Category Archives: Op-eds

Geoff Crocker

Disabled people claiming vital benefits are being treated disgracefully

By Geoff Crocker | Fri 13th January 2017 - 2:28 pm

We hear regular assurances from our political leaders, that priority will be given to meet people’s mental health needs. The opposite is currently the case. Many people with mental health needs receive Disability Living Allowance. DLA is ending and being replaced by Personal Independence Payment (PIP). DLA recipients, and/or their carers, were sent a letter from the Department for Work & Pensions dated 11 December 2016, informing them that DLA is ending, that they will not automatically be transferred to PIP, but must submit a claim by telephone by 8 January 2017. If the DLA recipient makes no contact, then DLA payments will simply end. The letter ends by suggesting that help can be obtained from unnamed organisations whose details can be found ‘online, at your local library, or in the telephone directory’! The letter was repeated in a follow up dated 25 December 2016! Some Christmas present from our renowned DWP.

I have care responsibility for my adult son, Paul, who has support needs resulting from a condition known as Williams Syndrome. Paul receives DLA, and care support from an organisation called ‘Options’ which I fund. I was away from home over Christmas until 30 December and so had to move quickly to telephone the call number to apply for PIP for him by the 8 January deadline. I called on 3 January, waited for 17 minutes, was then told that the system was down and I would receive a call back the next day. No call back came on 4 January, so I called again myself on 5 January. This time I had to wait 30 minutes to be answered. A DWP (although probably contracted out) officer then took me through an application process which required extensive data of Paul’s NI number, GP address and telephone, social worker and care organisation addresses and telephone numbers, nationality or immigration status, details of time spent abroad, and bank account details. There were bizarre questions about EU and Swiss connections which I didn’t even understand. During the process the officer frequently read out to me various warnings and threats of action which DWP would take in the event of false information being submitted, ranging from benefit withdrawal to prosecution.

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William Dyer

Six questions for London Region candidates

By William Dyer | Fri 13th January 2017 - 11:28 am

 

As voting quickly approaches for the London regional executive, I fell that there has been very little time to scrutinise the candidates and quiz them on key issues that affect London Liberal Democrats. So, I have complied a short list of questions for candidates to answer (preferably in the comments).

  1. Which seats to target?

What criteria should a seat or council have to pass in order to make them a target seat? Should this just be restricted to the seats we have held previously? Should seats have to meet certain targets to remain on the target list?

  1. Diversity?

Diversity within the London Lib Dems has improved, but it is nowhere near as extensive as it needs to be. What would your plans be to improve diversity across the capital?

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: And so it begins…

By Tom Arms | Fri 13th January 2017 - 8:51 am

And so it begins. Or at least it will on Friday January 20th when Donald Trump stands, on the steps of the US Capitol building, places his hand on The Bible and swears to protect and uphold the constitution of the United States.

The US presidential inauguration is a celebration of American democracy and the peaceful transition from one administration to the next. There are parades, marching bands, waving flags, an inaugural ball and a bevvy of Hollywood stars.

Not this time. Oh yes, all the above will occur as usual. But in addition a million-plus protesters are expected to descend on Washington DC to political disown the elected President of the United States. “Not our President” they will shout.

And all the indications are that the forthcoming inaugural weekend  is a mere curtain raiser for the global thrills and spills to come. If you enjoy life on the edge, than you are living on the right planet at the right time. 

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Chris Bowers

A slogan you might not expect from the Lib Dems

By Chris Bowers | Thu 12th January 2017 - 12:30 pm

 

When a political party is struggling for attention, or even to establish in the public’s mind what it’s actually for, it needs to do something that catches the imagination. Something that fits with the party’s ethos but still manages to take the country by surprise. I may have just the thing for us Liberal Democrats.

When I look at the reasons for the Leave vote in last summer’s referendum, I see a lack of identity as a central factor, certainly in England. However irrational it may seem (on a pragmatic level the whole vote was irrational), people feel the EU has eroded their sense of who they are. Globalisation has robbed them of a sense of national belonging, so slogans such as ‘Take back control’ and ‘I want my country back’ appeal to a sense of who we once were, regardless whether the golden olden days really existed.

That analysis goes for England, but less for Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Scots seem very happy to know that they’re Scottish, and as the likes of Andy Murray and Chris Hoy have shown, they’re sufficiently proud of their Scottishness that they’re happy to be British as well. Even the Welsh seem happy with their Welsh identity, despite voting a different way to the Scots and Northern Irish in the referendum.

But as by far the biggest nation in the UK, many English people have the sense that they’ve lost their sense of being English.

