Category Archives: Op-eds

Caron Lindsay

LGBTI Scottish hustings reveals consensus on gender recognition law change

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd April 2016 - 3:15 pm

The five main Scottish Party leaders participated in a hustings organised by Stonewall Scotland, the Scottish Transgender Alliance, the Equality Network and LGBTI Youth Scotland. Those four organisations do ground-breaking work to support LGBTI people. Their role in providing positive and practical help can’t be under-estimated and they are helping to change the culture of the country.

If you are a young person struggling to come to terms with your sexuality or gender identity today, you can see that five party leaders, including the woman who runs the Scottish Government talk about how important it is that in school, at work, in society, you are free to live your life without discrimination. They agree that health services need to improve so that they meet your needs.  Compare and contrast to even 20 years ago, when Section 28 (or 2A as it was in Scotland) was in force. It’s such a powerful signal of acceptance for all leaders to participate in something like this. It will help those young people walk taller, with more confidence.

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Paul Walter

Enforced academisation plan is “bonkers”

By Paul Walter | Sun 3rd April 2016 - 12:14 pm

The chairman of the Conservative 1922 backbench committee and Tory councillors are reported to be angry with the government’s plan to force 17,000 schools in England to become academies by 2020.

Melinda Tilley, cabinet member for education in Oxfordshire said:

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Caron Lindsay

Willie Rennie: I want Scotland to be the best

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd April 2016 - 8:36 am

In today’s Sunday Herald, Willie Rennie talks to political editor Tom Gordon about the Scottish Liberal Democrat campaign. He sets out the key Liberal Democrat themes:

I want to get Scotland back up there, with an ambitious programme for investing in education with a penny on income tax.

Protecting our civil liberties, getting our police force to be the best again so that it’s got the confidence of the public but also police officers themselves.

On the environment, making sure we have a very strong programme on fracking and not cutting Air Passenger Duty . And on the health service, making sure mental health services get the support they need and recruiting more GPs. You couldn’t be more positive than that.

As Holyrood gains new tax powers, Lib Dem plans to increase income tax by a penny to invest in education is the most radical in a set of fairly modest measures put forward by all the parties. The SNP have always talked a good fight, but when they are actually given significant power, it’s like they’ve been given a Ferrari that they won’t take out of second gear. Willie talked about the SNP’s timidity:

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Caron Lindsay

Agenda 2020 Essay Competition #22: What it means to be a Liberal Democrat today

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 2nd April 2016 - 3:55 pm

The party ran an essay competition for members of the Liberal Democrats, to submit 1000 words on the theme “What it means to be a Liberal Democrat today.” The deadline for contributions was in November and the winner was announced at Spring Conference. If you would like us to publish your submission, send it to [email protected]. This one ended up on the shortlist, as Essay #9. It was mine. It dawned on me that I’d never actually published it on here and, as I’m currently en route for a week in the gorgeous Highlands, now seems to be a good time to let you read it. True to form I wrote it in about half an hour and submitted it about 10 minutes before the deadline.

The most important thing about being a Liberal Democrat today is that it is not a spectator sport. Liberalism is under threat from the politics of blame, fear and isolationism. Everyone who believes in freedom, social justice and the need to look after our planet needs to roll up their sleeves and live those values in every aspect of their lives. We need to find ever more creative and effective ways of countering the forces that threaten liberty, scapegoat groups of people and perpetuate inequality.

At the core of our belief, uniquely, is respect for the individual. Enforced or even encouraged conformity makes us weep. Our optimistic view of humanity drives us to create the conditions for all to thrive. While education is the cornerstone of human development, we understand it’s difficult to learn without food and shelter. We will stand up for the rights of those who don’t conform to society’s norms and will challenge attitudes which impose an oppressive expectation of behaviour. Unless it harms others, let it be.

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Iain Donaldson

Will North West Region choose to become a state party?

By Iain Donaldson | Sat 2nd April 2016 - 8:56 am

The Liberal Democrats are a growing party and week on week new colleagues join us in the battle to create a democratic and liberal nation in which success is founded on merit, policy is founded on evidence and citizens are treated equally.

