Category Archives: Op-eds

Paul Walter

Postcard from India – monumental bank note upheaval

By Paul Walter | Wed 23rd November 2016 - 3:00 pm

cow-mini-market in Goa by Paul Walter
Paul Walter is now back at home. As is often the case, this postcard arrived after the sender returned to Blighty!

We’ve had an enrapturing holiday in Goa, India. The welcome from the Goan people was wonderful. The beauty of the place was breathtaking.

By coincidence, we arrived just a couple days after a major monetary change by the government. To wrong-foot terrorists and criminals, there has been a monumentally huge exercise called “demonetisation”, going on across this, the second most populous nation in the world. All the old 500 and 1000 rupee notes have been withdrawn from circulation at two hours’ notice.

In the Times of India, Santosh Desai wrote: “86% of the currency in circulation becomes illegal virtually overnight”. That relates to an estimated $210 billion worth of money notes. $210 billion! That is a mind-boggling figure.

Continue reading »
Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged | 1 Comment
Arnold Kiel

Opportunities? Brexiteers, please specify

By Arnold Kiel | Wed 23rd November 2016 - 12:39 pm

The motives and backgrounds of leave-voters are by now sufficiently understood to conclude that many of them cannot afford to and would not have voted for becoming substantially and permanently poorer. Some may, but had it been widely understood that Brexit comes at a high economic price for everybody, the result would have been a different one.

Apparently, most leavers dismissed the economic arguments of remain, and instead of asking for better arguments from leave bought the “scaremongering”-claim (admittedly, leave was much better at creating slogans). And this continues: leave already claims victory on the economy after 6 months in which nothing (apart from a 15% devaluation of the country) has happened. Luckily, consumers so far remain complacent and keep spending.

I know the typical response I can expect from Brexiteers: unsubstantiated claims (“see the opportunities”, “champions of free trade”…), denial (“Q3 was good”), fluffy sovereignty-talk (“Brussels”), and pressure (“how dare you not respecting the will of the people?”). Is that all you have got?

May I challenge you to think a little harder? Specify trading opportunities the UK currently misses because of EU membership, which outweigh the losses from leaving the single market. In other words: How and when will you have replaced the benefits of preferential access to 27 EU member states and the EUs’ 53 third-country agreements with higher yielding UK-deals? How and when will you recover the transitional losses? Will the current generation of young people recover from the damage within their professionally active lifetime? No leave-campaigner has ever presented any such case. Can you?

Continue reading »
Tagged , , and | 98 Comments
Scott Craig

Safeguarding democracy in an era of mass surveillance

By Scott Craig | Tue 22nd November 2016 - 4:34 pm

The Investigatory Powers Bill is about to become law. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it represents the most significant transfer of power from people to the state in our lifetime. The bill will allow the surveillance of anyone (and potentially everyone) in the UK, without the need for suspicion of involvement in a crime or evidence of wrongdoing, without the need to target a person or premise and without ever notifying anyone that they have been spied on.

It would be hard to imagine a more terrifying situation for a political party than to know that every communication …

Continue reading »
10 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Brexit: You broke it, you fix it.

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 22nd November 2016 - 8:28 am

It’s now five months since the EU referendum on June 23rd: plenty of time, you might have thought, for a government which appointed ministers committed to Brexit to key posts to have developed a strategy. Yet confusion reigns in Whitehall and Westminster. The clock is ticking towards Theresa’s pledged date of invoking Article 50 by the end of March. Yet the government seems more focused on fighting a court case to limit the involvement of Parliament than in setting out its preferred future relationship with our neighbours on the European continent.

This is a degree of incompetence about …

Continue reading »
44 Comments
Mohsin Khan

We need to reform prescription charges

By Mohsin Khan | Mon 21st November 2016 - 6:00 pm

 

Over the last few years, we’ve seen rise after rise in English prescription charges.

Yet the list of illnesses giving you free prescriptions was set in the 1960s, with cancer being the only recent addition.  Shockingly, it excludes mental health outright.

At this autumn’s South Central Regional Conference, a motion by the author was passed calling for reforms to remove the inequities of the current charging regime.

Take two hypothetical examples.

Jon is 40 and has a weak thyroid. Although he has a well paid job, Jon does not have to pay for his thyroid medication, or for any other medication, no matter what it’s for.

25-year-old Samantha works part time, with an income of £17,000. This takes her over the financial thresholds for free prescriptions. She has asthma, but often cannot afford to fill her prescriptions. Samantha ends up in hospital with asthma several times a year, with frequent GP visits too.

