Brexit or no Brexit, we have to improve and stimulate our flagging economy. We cannot blame Brexit for everything. We haven’t even started to leave the EU yet. Nothing has really changed. If there are problems we need to look at the effects of past years of austerity economics first.
The usual charge made against those of us who are of a more Keynesian inclination and who argue against austerity economics is that we are far too ready to let the Government’s deficit increase. In other words, that our policies will involve too much public borrowing, which will only add to high levels of public debt.
This is not necessarily true. But, we do need to understand what the government’s deficit is, how it originates, and why it was so difficult for George Osborne to make good his election pledges of reducing it, let alone turning it into a surplus. We can perhaps expect Philip Hammond to have the same problem. Tories seem very slow learners at times.
On 27th August, LDV will be 10 years old. In that time, we’ve brought you over 24,000 posts and published over 337,000 comments. Over the Summer holidays, we’ll take you on a nostalgic meander through a decade of Liberal Democrat history, seen through the eyes of our editors and contributors. We hope you enjoy our choices.
While we are all marvelling at the Olympic action in Rio, there is no way that the Games pack as big an emotional punch for British people as our home games four years ago. Even the most hard-hearted sceptic got totally caught up in the Games.
With all that’s happened since, many of us want to see that tolerant, inclusive, liberal vision set out in Danny Boyle’s amazing opening ceremony. That Britain is still very much there, despite what has happened recently. Building that country that works for everyone is the only way to bring people back from listening to the voices of those who spread hatred and division.
Anyway, here is Stephen Tall’s take on Boyle’s opening ceremony. He made Danny Boyle his Liberal Hero of the Week.
I read this book as the primary campaigns started in the US earlier this year. There is a chapter dedicated to the misogynistic bile directed at Hillary Clinton in 2008, which seems tame given what she’s getting now. “Life’s a b****. Don’t vote for one.” was an actual badge being sold by Republicans in Cleveland at their convention. I’d like to think that Federal Conference Committee Chair Andrew Wiseman would fling out anyone selling similar at a Liberal Democrat Conference.
My Life on the Road details four decades of travel all over the world as Gloria Steinem’s work took her to all sorts of places. It is a wise and gentle book which is primarily about bringing people together and making sure diverse voices were heard. It’s a great insight in to the history of the feminist movement and the importance of intersectionality within that.
Remember the ongoing controversy over the Conservatives bussing activists into marginal seats and whether the costs should feature on local expenses returns? Around 20 police forces are still carrying out investigations into a serious issue.
At the same time, there were a few complaints about former Liberal Democrat MPs’ expenses. There were suggestions that visits to constituencies by the Leader’s Tour should somehow be put on local expenses. Given that these visits were about promoting the Liberal Democrats to the country and providing the piece for nightly news bulletins, the costs were, of course, included on the national return.
In my LDV contribution in early June I reported that the Dutch CPB (=equivalent of the IFS) warned that every Dutch citizen stood to lose 1.000 euros (by 2030) as a direct consequence of a Brexit.
Now that Brexit has been decided, but article 50 will only be invoked in 2017, a long period of international uncertainty has started. In its “Autumn Estimate”, the same CPB has today (August 9) concluded that Brexit and its uncertainty will hit the Dutch economy and society hard, starting in 2016-7. And we have general elections in March of 2017.
In the wake of the referendum, with Trump appearing to be gaining ground in the US, and populism on the rise across Europe, we Liberals could start to feel a little grim about our future relevance in the world.
Not so in South Africa where the Democratic Alliance (DA), long-time Liberal Democrat sister party and the only viable opposition to an increasingly corrupt African National Congress (ANC) government, has surged to its best result yet in last week’s nationwide local elections.
The tweet above, and others like it, caught my eye.
Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith is pictured on a fishing trip with rich Tory MPs Richard Benyon and Charles Walker. “Not much socialism there” was one tweeted comment.
So, the inference is that Owen Smith has lots of rich Tory chums and goes on fishing trips with them. So he can’t possibly be a socialist, or even a true “new Labour” man.
