Category Archives: Op-eds

Richard Robinson

Earthquake in Austria

By Richard Robinson | Fri 29th April 2016 - 2:32 pm

Austria Hofer

 

Last Sunday, the post-war consensus in Austrian politics was swept away. Nobert Hofer, from the far right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), came top with 35% in the first round of the presidential elections and faces a run off Alexander van der Bellen, a former leader of and supported by the Greens, who received 21% and came first in most cities including Vienna. Turnout was a respectable 69%. The campaign for the second round ballot on May 22 is likely to be bruising and divisive. Forecasts suggest that Hofer will win.

This was no earthquake as the FPÖ had performed well in local elections last October. This time Hofer’s result was significantly better than the polls had predicted. The Greens were also pleased with van der Bellen’s result. NEOS, our young sister party, had backed Irmgard Griss who came third with 19%. They are now supporting van der Bellen ‘for the Republic’.

Austria van Bellen

The candidates supported by the two main parties came fourth and fifth with around 11% each. The Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) have provided all previous presidents since the Second World War and are currently governing together in a grand coalition. The coalition is now responding by tightening asylum laws and building more border fences.

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Tim Pickstone

Tim Pickstone writes…Help make the difference next Thursday

By Tim Pickstone | Fri 29th April 2016 - 12:59 pm

Farron in EdinburghAll Liberal Democrats will remember what it felt like on Friday 8th May last year, the morning after the terrible 2015 General Election results .

This Thursday is our first big chance to build a more positive story about the progress we’ve made since, with voters going to the polls in one or more elections right across the UK.

A lot has been said about the Lib Dem ‘fightback’, but in politics it is elections that matter and our opportunity to ensure the Party makes a massive step forwards from 2015.

How well we perform next week will largely be up to us: Lib Dem members, activists and helpers.  We will make the difference between Lib Dems getting elected, or the opposition winning.

Thousands of people – candidates, activists, helpers, party staff have already been working hard for months.  But to get across the finish line we need everyone to help. 

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Suzanne Fletcher

A lifetime achievement, but still much to be done

By Suzanne Fletcher | Wed 27th April 2016 - 1:50 pm

Suzanne Fletcher 2

Suzanne Fletcher with Guy Verhofstadt

Our visit to Brussels has been one of terrific highs and awful low points.  The only thing that was consistent was the pouring rain, and the lovely welcoming help from people wherever we went.

I was there at the invitation of the committee of the regions for the ALDE-LeaDeR Awards.  I had been taken aback by being shortlisted for the Lifetime Achievement Award for long service as a councillor, for my work on environmental issues long before everyone woke up to it ( I got the first bottle – and then can – bank in Stockton in 1982), and more recently as founder member and chair of LD4SOS, an organisation within the Liberal Democrats that stands up for and campaigns on issues around asylum seekers and refugees.

The room filled with those nominated from throughout the EU for a range of different awards. There was only one other from the UK, Ray Georgeson from Otley, up for a different award from me.  I didn’t want to win; what I wanted more than anything was for the amendments from the Lords to be agreed in the House of Commons in the immigration debate that afternoon.  I silently prayed for 3,000 unaccompanied children to be given safety in the UK.

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Sally Hamwee

Baroness Sally Hamwee writes…How Lib Dem Lords are making the horrible Immigration Bill a little better

By Sally Hamwee | Wed 27th April 2016 - 12:21 pm

This is my third attempt at writing this piece. Events have been moving quickly on the Immigration Bill as the Government tries its hardest to push it through before the end of the session.

Last night the House of Lords got the Bill back from the Commons who discussed it the previous night.

The debate there concentrated on the amendment that would put into legislation the call for the UK to offer sanctuary to 3000 unaccompanied child refugees who have already arrived in Europe.

Of course the Government does not need legislation to do this, but it seems the force of votes in Parliament is required.

That vote was defeated by a narrow majority in the Commons and it was left to us in the Lords yesterday to reinstate it, inflicting another heavy Government defeat. This gives the Commons – and those Tories who talk of ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ – another chance to do the right thing.

Apart from this amendment we also won votes on putting a 28 day time limit on immigration detention of and restricting the detention of pregnant women. Detention should be imposed only in the most exceptional circumstances, and the calculation of the time limits gives too much wriggle room.  Safeguards were also inserted similar to those which apply to children which we insisted went into legislation during the Coalition Government.

