Category Archives: Op-eds

Stuart Bonar

The No campaign’s grim blueprint for a Britain out of Europe

By Stuart Bonar | Tue 18th August 2015 - 1:30 pm

European FlagLeaving the European Union would be a big deal. It would mean slamming on the brakes, crunching the gears and setting out on a new course, and, in the run-up to the EU referendum, the No campaign will argue that we should do just that. They want us to break with the past and follow a new path. So, what would a No victory mean for the future direction of Britain?

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Joanne Ferguson

How to Beat the SNP

By Joanne Ferguson | Tue 18th August 2015 - 10:33 am

 

I don’t know when the SNP will be toppled, but I am confident it will happen eventually. I also seriously doubt people will flock en masse back to Labour, a party that took Scotland for granted for years and, in my opinion, doesn’t deserve the return of unwavering support. There will be a gap that we could perceivably fill, but we have to earn the right of that space, not make Labour’s mistake of taking it as a given.

Here are some things I have been trying to keep in mind over the past few months talking to SNP voters:

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Paul Walter

The stars and stripes flying in Havana top a list of significant achievements by Barack Obama

By Paul Walter | Sun 16th August 2015 - 3:00 pm

I was toddling around in nappies when the US flag was taken down in Havana in January 1961. The decision to break off diplomatic relations between the USA and Cuba was taken a day earlier by President Eisenhower. So started a period of frozen relationships between the two neighbours which included years of trade embargoes.

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Also posted in News | 26 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Politics and gardening

By Lord William Wallace | Sat 15th August 2015 - 11:45 am

Garden by Emma Nagle (etcher) Flickr CCLPolitics and gardening don’t mix. You need to pay most attention to flowers and vegetables in March and April, when campaigning for the May elections fills your evenings. In June and July you should be watering your vegetables more evenings than not, instead of going out to parish council meetings or encouraging new members. Only in August, when it’s too late to do much more than harvest what came up nevertheless, can the activist give the garden or allotment the attention it needs.

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Also posted in Humour | Tagged | 12 Comments
Shane Burke

Liberal Democrats fight for the world’s poorest

By Shane Burke | Fri 14th August 2015 - 3:40 pm

Women in the Abu Shouk camp for displaced people, north Darfur, Sudan - Some rights reserved by DFID - UK Department for International DevelopmentFor many Liberal Democrat members the heavy election defeat was disheartening. However, the party can take strength from their contribution to governing the United Kingdom from 2010-2015.

One such example is the achievement made in the area of overseas aid. What were the achievements? When the Liberal Democrats were in government the UK reached the 0.7% figure of all national income, that should go towards foreign aid, for the first time ever; then enshrined the commitment in law.

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David Thorpe

The economic case is limited, but liberals should support Sunday trading anyway

By David Thorpe | Fri 14th August 2015 - 11:35 am

 

As the years of my youth sweep by me, increasingly I am drawn towards the comfort blanket of nostalgia, but when it comes to public policy making, such vanities must be cast aside and answers framed by the chill of the contemporary, and the pragmatic must instead rule the roost.

It is this increase reluctance to fight the dying of the light and instead embrace maturity that has caused me to pause, and embrace the idea of Sunday trading.

For personal and professional reasons I tend to view all policy decisions though the prism of their economic efficacy , rather than the madrigal of sentimentality that sometimes frames Liberal Democrat policy making.

But despite there being negligible economic advantage to the UK from a relaxation of the Sunday trading laws, I believe the Liberal approach is to favour a change in the law.

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David Faggiani

Liberal heroes in pop culture Part 3: Mary Poppins

By David Faggiani | Thu 13th August 2015 - 4:00 pm

This is the third of a series of pieces that we will publish over the summer. Please do nominate further entries in the comments! This one was suggested by Cathy Thompson! See here for a link to Parts 1 and 2.

This latest liberal icon is different in several ways from our prior picks. She isn’t a military captain or commander, but she’s arguably a greater source of authority than that. She’s an educator. And she’s practically perfect, in every way. She is the one and only Mary Poppins.