This party has always championed the concept of subsidiarity, decisions being taken as close as possible to the people they affect. We were the party that pressed hardest for a North West Regional Parliament, and we are the party that in government delivered Devo-Manc and real prospect of Devo-Merseyside. It is not our preferred option of devolution and it does not devolve enough powers, but it is a beginning in the quest to achieve the Liberal Democrat ambition of a Federal United Kingdom within a Federal European Union.

The North West Region finds more General Election candidates than the Party in Scotland, the Party in Wales or the Party in any other region in England. We not only fill our own seats but we also export candidates to other regions and train candidates for other regions.

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Tobie Abel

Problems identified with enforcing prohibition of legal highs

By Tobie Abel | Fri 1st April 2016 - 1:45 pm

There was an excellent article on Victoria Derbyshire show yesterday about the dramas the legal highs legislation is going through now the Police are having to consider its enforcement.  The problems centre on the practical difficulties for police of proving that a substance is ‘psychoactive’, that is, that it actually gives people a high.  Whilst this might lead to a surreal career opportunity for someone, the very process of defining what a legal high is shines a wonderful light on the futility of prohibition, with legal experts straining to find a form of words which makes mind altering substances illegal whilst still allowing for the use of substances as diverse as Super Tennants and Incense used by the Church of England!

The obvious answer is of course to end prohibition, gradually, and start proper regulation and control.  Cannabis is an excellent first step, and it would be wise to make a success of that before moving on to other drugs, but the legal highs legislation is a wonderful opportunity to make the wider point whilst the country is listening.  The government aim is to avoid the risks to users health and well being from dangerous legal highs, which is a noble aim.  The entire thrust of the legislation however is now concentrated on giving police the powers to define legal highs in order to the shut down the shops selling them.  This only makes sense in a very narrow ‘technical’ manner.  If successful, the shops might be closed down, or maybe the sellers will either tweak their products to side-step the definition or simply move into the darker parts of the internet, which will only increase the risks to the end users. In the meantime the police have wasted money and man-power, the exchequer has raised not a single penny in taxation, and if anyone still believes that prohibition will stop the end users demand for these legal highs then they’re probably indulging in some mind altering substances of their own.  

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Tim Pickstone

Tim Farron kickstarts local election campaign with 48 hour tour of key battlegrounds

By Tim Pickstone | Thu 31st March 2016 - 1:26 pm

Tim Farron is today kick starting the party’s local election campaign, with a two day tour of key battlegrounds. He will be campaigning with activists in Sheffield, Hull, Newcastle, Southport and Liverpool over the next 48 hours.

In just five weeks’ time Liberal Democrat campaigners will be defending 351 council seats across much of England, and campaigning for gains in many areas.

Local elections are, of course, about local issues. What matters to local people and what we campaign on can be different from ward to ward, never mind in different parts of the country.

But there are some key themes that will resonate across all of us:

Public Services

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Adam Hanrahan

Doing more for refugees

By Adam Hanrahan | Thu 31st March 2016 - 11:58 am

Greek Statue of LibertyLast week, I was in Lesvos for a fieldclass. The module was ostensibly meant to focus on island economies, what issues does Lesvos’ economy face by virtue of being an island. On the second day of the class, it became clear that the real focus had to be about refugees not as statistics on a page. But as people.

We arrived in Lesvos on 19th March, the day the EU-Turkey deal came into effect. The next day, we went on a walk around Mitilini (the capital of Lesvos) when I took this photograph. It was meant to be a picture of the Greek Statue of Liberty, which celebrates their liberation from the Ottoman Empire. But in the bottom right hand corner of the picture, you will see a large ship, full of people waiting to leave.

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Michael Beckett

The vision for a Liberal Britain needs to be ours!

By Michael Beckett | Thu 31st March 2016 - 10:15 am

Your Liberal BritainAs a dyslexic, I am probably not the best person to write anything as others are often much more gifted and fluent with the written word than me. As someone educated at a comprehensive school, I’ve enjoyed the benefits of a fairly well rounded education. As a survivor of child sexual abuse, I have gone through some struggles, and I know I am not the only one who has had to overcome impediments in order to cope with life. I really appreciate those who, for whatever reason, have had barriers (that I know in a truly Liberal Britain wouldn’t be in their way), and have been able to overcome and unlock their potential.