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Bernard Aris

Trying (too hard) to curb EU free movement: A symptom of the EU-wide social democracy meltdown

By Bernard Aris | Wed 11th January 2017 - 1:55 pm

Just as I was reading Nick Tyrone’s blog about Corbyn betraying the EU freedom of movement but wanting to have the EU cake nonetheless, another recently-elected Labour leader came on Dutch public radio. Note the date: Tuesday, January 10th, 2017.

I’m talking about former Amsterdam alderman and present Dutch minister of Social Affairs, the ambitious lawyer Lodewijk Asscher of the “Partij van de Arbeid”/PvdA, literally: “Labour Party”.

In the 1980s, when Labour under Michael Foot was going through its “Militant Tendency” phase, the then PvdA leaders, ex-prime minister (1973-’77) Den Uyl and coming prime minister (1994-2002) Wim Kok deplored that leftist populism and leftist political correctness gone wild. So both criticised it: British Labour, come to your senses.

Not today.

In the Dutch campaign that just got started for the General Election on 15th March, Mr. Asscher, who just two weeks ago won a party leadership contest, just said that he counted on “European Leftist support” (PvdA jargon: from fellow Labour and social democratic parties) to pursue his top-profile policy: curbing free movement of labour through the EU. When the radio presenter quoted a phrase Gordon Brown grew to regret: “Jobs for our labourers first”, Mr. Asscher readily agreed. And who does he expect to get support from?

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David Thorpe

Corbyn’s pay cap plan boosts the rich, not the poor

By David Thorpe | Wed 11th January 2017 - 10:55 am

As usually happens when hard line Socialist utopias are created, Jeremy Corbyn’s maximum pay plan would help the rich not the poor.

That is because when employees reach the maximum, other ways would be found to reward them which would increase inequality and reduce the tax take from the rich.

In Soviet Russia access to the splendour of the Bolshoi Ballet was a perk for the wealthy. The poor weren’t helped, and no tax was collected on the perk.

So it would be if Corbyn got his way.  Employers would pay bonuses, perhaps in shares or profit share, when they can’t pay extra cash. The thing is, shares or profit shares, when sold, are liable to Capital Gains Tax, not Income Tax as wages are, and the capital gains tax rate is lower than the income tax rate above £140,000. 

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Andrew Brown

Brexit means…Keeping mum

By Andrew Brown | Wed 11th January 2017 - 9:50 am

Brexit means Brexit… The oft repeated mantra has become as synonymous with Theresa May as Major’s “Back to Basics”, Blair’s “Education, Education, Education” and Cameron’s “Compassionate Conservatism”. Like those, the phrase has become something of a joke – not helped by the assonance of the words “Brexit” and “Breakfast”, and the trap this has provided to ministers and commentators alike. So far, so funny, so harmless. Well, not harmless, but there is a world of difference between soundbites and actual policy. Originally “Brexit means Brexit” seemed designed to simultaneously pander to those who want a hard Brexit, whilst leaving the government leeway to work out what to do.

Of course, the official explanation of a lack of policy is that we cannot “reveal our hand” in advance of negotiations. There can be no escaping the whiff of sophistry about this answer – particularly when you consider the conflicting signals from the various departments charged with coming up with some form of coherent plan for those negotiations, preferably before Article 50 itself is triggered. It is patently obvious that no such plan yet exists, and all the while the clock is ticking towards the government’s self-imposed deadline.

If taken at face value, then May’s approach shows a shocking disregard for parliament, and the people. Her original desire to exercise Royal Prerogative to trigger Article 50 was but a symptom of a wish to retain control over every aspect of Brexit. I doubt those who voted to “Take Back Control” meant “take back control and hand it to the whoever is selected to lead the Tory party to do with as they wish”. Nonetheless in a few short months we have gone from having a government elected on a manifesto in which they said “yes to the Single Market” to a situation where the new Prime Minister will not now categorically repeat that affirmation.

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Jeremy Hazlehurst

The problem with a wage cap

By Jeremy Hazlehurst | Tue 10th January 2017 - 7:30 pm

Jeremy Cobyn’s proposal to bring in a maximum wage (or, if you like, a 100% tax rate) would not work, for two reasons. The first, is that the swing voters he needs to attract would never vote for a party with this potty policy. If you are flirting with voting for the Conservatives, you are not going to like the idea of a wage cap.

If any further discussion is needed, then the second reason is that it would not have the intended effect. Presumably the reason to bring down wages would be to reduce inequality. But most rich people do not get their income from salaries, but from dividends, capital gains, rental income etc.