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Simon Horner

And the biggest threat to the Union is….Ruth Davidson

By Simon Horner | Wed 27th April 2016 - 10:00 am

If short-term party political advantage is the aim of the game, then you can understand why the Scottish Tories have chosen to play the unionist card in the Scottish election. Ruth Davidson knows that Tory economic and social policies do not win elections (or even the runner-up spot) in Scotland. She must despair at her colleagues supposedly running the show in London who are tearing themselves apart on Europe and rapidly abandoning any claim to economic competence or social conscience.

Instead, she has put the independence question at the front and centre of her party’s Scottish programme. This is a headline currently on the “Herald” website:

“Ruth Davidson: SNP wants to keep wounds of independence debate open.”

I did a double take when I first spotted the story because at first glance I didn’t take in the “SNP” part. Of course, if you read it without the “SNP” it still makes perfect sense. Every time Ruth Davidson harps on about the union – and she does it an awful lot! – she is poking at the scab.

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Lord William Wallace

Could Trumpland reach Britain?

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 26th April 2016 - 2:43 pm

We all hope that Donald Trump will not be the next US President; even if he wins the Republican nomination, it’s unlikely that he will win over a majority of states and voters. But his astonishing success so far, in mobilising the embittered, marginalised and nostalgic, all those who feel they have lost out through rapid economic and social change, has lessons for British politics.

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Joe Otten

Inquest verdict: The 96 were unlawfully killed #JFT96

By Joe Otten | Tue 26th April 2016 - 1:04 pm

Today the Hillsborough inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing of 96 people.

Errors and omissions by the South Yorkshire Police are ruled to have caused and contributed to the deaths on a number of counts, and also errors and omissions by the city council as the ground safety licensing authority, the engineers Eastwood and Partners, Sheffield Wednesday FC and the ambulance service.

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We shouldn’t just be the party of Remain; we should also be the party of Reform

By Ian Thomas | Mon 25th April 2016 - 6:05 pm

 

There is a strong chance that the Remain camp will win the EU Referendum. I say that because, through campaigning on the streets for Britain Stronger In Europe in the most Eurosceptic town in the South West, there has definitely been a shift in public attitude from a generally hostile view of the EU to the realisation of the potential damage to the UK a Leave vote would bring.

I am not saying that we are home and dry; a week is a long time in politics and there are several more weeks to go in the run-up to the vote, but this campaign is one Remain could easily lose rather than one the Brexit side could easily win.

With that said, the referendum is only the beginning in a new chapter on the debate over Britain’s relationship with the European Union, and we will make a fatal error in thinking that this vote will finally slay the dragon of anti-EU sentiment. In fact, the closeness of the vote we are more likely about the see the rebirth of a more wide-ranging UKIP party along the lines of the SNP after the Scottish referendum; rebranding itself as a Eurosceptic ‘Libertarian Party’ to draw together those involved in the Vote Leave, Leave.EU and Grassroots Out campaigns.

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Judy Abel

It must be possible to be 100% pro-EU, but still question how things are run

By Judy Abel | Mon 25th April 2016 - 2:12 pm

 

I’m half Danish and consider myself to be a European. I have never really felt particularly English or British at all and if Denmark is playing England at football it’s a tough call, even though I’ve lived in the UK almost all my life and spent a total of only two years in Denmark.

I have always been pro-EU. I believe in political co-operation and the European ideal – and have often considered other European countries to be more enlightened when it comes to matters such as social justice and environmental protection. Without the EU, I am sure we wouldn’t have had Blue Flag beaches or the equivalent, tighter car emission regulations (although they’ve been flouted badly in recent years) and proper food labelling. Whereas, in my experience, Danish Governments of whatever shade tend to want to ensure the quality of life and wellbeing of their populations, that enlightened approach sadly hasn’t been a particularly strong feature of British life – although it does appear to be something Scotland wants to follow (hence no tuition fees and prescription charges).

Whilst agreeing with the provisions of the Single Market in terms of the free movement of goods, service and people, this doesn’t stop me asking certain questions about the efficacy of the EU and what we might be able to do better. All institutions need to adapt and evolve to changing circumstances and the EU cannot be an exception to that.

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Lindsay Northover

One year on from the Nepal Earthquake

By Lindsay Northover | Mon 25th April 2016 - 1:00 pm

 

It is one year since the earthquake in Nepal which killed nearly nine thousand people, injured tens of thousands, and left half a million families homeless. Even before this tragic event, Nepal was one of the twenty poorest countries in the world, and the estimated economic impact of the earthquake was around $10 billion, fifty percent of its entire GDP. There was no question that the UK would help Nepal in the aftermath of the disaster, both in terms of emergency humanitarian relief and also longer term rebuilding. Within a month of the earthquake, which happened when I was a DFID minister, we had released over £33 million of help, including match-funding the £5 million in donations given privately by generous people across the UK.

