leader Len McCluskey are the latest to come out with less-than-helpful comments about him. But whatever seeming pressure there is on Corbyn, he has won two leadership elections now, surviving  the most extraordinary internal coup with a bolstered mandate from members. Forcing him out will be a near impossible job for Labour and I can’t see him resigning himself. If he was going to take the humble way out why didn’t he do it when 80% of his MPs turned on him in the no confidence vote? This means that the Liberal Democratss will likely have another year of being the only major UK wide Party united against Brexit. Banging the drum for the 48% who voted Remain, and holding the Government to account over its handling of its EU negotiations should remain our raison d’etre for now. Even if some start to see us as a single issue Party, it doesn’t matter in my view. Growing a small Party into a big one is often done by focusing on a single issue and then expanding from there. 

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Mark Argent

A time for wise leadership

By Mark Argent | Tue 3rd January 2017 - 12:20 pm

At the start of 2017, things feel much less stable than a year ago. Prince Charles broke with convention in his Christmas message by expressing concern at the “deeply-disturbing echoes of the 1930s”. He is thinking in global terms, but the UK is part of this story. He is right to be concerned.

I finished a recent blog post by saying that what we need now is wise leadership. Those words are haunting me. Doubtless there are some who want a leader to push Brexit through as fast as possible, and others who want a …

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Nathan Sinclair

“I’m not sure we can do anything about it anymore.”

By Nathan Sinclair | Tue 3rd January 2017 - 8:41 am

This is something I read in a conversation online. The political climate in both Britain and the world at large is, I suspect, something a great many people are worried about at the moment. 2016 has been hard. Tragedies like Berlin and Orlando, the pure horror of Aleppo, the deaths of so many of our heroes, aggressive and violent political discourse in multiple countries. If you have this disturbing suspicion that 2016 was sent by some wrathful God, specifically to beat you down into submission, then believe me, you are not alone.

It feels as though the world …

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Bernard Aris

Farage’s legacy and continental populist laws put EU expats in UK in impossible quandary

By Bernard Aris | Mon 2nd January 2017 - 5:13 pm

 

With Farage’s legacy (Britain leaving an EU it never loved) and Trump’s victory in the US (appointing Putin’s friends on key White House and ministerial positions), the world is getting back to the “each for his own, beggar-thy-neighbour”-politics that were such a stunning success in bringing wealth to everybody in the 1930’s.

What the possible success in upcoming European elections of populist parties (many already being sponsored by Putin) will mean to European expats living in the UK (often being married to a British citizen) is becoming clear with the cases of a Dutch engineer/housewife and a German aerospace executive who both received orders from the UK home office to leave the country forthwith, as reported by The Guardian.

In the case of the Dutch woman, who was unjustly rejected in her application for British citizenship, an earlier Dutch political success by convicted racist populist Geert Wilders has aggravated the significance of applying for British citizenship; and will do so in the case of all Dutch inhabitants of the UK. (I wouldn’t be surprised if they are in their thousands).

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Marisha Ray

How do we each make 2017 a better year for race equality in the UK?

By Marisha Ray | Mon 2nd January 2017 - 2:56 pm

2016 has been one of the worst years for race equality which I have lived through in the UK. It is quite frankly a stain on our country’s record which every liberal, whether a member of the Liberal Democrats or not, would not wish to see repeated ever.

It is up to us to create a better future, up to each of us personally. We need our political parties to be fit for purpose for race equality campaigners of all backgrounds. Imagine my surprise when I read Roy Lilley’s words below on the NHS (in an email from nhsmanagers.net) and saw how well they apply to our party and increasing the involvement of a wider range of people in politics.

As we nudge our way out of what, by any standards, has not been the health and care services’ finest year, there’s some stuff we would do well to leave behind.

…

The first is a word.

The ugliest word in the NHS lexicon… ‘engagement’. I don’t want to ‘engage’ with people, do you? I want to talk to them. Better still; listen to them. I want to hear their views, have a conversation, ask what they think.