So many people in the Liberal Democrats have stories of overcoming adversity and making a difference. I believe that this is why many of us are part of Team Lib Dem. A good start to making a Liberal Britain would be to celebrate our Lib Dems members’ achievements and then invest in helping them to advance to whatever their next level is. We are the party of education and our human capital is our most precious asset. We have often worked our volunteers hard at by-elections, but if we give more thought to investing in them, then we can expect to earn dividends of a more Liberal future.

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Caron Lindsay

Papers score Willie Rennie as debate winner

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 30th March 2016 - 2:30 pm

After the second televised Scotish Leaders’ debate of the election, three newspapers have judged Willie Rennie to be the winner. The Press and Journal, not known for its undying devotion to the Liberal Democrat cause, gave him and Labour’s Kezia Dugdale the winning 7/10 score, saying that he “spoke with a personal touch.”

The Scottish Daily Mail, similarly without a history of Lib Dem love, also gave him 7/10, but made him the outright winner.

The Courier gave him 8/10 and also called him the winner.

Here’s a summary of the media coverage:

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Dean Crofts

Welfare welfare welfare – part of the LibDem Fightback

By Dean Crofts | Tue 29th March 2016 - 11:03 am

The Conservatives are tearing themselves apart and showing their true colours on cuts for the disabled and people on low incomes.

Welfare policy and tax within the Liberal Democrats are the areas WE can define ourselves as a party.

Beveridge, always stated that a welfare system is required to protect people who need protection but must avoid idleness and encourage individuals to take up their responsibilities.

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John Pugh

John Pugh writes: Our vision for Education

By John Pugh | Mon 28th March 2016 - 4:16 pm

Teacher In Classroom

In 2010 Michael Gove, acting before the ink was dry on the Coalition agreement, rushed the Academies Bill through Parliament. Governors were free to turn their school into an Academy Trust, without canvassing parental or local opinion . This being a little high-handed, I moved an amendment during the Commons debate requiring school governors to consult parents – particularly important  as the government were pressing on with this radical change during the school holidays.

Gaining the support of Ed Balls, then Labour party Education spokesman, I pushed it to the vote and divided the House. We lost as most of my colleagues voted against and the Whips angrily  informed me that trying to amend government legislation, however crass, was not how coalition in the Commons was meant to work. Now in 2016 we have even school governors sidelined as the Academy bandwagon, courtesy of the Tories smashes through every barrier.

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John Grout

The #LibDemFightback: things to look for on May 5th

By John Grout | Mon 28th March 2016 - 2:03 pm

Eastleigh HQ leaflets

I’ve never been one for negativity.  I’m all for realism, however stark – provided that one is permitted to also consider how to change one’s circumstances if the current ones are dire.  This is one of the many reasons why the Lib Dems attracted me as a party – evidence-based policy, and a ‘well, let’s fix it’ attitude to tackling problems, offering solutions and alternatives instead of simply complaining.

The membership surge after last May’s elections, and the ensuing #LibDemFightback have been extremely heartening.  Outside the comfort zones of the Liberal Democrat community, the evidence for that fightback is there, but the new reality we face is that it is much harder to make ourselves heard than it was before last May.

So, I thought I’d try some evidence-gathering myself from council by-elections; you can see what I found here.

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Jonathan Ferguson

A longer read for the holiday weekend: The tangled path ahead for Liberal Democrat pacifists and non-Interventionists

By Jonathan Ferguson | Mon 28th March 2016 - 11:15 am

Lib Dem pacifists and non-interventionists will no doubt have had difficult adjusting to the decision to assist the government in supporting the coalition that is currently intervening in Syria and Iraq. Here, I will provide a few simple suggestions for how we can keep to our principles, but also avoid irresponsibly divisive behaviour.

  1. No Irresponsible Dissent

    2. Disagreeing with the decisions a party makes is perfectly reasonable. And criticism, per se, is not inadmissible. But criticism of one’s own party is not the same as criticism of individuals and organizations outside one’s own in-groups. Even if party loyalty is not an absolute, it is certainly a very weighty consideration.
    As with so many matters pertaining to liberalism, the true test of loyalty is not the issues where most members agree, but the issues where there is a fundamental split on an issue of grave ethical importance. The true test for us is for grassroots and top level Lib Dems to maintain unity, even when it is genuinely heartbreakingly painful to go on.