As a doctor, I know that there are many real patients like this.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 17 Comments
Keith Aspden

York responds on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children

By Keith Aspden | Mon 21st November 2016 - 3:06 pm

 

Around this time last year, I posted on Lib Dem Voice about York’s role in responding to the refugee crisis. I am very pleased that over the last year, York has been active in the Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme and in welcoming refugees to the city. We have a proud history of offering a home to those fleeing persecution and will continue our work to meet our humanitarian commitments.

A closely associated issue, increasingly prominent over the last few months, has been that of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Tim Farron and Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords have campaigned strongly for the government to do a huge amount more on this front. Early this year, Tim slammed the government’s response as ‘cold-hearted’ and ‘callous’. He was absolutely right – we were failing people who are the least able to help themselves. After months of pressure, the government accepted a commitment to resettle ‘up to 3,000’ children from within Europe.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 13 Comments
Paul Carroll

The heart weighs far more than the head

By Paul Carroll | Mon 21st November 2016 - 12:30 pm

please-dont-goIn David Thorpe’s recent post his opening sentence asked: “Ever lost a lover and then spent hours replaying the whole of the time you had together back in your mind?”

This sentence resonated with me and little did I think on the announcement of the referendum result that I would end up doing exactly this.  Being a bit of a news addict I think my initial reaction to the referendum was to find the whole thing quite exciting.  During the campaign it was a standard joke in our house to come home and say ‘I’m an inner today’, followed by the next day of ‘I’m an outer today’.  I researched and thought about the likely economic impact of Brexit.  Researched and tried to distil fact from fiction on immigration and budget contributions.  Still I was undecided. Why, when all the hard evidence pointed to remain?

Then one day I caught a glimpse of the cover article of Der Spiegel with ‘Please Don’t Go’ blazoned across a Union Jack.  Bang! My mind was made up and fixed. The EU is really made of people who wanted us to stay, our neighbours, friends and colleagues.  Europe is in our DNA, literally, even Boris Johnson’s family tree is testament to that.  Yes, we have arguments and sometimes we don’t treat each other particularly well but we are still a family. What were we thinking about? It took that headline to give me that emotional connection to the remain side of the EU debate.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 15 Comments
Ben Andrew

Labour did not crash the economy

By Ben Andrew | Mon 21st November 2016 - 10:07 am

 

After the financial crash, the Tories persuaded the public that they were the only party who could be trusted with the economy. Osborne’s message went something like this:

“Labour crashed the economy. They did this by spending too much, borrowing too much, and letting the budget deficit get too large. In order to create a strong economy, we need to get the deficit down. And the only way to do this is to implement spending cuts until our deficit reaches zero again.”

This narrative was a huge political success. Even now that we have a new Chancellor, and a supposedly new approach, the Conservatives still hold onto the reputation of being the only economically sensible party, built on the foundations laid by so-called Osbornomics. The problem is that it is absolute nonsense.

Their economic narrative is flawed in three ways.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 125 Comments

Dublin versus Dubs

By Office of Lord Roberts | Sun 20th November 2016 - 3:12 pm

 

Whilst the Home Secretary hails the arrival of 312 unaccompanied asylum seeking children as “a really good result”, the fact remains that domestic legislation allows for the UK to positively impact the lives of hundreds – even thousands – more children.

To explain, unaccompanied asylum seeking children can be brought to the UK under one of two systems. Firstly, the Family Reunification provisions of the Dublin III Regulations allow for asylum seekers who have family members who have already received international protection in another state to be transferred to join those family members and have their asylum claim determined by that country. This is rooted in EU asylum policy – meaning the Government has no choice but to comply with the legislation, and there is no limit to the number of children who can be brought to the UK.

On the other hand, the Dubs system of transfer allows for an unspecified number of unaccompanied children with or without family in the UK to be transferred into British care, providing that they arrived in Europe before 20th March 2016 and that it is deemed to be in the child’s “best interests” to be relocated. Thus, many children who may have been excluded from coming to the UK under the Dublin Regulations because they do not have family members in the UK, may now fall under the criteria of the Dubs amendment.

Continue reading »
Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Martin Roche

It’s time for LibDems to use the most potent word in the political lexicon

By Martin Roche | Sun 20th November 2016 - 12:30 pm

 

I’m a new Liberal Democrat, though I’ve called myself a social democrat for more than forty years now. In my youth I was an activist tribal Tory, but cast them forever from me before I was 25. Since then have been a fellow traveler of the soft Left, but now, as of three weeks ago, I am one of you.