As portrayed by Julie Andrews in the classic film, Mary Poppins is a shamanistic governess who enters the staid world of 1910 London, and turns it upside down. The political scene of 1910 is worth several articles in itself. For one thing, the plot of Mary Poppins takes place during a Hung Parliament, and just after a legitimate constitutional crisis. Of course, none of this is mentioned. But we do get the Suffragettes. Maybe Disney thought kids weren’t that interested in Herbert Asquith. Shame on them…

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Ian Hurdley

No replacement of Trident

By Ian Hurdley | Wed 12th August 2015 - 4:21 pm

 

Members and supporters of the  Libdems against Trident group have proposed a motion calling for the like-for-like replacement of Trident to be scrapped.  The motion will be debated at Bournemouth in September. I am not able to get to Bournemouth, but the motion has my full support.

This does not mean that I am anti-nuclear; I am not. What I am is anti-waste on a nuclear scale, which is what I believe the replacement of Trident to be. It takes us back to 1930s thinking which saw Britain prepare to fight the previous war, not the next one or the one after that. The days of Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Cold War are behind us thankfully. The Soviet Union has collapsed and whatever its posturing, Russia is a much weaker opponent. China is no threat to the UK and the nuclear powers outside Europe have regional not global ambitions.

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Henry Fisher

On drugs, protests and direct action

By Henry Fisher | Wed 12th August 2015 - 3:05 pm

 

On 1st August I attended my first ever protest outside the houses of Parliament. There was no kettling, shouting, or even any placards. Instead, there were balloons, balloons filled with nitrous oxide – laughing gas. This was the protest against the Psychoactive Substances Bill, organised by The Psychedelic Society to highlight the idiocy of the Bill, both in its principle and in its wording.

I could fill this entire post, and a few more, with criticisms of the Bill itself, from its illiberal premise, to its impact on medical research, to its utter unworkability, but I won’t.

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Antony Hook

Lib Dems are the natural party for Eastern Europeans in Britain

By Antony Hook | Wed 12th August 2015 - 1:34 pm

Britain’s always changing. That is one of the best things about our country.

Liberal Democrats, and before us Whigs and Liberals, have long supported outsiders seeking to make this place their home.

Whigs supported Huguenots – religious refugees from France. In the nineteenth century Liberals supported equality for Jews and Catholics, who were denied basic civil rights.

It is well documented in history that the arrival of new people has made our country greater. Immigrants have brought new talents and energy.

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On liberalism and NIMBYism

By Max Parish | Wed 12th August 2015 - 10:26 am

 

I was delighted to see Tim Farron taking on housing as a personal campaigning priority. In order to do this effectively, though, he will sooner or later need to take on a culture of expedient NIMBYism in his own party.

Local campaigns against new development are often highly effective in garnering media attention and engaging people who might join or support the party. At times, they are also the right thing to do for an area. At other times, however, they can be opportunistic and exaggerated: in a recent example I came across, a local party deliberately misinterpreted a proposal in a non-party, think-tank style report on the housing crisis for a concrete, Conservative plan to pave over a large swathe of the district. Local campaigns which proudly ‘see off’ developers may leave a legacy of usable sites remaining derelict for years, and seek to spin this as some sort of victory over vested interests, when in fact it is anything but.

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James Harper

The Conservatives and asylum seekers

By James Harper | Tue 11th August 2015 - 3:27 pm

Anti-immigrant feeling is one of the oldest prejudices in the book. We have rightly come to expect to hear it with wearying regularity from the right-wing press and certain parts of the Conservative party.  But there is something different about the latest round of comments and policy proposals from Theresa May and co – something darker and altogether more troubling.

