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Category Archives: Op-eds

Doing more for refugees

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

Last 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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Tagged refugee crisis | 5 Comments

The vision for a Liberal Britain needs to be ours!

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

As 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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Tagged your liberal britain | 5 Comments

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:

The verdict on #ScotDebates is in. @willie_rennie had so much fun he wants another debate https://t.co/9mHboQ1gVW pic.twitter.com/gks5rfJn3o

— Scot Lib Dems (@scotlibdems) March 30, 2016

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Tagged featured, Scotland, scottish leaders' debates and willie rennie | 10 Comments

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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36 Comments

John Pugh writes: Our vision for Education

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

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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Tagged academies, education and featured | 19 Comments

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

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

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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Tagged #libdemfightback and local elections | 7 Comments

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

Embed from Getty Images

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.

No Irresponsible Dissent

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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Tagged liberal interventionism, non-interventionism and pacifist | 13 Comments

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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Tagged scottish parliament elections 2016 and willie rennie | 3 Comments

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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Tagged middle east | 41 Comments

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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Tagged church of england and liberal democrats | 22 Comments

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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Tagged elections may 2016 and eu referendum | 11 Comments

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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Tagged eu and eu referendum | 45 Comments

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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Tagged foreign affairs, libya and military | 14 Comments

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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Tagged committee reports, federal policy committee and internal party communication | 5 Comments

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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5 Comments

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

Embed from Getty Images

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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Also posted in News | Tagged disability, equality, house of lords and sal brinton | 3 Comments

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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8 Comments

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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Tagged featured, foreign affairs and libya | 68 Comments

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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Tagged academies, education and england | 32 Comments

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 19^th, 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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Tagged local government by-elections | 22 Comments

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

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

As 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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Tagged behaviour which needs to be challenged, disability, diversity and ignorance | 24 Comments

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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Tagged academies | 18 Comments

Kerslake report: some strikingly Liberal Democrat conclusions

By Jim Wallace | Tue 22nd March 2016 - 3:38 pm

One of our proudest achievements as a party is the success of our unwavering advocacy of devolution to Scotland and Wales. Without us, and without the pressure of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, it is likely Tony Blair would have abandoned the project. And some of our party’s first successes in government were as part of the partnership agreement with Labour in Holyrood, where I was proud to lead the first Scottish Executive alongside the late Donald Dewar.

Political developments in Scotland since might lead some to say that devolution has been dangerous for the Union. I disagree. It is bad enough …

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3 Comments

Keep London in Europe

By Jonathan Hunt | Tue 22nd March 2016 - 2:33 pm

Almost three-quarters (73 per cent) of Londoners polled recently want Britain to remain in the EU. It is the highest number among all UK regions polled. In addition to the normal electorate, who will vote in the referendum on 23 June, some 500,000 EU citizens will also have a vote in the GLA / Mayoral elections on 5 May.

In the capital, mark the lack of enthusiasm in the Labour Party for the cause of staying IN, mirrored by its mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan. Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate for mayor is described as a Euro-sceptic, and Boris Johnson …

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12 Comments

What is the Osborne/IDS row all about?

By Joe Otten | Tue 22nd March 2016 - 12:51 pm

As some commentators are expressing incredulity that Iain Duncan Smith has found himself a conscience over welfare cuts for disabled people, not long after signing off those very same cuts, or are attibuting these events to a phoney war over Brexit, I think there is a more interesting possibility.

If we take IDS position at face value, this reveals something about how government works – or about how it did work under the coalition and is now liable to go wrong.

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3 Comments

Liberalism vs. authoritarianism in the debate over cannabis

By Ben Lawrie | Mon 21st March 2016 - 7:51 pm

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In York, conference voted to create a regulatory framework for cannabis. This is a move that I wholeheartedly support and I’d like to draw on the example of Colorado to explain why.

On the 1^st of January 2014, Colorado fully legalised cannabis for recreational purposes. Within four months they raised $10 million dollars in tax revenue which they invested in education and infrastructure.

Crime dropped by 10% and violent crime dropped by 5%. The marijuana industry also created thousands of jobs and by October unemployment was at its lowest since 2008.

Colorado also legalised marijuana for medicinal purposes meaning that people suffering from ailments such as chronic pain and cancer could effectively alleviate their pain without fear of prosecution or risking their freedom.

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Tagged cannabis and liberal democrat spring conference 2016 | 32 Comments

Five years into a revolution betrayed – Liberal Democrats need to build links with Syrians

By Jonathan Brown | Mon 21st March 2016 - 5:28 pm

Note, this post contains descriptions of torture that some readers may find distressing.

Five years ago, on Friday 18th March 2011, Syrian civilians in the southern town of Deraa took to the streets to demand freedom, dignity and a fair future. The regime of Bashar al-Assad and his coterie responded immediately with deadly force, and over the following weeks more and more protesters were shot down, more and more mourners were murdered while attending funerals and more and more innocent Syrians were rounded up for torture – in many cases never to be seen again.

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Tagged syria | 8 Comments

Avoiding the Tory disaster in Education

By Jamie Dalzell | Mon 21st March 2016 - 3:47 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Last week, as a governor, I spent my morning at my local primary school completing an annual return and reviewing our budget for the next financial year (as an accountant, I get all the fun jobs). The atmosphere was a strange one. As a school that has successfully fought off an attempt at academy conversion, the staff were deeply upset about the grand announcement from George Osborne, that all schools will become academies by 2020. Meanwhile, our excellent Local Education Authority advisor was clearly and understandably out of sorts having just been made effectively redundant.

The policy being pushed forward by the government is going to be a disaster for primary schools, and everyone working in the sector knows this. Quite simply, the size of primary schools prevents them from having the necessary infrastructure to make an academy structure feasible. The destruction of the Local Education Authority support network will do irreparable damage to our capacity to support primary leaders in their incredibly varied roles.

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Tagged academies and george osborne | 20 Comments

Agenda 2020 Essay #21: What it means to be a Liberal Democrat today

By Denis Rixson | Mon 21st March 2016 - 2:23 pm

Editor’s Note: The party has been running 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].

Some things do not change. Liberalism is always, everywhere, about freedom. Historically this was freedom from – from political or religious authority; from the king, the church, or foreign power. In the west many such freedoms have been won, or rewon. But, though freer, are we free from want and sickness, custom and convention, from the pressure of the norm, from worry, fear and hate, from ignorance and prejudice? There are many battles still to be fought.

The test for a liberal is always freedom for an individual, not a sect or class, nor group nor gender – but freedom for the person, however they term themselves. We judge our freedoms by ever-changing benchmarks; as each summit is reached we see distant horizons, further freedoms beckon. Gaining political freedom, we seek social, sexual, economic freedoms now. We are ambitious for our selves. We treasure personal liberties. Being free, growing in freedom, is a process, not an achievement; a journey, not an ending.

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Tagged agenda 2020 essay competition and liberalism | Leave a comment

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