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Two very different interviews for Willie Rennie

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 24th April 2016 - 4:51 pm

Scottish Lib Dem Leader Willie Rennie faced two very different interviews this week. The first was with STV political editor Bernard Ponsonby.

Willie said he thought we were going to grow because of our record as the strong liberal voice and because of our positive, uplifting plan for Scotland with its transformational investment in education and investment in mental health.

Before he was able to talk about all these plans though, he faced quite a grilling over coalition mistakes (he said the Bedroom Tax was one which should never have happened) and over Alistair Carmichael (he said he would still vote for him despite his mistake, which was an aberration and out of character for the Orkney & Shetland MP).

Ponsonby gave him a really hard time over tuition fees in Scotland. Liberal Democrats were responsible for their abolition, against coalition partner Labour’s wishes. He tried to make out that us supporting the Graduate Endowment – which was not a tuition fees, which didn’t go to pay for lectures or learning but simply to enable more students from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to university – and then voting to abolish it (when circumstances allowed) was inconsistent. Willie managed to get across that the Liberal Democrats had been the drivers behind free education.

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James Davis

After a year of Tory rule, we have the chance to show our disapproval

By James Davis | Sun 24th April 2016 - 9:01 am

When Labour has moved to the unelectable far left (however admirably unpolitician-ish Corbyn may be) and the Tories are hell bent on ruining the lives of teachers, junior doctors and the disabled, just to shrink the state, we need a party that actually will do good for the country more than ever.

Look at Canada, electing the inspiring Justin Trudeau, and implementing that shared liberal idea of making life better for everyone. protecting the disadvantaged, and the disabled, caring for the environment yet -here in the UK – being able to save the economy from the worst recession since the 1930s whilst being pro-business and pro-aspiration.

Increased mental health funding? Lib Dem legislation. £11,500 tax free income? Lib Dem legislation. We should also mention 5 years of stopping the worst Tory policies, which are now being enacted unopposed by the divided squabbling mess that Labour has become. Whilst the Lib Dems made a grave mistake with tuition fees, they’ve actually admitted they were wrong, learned from that, and fought to make life better for all of us during the recession despite knowing they would lose the next election and their work wouldn’t be praised by the press. How often can you say that about politicians? And happily, more disadvantaged people are now going to university thanks to grants which the Tories are now scrapping.

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Alex Cole Hamilton on the SNP’s “smog and mirrors” and singing the recycling song

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 23rd April 2016 - 4:55 pm

This week, Edinburgh Western and Lothian list candidate took part in a Scotland 2016 debate on energy and the environment. After his success at getting in John Swinney’s face on tax, expectations were high, and he didn’t disappoint.

Here are some of his highlights:

Pointing out that the SNP consistently miss its climate change targets while they cut the budget for measures to tackle climate change.

“There is no question in the climate change challenge which shows that tracking is part of the solution”

Describing SNP MInister Fergus Ewing’s justification of a planned cut to Air Passenger Duty as a “smog and mirrors approach”

Outlining the Liberal Democrat plan to make sure houses are energy efficient and warm.

Explaining how good habits on recycling are being embedded in today’s children – and singing the song his 4 year old sings every day at nursery. Whether that latter part was entirely necessary, I’ll leave to your judgement.

You can watch Alex’s highlights below:

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Paul Walter

The USA: The clue is in the title – and it is the greatest example of pooled sovereignity between states

By Paul Walter | Sat 23rd April 2016 - 10:50 am

Four of the USA’s founding fathers: (l to r) Adams, Morris, Hamilton, Jefferson

There was a rather strange moment on Thursday’s BBC Question Time. There was a discussion about President Obama’s intervention in the EU referendum debate.

Liam Fox was waxing lyrically about how the USA has great democracy, and all we want is the same democracy ourselves without our country being, he posited, controlled by “Brussels”.

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Mike Biden

St George for Europe!

By Mike Biden | Sat 23rd April 2016 - 9:22 am

Let’s celebrate – it is St. George’s Day! St George is not only England’s but one of Europe’s most popular patron Saints. Today he will be celebrated across Europe, especially in Portugal, Malta and Romania where he is their national saint as well.