It is fascinating to imagine how these will go. On the one hand we’ll have the ultimate cool-headed policy wonk in Hillary. On the other we will have the hot-headed, insult-firing Trump.
With the exception of the overseas French territory of Saint Barthélemy, no country has ever left the European Union. Greenland left its predecessor, the European Economic Community, in 1985. Exit negotiations, in that case, took more than 100 meetings over three years. Given that the EEC was a slimmer organisation than the EU, that negotiations were mainly over one subject – fish – and that Greenland has a population smaller than Bracknell or Bury, this should set alarm bells ringing for the UK.
The first seven months of 2016 have seen big, consensus-upsetting scores by populist parties across Europe.
The election in Italy of two women from Beppe Grillo’s “Five Star Movement” to become mayors of Rome and Turin (the present capital and the residence of Italy’s founding Savoy dynasty, respectively) in June; the success of Dutch populists (Wilders’ PVV and the weblog “GeenStijl”) and British populists (UKIP) at two big EU-related national referenda in April and June, and the breakthrough of Germany’s racist “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD) in three German regional elections (biggest score: 24,3% in Saxony-Anhalt) in March, all were seen as portents of big electoral upsets, threatening established party-political balances of power.
I lost my job following the General Election of May 2015 after nearly 35 years of working in and around politics. MPs are not generally held in high esteem but in my experience, they are overwhelmingly decently motivated.
An exception is the blind spot of political parties, including on occasion the Lib Dems, for the political honours system.
Lynton Crosby, said to have been paid £500,000 for his work on behalf of the Tories and with no long term commitment to the UK was the outrage six months ago. Now we have David Cameron’s resignation list. And so it goes on. The other parties condemn but then go on to do the same.
Way down the honours list you find British Empire Medals. BEMs are given to individuals for dedication and hard work in their communities, typically for unpaid voluntary work, sometimes over decades. Not glamorous or high profile and certainly not profitable. Recently a 99 year old received a BEM for 50 years of service to her community. Another elderly recipient was an Auschwitz survivor who volunteers with the Holocaust Memorial Trust. Ordinary people giving their time altruistically and sometimes extraordinarily, for no financial reward.
I was delighted to get Miriam’s part memoir part cookbook for my birthday last week.
I love cookbooks and have a stack of them not in the kitchen but by my bed. My favourite sort have a lot of commentary and background as well as just recipes. That’s part of the reason I’m such a huge Nigella fan. She puts a lot of herself into her recipes and writing. The two women have cooked together before and Nigella’s “Gorgeous recipes” endorsement on Miriam’s front cover is a very useful thing.
The book is worth it for a mini rant on stock alone, but it has so much to offer. The food is appetising – although I might use a bit more garlic than she does – with gutsy flavours. I can see myself making a fair few of these recipes, although I’d have to figure out how to use less oil. From a vibrant gazpacho simple pasta with bacon and peas taught to her sons when she broke her elbow during the 2010 election to a delicious lamb stew to the most wonderful sounding dish with potatoes, garlic and saffron, to lemon curd muffins, to olive oil chocolate mousse, there are dishes that could make me very happy. You never know, I might just cook some and compare her photos with mine.
Her recipes are interspersed with personal anecdotes:
I was first introduced to guacamole when I helped to negotiate the EU-Mexican trade agreement.
The BBC has announced that, from September 1st, the “iPlayer loophole” will be closed and access to the BBC’s iPlayer will require payment of the licence fee. Of course, there was never a loophole; the licence fee is meant to apply only to live television broadcasts.
Of course, the blame cannot be put at the BBC’s feet. The BBC has been forced to make severe budget cuts leading to the scaling back of services that cost relatively little such as Radio 6 and BBC Three – services disproportionately used by people aged 18-34, while at the same time having to shoulder £750 million per year for concessionary licences for over 75s: the biggest cost to the BBC after BBC One. Indeed, TV Licensing emphasises the disproportionate effect on students, who increasingly exclusively use on-demand services.