I don’t know if the Duke of Westminster takes a salary, but capping it would not change one iota the fact that he owns a huge swathe of London’s most valuable real estate. If your only source of income is your salary, then capping it only stops you being able to catch up with the already-rich. Or encourages you to take income in other forms. 

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David Boyle

Why we need a little civil disobedience and please help me provide it!

By David Boyle | Tue 10th January 2017 - 8:39 am

The rail crisis is reaching its reluctant and rather tawdry head. Even passengers campaigners are being singled out for flaming criticism by the government’s supporters in the press, as the leaders of the Association of British Commuters were so unfairly over the weekend.

We are in short being forced to take sides in the traditional management versus labour battle – when people like me believe that the slow collapse of Southern Rail is mainly to do with incompetent franchising from the Department of Transport and absentee landlord behaviour from the Treasury and owners Go Ahead (as well, of course, on the usual useless industrial relations).

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Jamie Dalzell

A fairer formula for schools: it’s not just about funding

By Jamie Dalzell | Mon 9th January 2017 - 12:24 pm

In the face of Brexit and a Trump Presidency, our communities face a period of crisis and uncertainty. We therefore must continue to focus attention on supporting and improving school’s here in the UK so that our young people are as well-equipped as possible to adapt to this rapidly changing world.

Aside from the distracting nonsense of Grammar Schools, the Government is pursuing ambitious reforms to the national schools’ funding formula. The second stage of their consultation was published on 14th December and, having campaigned for such reforms for several years, there are many aspects that I welcome. However there are also concerns surrounding the potential 8% real-term cuts that are being imposed nationally by 2019-20.

With all this in mind, school funding is likely to become the focus of debate in education, but, I believe, that we may end up further overlooking a far more important issue that is currently driving our education system into crisis: the understaffing of UK schools.

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Paul Walter

The physical network behind surveillance – an extraordinary video about Cornish internet apparatus

By Paul Walter | Mon 9th January 2017 - 9:53 am


The path to the beach at Porthcurno - geograph.org.uk - 1298346
The path to the beach at Porthcurno, Cornwall. The diamond-shaped sign indicates the presence of underground cables, of which there are many buried under the beach, this place being the landfall of many cables under the Atlantic Ocean. The small building houses the terminals of these cables.

Here on Liberal Democrat Voice, we often debate the subject of government surveillance. But do we ever consider the actual physical network of cables and buildings which underpin that surveillance?

Videographer Mark Thomas has published an extraordinary video on You Tube which shows cables, manhole covers, buildings and the like, to give a detailed picture of how the network, which presumably facilitates surveillance of data, works on the ground.

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Caron Lindsay

Now, Theresa, you weren’t really the driving force behind mental health crisis care improvements, now, were you?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 8th January 2017 - 8:28 pm

So, Theresa May gave an interview to Sky’s Sophy Ridge today in which she gave the biggest signal yet that leaving the single market is very much on the agenda.

In time honoured tradition, there’s a nice petition you can sign if you agree with Tim Farron that “reckless plans to leave the Single Market would make us all poorer.”

But it’s something else she said in her interview that grabbed my attention. She had moved from saying not much actually on Brexit to a very small amount on the NHS to talking about her speech tomorrow. Apparently mental health is a priority of hers. Who knew? The Prime Minister said:

If I can give you an example of something I have already done, when I was in the Home Office one of the issues that concerned me was people in mental health crisis being taken to a police cell as a place of last resort.  It wasn’t good for them, it wasn’t good for the police.  Actually we’ve changed that and we’ve seen the number for whom that happens coming down by 80% and that was a small sum of money that the NHS has been able to put in in order to ensure that there are more, for example more and different places of safety for people …

“I have already done.” Really?

Well, let’s look at an unbiased source, shall we? The Government website which announced this initiative back in 2014 didn’t mention Theresa May anywhere. The main names were Liberal Democrat ministers Nick Clegg and Norman Lamb. Yes, there was Home Office involvement, but it was Lamb who had done all the work bringing it together across government. He was the driving force behind all the mental health measures introduced by the Coalition Government.

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Caron Lindsay

Caron’s Sunday Selection: My favourite videos and articles from this week’s news

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 8th January 2017 - 11:16 am

It’s been ages since I’ve done one of these and I’ve decided to change it slightly so that I put in some of my favourite articles, videos and interviews from various media outlets, not just the Sunday papers.

First up this week exactly the sort of confident, bold setting out of the liberal values our society so desperately needs. Dutch liberal Marietje Schaake talks to CNN’s Christine Amanpour about the benefits of liberalism:

Dutch liberals face a challenging election later this year with right wing populists headed by Geert Wilders in a strong position.