Engage is what gear boxes do, to drive an engine and what old telephones sound like when someone else is talking. People who are interested in other people’s ideas don’t ‘engage’. They have a chat.

If they have something to explain, clarify, demonstrate, make a case for… they do it, face to face, eyeball to eyeball. Politely, with passion and purpose.

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Ben Andrew

Why we need UKIP in the fight for Electoral Reform

By Ben Andrew | Mon 2nd January 2017 - 12:40 pm

 

Pursuit of electoral reform was once a defining policy of the Lib Dems, and it remains one of the key reasons why I am a member of the party. But the disastrous AV referendum in 2011 seems to have kicked the issue into the long grass. I have the same hangups about that referendum as many other Lib Dems do. Labour’s support was non-existent; the Murdoch press spread lies; and the vote was used as a way of punishing Nick Clegg. In short – the establishment pulled rank.

One popular observation about electoral reform is that no party in Government would ever support changing a voting system which had just given them power. I don’t think that this argument is as tautological as many claim it is, but it’s certainly a major concern.

However, none of this hides the fact that voting reform has never gained much support from the general public, unlike other anti-establishment causes. Electoral Reformers are in the uncomfortable position of being hated by the establishment but treated with disinterest by the wider electorate too. It is so often seen as peripheral issue, which only middle-class policy wonks from the liberal elite can be bothered to care about (a problem which the Lib Dems are oh so familiar with).

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Roisin Miller

There is nothing about 2016 that wasn’t inevitable

By Roisin Miller | Mon 2nd January 2017 - 10:58 am

 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there is nothing about 2016 that wasn’t inevitable. Nothing that hadn’t been brewing for years.

Whether you’re looking at Brexit, Trump or ‘untimely’ celebrity deaths. 2016 is the year things caught up with us – it became a melting pot for events we had arguably been dodging

It may not be a fashionable opinion but as “Changes” by Bowie came on to my iPhone this morning and I remembered that night at New Slang in Kingston in January with friends where we belted out his lyrics thinking how tragic his early death was I began to think. 2016 was an annus horribilis for sure. But was it one that could have been avoided?

Like many, I was continually plagued by shock and disbelief as the year unravelled. However it was only with less than 24 hours to go that I realised this has been partly due to my circumstance and, frankly, living in leafy South West London.

Over Christmas, as we, like many, lamented the deaths of George Michael and Carrie Fisher, mum piped up – this isn’t a curse of 2016. These people took a lot of drugs. Drank a lot of alcohol. They did what we are told not to every day. This fed their artistic brilliance. But it also meant they were susceptible to human weakness. Of course their deaths were sad and tragic but could this be used as an education piece for young people? These lifestyles the media glamourises and encourages had real consequences. One lasting legacy of this year would be to make people think about these actions and how we all live.

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Caron Lindsay

2017: A year when Liberals across the world need to work like never before

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 1st January 2017 - 12:00 am

It’s here. We’ve bid the often crushing 2016 farewell and now have to face up to its consequences.

In politics and world affairs, Brexit and the election of Donald Trump have signified a terrifying and undoubtedly disastrous change in direction. The irony of powerful rich men railing against political elites has not yet been realised by the general population. As liberals we really have our work cut out for us to challenge a chilling new orthodoxy of national selfishness, of scapegoating, insularity and the unravelling of decades of international European and transatlantic co-operation.

The hideous and entirely preventable suffering we see in Syria, Yemen and in refugee camps across Europe is a powerful reminder of the need for countries to work together, not to retreat into isolation and enmity.

The Liberal Democrats have a lot to offer this uncertain world. We have always and will always be on the side of the powerless against those powerful elites. We have and always will call for people to have decent housing. We have and always will champion people being paid a decent wage and having decent employment rights. We are that radical, insurgent, planet saving, establishment busting, freedom loving force for good that this country needs and we need to get out there with absolute confidence in that. You don’t see the likes of Farage or Theresa May (and the two, sadly, are almost interchangeable these days) waver one bit in what they are saying. We can be too darned reasonable sometimes. We need  to counter the most serious threat to our way of life we have ever known  with passion. This is not going to be easy. We’ve already seen Tim Farron called all sorts  of names – and some Conservatives have called for him and anyone else who supports the EU to be charged with Treason.  It’s going to get a lot uglier. The treatment meted out to Charles Kennedy when he rightly opposed the Iraq War is going to seem like a teddy bear’s picnic but we all have to step up, face it and roll up our sleeves to fight for what we believe in.