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Caron Lindsay

Willie Rennie’s week – a whirlwind start to the campaign featuring children, animals and the other party leaders

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 27th March 2016 - 4:55 pm

You can tell there’s an election on. This week, Willie Rennie has painted Easter eggs, sung songs with children at a nursery, visited a farmers’ market and fed seals.

Here’s a look at a whirlwind week in Scotland. Some of it is quite funny.

Monday

Willie was supposed to be going to Amazon in Dunfermline to discuss working practices and pay with employees. At the last minute, Amazon cancelled the meeting. Undeterred, Willie went anyway and recorded this video outside the depot:

Locked outToday, I was supposed to visit Amazon in Dunfermline.At the last minute, they cancelled the visit, because they were too embarrassed to let me see conditions in the center – and too embarrassed by the wages they pay their staff.Big companies like Amazon, that receive government grants, should pay their staff the living wage.That’s why we will never pay government grants to companies that don’t pay the living wageAgree? Add your name here: scotlibdems.org.uk/livingwage

Posted by Willie Rennie on Monday, 21 March 2016

Tuesday

He was on Scotland 2016 to talk about the SNP’s tax plans, or lack of them. In short, they say they can raise £1.2 billion without anyone paying any more tax. That seems to defy the laws of any sort of finance.

Last night I was on Scotland 2016 talking about the SNP’s tax plans and challenged John Swinney’s claims over what this would mean for public services. The truth is that their plans will not raise an extra penny to invest in schools and deliver the transformation in education that we need.

Posted by Willie Rennie on Wednesday, 23 March 2016

Wednesday

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Jonathan Coulter

Lib Dems and the Middle-East: are we prepared to address the obvious?

By Jonathan Coulter | Sat 26th March 2016 - 6:22 pm

I am a “Newbie-Oldbie” and joined the Party after the 2015 elections. With a lifelong interest in international relations and career with much overseas work, I particularly wanted to find out where the Party stood on Middle Eastern affairs.

I decided to attend the York conference which had interesting fringe meetings dealing with both Israel/Palestine and Syria. What really struck was the contrast between the two cases. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a relatively straightforward clash between a settler-colonial movement and indigenous people, but that of Syria is really complicated, with many moving parts­:

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William Dyer

Can the Lib Dems learn from the Church?

By William Dyer | Sat 26th March 2016 - 1:25 pm

One of the obligatory truths of being a university student is that you become nocturnal. Staying awake until the small hours of the morning and rising just in time to get to your next lecture, even if that lecture is in the afternoon. It was on one of these nocturnal sessions that led me to watch ‘The Battle for Christianity’, written and presented by Professor Robert Beckford currently Professor in theology at Canterbury Christ Church University. This documentary took a look at where the heartbeat of Christianity is today, debunking the myth that church is still uniformly done to the keys of an organ.

As a practicing Christian, I have often perched myself on an uncomfortable pew, listened to the preacher, sat back and thought to myself, ‘the church and the Lib Dems are incredibly similar.’ This thought has occurred to me far too many times for me not to share it. Using ‘The Battle for Christianity’ and my own experience within the Liberal Democrats, I will seek to explain how to church has changed over my (relatively short) lifetime and what the Lib Dems can learn from this.

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Lord William Wallace

Lord William Wallace writes… Fighting both the local elections and the EU referendum

By Lord William Wallace | Sat 26th March 2016 - 11:45 am

Whether we like it or not, the European Referendum campaign is already under way, threading in and out of the May elections. UKIP is hoping to make gains in the Welsh Assembly, and will be standing candidates in many local elections across England. Competing Leave campaigns fill the pages of the Mail and the Telegraph every day; leaflets are beginning to drop through letter boxes. LibDem activists who protest at the ‘distraction’ that the referendum campaign presents to local campaigning between now and May forget that voters don’t think about local and national politics in sharply-differentiated compartments. They also ignore the extent to which Conservative and UKIP candidates will be using nationalist and anti-EU themes in their pre-May campaigning.