It is frequently asked how we reach the lower paid and those in poverty who have made up a large proportion of whose who may have been disenfranchised or chosen to vote for UKIP in the past. A big part is about getting the message across in a way which isn’t patronising or condescending but it’s also the day to day issues that need addressing. Liberal democrat policies need to be addressing these issues.
Those who have struggled financially, having fallen in to arrears, or are in rented accommodation are highly likely to be placed on pre-payment meters for their energy needs. The BBC today reported that these customers are likely to pay on average £220 more a year than customers who are not on the pre-payment meters.
Those on pre-payment meters, who are among the most vulnerable and least likely to switch, will be protected by an interim price cap which will save them around £75 a year from next April.
I don’t think this goes far enough, pre-payment tariffs will still average a cost of around £145 more a year and, furthermore, the use of the word ‘interim’ highlights that the cap is not even a permanent reduction to pre-payment tariffs. This potentially means that pre-payment tariffs may become even more unfair after any proposed cap expires.
We need you here in Merton. We want you to be one of our two parliamentary candidates. We want the best and that’s why we’re asking you to think about us. We want to be open, transparent and democratic and that’s why we’re getting in touch.
It’s been agreed by our Regional Candidates Chair that we can vote on parliamentary candidates at a members’ meeting on the afternoon of 4th September.
Well, why us?
The numbers
At the referendum, the overall borough result was 63% Remain – but it was a fraction over 70% in Wimbledon constituency. Mitcham & Morden was in the 50s.
Wimbledon’s share of the vote in the 2015 General Election was 13%. If I recall correctly, this reflects the best Lib Dem result outside of a held/former held seat in London, one of only 2 two such constituencies to make it into double figures . . .
Our (current) target wards got some of the highest shares of the vote for the Lib Dem list on the London Assembly across the whole of London. 54th and 56th out of 649 to be precise. Those wards with better results are mainly those represented/formerly represented by Lib Dem MPs . . .
We can’t not mention that Morden is home to the largest mosque in Western Europe, built in 2003, Baitul Futuh Mosque serves as the international headquarters of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community at large.
We’re a diverse borough: it’s not all about the Lawn Tennis Club or Wimbledon Village.
Brexit means Brexit were among the first words spoken by Theresa May when she was anointed by Conservatives as our new Prime Minister. She swiftly followed that up by appointing prominent Brexiteers to key Government roles to direct the UK withdrawal from the EU.
Brexiteers argue that the outcome of the EU referendum provides the UK with a clear and unequivocal mandate to take the country out of the EU. Well, not quite: the result delivered confused and conflicting mandates.
Firstly, two out of the four countries which comprise the UK voted to remain: overwhelmingly so in the case of Scotland. Brexiteers do not therefore have a UK-wide leave mandate. It is important to remember that Scotland and Northern Ireland are countries not English counties. Scottish and Irish voters delivered a clear and unequivocal Remain mandate which deserves as much respect as the UK-wide vote: quite how that can be achieved is, at present, unclear.
Secondly, during the campaign Brexiteers offered voters all sorts of different alternatives to UK membership of the EU – the Norwegian model, the Swiss model, UK in the Single Market, UK outside the Single Market etc. Consequently, there was no single definitive leave mandate. Many of the leave voters I spoke to during the campaign were convinced that UK access to the Single Market would be guaranteed post-exit: if that is not the case will they still be so keen to leave?
I’ve seen a lot of posts on Facebook and heard questions at Lib Dem socials about how to recruit more women and diverse candidates for council elections. There seems to be a real willingness to do it but not always a clear idea of how. Here are my three top tips – I’d be interested in what others have done.
SET TARGETS. Look at the demographics of your area and propose that your local party Exec or campaign team buy into the idea of taking some action and agreeing targets. You could decide that 50% of target council seats will be held by women; and/or 50% of all council seats. You can adopt targets for BAME /LGBT+ and people with disabilities too. Telling potential council candidates that you are taking positive steps to better reflect the local community you want to serve is a very strong recruitment message.