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Caron Lindsay

The good things about 2016

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 31st December 2016 - 9:52 am

How many times this year have you heard people say “I’ve never known a year as awful as 2016.” I have some sympathy with what they are saying. I don’t think I’ve ever known a year when so many friends have lost loved ones – parents and children. It’s not just my age. Some of those friends have been much younger.

For me, it seems that so many of the key influences on me as I was growing up have gone. I felt the sudden loss of Victoria Wood particularly strongly. I was one of the few never to have had a crush on George Michael but I loved his music and Princess Leia was a great female role model in an otherwise male dominated  genre brought to life so well by Carrie Fisher.

In the party, we have lost wonderful liberals like Eric Avebury, David Rendel, Ed Townsend and Brian Niblett and we will miss their service and contributions.

I can’t write off 2016 totally, though. It has been a stinker, but on a personal level, it will forever be the year my husband got through heart surgery. It contained the scariest moments of my life, with the worst being that awful late night phone call from the Intensive Care charge nurse telling me that they were taking him back into theatre. However much that feeling of petrified helplessness will stay with me, it’s well and truly trumped by the relief I felt just 14 hours later watching him sitting up in bed in ICU scoffing a tub of ice cream. For me, a glance into a room as he works on his music fills me with joy. He brought me a cup of tea the other morning for the first time in three months and I couldn’t stop smiling for  hours.

The Liberal Democrats have had some fantastic times, too. Here are a selection.

Sarah Olney wins Richmond Park

This has to be the mother of them all. Against all the odds, we showed we were back by defeating Zac Goldsmith and replaced a pro Brexit anti Heathrow expansion MP with an anti Brexit anti Heathrow expansion MP. It was wonderful watching everyone’s body language at the count as we waited for the result to come in. Initially our people weren’t very optimistic but things definitely changed.

Look at this and smile:

Alex Cole-Hamilton and Willie Rennie take seats off the SNP

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Disastrous Middle East victory

By Tom Arms | Fri 30th December 2016 - 5:00 pm

 

It looks as if the fighting in Iraq and Syria will draw to a close in 2017. We won and lost.

Isis,  Isil, Daesh, Al-Nusra, A lQaeeda, whatever name the Jihadists call themselves  have been pushed out of the remains of Aleppo and are hanging on by their blood-soaked fingertips in Mosul and Raqqa.

Also destroyed and seeking peace terms are Western-backed rebels in the Free Syrian Army and its dozens of feuding constituent parts.

The Obama Administration and its 13 allies backing air strikes could claim victory.  They may even try to do so.  And in terms of denying the Jihadists a territorial base, there are justifiable grounds for a victory claim.

However, Islamic extremism is far from defeated. Jihadists have repeatedly displayed their prowess in filling political vacuums wherever they occur, and Western intelligence agencies are issuing dire warnings of attacks on Western soil orchestrated by bitter battle-hardened extremists in full flight from the Middle East.

No, the real winners are Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iran and Hezbollah.  And the real result is a massive defeat for the democratic hopes of the 2011 Arab Spring and a  victory for tyranny

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Paul Walter

On losing so many heroines and heroes in 2016 – and telegraph poles

By Paul Walter | Fri 30th December 2016 - 11:00 am

First of all, I would like to express my deep sympathy to everyone who has lost close ones this year. Particularly at this festive period, I am conscious of the hell of grief many people are going through.

I’m not saying anything new here. But we seem to have lost one heck of a lot of famous icons, heroines and heroes in 2016.

The Mirror has a theory on why this is:

Between 1946 and 1964, there was a massive growth in population.
This means people in their 50s, 60s and 70s now make up a much larger percentage of the population than they did four or five decades ago.
And as a result, more of them are famous, the BBC notes.
These people, dubbed ‘baby boomers’, are reaching an age where they are more likely to develop life-threatening conditions such as cancer and heart disease.