I realised after 23rd June that it was time to properly join in the fightback for the sort of political values I’ve long held and that are at the heart of the LibDems.

Given 5 minutes I could give you an erudite and historically pretty accurate explanation of what the LibDems stand for.  That’s roughly four minutes thirty seconds too long. Like or not, brevity, clarity, simplicity and ruthless consistency are the vital elements of winning in today’s febrile communications world.

I know a bit about the art of communications, having worked in newspapers and spent 35 years in advertising and PR. Indeed, I spent ten of those years with “Mrs Thatcher’s favourite ad man,” Tim Bell. My value was probably that, not only could I make money, but that I saw the world through different eyes from the great majority of my personally delightful but unforgivingly Thatcherite colleagues. I was never, thankfully, invited to be part of anything with a Tory party label on it, but did relish helping the Yes to Europe campaigns in Malta and Sweden win their respective accession referendums.

Continue reading »
73 Comments
Ciaran McGonagle

John Bolton as Trump’s Secretary of State?

By Ciaran McGonagle | Sat 19th November 2016 - 1:27 pm

john-bolton

News that John Bolton is being considered for the role of Secretary of State in President-elect Trump’s administration should give liberals, multi-lateralists, indeed anyone who values human rights and the rule of law, much cause for much concern.

As you may recall, John Bolton served as both Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and, temporarily, as Permanent Representative to the United Nations under the Bush administration. His brief tenure at the United Nations was cut short as the 2006 Democratic mid-term sweep removed any realistic prospect that Bolton’s nomination would be confirmed.

With Republican majorities now in place for at least the next 2 years, it seems unlikely that Trump’s will encounter similar problems with his own appointments.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 10 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Solid gains in vote share for Liberal Democrats in Council by-elections

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 18th November 2016 - 10:09 am

Last night’s by-elections saw solid gains in the Liberal Democrat vote share in 3 seats across England.

The Lib Dem vote went up a whopping 17.8% in Welwyn Hatfield:

In Bath and North East Somerset, where the Conservatives took a seat off the Greens, we were up almost 5%:

And in Misterton, Harborough, the benefits of actually standing a candidate turned out to be a very respectable 15% of the vote.

Continue reading »
Also posted in News | Tagged | 20 Comments
Bernard Aris

Dutch D66 starts fightback against Trumpish Populism

By Bernard Aris | Thu 17th November 2016 - 10:43 am

In the aftermath of the Trump victory in the American elections, D66, the direct Dutch equivalent of the Lib Dems, has started a fightback both against the rising, fact-free and people-insulting populism personified by Trump, and against the appeasement-like reaction of the Dutch government on Trumps election.

It started not only with the usual statement on the party website by party leader Alexander Pechtold MP, but with D66 publishing small advertisements (with a large party logo) in national Dutch newspapers, in which we stated that the age of staying passive in the face of rising populism had passed, it was time to join a party willing to fight back like D66.

Continue reading »
14 Comments
David Thorpe

Responding to the anti-globalisation backlash

By David Thorpe | Thu 17th November 2016 - 9:23 am

Ever lost a lover and then spent hours replaying the whole of the time you had together back in your mind?

If you engage in such reflection it’s often possible to see with hindsight where the cracks started to appear, and the happiness shunted to a road leading to subsequent despair.

Liberals have been shell shocked by a 2016 that has produced a slew of political upsets, and created a stew of uncertainties about the prospects for a progressive future.

The elevation of Donald Trump to the White House is merely the latest in a long line of upsets that have confounded the pundits.

Continue reading »
60 Comments
Scott Craig

Can Parliament vote against Brexit?

By Scott Craig | Wed 16th November 2016 - 5:05 pm

Regardless of the cries of the Brexiteers, the answer is simple. It can, if it wants to. Here’s why;

First and foremost Members of Parliament are representatives, they are not delegates. As representatives, they are free to, and it is their duty to, exercise their own judgement. Members cannot be and should never be prevented from exercising their conscience in casting their votes.

This duty applies in even greater measure to Peers. As (self-proclaimed) trustees of the nation, they must be willing to take decisions counter to the public mood when they consider it to be in the national interest. I cannot …

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 114 Comments

“Liberal” means “radical” now. Embrace it.