Immigration is an issue that affects voters’ choices in local as well as national elections. Attitudes to asylum-seekers, and how far they should be welcomed into local communities, shape voting intentions. Internationally-minded people, generously-inclined towards outsiders and non-citizens, are likely to be natural Liberals – and potential members and activists. I recall canvassing on a former Council estate in Hull in 2004, with a Washington journalist who had asked to come with me to pick up attitudes towards the US after the Iraq invasion. The first person who opened his door to us started with complaining about cars parked on the grass verges; but 2 minutes later he had reached Iraq and how strongly opposed he was to British intervention alongside the Americans – without any prompting to move away from local issues.

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John Marriott

EU Referendum: Are you still undecided?

By John Marriott | Fri 25th March 2016 - 12:55 pm

Those wishing to stay in the EU will point to the economic benefits of membership of what is still the world’s largest single market in an increasingly dangerous world and the unnecessary risks of our coming out, while those opposed to continued membership will cite the need to take back sovereignty ceded gradually to Brussels over the past forty years and to regain control of our borders. Their view is that then we could strike deals with the rest of the world and have a much more money to spend as we would not be paying into the EU coffers.

Neither side of the argument is in any way watertight. The ‘Common Market’ which some of us voted to remain in over forty years ago was very different from what we have created today. There are serious questions about the democratic deficit and whether it is still fit for purpose. Despite delivering prosperity and a certain degree of stability for over half a century there are some serious question marks over its its long term future. The Euro has hardly been a massive success and the EU GDP is currently shrinking. Probably the single biggest crisis for us all both in and out of the EU is how it will deal with migration from the Middle East and Africa, which currently shows no sign of abating.

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Steve Walpole

Fighting the war and peace in Libya

By Steve Walpole | Fri 25th March 2016 - 11:25 am

MP Tom Brake asked for input on whether we should support a war to defeat Da’esh in Libya. I would support such a war but with these provisos.

First, we must have an unequivocal resolution from the UN Security Council supporting any such action. The paltry effort which usually emanates from the council is not enough. Then the UN in general must put its money where its mouth is, both in gold and in its personnel. Here I do not mean just the usual suspects – the US, Canada, the UK, other european countries and a few from further afield but as many countries as is possible to convince to do so. We cannot do it without the support of the Arab League, the African Union and countries like Russia, Pakistan and others We must also have invitation and confidence from the Libyan government.

Second, in order to properly play our part and still be able to defend ourselves adequately, we have to take our Armed Forces establishment to the levels of before the coalition. The equipment we supply to our troops must be correct for first the war fighting and then afterwards the peacekeeping. We have to learn from our experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, Urgent Operational Requirement notices were used to replace equipment which was failing our troops, or to fill a need existing equipment didn’t cover. This must not happen in Libya, our troops must have the best equipment on offerWe also have to have the willpower to keep the necessary troops in theatre to stop the debacle of our time in Helmand, when we were unable to hold the ground we patrolled and so took unnecessary casualties.

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George Kendall

We already have the Social Liberal Forum, so why do we need a Social Democrat group?

By George Kendall | Fri 25th March 2016 - 8:55 am

The Social Democrat Group has been formed to work with social democrats outside the party, to build links with them, and encourage some to join the Liberal Democrats.

As I handed out leaflets to promote our fringe meeting in York (see here for a recording) , I was asked why we needed another group when we already had the Social Liberal Forum (SLF). A year ago, I’d have agreed a new group wasn’t needed but the situation has changed.

When the party merged in 1988, there was a lot of controversy about the party’s name. It was vital the party move on from that debate, so many former members of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) agreed that the short name become the Liberal Democrats. I feared this might mean we would eventually be called Liberals, and the SDP heritage forgotten, but I believed it was necessary.

Sure enough, increasingly, we have been called Liberals. I haven’t liked it, but when there were so many other serious issues to grapple with, it didn’t seem a fight worth having.

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Federal Policy Committee meeting report

By Geoff Payne | Thu 24th March 2016 - 4:10 pm

This report concerns the meeting of the FPC that took place on 23rd March 2016. This was not the best-attended meeting of the cycle but there were some very interesting discussions nonetheless.