In the pages of the Express, you tend to find Liberal Democrats being lampooned. However, this is a quite charming article where Paddy Ashdown describes his favourite photograph – his wedding photograph from 54 years ago. He talks about their first meeting at a Christmas ball:

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Bradley Hillier-Smith

Why Vince Cable is wrong to call for an end to free movement

By Bradley Hillier-Smith | Sun 8th January 2017 - 8:55 am

Vince Cable is fundamentally wrong to suggest that there is no great argument of liberal principle for free movement and his case for ending free movement is weak. He ought to revise his views to be in more in keeping with liberal values which, in the face of rising and fierce anti-migrant rhetoric, are sorely needed.

His assertion that ‘British opposition to immigration is mainly colour-blind’ is simply not true.

Fears and prejudices were purposefully stoked during the referendum with explicit scapegoating, disingenuous scaremongering about Turkish migrants and in particular Farage’s appalling blatantly non-colour-blind Breaking Point’ poster campaign.

Hate crime has soared since the referendum.  The vast majority of the targets of xenophobic incidents and abuse have been EU migrants in particular citizens from Eastern European countries.

Islamophobia and associated crimes have also risen exponentially. Note the 25 serious incidents of anti-muslim hate crimes recorded in the three days after the Brexit vote. People are explicitly abusing muslims in the streets ‘because we voted out’, shouting ‘shouldn’t you be on a plane back to Pakistan? We voted you out!’

The EU referendum vote has unleashed an ugly force of racism where those who hold prejudiced views feel emboldened to shout, abuse and attack people in the street, post excrement through people’s letter boxes and rip off people’s hijabs in public. 

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Caron Lindsay

And your problem with an innovative way to tell girls they don’t have to put up with violence is…..?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 7th January 2017 - 2:25 pm

There are few things in life more irritating than the Daily Fail crowing. It is doing just that this morning after International Development Minister Priti Patel announced that funding for what the Fail called the “Ethiopian equivalent of the Spice Girls” was being cut from our international aid budget. In the same way as they pepper words like “bogus” around when talking about asylum seekers, or make it sound like every second person claiming benefits is doing so fraudulently (when the figure is less than 1%), they are trying to make it sound like all the money that we send overseas is being frittered away on frivolity.

What they don’t tell you is that the group Yegna is a brilliant, innovative and creative way of getting an important message about women’s and girls’ rights through to both men and women. It tells girls that they don’t have to put up with being beaten by their parents. It changes minds. Just look at this poster from the Girl Effect, who manage this project.

 

I’d particularly want to draw your attention to the changes in knowledge, attitudes and behaviours section. Almost all boys who were exposed to Yegna’s work would be moved to report it if they were aware of a girl being forced into marriage compared with just over half who were not. 59% of girls beaten by their parents who had listened to Yegna would agree that it should be reported to the authorities compared with less than a third who had not. 25% more girls who had listened to Yegna realised that it was wrong for men to hit their wives.

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Rob Parsons

This is how to respect the referendum result

By Rob Parsons | Sat 7th January 2017 - 11:15 am

I am frequently told that, as a “Remoaner” I must “respect” the result of the referendum. It seems to me that I am not being asked to respect it so much as to fetishise it.

Actually, I do respect it. I respect it for what it was – an advisory vote won by a wafer thin majority based on a mountain of lies.

Then, because I say that, I am criticised (virulently quite often) for being undemocratic and for not respecting the will of the people. And many people who did not vote Leave, and do not want to leave, seem to have accepted the line that the vote has happened and they must “respect” it.

But democracy is so much more than a single vote.

Generally speaking electoral votes stand, even if the majority is unsatisfactory. But that is premised on two conditions.  The first is that the voters get a chance regularly to change their minds. The second is that the voters were – at least relatively – well informed about the subject of their vote. All sides make their offers clear, and the media do a proper job of examining their claims.

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Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable calls for end to EU free movement

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 6th January 2017 - 11:15 am

Vince Cable writes for this week’s New Statesman arguing for the end to the EU’s free movement of people.

He builds on the themes he initially set out on an article for this site just after the referendum – which turned out to be our most read article of 2016.

In the New Statesman he writes:

As a liberal economist, I welcome freer trade and globalisation in general; and as a political liberal I oppose attempts to fence people in. I naturally value the freedom to travel around Europe for business or pleasure with minimal restriction.