By Doctor North | Wed 16th November 2016 - 10:04 am

I am a Millennial and I am a Liberal. The former just happened to me, like my skin colour, place of birth and shoe size; I take no pride in it, nor do I feel shame. The latter fact is something I chose for myself, and I am immensely proud of it. I reject hatred and violence as political tools. Why, then, am I writing anonymously?

I teach in a university. In the past few years I have seen more and more of my colleagues deliver lectures in which “liberalism” (not neoliberalism) is used as shorthand for exploitation and racism. Fewer …

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 32 Comments
Pete Shallcross

“Don’t forget the congregation…”

By Pete Shallcross | Wed 16th November 2016 - 7:41 am

As a long time supporter of the party, through good times and bad, I was, like thousands of others, finally spurred to join the party on 8 May 2015. My contact with the party had, until this point, been limited to the odd email initiated by donations made during the 2011 and 2014 referenda. The tone of these communications was correctly pitched and gave potential and actual supporters plenty of good reasons to lend the party their vote – I can’t say the same about the (particularly electronic) communication with party members.

Confession time; I haven’t been at all active since …

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 24 Comments
Joe Otten

It’s not about inequality

By Joe Otten | Tue 15th November 2016 - 5:06 pm

I recall after the financial crisis of 2008 everybody with an unconventional opinion on banking and monetary policy felt confirmed that this showed they had been right all along. Whether they believed in more regulation of banks or less, or in the superficially plausible but ultimately wrong-headed notion of banning bank lending altogether and making up the money supply by having the government print a lot extra – they felt proven right by events.

We are in danger of doing the same with Donald Trump’s victory. Last week Helen Flynn argued that it was about inequality. Thus the solution …

Continue reading »
37 Comments
Arnold Kiel

A populist Parliament

By Arnold Kiel | Mon 14th November 2016 - 4:31 pm

 

I am a German citizen and UK resident. I am also a fan, but not a member of the Liberal Democrats.

I appreciate your party’s stance on Brexit, but I urge you to go further:

Stop expressing misguided respect for a misguided referendum result. People want and deserve a better life, and you know Brexit will give them the opposite: Brexit impoverishes, endangers, brutalizes, and kills.

An MP voting with the Government on triggering Article 50 against his or her conscience is worse than Johnson or Farage, because he or she will not only be a populist, but will irreversibly go down in history as a legislating populist. MPs must protect the country and its people from harm, also and especially if self-inflicted.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 62 Comments
Chris Key

Liberal Democrats need to play smart on immigration and border controls

By Chris Key | Mon 14th November 2016 - 2:45 pm

If we are to learn from the lessons of Trump becoming President and the EU referendum, we progressive politicians must play smarter in the area of immigration. This does not mean aping Mr Trump or Nigel Farage but working out where the real blame lies for failures in our border controls and who has accountability for fixing them.

The current government has decided landlords and schools are suddenly  quasi immigration officers. Even the Daily Mail noted that the government pilot project to require landlords to check tenants rights to live in the UK had been an abject failure. Many parents at my own children’s school complained about the need to audit the nationalities of their children and where their parents were from. Parents were not even told this was optional and that they could refuse to complete the census. The head teacher complained of the administrative burden of this new dictat. Quite rightly so, given no extra resources were given to schools to carry out this work.

This brings me back to where I think we as Liberal politicians should be looking to do more around border controls. The introduction of proper exit checks last year was long overdue and the Lib Dems contributed to this in the Coalition. Yet individual landlords and schools are being asked to mop up the mess created by previous governments. Technology initiatives from the Labour government on immigration control during the 2000s cost up to £1 billion and were not fit for purpose.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 35 Comments
Ben Andrew

The Language of the Left – and how it alienates progressives from their own causes

By Ben Andrew | Mon 14th November 2016 - 12:17 pm

 

“Privilege”, “trigger warnings”, “safe spaces”, “mansplaining”, “tone policing” and “cultural appropriation”. These terms are the Language of the Left. Anyone who has talked politics with lefties will be familiar with the way that they are thrown around in discussions willy-nilly. And each of them describes a problem which should be taken seriously.

Take “mansplaining” for example: when men explain things in a patronizing way to women, because of an imagined authority on a certain subject. This happens all the time. It happens in offices; at dinner tables; on television; in politics. If you haven’t seen this in action you’re just not looking hard enough. And “trigger warnings” serve an important purpose as well. People who suffer from PTSD after sexual assault can be severely distressed when reading descriptions of rape, for example. Flagging this up to avoid aggravating their condition is no different from warning epileptics when there will be flashing images on TV. It’s completely sensible.