Far from being a unique icon of Englishness he is the very embodiment of how European the English are. He is celebrated and venerated by all the Christian traditions including Greek Orthodox, Catholic and the Church of England. He is also venerated in Islam and is therefore perfect for a modern forward looking internationalist country like England.

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Monroe Palmer

Lord Monroe Palmer writes…The Government has back-pedalled and tenants have won

By Monroe Palmer | Fri 22nd April 2016 - 2:10 pm

This week the Housing Bill has continued in its long worn out path through the Lords. The Liberal Democrats have been battling to make changes to a Bill which will currently only worsen the housing crisis, reducing the availability of housing and moving the first rung of the housing ladder even further out of reach.

Across the past fortnight, facing the threat of multiple humiliating defeats at the hands of opposing peers, the Government have been forced to back pedal on a number of measures. This week they made a significant concession on protections for tenants at the hands of rogue letting agents. An amendment with my name on it had been put forward which ensured that money belonging to tenants for use as holding fees, deposits, rent, or service charges by letting agents, was protected.

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Tim Farron: The Government’s latest capitulation to take up to 3000 more refugees is welcome but not enough

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 22nd April 2016 - 12:40 pm

Well, it serves me right for not reading something properly. I was on the train yesterday on my way to a hot date with lots of blue envelopes and leaflets when I saw the BBC announce that the UK was going to take thousands of child refugees. I thought that they had agreed to the request that had been made repeatedly by Tim Farron over the last few months.

I should have known better that this was just a re-hash of an earlier announcement ahead of a key parliamentary vote on Monday. Tim Farron saw through it straight away, and explained in the Huffington Post why it fell far short of what is needed:

If I was cynical I’d remark on the fact that this latest announcement comes just days before a crucial vote in the Commons which would force the Tories to take 3,000 vulnerable child refugees from Europe and it seems that the Government are trying to buy off MPs ahead of that.

Of course the Government’s latest capitulation to take up to 3,000 individuals from the Syrian region over the next four years is welcome but it is simply not enough. When I travelled to Greece earlier this month I saw thousands of refugee children languishing in camps that were overstretched and understaffed. Tens of thousands of vulnerable children travelling alone arrived in Europe last year – this latest announcement will do nothing for them. Instead they will continue to live on food rations, without access to education and without hope or fall prey to traffickers and those who would exploit them.

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Caron Lindsay

Paddy has Brexit campaigners floundering on Question Time

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 22nd April 2016 - 11:08 am

Paddy Ashdown has been in very combative form on the EU Referendum. Actually, the one debate I would love to see would be Paddy vs Boris. Our former leader would show up the Mayor’s vacuous, disingenuous rhetoric for what it is.

Paddy is truly getting out there and taking the fight right to Brexiteers in a way that nobody else has managed. He’s been pretty punchy on Twitter for the last few weeks:

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Nick T

Review: Coalition, by David Laws

By Nick T | Thu 21st April 2016 - 1:01 pm

Coalition: The Inside Story of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government (Biteback; £25)

David Laws CoalitionIf journalistic reportage is the first rough draft of history, then the politicians’ memoir has a good claim to be the second — at least as far as contemporary political history is concerned.

Few are better placed to give the inside account of the UK’s first national coalition in living memory than David Laws. Laws was at the heart of the coalition before it had even been conceived, as part of a small Lib Dem team preparing for a hung parliament, and was then one of four Liberal Democrats to make up the party’s negotiating team when possibility became a reality in May 2010. From thereon in he bore witness to every significant decision made over the next five years, even though two of those years were ostensibly spent on the backbenches.

Laws has two other advantages, too. The first is the intelligence and insight that has earned him respect across the Lib Dem party — even from those with whom he often disagrees — and beyond. The second is his proximity to Nick Clegg, who allowed Laws access to his papers from his time as deputy prime minister in the preparation of this book.

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Neville Farmer

Your Liberal Britain: What would a Liberal Britain look like?

By Neville Farmer | Wed 20th April 2016 - 12:35 pm

Your Liberal BritainHow many times have you heard it? “What do the Lib Dems stand for?” I mean, it’s not as though Labour have been socialists for the last 20 years. There is clearly no such thing as one-nation Conservatives, or fiscally responsible Tories, or compassionate Conservatives. Yet the public seems to think they understand the main parties’ positions.

The typical voter thinks it’s the Lib Dems who have no stance, the piggy in the middle that invited the Cameron treatment for five years. Not a party of government, as our failed campaign slogan confirmed last year. Our position as a party is one of the reasons the Your Liberal Britain group was created. So, here’s my two penn’orth.