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Caron Lindsay

Who benefits most from voters having to show ID?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 29th December 2016 - 10:59 pm

I had thought that the Vanquis advert would be the thing that would irritate me the most during this chilled out festive week. Even if you lay aside the fact that it’s advertising outrageously overpriced credit, the utter misogyny of the plot line should see its creators banished back to the 11th century where they belong.

But no, the Tories had something to seriously annoy me. Their plan to make voters show ID at polling stations in the name of “securing the ballot” is a thinly disguised attempt to skew the voting in their favour. Let me explain. If you are young or poor, you are less likely to be able to afford a passport or even a driving licence. Some don’t have a bank account. You may also not have your name on a utility bill. If you live at home with your parents, as many young people do, or if you are sharing a house with several others, you may simply not have the prescribed ID and will not be able to vote.

It’s as if there weren’t enough barriers already to young or poor people voting already. And these groups, shall we say, tend not to vote Conservative. Putting more obstacles in the way of these people casting a vote seems at best irresponsible.

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Caron Lindsay

Help us find the Liberal Democrat Stars of 2016

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 27th December 2016 - 9:05 am

For the last couple of years, around this time,  we’ve  asked you to name your Liberal Democrat Stars of the year.  Little did we know that in 2013, what we thought might be an interesting comments thread for a day or two would turn into a six part Liberal Democrat Roll of Honour  with some really lovely tributes to some fabulous people. This year, we’ve had a few nominations already!

Last year, my introductory post talked about 2015 as the worst year ever to be a Liberal Democrat. It certainly was a stinker. This year, we find our own fortunes improving, but our core …

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Tom Arms

A good year for journalists

By Tom Arms | Sat 24th December 2016 - 12:55 pm

It has been a good year for journalists. I have never known better.

There has been an endless march of, upsets, twists, turns, worries, cheers, jeers, doom, gloom and unadulterated surprised joy.

Half the world is sunk into a slough of despond deeper than the Marianas Trench and the other half is waving their anti-globalist flags from the top of Everest.

The Western world is the most divided it has been since World War Two.  Divided within countries and divided between countries.

The authoritarian East is a different story. They are  watching the democratic West self-destruct  and going about their business and rattling their sabres to let the rest of the world know that they are prepared to move into the yawning  political vacuum.

Russia is well-placed to pick up the pieces from America’s failed Middle East policy. The victory in Aleppo has established the military supremacy of Vladimir Putin’s buddy Bashar Al-Assad—the dictator everyone loves to hate.  They hate him almost as much as they do Russia and Syria’s other regional ally—theocratic Iran. 

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John Kelly

Spare a thought for Bethlehem

By John Kelly | Sat 24th December 2016 - 9:11 am

Last January I managed to visit Bethlehem after 5.5 hours of  delay and “obstruction” at the Jordan/Palestine border by the Israeli authorities.  As well as visiting the (Christian) University of Bethlehem, I also paid a visit to the birthplace of Christ and the place where Christmas originated.  At this time of year, it is appropriate to remember just how much the occupants of Bethlehem are affected by the illegal occupation and I am grateful to the Palestinian mission for the following information, which I will present without further comment – it speaks for itself.

Bethlehem is located 10 kilometers to the south of Jerusalem. It has a population of over 220,000 people, including over 20,000 living in three refugee camps (Dheisheh, Aida and Beit Jibrin).

The most important cities and towns of the governorate are Bethlehem City, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, Al Doha, Al Khader, Battir and Artas.

There are two sites in the governorate that have been inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites:

  1. The Nativity Church and Star Street (“Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route”).
  2. Battir, including Wadi’ Makhrour (“Land of Olives and Vines – Cultural Landscape of Southern Jerusalem, Battir”).