Until now, even the Conservatives, who have attacked ‘economic’ migrants (including students) with every kind of financial and regulatory penalty imaginable since 2010, have maintained an attitude of respect towards asylum seekers and refugees. ‘Britain has a proud and historic tradition …

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Andrew Chamberlain

Liberal Democrats should commit to abolition of all global borders

By Andrew Chamberlain | Tue 11th August 2015 - 10:25 am

The upcoming referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union is both an opportunity and a threat for the Liberal Democrats.  The party has an opportunity to define itself clearly as the most forward-thinking, internationalist force in British politics.  However, if it fails to do this then it risks looking like an irrelevant, also-ran defender of the status quo.

The 2014 European election campaign shows the threat that the party faces.  It was insufficient to simply argue that the European Union must be retained because it preserves jobs and helps our on-going effort to prevent climate change.  If we want to galvanise support then we have to offer a vision of the future, not simply a defence of the present.

Similarly, the Better Together campaign in the Scottish independence referendum ended up creating the impression in far too many voters’ minds that the Liberal Democrats and the other unionist parties were simply interested in defending the UK as it exists now.  That vote might have been won, but it was won in a fashion that did the victorious parties no good at all in Scotland.

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged and | 60 Comments

British Politics is in a constant battle with the youth and the Lib Dems should be on the frontline

By Jamie Dwan | Mon 10th August 2015 - 4:11 pm

 

As a party we have, despite recent results, a lot going for us. We have thousands of enthusiastic members, a huge amount of dedication and heaps of potential. Potential is the key word. The key values that the Liberal Democrats stand for are: liberalism, freedom and equality for all. These match very closely with what today’s young believe. So why in the last election did UKIP (10%) and the Greens (9%) perform better with the youth vote than the Lib Dems (8%)?

We are living in a liberal age. People have internationalist, democratic and progressive views. Yet the Lib Dems achieved only eight MPs in May. This is clear evidence that we have failed to spread the message of progressive liberalism to young voters. We need to accept as a party that we are no longer the campaigning powerhouse that we once were. The policies are there, the framework is there, the people are there but the clear concise message to young people is not.

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Judy Abel

The Lib Dems: We need to fight back for the many, not just the few

By Judy Abel | Mon 10th August 2015 - 2:49 pm

 

I am really pleased that Tim Farron won the leadership election, because of his energy, commitment and strong sense of social justice – and I am really impressed that Tim went to Calais to see for himself what is going on there – but I do have some concerns about where the Party may be heading. Of course, it is early days, but over the summer the coverage of the Lib Dems in the media has been mostly around ‘fringe’ issues such as Tim’s comments about the SNP and his faith perspective. That may fit in nicely with the media’s ‘Lib Dem agenda’, but we shouldn’t be boxed in as a minority party that has little to say to the wider electorate. Having just read Tim’s policy priorities in Caron Linday’s article posted a few days ago, with the exception of housing, I remain concerned.

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Stuart Bonar

Daily Mail exposes scandal that isn’t

By Stuart Bonar | Mon 10th August 2015 - 1:24 pm

Daily MailIf you’ve glanced at the front page of the Daily Mail today, you’ll have seen that those scheming, sneaky foreigners are at it again. This time, according to the Daily Mail, “foreigners charge NHS for care in their own country.”

The full report is here, but let me summarise it for you. A Hungarian journalist living in Hungary – and working for the paper – lied and used a forged tenancy agreement to obtain a UK-issued European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), to which she had no legal entitlement. An EHIC allows residents of certain European countries to obtain emergency medical treatment when visiting other European countries. The journalist then visited health providers in Hungary to confirm that they accepted the EHIC. She states in the paper that she did not use the card to obtain any care, but if she had done so the authorities in Hungary would have been entitled to claim the cost of that care back from the UK Government.

Cue outrage at soft touch Britain, etc.

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Cara Jenkinson

Working together in North London

By Cara Jenkinson | Mon 10th August 2015 - 12:01 pm

haringey lib dems

The campaign in Hornsey and Wood Green this year to keep the wonderful Lynne Featherstone as MP was the biggest we in Haringey have ever fought.  One of the really gratifying aspects of the campaign, despite the disappointing results was the way in which other North London parties came to help. Whether it was knocking on doors, writing blue envelopes or running fundraisers for Lynne, the support from our neighbouring parties was fantastic.