Consultation Session on Liberty and Security Working Group Paper

Brian Paddick attended to offer the committee an opportunity to comment on the consultation paper that was taken to Spring Conference by his working group. The consultation session at Spring Conference was standing room only and there were a number of views expressed in that meeting.

Brian explained that the Investigatory Powers Bill is starting its committee session in the Commons shortly. The committee was delighted to hear that the chair is to be Nadine Dorries MP.

Members of the committee made a number of points in response to the consultation. There were comments surrounding the rushed nature of the legislation, the need to keep the rhetoric on the proposed powers proportionate to the threat, the issues in relation to bulk retention and the privacy implications thereof. There were also comments about the need to ensure that legal professional privilege is inviolable,that there should be proper judicial oversight with submissions potentially being made by special advocates for the other side and the need to ensure that there are no hidden ‘back doors’ into encrypted data. Others made comments about identifying those things that we disagree with and those things where there is a debate to be had about the detail, for example judges versus minsters issuing authorisations. Others queried the effectiveness of the measures and made the point that the provisions may have a disproportionate effect on minority communities.

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Eden Watkins

Minority Rule: The power dynamic of social liberalism

By Eden Watkins | Thu 24th March 2016 - 1:27 pm

A few weeks ago now I started using a different name. First, I told my close friends and family about the change, then mentioned it in passing to acquaintances who asked how to address me, then I changed my Facebook, Twitter, email adress, all of my public facing profiles and simply began to expect people to use it as if it was the name I was baptised with. Yet curiously, even the most classically liberal of my classical liberal friends tolerated this action. Without consulting them, I made a decision about how they would use language, informed them of my choice and simply expected them to obey. Why did they accept this blatant disregard for their liberty to refer to me however they wish?

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Caron Lindsay

Sal Brinton on the change of attitude needed so that disabled people can start to live their lives

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 24th March 2016 - 12:26 pm

Sal Brinton was part of the House of Lords Committee which produced today’s report which reviewed the impact of the Equality Act 2010 on disabled people. Its conclusions were pretty damning. It’s worth setting out in full the five major themes that they identified:

First, in planning services and buildings, despite the fact that for twenty years the law has required anticipatory reasonable adjustment, the needs of disabled people still tend to be an afterthought. It is time to reverse this. We are all living longer, and medical advances are keeping us alive where in earlier years it would have failed to do so, but not necessarily in good health. We should from the outset plan for the inevitability of disability in everyone as they get older, as well as for those who suffer accidents and for all those other disabled people who are the subject of our inquiry.

Our second theme, closely related to the first, is the need to be proactive, rather than reactive or process driven. Many of those involved—Government departments, local authorities, the NHS, schools, courts, businesses, all of us—wait for problems to arise before, at best, attempting to remedy them. We should be planning so that disabled people can as far as possible avoid facing the problems in the first place.

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Alex Hardiman

Could “blockchain” technology transform public sector budgets?

By Alex Hardiman | Thu 24th March 2016 - 8:59 am

Surprisingly, perhaps the most interesting policy proposal in the race for Mayor of London has come from George Galloway, the controversial Respect candidate. Galloway’s economic guru, Max Keiser, has set out plans in a white paper and campaign video to place the entire mayoral budget on a blockchain. The policy has yet to attract much coverage but the idea could feasibly garner support from both the left and the libertarian right, and suggests an interesting direction for liberals at all levels of government.

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Tom Brake

Tom Brake MP writes: Do you support military intervention in Libya?

By Tom Brake | Wed 23rd March 2016 - 6:55 pm

Libya is in crisis. After the removal of the brutal dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has unfortunately disintegrated into a state in little more than name, without the stability and leadership of any government. The country is being held back and fragmented through tribal infighting and most worryingly Daesh has established strongholds around Libya, including the cities of Sirte and Sabratha and even in areas surrounding Benghazi.

It is reported that the vast majority of Daesh fighters based in Libya are not Libyan nationals and the movement does not have roots within the country. Daesh is deeply unpopular with Libyan citizens and they have struggled to motivate and indoctrinate Libyan citizens.