Other important heritage and archeological sites located in the governorate are:

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Rob Parsons

“What I really wanted to hear from Remain”

By Rob Parsons | Fri 23rd December 2016 - 6:00 pm

I don’t know who Little Jackie Paper is but I am grateful to her / him for the following comment on  Katharine Pindar’s recent article o EU reform: “What I really wanted to hear from REMAIN in the referendum was, ‘if we remain in the EU the things that we would do differently in future are…..’”.

I think we all accept how ineffective the Remain campaign was overall. It is still quite painful to revisit it. I can still feel the daily gut wrenching at seeing opportunity slip by as the Leave campaign outthought and outfought us. We had so little to offer that was positive, and Little Jackie Paper’s comment sums that up. It focussed my mind, so here is my answer:

End within two years the silliness of the EU working in two places. It is a waste of money and time and it symbolises everything that is wrong about the EU. Find something to placate French feeling about the loss of prestige involved.

Invite every single EU country leader here on a rolling programme over the next two and a half years to explore concerns and mutual interests.

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Sam Phripp

An early general election? There’s a Christmas present we should be careful about wishing for

By Sam Phripp | Fri 23rd December 2016 - 4:30 pm

The Independent has run an interview today with Jeremy Corbyn, outlining the Labour leader’s strategy moving forward – including his pledge that Labour MPs would back a dissolution of Parliament and an early General Election. I was previously a real supporter of an early General Election. Ultimately, I question Theresa May’s ability to hold her own party together through the Brexit negotiations, and I also think that it would provide an opportunity for the process to be amended or slowed by the more progressive forces within our country. This said – we need to be careful what we wish for.

My partner and I were having a conversation the other day, where I was ranting on about how it would all be wonderful – we Liberal Democrats would gain seats from the Conservatives in some of our former heartlands (it wouldn’t take a miracle for seats like Bath and Yeovil in the South West and seats like Twickenham to fall our way in London, for example) and we’d be able to pull the brakes on Brexit. But there’s another more worrying possibility that I’d like to let you into.

So, it’s Friday 3rd of March and we’re all still up, having sat there throughout the night as results have poured in. Things aren’t quite as we’d hoped, and we have that nagging feeling that we had in June, and that many of us had in November when Hillary Clinton was beaten by the blonde-haired Wotsit – the feeling of the ground slipping away from underneath you, and the feeling that you don’t really know your own neighbours any more. Yes, the Liberal Democrats have gained a lot of seats, maybe fifty or sixty, and that’s a good showing. But that isn’t the concern, because this is no victory for Liberalism. In former Labour heartland seats, where industry left thirty years ago to be replaced by absolutely nothing, an angry electorate, which flexed its muscles in the European referendum has elected a rash of UKIP MPs. There aren’t hundreds, but there might be fifty or more. The seeds of their victories have been sewn over generations – not because Labour isn’t tough enough on immigration, but because Labour said that it stood for the working man but now they’re seen to stand for nobody. When voters have looked to the Parliamentary Labour Party for cues that they can be trusted, that they have even basic competence when it comes to Government, they’ve seen Shadow Ministers resigning, pitiful performances at PMQs and Jeremy Corbyn pretending not to be able to find a seat on a train when plenty of seats were available, and then squirming for what felt like days when he got found out.

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Stephen Lloyd

Southern Rail Debacle. Time for the Tory MPs in the South East to step up!

By Stephen Lloyd | Thu 22nd December 2016 - 12:25 pm

Rail users have had to put up with an appalling service from Southern Rail over the last few months. Even before the strikes the company’s service was one of the worse amongst all the train companies across the UK but now the situation has become totally unacceptable.

Businesses in the South and South East of England are being adversely affected, important hospital appointments missed, everyday family routines of commuters are being wrecked, people are losing their jobs because they cannot guarantee their employer what time they will get into work or, on strike days, even that they will get into work.

All this because of the deplorable non-service provided by Southern Rail. This cannot go any longer.

It is time for the Secretary of State at the Department of Transport (Dft), Chris Grayling MP, to act now before it is too late and serious long term damage is done to tens of thousands of lives and businesses as a result of the shocking rail service southern commuters have had to endure for far too long.