I joined the party because I believe that government is about nurturing and investing its citizens’ talents, not putting the fear of God into them, not reining them in or nannying them and certainly not spreading anxiety and mistrust.

Fundamental to our system of justice is the presumption of innocence. We are supposed to trust each other. But recent legislation doesn’t reflect that.

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Caron Lindsay

Cooking with Kirsty

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 19th April 2016 - 4:35 pm

Kirsty Williams faces her ITV leaders’ debate on ITV Cymru tomorrow at 8pm.

Away from the formalities of the campaign, she has been cooking with ITV Cymru’s political editor Adrian Masters. He’s been doing this with all the party leaders. I do hope he asked the men what their families thought of them being party leaders as well.

He helped Kirsty make Sloppy Joes.

Kirsty had a great story about being brought back to earth after meeting President Obama. If it had been me, I’d have wanted to talk about nothing else for about a year. Her husband, Richard, had something else he needed to ask, though:

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Caron Lindsay

Willie Rennie’s most embarrassing moments – and his favourite films

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 19th April 2016 - 3:05 pm

In London, they have the taxi thing, but in Scotland, the BBC are doing a Leaders’ Lift Challenge. As they travel up the lift in what I presume is their Glasgow HQ, people get on and ask random questions.

Here’s Willie Rennie’s. The answer to “Who would you most like to be stuck in a lift with?” is very sweet. And we find out about the transgressions in his past. Stealing apples, indeed.

This comes out as a BMG opinion poll had two bits of potential good news. First of all, 51% backed the idea of a penny on tax for education, which is the party’s key policy in this election. On hearing this, Willie said:

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Joe Otten

Brexiters have nowhere to hide on crime, policing, terror and intelligence

By Joe Otten | Tue 19th April 2016 - 1:38 pm

With the Brexit debate currently focusing on the question of trade, Brexiters are able to wrongly claim that the UK would enjoy better trade agreements outside the EU, sooner or later. This exercise in hand waving complacency is not available when it comes to our security.

This is not just about the European Arrest Warrant, responsible for the

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Steve Trevethan

Value for Money and Power Education

By Steve Trevethan | Tue 19th April 2016 - 8:55 am

No action can have a single consequence.

Can the stated purpose of an action distract us from considering its several unstated/understated consequences?

Can unstated consequences be unstated purposes?

Can/does the iceberg profundity of the governmental decision/action to academise all English schools have a single consequence/purpose?

Academisation of our schools involves more than education. It also involves money, property, power, politics, cartel-control, democratic freedom, governance and accountability, to name but some of the areas of our lives it affects/controls, now in the future.

Some questions:

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John Marriott

We need to challenge some of those Brexit statements

By John Marriott | Mon 18th April 2016 - 3:34 pm

 

Well, the ‘official’ EU referendum campaign has finally begun. Funny, it appears to have been going on for months already.

I was interested to see the images of the two official campaigns juxtaposed the other day in the BBC report on my TV screen. The ‘Leave’ campaign was illustrated by old footage of Tories Grayling, Gove and Whittingdale etc. manning the phone lines, whereas the ‘In’ footage showed Tory, Labour and Lib Dem politicians, including the Prime Minister, doing the same thing. For an organisation that has tried so far to be unfailingly impartial in its reporting of the campaign in its ‘phoney war’ stage, I have a feeling that the BBC has possibly given the ‘In’ campaign a visual leg up, by showing its multi party nature. Now, whether we get politicians of different parties actually sharing a platform as we did in 1975 is a different matter.

So far, the arguments for and against have been pretty well rehearsed. We should park immigration for a moment, which could be the deciding factor, but which will still pose problems for us whether or not we stay in the EU. As an EU pragmatist, who thinks that, on balance, leaving the EU now would be a massive gamble, I do have to say that some of the arguments being put forward repeatedly by the Brexiters need challenging.

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Liz Lynne

Who makes the decisions in the EU?

By Liz Lynne | Mon 18th April 2016 - 1:38 pm

 

I have become increasingly frustrated that so many people, including journalists and UK politicians, do not seem to know how the EU actually works and who is responsible for making the decisions on legislation. Over and over again I hear that unelected bureaucrats are in charge and people endlessly talk about the democratic deficit. The reason they do that is that they have been fed this misinformation by the majority of the press and media for years.

I thought it was about time to try and put the record straight. Having been both an MP and then an MEP I can genuinely say that I had more power to shape legislation as an MEP than I did as an MP even though I was a front bench spokesperson.