TARGETED RECRUITMENT. Filter your ‘strong Lib Dem’ data on Connect by gender, and approach the women on the list first – of course you need to have a conversation to check that they really do ‘live our values.’ Look at the local residents’ associations, Parish Councillors, and residents who are vocal on local Facebook forums etc, and those who are involved in civic campaigns that overlap with our values (for example local Amnesty groups, Transition Towns etc), identify the people you know to be from under-represented groups and cross-check them with your canvass data, or go and canvass them.
DON’T PUSH FOR AN IMMEDIATE ANSWER. For all sorts of reasons, men are more likely to say ‘yes’ to standing or even put themselves forward without being asked. Statistically, women are more likely to be care-givers (for children and/or ageing parents), and women and people from BAME backgrounds are more likely to be in lower-paid jobs (which can require night-shifts / unusual hours) so unless they immediately rule it out (and by this I mean they say “no way, not a chance, never”), their thinking might jump ahead to ‘how can I fit it all in?’ They are also more likely to want to discuss the idea with friends and family to gauge their reaction too. In short, you may have to ask, then give them a few days to think about it, offer to give them the chance to speak to someone with similar circumstances and agree to give them a follow up call a few days later. Even inviting them out for a ‘taster session’ of door knocking. You’ll need to be prepared to change campaign sessions around their lives. If there’s no-one in your area with similar circumstances, you can post on here and I expect someone will volunteer to speak to them.
It does require more effort but consider it an investment of time that will help you find under-used talent. I’ve been part of a team that has done this and just this year we found two brilliant new by-election candidates who gave it everything.
Despite not being as high on the news agenda the refugee crisis is still ongoing, with thousands of people seeking safety arriving on Europe’s shores every week.
The Lib Dems have been proud to stand up for refugees and campaign for the UK to offer help and safety. Tim Farron was the first party leader to visit Calais, Lesvos and Idomeni. He has led the campaign for the UK to take in 3000 unaccompanied refugee children from Europe. Our peers in the House of Lords have worked tirelessly to pressure the government to take in more refugees. On the ground Lib Dem volunteers have raised vanloads of essential items donations to be sent to aid refugees in the camps across Europe.
There are serious concerns that Brexit and rising anti-migrant rhetoric could be a backwards step in our campaigns to take in more refugees. The political developments following the leave vote could also take attention away from the ongoing plights of refugees. However we as Lib Dems refuse to let brexit mean that we forget our moral obligations to help refugees.
People are reaching out. The more politically active join Labour or the Liberal Democrats. Many others worry quietly, and more of them than usual seek out personal counselling. The holidays and the pause in political activity may offer some relief, but the anxieties persist. In fact it’s a worse time than before, because the months of campaigning for the Referendum and the weeks of political upheaval were exciting and arousing. Now is the time of waiting and worrying.
It’s been a year of no genuine government. It climaxed in a campaign which in its incoherence and noisy assertiveness showed up British politicians in a very poor light. The campaign ended in vast uncertainty about what happens next. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the most powerful men in the country, suddenly lost power. The Government regrouped with an assertion of right to rule, but without legitimacy. The main Opposition fell apart and seems fatally split.
In the latest British edition of The Economist (July 30th) , there is a report about a useful initiative in the field of (il)legal highs and party drugs like XTC (as we Dutch spell ecstacy). It appears that there is a non-profit organization called The Loop, with a professor Fiona Measham, criminologist at Durham University, amongst its co-directors; she is their spokesperson in the article.
They’re this year starting to travel around local summer music festivals, offering festival-goers to test their party drugs before they consume them. The result at the “Secret Garden Party” near Cambridge were sobering: stuff sold as “MDMA crystal” was ordinary brown sugar, and hard grey pills were actually made from concrete, the building material. And where XTC really was XTC, some pills were five times as potent as others being tested.
In 2008, financial services firm Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. With over $600 billion in assets, Lehman Brothers remains the largest bankruptcy filing in US history. Under-capitalised and enormously leveraged with significant holdings of risky mortgage-backed and residential property-related assets, despite weeks of intense negotiations with regulators and prospective buyers no viable solution could be found and Lehman was allowed to fail.