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Nick T

The triumph of mendacity, and what we can do about it

By Nick T | Thu 22nd December 2016 - 11:58 am

Brexit. Syria. Trump. 2016 in three words. It is human nature to see commonalities where there are none, but there are surely some here.

First, of course, there is the not-so-invisible hand of a resurgent Russia to be seen in each. Time magazine’s choice of Donald Trump as its Person of the Year was a mistake: it is not Trump but the subject of his admiration, Vladimir Putin, who has shaped world events this year more than any other individual.

Second (and not entirely unrelated to the first) is the triumph of mendacity. Key to each of the year’s key events was dishonesty. The referendum campaign felt at points like a contest to see which side could bend the truth furthest but it will, in the final analysis, be the Leave campaign that will be viewed as one of the most dishonest political campaigns in this country’s democratic history. Its mendacity was of course easily surpassed by Donald Trump, a man who in the face of inconvenient facts doesn’t just deny their existence but creates his own new reality. It didn’t help that the Democrats nominated a candidate much of whose political career has been defined by sleights of hand and questionable dealings: lying simply became relative.

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Caron Lindsay

Paddick: EU court ruling on surveillance shows that Government overstepped the mark

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 21st December 2016 - 9:45 pm

When the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act was just a Bill being rushed through Parliament with indecent haste, the pros and cons were hotly debated on this site.Today, the European Court of Justice ruled that the general and indiscriminate collection of data was illegal.

Now, this was a Bill passed by the Coalition Government with Liberal Democrat consent So shouldn’t we be feeling a bit embarrassed by this ruling? I guess we need to look at the position we were in at the time. Even if we’d told the Tories that we wouldn’t support the legislation, there would have been a majority in the House of Commons for it. In fact, Labour would have been falling over itself to make it even more authoritarian.

We also know what the Tories wanted to do with communications data – because they did it with the much more pervasive and illiberal Investigatory Powers Act passed, again with Labour support, as soon as they had a majority.

Back in 2014, we secured some important concessions from the Tories in return for our support on the DRIP Act.  Julian Huppert wrote at the time that it was what we already had but with additional safeguards as he set out the context to it all:

There is an issue we have to deal with now. The European Court of Justice threw out the European Data Retention Directive, which underpins all collection of communications data in this country. I sympathise with the reasons, but we must acknowledge that it causes real problems – we do need to have some way to keep some communications data, but under very careful control.

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Caron Lindsay

Copeland – a chance to reach out to both sides of the Remain/Leave divide

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 21st December 2016 - 8:37 pm

They’re calling Copeland, soon to have a by-election after its MP decided to go work at Sellafield, a three way marginal between the Tories, Labour and UKIP. Maybe in old money it would have been, but that was before Brexit. Now those three can fight over whose Brexit is bigger and harder, giving us a unique position. The 38% who voted to Remain, and a good chunk of the 62% who voted to leave in June may well be attracted by the thought of a vote on the final deal, a chance to legitimise what is being done in their name by the Government.

I tend to view the 2015 election results as a bit of an aberration. In Copeland we got 3.5%, but for the previous three decades, we’d been trundling along at around the 10% mark. We should certainly aim to improve on that as we did in Sleaford.

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James Vincent

If – that awkward little notion

By James Vincent | Wed 21st December 2016 - 2:41 pm

If Britain does undergo ‘hard Brexit’, what do we do next? If said ‘hard Brexit’ results in a consistent and high-reaching economic growth, what do we say? “Unlikely”, “highly implausible”, “outright impossible” might be the instinctive or well-thought through response of an expert (of the armchair or academic variety). But humour me. If something happens contrary to our expectations, how do we respond?

It’s a relevant topic, given the year we’ve had. The idea that the referendum would result in Brexit was surprising (though, for me personally, not shocking). The idea that Donald Trump would be elected President of the US really was shocking. In both cases, the presumption of many was that they could not lose; that a variety of factors and self-evident prepositions resulted in an inevitable conclusion. I do not want to raise here why your or my presumptions were right or wrong, but how we should respond when we are mistaken.