Most legislation in the EU has to be passed by both the MEPs and the Council which are made up of Ministers from each Member State that is why I get so frustrated when people say that unelected bureaucrats make the decisions. They are usually under the misapprehension that the Commission are the ones who actually legislate.

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Lord William Wallace

In the Spring …

By Lord William Wallace | Mon 18th April 2016 - 12:23 pm

 

In the Spring every Liberal Democrat activist goes out delivering and canvassing.  To pass the time, and increase the interest, many of us play mind games about the political tendencies of the streets and houses we are approaching, trying to anticipate what we may expect.  In Bradford we have to anticipate first of all whether the front door and letter box will be at the front or the back – well, we hardly ever open our own front door in Saltaire, though the letter box is there. In generations past, front doors  in West Yorkshire were only used for weddings and funerals; now, you are more likely to encounter thick piles of clothes and shoes which prevent the person you wanted to talk to from getting close enough to open it.

The most successful game I ever played, with others in our group, was in an affluent area of Sheffield Hallam in the 2010 campaign: guessing the sort of reception we would get, and the likely political leanings, from the make of the car in the drive. BMWs indicated solid right-wing views, Mercedes only slightly less so.  Minis denoted concern not to hog the road or to look aggressive, Peugeots had a definite tendency towards Liberalism, and Volvos were a pretty sure bet.  When one of my nephews was lodging with us a few years later, and looking for a car to buy, he explained to me how each make and model of car carries a particular image that the purchaser buys into: male, female, assertive, family-oriented, socially aware.  This reassured me that I had not been idly associating choice of car with political tendency.

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Andrew Venning

Is Liberalism Dead?

By Andrew Venning | Mon 18th April 2016 - 9:10 am

Every day as I read the news and listen to the radio I dread the erosion of Liberal principles across the globe and there seems to be an increase in extremism and antagonistic attitudes toward the most seemingly inoffensive issues. Due to the growth of fascism both in the UK and particularly across Europe it feels as if Liberal ideology is utterly at threat.

The LibDem fight back is about more than a party but an ideal. We need to convince people that we can moderate as well as keep the door ajar to our left wing allies. We must fight the corner for workers and the poor and those lives that have been utterly ruined by the Conservative party cuts. We must keep a balance of sensible politics and reject extremism in any form, right or left. It is not a healthy route to achieve political, social and geopolitical cohesion. Liberal ideas must be kept alive and not end up squeezed out and squashed into nothingness.

The ideas of being Liberal must be at the nucleus of our thinking, behaviour and actions. We need to embrace our historical “founders” Erasmus, Montesquieu, John Locke, Simone de Beauvoir or whoever else you choose as your own personal poster person for liberalism. We need to keep the best of their ideas alive. If we don’t, we risk losing the liberal ideal and getting left behind.

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Vinous Ali

Visiting the Northern Greece refugee camps with Tim Farron

By Vinous Ali | Sun 17th April 2016 - 10:55 am

Refugee camp Northern GreeceOn Monday I flew out to Greece with Tim ahead of his visit to the camps in the North on Tuesday. Hours earlier UNHCR informed us they would no longer be able to facilitate the visit of a ‘high-profile’ individual given the security concerns after the clashes the day before. I tried desperately to reassure them that it was not exactly a ‘high profile’ visit, there would be no security team, huddle of staff and no media crew following him around– something that I don’t think they really believed.

So we flew into Greece with ‘fluid’ plans let’s say.

I spent Monday night manically emailing all the contacts I had working in the field to see if we could line up briefings for Tim the next day and had a surprising response. Everyone was very keen to meet Tim to tell him what they were doing and what they needed from the UK Government. One organisation who wasn’t even currently in Idomeni, the informal camp we visited on Tuesday morning, came over especially to give Tim and an overview of what was happening on the ground day in, day out.

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York Membery

In conversation with David Laws

By York Membery | Sun 17th April 2016 - 8:55 am

The former Liberal Democrat MP and government minister discusses his new book about the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government, says what he would do differently in hindsight, and looks into his crystal ball to see what the future holds for the party…

Your new book about the Coalition has certainly made a few waves following its Sunday newspaper serialisation – the right kind of waves?

I think inevitably there is a temptation in the press to shed light on things which are currently topical, such as Tory divisions on the referendum. But the primary reason I wrote the book was to give an accurate, historic account of the Coalition and a proper explanation of our part in it – and if the serialisation results in more people reading the book, so much the better.

It sounds like you’re, by and large, proud of what the Lib Dems achieved in government?

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