In the ensuing market chaos, and following a G20 meeting in London in early 2009, the Financial Stability Board was established to monitor the global financial system and coordinate financial regulation among the G20 nations. One of the Financial Stability Board’s key objectives was to end “too big to fail”, the idea that these huge, inter-connected financial institutions with balance sheets comparable to the GDP of small nations were too complex and not capable of failing without having adverse effects upon the broader global economy. As part of a package of measures, the G20 proposed and adopted rules that would ensure that all globally and systemically important financial institutions were required to hold more capital, to segregate riskier investment banking and trading businesses from retail banking operations and, significantly, that upon the failure of the institution, the bank’s creditors have their holdings written down or “bailed-in” in order to avoid future tax-payer funded bail-outs.
“A week is a long time in politics”, so quipped Harold Wilson – although in the aftermath of Brexit, perhaps ‘week’ should be replaced by ‘hour’. The glut of political developments since June 23rd have evidently led Tim to forget the nadir of 2015. “There must be an election”, he demanded upon the accession of Theresa May to the premiership. Right now, we will gain little if Britain were to go to the polls early. We need more time to rebuild our grassroots organisations and to formulate a liberalism that acknowledges the circumstantial changes catalysed by Brexit.
We should take our press office’s releases lauding the surge in membership that has taken place following the referendum with a pinch of salt. The 15,000+ increase in members is impressive, but we need to find ways to secure our new members within a grassroots framework which contracted massively during our time in coalition. Maybe the way forward is to follow the example of left-wing parties in continental Europe, and start community organising.
This week, the Scottish Government was told by the Supreme Court tae think again about the controversial Named Person law. The Court said that it couldn’t be implemented as it currently stood following an application from parents and organisations, among the the equally controversial Christian Action Research and Education (CARE). This law makes sure that there is one person with responsibility for bringing information together about a child and co-ordinating necessary interventions.
The Court was at pains to point out that the intention of the legislation was benign but there were concerns that some of the information sharing provisions in …
My time in the US is drawing to a close, and it’s been great to get to see the way they campaign first hand. I’ve not got as many tales from the campaign trail this week because I took the chance to go and do a bit of sightseeing. Sadly, I didn’t manage to get into the Daily Show, as I’d hoped to at the end of my last post. Although, I was in the office phonebanking when Hillary became our official nominee for President, and the cheering from the staff and volunteers was something I’ll never forget.
I think it’s important to note that a lot of people over here genuinely support and admire Hillary Clinton. That gets lost in the media coverage – sure, some people will cast a tactical vote. But most of us are here because we think she’d make an amazing President. Obama said on Wednesday that she is more qualified for the job than he or Bill ever was. That’s still too often the case – women have to be stellar and massively outdo men to even get a foot in the door of top positions. I support Hillary because I think she did great work for women and girls at the State Department. Her passion about women’s rights and disability rights absolutely shone through in her acceptance speech. This isn’t just a case of stopping Trump. I’m with her because she’s with me.
I have been a huge fan of Hillary Clinton for pretty much quarter of a century. I admired the way she fought for women and girls, children and particularly those with disabilities. These have been her priorities for all of her life.
I am thrilled to bits to see her as the Democrats’ candidate for President and I can’t wait to see her debate the divisive slogans of Donald Trump.
She has fought for things that we take for granted here. Her fight for universal healthcare in the 1990s was ahead of its time. When she was Secretary of State, she put women and girls at the heart of everything she did. Read more about the specific things she did in this excellent blog post.
Her speech accepting the nomination put forward a positive vision to counteract the negativity and division of her opposition. She did it effectively, unlike David Cameron and George Osborne when they needlessly forced a similar choice here.
Hillary stood up for values that every Liberal Democrat should embrace: workers’ rights, healthcare, positive on immigration, committed to tackling climate change – and, importantly, stewarding the planet for the future, as she put it “planting seeds in a garden that you will never get to see”.
She is the standard bearer for progressive, optimistic, inclusive politics in a fight that mirrors so much of what’s going on in Europe. It’s the job of every progressive to back her in these next crucial months.
Make a cup of tea, put your feet up and watch her whole speech.