It seems to me that the underlying condition that arose in 2016 was how headstrong everyone became. Every political hue became convinced that everything they asserted was undeniable, unless you were a blithering idiot (or deplorable). Facts became relative, and forecasts became cast-iron; unless of course, I disagreed with them. When did we lose the respect for our rivals, saying “this is what I propose, but I accept you have an alternative”?

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Mark Argent

Lessons (and warning) from Trump

By Mark Argent | Wed 21st December 2016 - 11:55 am

The day after the US electoral college chose Donald Trump to be their new president, Huffington Post ran an article on his use of digital campaigning, where Brad Parscale, the digital director of the campaign explains:

We never fought for the popular vote. There was no economic reason, and there was no reason based off the system of our constitution to do so. We needed to win 270 , and to do so we needed to win in certain states, and we needed to target registered voters that had a low propensity to vote and a propensity to vote for Donald Trump if they come.

This was done by highly-targeted and personalised messages to key voters in key states.

Questionable behaviour by the FBI over Hilary Clinton’s emails, and whatever it is the Russians actually did may have contributed, but Parscale’s point is that very effective targeting gets results.

Part of me is wincing. The targeting is entirely legal, but also strains the definition of democracy — not least because Hilary Clinton had 2.8 million more votes than Trump (and roughly the same number of votes as Barack Obama had in 2012): the problem is that she had the votes in the wrong places. Most worryingly, this means that the voters-who-matter end up being a small number in a few places: marginalising the vast majority.

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Richard Warren

Taxing multinationals

By Richard Warren | Tue 20th December 2016 - 3:32 pm

It’s time multinationals paid more tax. And the way to do that is with a point of sales tax.

Tax avoidance is huge. Take Google: The company generated more than GBP17billion in UK sales between 2005 and 2013, but paid only GBP52 million in Corporation Tax on UK profits for that period. Even George Osborne’s subsequent back taxes deal with Google, announced earlier in 2016, netted only an additional GBP130million, including interest.

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Joe Otten

Aleppo must be a wake up call

By Joe Otten | Tue 20th December 2016 - 12:17 pm

Amid the humanitarian catastrophe that has been the siege and fall of Aleppo, both supporters and opponents of earlier calls for military action by the West against Assad have been claiming vindication by events. Perhaps some are relieved that the TV pictures of bloodied children in rubble can be attributed to Russian bombs rather than Western ones.

And perhaps we are guilty – as the EU is supposedly guilty of welcoming closer ties with Ukraine – of seeing a potential for good in the Arab Spring. Torment nobody with the promise of freedom and democracy unless you can deliver it, at gunpoint if necessary? Don’t start a civil war you can’t win, however bad your government?

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Joe Otten

Jedi is not a religion: official

By Joe Otten | Tue 20th December 2016 - 8:07 am

A ruling from the Charity Commission yesterday, has determined that Jediism, the worship of the mythology of Star Wars, is not a religion. This marks the release of the latest Star Wars film, episode 3.5, Rogue One, which in deference to the Charity Commission’s ruling does not feature (spoilers?) a single proper Jedi Knight, though there is a blind kind-of-Jedi monk, with whom is the force, and who seems to do as much damage with a stick as a proper Jedi does with a light sabre.

I’ll confess I was ignorant that the Charities Commission’s powers and competence extended to determining the validity or frivolity of theological doctrines, and I now look forward to many more theological disputes being settled by the same good people.

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Brian Paddick

Brian Paddick writes: Swearing an oath to British values would be superficial and divisive

By Brian Paddick | Mon 19th December 2016 - 4:44 pm

At the weekend the Conservative Government proposed that civil servants and other holders of public office should be required to swear an oath to “British values”.  I suggested that such a move would be superficial and divisive and here’s why.

This is a reaction to ‘The Casey Review: a review into opportunity and integration’ where she found small pockets of minority communities who were not integrating with the rest of society.  These people represent a tiny proportion of the UK population but the report had the effect of further demonising minority communities generally and the Muslim community in particular.  Of course, we should do everything we can to encourage people to integrate.  We need to provide English language courses for those who find it difficult to communicate and we need to tackle the racism and xenophobia that makes some people feel unsafe in their own communities.  Promoting “British values” is not the way forward.