But once these terms become trump cards which can automatically win arguments and shut down discussions, then mission creep seeps in, as people use them more and more lazily. People don’t just use trigger warnings to flag up distressing content any more. They splash them in front of any Daily Mail article which they disagree with, and claim they are triggered every time they hear an opinion which they don’t like.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 145 Comments
Nigel Lindsay

Joint working with other parties – or leadership by silverbacks?

By Nigel Lindsay | Mon 14th November 2016 - 10:11 am

 

It seems as if the more we talk about gender equality, the less we achieve – at least in Scotland.

The Scottish Spring LibDem conference passed an exhaustive motion on the subject, but just a few weeks later the party saw its female representation in the Scottish Parliament fall from 20% to zero. Those who had proposed and supported the motion offered no visible resistance when the wonderful Alison McInnes MSP (who had been the only MSP to hold Police Scotland effectively to account for its many failings) was replaced as candidate by a male former MSP who has made little or no impact since then.

Yesterday, at the party’s autumn conference, a motion on Scotland in Europe was proposed by former MEP Elspeth Attwooll, and by Christine Jardine who fought Alex Salmond with distinction at the General Election. The motion called for a future for Scotland which retains the advantages of the EU “without the limitations of the unthinking Unionism of the Conservatives or the ideological drive towards independence of the SNP”. Nothing too controversial there, you may think – but you’d be wrong: to attack the Conservatives is to stand on dangerous ground nowadays, it seems.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 37 Comments
The Voice

WATCH: Willie Rennie’s speech to Scottish Liberal Democrat conference “Liberals are not quitters”

By The Voice | Sun 13th November 2016 - 11:55 am

Yesterday, Scottish Liberal Democrats had their Autumn Conference in Dunfermline. Here is Willie Rennie’s leaders’ speech. The text is below.

Continue reading »
Tagged and | 1 Comment
Chris Bowers

Can we build in an extra question, please?

By Chris Bowers | Sun 13th November 2016 - 10:29 am

Maybe it’s just my own predisposition, but I seem to be seeing the phrase ‘more candidates’ all the time in Lib Dem literature. Mark Pack’s excellent pamphlet ‘How to Rebuild the Liberal Democrats’ talks about ‘more candiates’, Tim Farron has used the phrase, and my regional chair has just asked me to contribute to a by-election fund so we can stand ‘more candidates’.

All of which is good stuff, especially if more candidates lead to better quality candidates and increased diversity of candidates because more candidates are applying to fly the Lib Dem flag. But I’d also like to encourage the idea of ‘smarter candidates’, which requires asking the question: is this the right election for the Lib Dems to stand a candidate at all?

Cynics may point out that my current hobby horse is cross-party cooperation, and it is. But I’m still a Liberal Democrat who wants to see liberalism – especially social liberalism – enacted in this country. And for that to happen, we need the cooperation of other like-minded people who aren’t necessarily Lib Dems, people who Caroline Lucas, Lisa Nandy and I called ‘progressives’ in our recent book ‘The Alternative’.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 30 Comments
The Voice

Why we build the wall

By The Voice | Sat 12th November 2016 - 5:00 pm

One of our contributors has drawn our attention to this video, which we happily share with you.

Continue reading »
Leave a comment
Michael Berwick-Gooding

According to Article 50, once it has been triggered there is no way back

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Sat 12th November 2016 - 3:00 pm

treatyIt is Liberal Democrat policy to hold a referendum on the terms of Brexit, but I think it is clear from reading Article 50 and the High Court judgment that once we have notified the European Council that we are leaving there is no method to stop us leaving.

Article 50 of the Treaty reads:

  1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
  2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
  3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
Continue reading »
Tagged and | 42 Comments
Emanuel Andjelic

Why I joined the Lib Dems and stood for election

By Emanuel Andjelic | Fri 11th November 2016 - 10:36 am

 

emanuel-andjelic-family

I’ve supported the Lib Dems for as long as I can remember, but until now, only ever from the comfort of my sofa. I’ve always been interested in politics, I studied the subject at college and university, but never felt compelled to get involved.

So what prompted me aged 36 to join the party? Well, on the face of it, it’s easy: Brexit. The referendum result was my call to arms. Like many others I joined the party a few days after the vote, realising that it was time for apathetic liberals (small l) like myself to stand up and fight back.

Most of my adult life was spent in a political system dominated by the centre ground. As a second generation East European, I was proud to be part of a tolerant and generous society that welcomed everyone. Brexit woke me up to how quickly things can change. It was a stark reminder of how xenophobia and intolerance could become prevalent. All those history lessons about the 1930s suddenly began to make sense.