The American military are currently conducting airstrikes on Daesh targets within Libya. The Secretary of State for Defence has personally authorised the use of RAF Lakenheath to allow these airstrikes to be launched from within the United Kingdom. The UK Government has been coy on what role, if any, our military will take to support the US military in their fight against Daesh in Libya, however the likelihood of the UK Government committing to military intervention in Libya is increasing.

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John Marriott

The Government finally “nationalises” all our schools

By John Marriott | Wed 23rd March 2016 - 5:05 pm

So the government has finally decided to nationalise our nation’s schools. At least we now know where we stand. So, if an academy fails under the new system, the buck goes straight to the Secretary of State and not, as now, to the Local Education Authority (which, I assume will simply disappear).

When are we going to stop messing about with education? We are dealing with human beings, not building motor cars, for goodness sake. I note that the current secretary, like most of her cabinet colleagues, was educated privately. In the independent sector, business acumen and PR are part of the DNA of its member schools. “Sell yourself or go under”- and a few actually do!

Some have you may be aware of the goings on at an academy chain in Lincoln where the former Executive Head and his Director of Finance recently went on trial and, to many local people’s amazement, were acquitted.  Only this week it was announced that another secondary academy, the one I taught at for 23 years, is having to face redundancies because of some of its grants being cut. Now it is planned also to remove parent representatives from governing bodies, what chance will the local community have to influence their schools?

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John Grout

The Nitty-Gritty: Evidence of the #LibDemFightback

By John Grout | Wed 23rd March 2016 - 10:54 am

Lib Dems love facts and figures – and evidence-based policy – so I thought I’d do some digging of my own to see how the #LibDemFightback is looking in the run-up to May’s elections.  While we only have opinion polls to guide us for the devolved assembly elections, there have been dozens of council by-elections already in 2016.

This year, up to February 19th, Britain Elects  calculated that Lib Dems stood in 17 first and second-tier council by-elections across the country where the party had contested the seat last time around – fewer than the Conservatives or Labour (26 and 21 respectively), but half again more than UKIP (11).  However we were the only ones with a positive average swing – +4.2%, versus average swings of -0.97% for Labour, -1.26% for the Conservatives, and a wince-inducing -8.06% for UKIP.

Since then, by my count, we have stood candidates in ten out of thirteen by-elections, gaining two, holding two, losing none.  Seven were in wards where Lib Dems stood last time – these averaged a +11.73% swing (the only fall was in Whissendine (Rutland), where we were the prohibitive winners with 65.1% of the vote, despite a -0.7% swing).  In the three where we stood anew, we netted 4% in Bloomfield (Blackpool), 8.4% in Ashby-de-la-Launde (North Kesteven), and a stonking 46.5% in Alderholt (East Dorset) – an 8-vote near-miss to the Tories at the first attempt.

What does this tell us?  Well, three things leap out at me.

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Henry Foulds

Disability is nothing to hide, so let’s not act like it is

By Henry Foulds | Wed 23rd March 2016 - 8:46 am

Henry and Natasha campaignAs a candidate for my home town in May’s local elections, I’ve helped residents fight for repairs to roads, I’ve lobbied for more action on dog mess and I’ve campaigned to prevent closures to residential homes.

As a blind candidate for my home town in May’s local elections, I’ve done all this while helping changing a few attitudes along the way. I spoke here about a mother who was delighted to see someone like her visually impaired daughter standing for election but a lot more has happened too – I’ve even received messages from young disabled people saying that me standing is a confidence boost for them.

I’m sure many readers will agree with me that standing for election is a mix of emotions – there are ups and there are downs.

But after the diversity debate, there’s a particular part of being a blind candidate that needs to be tackled head on – and so I turn to Lib Dem Voice.

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Helen Flynn

What is Nicky Morgan doing to school governance?

By Helen Flynn | Tue 22nd March 2016 - 5:40 pm

I’d love to know who is advising the Tories and Nicky Morgan with respect to much of what is contained in the education white paper.

What I sense overall is panic. They are terrified that we will not have the skilled individuals to make us globally competitive. So they are embarking on a series of measures that they think will give more flexibility in the education system and modernize it in terms of structure and accountability, on the one hand, but rigidly defining what children should learn, particularly at primary level, and sticking with archaic, sudden death-style …

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