For a start we are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  Apart from the far more encouraging tone of a being a United Kingdom, and not excluding Northern Ireland, I personally find Great Britain has echoes of the inglorious past of the British Empire. While this may  not be relevant to many young people today, it may be significant for older generations whose origins are in the Indian sub-continent.  Some “British values” from colonial times are ones we have thankfully left behind.

The Government has not yet defined “British Values” but they say they include democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.  These are not uniquely British and you do not have to delve too far back in our history to discover that some of them were not very British at all.

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Richard Robinson

Another Article 50 court case (and Article 127): why we should take notice

By Richard Robinson | Mon 19th December 2016 - 11:10 am

Just as the Supreme Court Article 50 hearings finished, another two potential cases appeared which could affect the government’s Brexit negotiating strategy, both of which address significant legal uncertainties remaining.

The first is a case developed by Jolyon Maugham QC that was crowdfunded in 48 hours last weekend. It seeks to resolve two legal uncertainties, i) whether Article 50 is indeed irrevocable (something that was not an issue in the recent Supreme Court case), and ii) whether the UK would automatically withdraw from the single market or European Economic Area (EEA) when Article 50 is triggered. The separate EEA Agreement was ratified by the UK in the EEA Act 1993. The case is being filed in the Irish courts, asking them to refer it directly to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), a process of at least 9 months.

Article 50 does not indicate whether or not its application is irrevocable, so it may be revocable following customary international law. Not surprisingly, David Davis sounded unsure when asked by the Brexit Select Committee! Only the ECJ can decide as the final arbiter of the EU treaties. If Article 50 is found to be revocable then we have a unilateral legal basis for implementing any second referendum decision to remain in the EU after the deal is agreed.

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Scott Craig

Thirty-seven Americans have the power to change the course of history

By Scott Craig | Mon 19th December 2016 - 9:11 am

 

Today, the US Electoral College will meet in 51 separate locations to decide who will become the next President of the United States. The decision these individual men and women make will determine the outcome of every significant global event for the next decade, if not the next century.

Earlier this year, on 4th August, the Harvard Republican Club issued a press release stating that, for the first time in their one hundred and twenty-eight year history, they would not be endorsing the Republican nominee for president.  The presumptive nominee, they said, was not just unfit to be president but represented, “a threat to the survival of the republic”.

They went on to say that, “His authoritarian tendencies and flirtations with fascism are unparalleled in the history of our democracy.” and that, “He hopes to divide us by race, by class, and by religion, instilling enough fear and anxiety to propel himself to the White House”. This approach, with a little assistance from foreign hackers, has brought him within touching distance of the White House.

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Caron Lindsay

Javid’s oath is nothing but dog whistle displacement activity

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 18th December 2016 - 8:54 pm

With barely a trace of irony, a minister in the Government which has just passed the most illiberal snooping legislation talked about defending freedom in an article in the Sunday Times (£) today. Not only that, but he seems to think that the answer to  any problems harming community cohesion could be resolved by holders of public office swearing an oath committing them to so-called British values of “equality, democracy and the democratic process.”

He spends the first 8 paragraphs of his article having a real go at Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities, setting up the scapegoats while using the language of tolerance as a fig leaf in which to wrap the dog whistle.

This is a government, struggling to get a grip on Brexit – trying to distract us by scapegoating an entire community of people, reinforcing the horribly divisive rhetoric of the referendum. Does that sound tolerant to you?

As an aside, the phrase “British values” makes me wince – as if respect for the democratic process or support for freedom of speech was a uniquely British thing that stopped at our borders. You can’t confine a basic human instinct to a tiny little blob on the map. These universal values are exercised every day in every part of the world – and often with great courage and bravery. The women in Saudi who defy the law and drive. The people who marched in places like Myanmar and Teheran for democracy. The people who attend gay pride rallies in places where being gay is punishable by imprisonment or even death. 

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