On reflection, the reason I didn’t didn’t get into politics earlier, was probably because I didn’t think I needed to. My views were mainstream and pretty well represented in politics. I joined the fight when I saw this change. The Liberal Democrats were the only party I could see that would be able to revive a fair and tolerant centre ground.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 9 Comments
Dan Whitehead

What can we learn from the US election?

By Dan Whitehead | Thu 10th November 2016 - 6:51 pm

 

There are few feelings worse than those that follow losing an election. The crippling sense of disappointment; the frustration of finding out that your vision for the future is not shared by the majority of the electorate. As liberals we have had to become accustomed to this over the past two years, but the Trump victory feels of greater significance to the geopolitical order than anything that has come before it – even Brexit.

It is vital that our anger is channelled into learning from the mistakes that become retrospectively apparent in our defeat. So what can we learn from the US election that can be applied to our campaigns? Here are a few of my initial thoughts:

Movements win elections

The strength of the Clinton campaign’s state-by-state ground game was long acknowledged as a major advantage that the Democrats would hold over the Republicans on election day. Whilst Clinton had millions of volunteers, thousands of field offices and huge financial strength, Trump’s campaign was an operation regularly accused of amateurishness.

Yet no party’s get-out-the-vote strategy can compete with the enthusiasm of a cause. Trump’s supporters were inspired by his anti-establishment appeal and promise to “Make America Great Again”. The Clinton camp, by comparison, struggled to find a consistent message that was memorable and of mass-appeal to the electorate. Instead her stump speeches were filled with technocratic policy ideas and often felt unfocused.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 24 Comments
Matthew Campbell

Electoral reform, Donald Trump … and Theresa May

By Matthew Campbell | Thu 10th November 2016 - 5:30 pm

 

For years, it was said that there was a threat to western democracies from far-right parties with extremist or populist opinions. The BNP were, in the 2000s, supposed to be ‘our’ version of this phenomenon, before they collapsed and – arguably – their vote went elsewhere.

But, still, the possibility of a small extremist nationalist party gaining undue influence was held to be a convincing argument against electoral reform. I think it may now be possible to say with great certainty that this was either a fallacy or a lie.

Why? Because there are two countries where, this year, populist/nationalist agendas have upset the existing political order: Firstly, the USA (in the person of Mr Trump); and secondly, this country (in the shape of Brexit). That is to say, two countries with plurality voting, who have historically rejected voting reform and proportionality as alien to their political culture.

And why might this have come to pass?

Continue reading »
Tagged , , and | 10 Comments
Chris Key

An Economics lesson for Trump voters

By Chris Key | Thu 10th November 2016 - 4:19 pm

 

No doubt the millions of Americans who voted for Trump will claim he will be the economic saviour of the United States bringing back millions of jobs from Mexico and Asia. For anyone who has studied even a basic level of Economics knows that this false promise will only bring disappointment to those who voted for him.

Argentina is a classic example of what happens when a country takes a protectionist and nationalistic approach. During the years of its former President Cristina Kirchner, it gorged on a diet of economic populism including ridiculous import restrictions in the vain hope that everything would be suddenly mass produced by “Industria Argentina”. Things got so bad that at one point women could not even by tampons because they could not be imported and prices sky rocketed with inflation hitting 40%.

Americans would do well to realise that slapping a tariff of 45%, as Trump wants to do on Mexican imports, will not encourage US industry to become more efficient as it will simply isolate them from competition. Moving car production back to the US will simply serve to raise prices, and reduce demand which will lead to less demand for employees. Furthermore all the tariffs in the world will not help prevent technology from replacing humans in producing everything from I-phones to Electric cars.

Continue reading »
Tagged | 9 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Peter Hirst
    If the political make up of the eu changes significantly would we be better to have stayed in? It probably depends whether you are more interested in global or ...
  • Peter Hirst
    An agreement with other countries to coordinate action when their interests collide would be a useful addition to the array of groups, organisations and bodies ...
  • Peter Hirst
    Our political strategy as I understand it does not make it easy for us to have a single message that gives us the publicity we need. We can talk about empowerme...
  • Mahmood Faiz
    As someone from the Kashmiri community and Chair of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Kashmir, I believe there is a significant opportunity for the Liberal Democr...
  • Peter Hirst
    Our defence policy should be centred around fostering our relationships with countries that have shared interests, values and where we can make a meaninful cont...