But I have serious doubts that EU free movement is tenable or even desirable. First, the freedom is not a universal right, but selective. It does not apply to Indians, Jamaicans, Americans or Australians. They face complex and often harsh visa restrictions. One uncomfortable feature of the referendum was the large Brexit vote among British Asians, many of whom resented the contrast between the restrictions they face and the welcome mat laid out for Poles and Romanians.

He goes on to argue that while there are benefits to immigration, they are not as conclusive as we would like to think for the country. He sets out what he thinks is the way forward:

The argument for free movement has become tactical: it is part of a package that also contains the wider economic benefits of the single market. Those benefits are real, which is why the government must prioritise single market access and shared regulation. Yet that may not be possible to reconcile with restrictions on movement. The second-best option is customs union status, essential for supply chain industries.

I do not see much upside in Brexit, but one is the opportunity for a more rational immigration policy. First, it will involve legitimising the position of EU nationals already here. It must involve a more sensible way of dealing with overseas students, who are not immigrants and benefit the UK. The permeability of the Irish border must lead to a united Ireland in Europe. And, not least, there can be a narrative in which control on labour movements is matched by control on capital – halting the takeovers that suffocate the innovative companies on which the country’s future depends.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Tough for Trump

By Tom Arms | Fri 6th January 2017 - 9:45 am

Donald Trump is in a no-win situation as regards  Russian hacking vs. American intelligence agencies vs Donald Trump.

Putin, as we all know by now, has been accused by all the American intelligence agencies (and several foreign ones) of hacking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and leaking the contents to help Trump win the US presidency.

The Russian President has denied this as he has denied many other misdeeds. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, he channel for the leaks, has backed him up. So has Donald Trump.

On the other side of the fence are, not surprisingly, a Democratic Party in search of a scapegoat to explain the inexplicable and America’s spy nerds.

Trump can’t really say that he agrees with the intelligence agencies. To do so would leave him branded as Putin’s poodle and undermine his mandate to govern. 

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Annabel Mullin

What the Lib Dem PPCs got up to in Brussels

By Annabel Mullin | Thu 5th January 2017 - 4:24 pm

Earlier this autumn I was at the London AGM where Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder  gave a rousing speech. I was lucky enough to see her at the Newbie Pint at Conference, so I know how passionate she is. When Catherine mentioned that she was running a training event in Brussels aimed at PPCs, I leapt at the opportunity. And what an experience!

It was my first time to Brussels, the European Parliament was gladiatorial in size and the scope of what it does is extraordinary. Even for someone who is an ardent European (currently Brexit will remove it legally but not in birthright) I hadn’t understood the wealth of research, knowledge and resource that it provides. We were given a tour and a tutorial to have a better understanding of exactly how all the cogs work.  That should be taught in all schools.

Then we had the chance to meet lobbyists, MEPs and the Brussels Lib Dems. They were kind enough to host us for the evening for a wonderful night, doing what we do best, waxing lyrical about liberalism! We took in a light show in the heart of Brussels to celebrate St Nicholas Day, with some amusing videography from the enthusiastic Daisy Benson. 

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ALDC

2017 is ALDC’s 50th anniversary year

By ALDC | Thu 5th January 2017 - 8:40 am

2017 marks Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors’ (ALDC) 50th anniversary and we’ll be celebrating throughout the year by sharing memories and achievements from our illustrious history.

Our history

The Association of Liberal Councillors (ALC) was set up in the late 1960s and the Association of Social Democrat Councillors (ASDC) formed in the early 1980s. In 1988, the ALC and the ASDC merged to form the ALDC. Now in 2017, we mark the significant milestone: 50 years supporting Liberal Democrat councillors and campaigners.

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Caron Lindsay

Rennie calls on SNP to back Lib Dem efforts on Brexit deal referendum

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 4th January 2017 - 1:40 pm

The Scottish Government consults on all sorts of important things. At the moment, it’s consulting on expanding early learning and childcare in Scotland and on the best way to empower teachers. What could possibly be more important than that?

How predictable. I don’t expect the SNP to give up on their quest for independence, but do they really have to give it the top billing? The SNP take comfort from a poll which shows support for independence still pretty much where it was at the referendum – but ignore that more than 50% of those asked really don’t want to do it all over again.

In the aftermath of the EU Referendum, it seemed like Nicola Sturgeon was building a pretty big tent to try to find a way forward for Scotland. Sadly, though, it seems that the SNP are unable to find a road that doesn’t lead to independence whereas the Lib Dems are focused on keeping Scotland in the UK and the UK in the EU. If the SNP were to work with us, then we might well have the parliamentary numbers to ensure a key part of that – a referendum on the Brexit deal.

Willie Rennie called on them to do just that today:

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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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