This is the section where she sums up the broad vision of what she wants to achieve.
This edit-a-thon is a collaboration between the Club and the Wikimedia Foundation (which runs Wikipedia), to get better, more in-depth coverage of liberal issues and liberal history in the online encyclopaedia, updating and expanding articles.
Wikipedia is the seventh-most-visited website and the world, and is the first port-of-call for many basic background facts, so the National Liberal Club thought it would be helpful to offer its backing to improve coverage of liberal issues. The NLC will be making its library — full of rare material around liberal history — available for the event.
The NLC is particularly proud to be doing this, as it has long been the spiritual home of Liberals and Liberal Democrats. Founded by Gladstone in 1882, the club provides a sumptuous “home from home” for those interested in liberal politics and the liberal arts: you can read more about it here, on the club’s own Wikipedia page.
In 2013, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a long-lasting period of depression; a few weeks ago, I was discharged as an out-patient after spending several weeks under a mental health home treatment team, having suffered a manic episode crammed with delusions, little sleep and a somewhat adamant neglect of both food and hygiene (I lost weight and I’m still in desperate need of a barber due to a matted dreadlock that has formed from the absence of a comb during this period).
One of the doorstep comments staying with me from the referendum campaign is: Im voting Out: we havent beaten the Germans in two world wars to give in now.
The psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan talks of chosen traumas and chosen glories, as stories from the past get retold and shape collective identity.
The trouble is that how the events are remembered changes. The stories seem to be about the past, but also have a present-day purpose. At the celebrations of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, Margaret Thatcher pointed out that we had had a revolution a century earlier: she was quoting history, …
At the end of the primary season 8 years ago, relations between the Clinton and the winning Obama camps were not the warmest.
Thankfully, both were grown-up enough to sort it out and move forward. Bridges were built quickly and Hillary ended up as Secretary of State in Obama’s first term.
In 2008, it was hard to imagine that Michelle Obama would give a speech warmly endorsing Hillary as her husband’s successor, as she did last night.
It was a very well crafted speech. It had lots of positives about Hillary – but also it put the boot into Trump in a very classy way. She didn’t mention him by name, but she talked of the importance of reasoned, measured, calm judgement. “When you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips, and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions.”
There was also a bit of an indirect plea to Sanders supporters. “We can’t afford to be tired or frustrated or cynical,” she said as she implored everyone to get out there knocking on doors to recreate what the Obama campaign had done in 2008.
The bit that made me cry was when she talked of waking up in a house built by slaves every day and seeing her daughters playing with their dog on the White House lawn. She paid tribute to all those who had fought for civil rights and to break down the barriers, too.
It was an extremely well-crafted and classy speech.
As a 20 year old, I stood up in a French classroom, to teach children two years younger than me, it was literally life changing. I have gone on to live abroad three more times, speak two other languages, marry someone from another continent and work in multinational companies where I get to travel the world. I want these opportunities for my children, but fear that due to the selfishness of the older generation, that things will never be the same after Brexit.
Living overseas gives you a fresh perspective, it helps you to learn how to deal with other cultures …
Barry Rhodes Caron this is such an accurate account of the all talk show.
Iain Dale is such a great interviewer bringing out the best in anyone he interviews.
I agree...
Peter Martin @ Peter,
" If you treat (supply of water and sewage disposal) as one industry and structure it to provide the commodity, the real problem will not get f...
Simon Horsman I've not looked at the agenda in depth but although it seems most worthy I saw little on the economy, taxes and money. Resources are not sufficient but they ar...
Peter Chambers > J.D. Vance, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner
This would be Mr Angry, the Steve who went to Moscow and trusted the Russians to do his translation, and the New...
Richard Whelan We are gioing down slowly in the polls too. Why? Is it because we currently have nothing to offer other than the odd soundbite that no one remembers....
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Councillor Martin Allen joins Liberal Democrats from the Greens
Boy the home office tried to deport at 9 wins British chess championship at 17
Clacton ad infinitum
Barry Rhodes 
Peter Martin 
Simon Horsman 
Peter Chambers 
Richard Whelan 