After Lynne’s defeat came the depressing task of closing down the constituency office and laying off staff. The local party looked hard at party finances and decided that the only way forward was for us to pool resources with other parties nearby. So we started discussions with Camden and Islington about sharing office space and an organiser. Three months later we have a new office, smaller but better located than our previous office and a new organiser who is shared between the three local parties.

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Bryn Jones

Let’s defend the underdog – Channel 4

By Bryn Jones | Mon 10th August 2015 - 10:16 am

Underdog

If you’ve tuned your telly to Channel 4 recently, there’s a good chance you would have seen a dog in a suit, interviewing Channel 4 stars about the virtues of the channel. You can see the ‘Underdog’ advert here.

The underdog hears from the likes of Adam Hills and Jon Snow about how Channel 4 is able to offer alternative views and take risks, because of its not-for-profit status as a publically owned station.

So why does Channel 4 feel the need to advertise to justify its own existence?

The privatisation of Channel 4 is a genuine worry under a Tory government. The current culture secretary is right-winger John Whittingdale, who actually proposed privatising the channel as far back as 1996 with an amendment to the broadcasting bill. Reporting of Whittingdale’s appointment as culture secretary has focused on what this might mean for the BBC, but it is likely Channel 4 is firmly in his crosshairs too.

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Caron Lindsay

Email glitch highlights need for better integration of party databases

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 7th August 2015 - 1:25 pm

I’ve had something to say about the content of certain emails which have come out from party HQ.  On Wednesday, I couldn’t fault the content of the email that came out from none other than party legend Sir Simon Hughes to new members:

It is my pleasure to invite you to your first Liberal Democrat Conference as a member of the Liberal Democrats.

This year’s Autumn Conference in Bournemouth (19th – 23rd September) is the first big opportunity for our party to gather together in large numbers following the general election and an opportunity to meet with like-minded people to discuss and debate ideas about the party’s direction in the future.

All those attending conference for the first time can register at a special discounted rate of £72 for the whole week or, if you prefer, you can register for just the weekend or for just one day – it’s entirely up to you. I would be really pleased, Galen, if you could join me and other Liberal Democrats at our September Conference this year.

Already more members have registered to attend this Conference than our Autumn Conference last year – a really encouraging increase. Members want to meet the new leader and hear directly from Tim Farron about his plans and ideas for the years ahead.

To make sure you have a really good time at Conference we’ve put together a number of ‘new representative’ events, giving you the chance to meet me and other new representatives. We have also put together a schedule of recommended events to show you what Conference is like which we’ll make available shortly.

The problem was that much mirth was caused by the fact that this was received by quite a lot of people who were not what you would call new members. One friend who joined the party the year I was born received it, as did one of our most prolific commenters on this site. A quick head count of all the people I know who got it reveals several hundred years of Liberal Democrat membership between them. 

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Ruth Dombey

Cllr Ruth Dombey writes: In memory of David MacDonald

By Ruth Dombey | Fri 7th August 2015 - 11:55 am

Where to begin?

A young man of 28 – with his whole life ahead of him – has had that life cruelly and unexpectedly snatched away. It’s hard to find the right words.

Dave MacDonald was truly special. As the emails and Facebook comments pour in from across the country, we all remember his kindness, his generosity and his boundless enthusiasm.

He was a tireless campaigner and set himself the highest standards.The trouble is he then expected the same from everyone else – and would never take no for an answer. I had barely had time to make myself a cup of tea during the recent Grove byelection Polling Day, take two gulps and he was pushing me out the door again.

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David Faggiani

Liberal heroes in pop culture Part 2: Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation

By David Faggiani | Thu 6th August 2015 - 11:55 am

This is the second of what will hopefully be a series of light-hearted pieces that we will publish over the summer. Please do nominate further entries in the comments! This one was suggested by Josh Kirk on Facebook!  For a link to Part 1, click here.

It is the 24th Century. Humans have explored nearly a quarter of the Galaxy. Energy and resources are almost limitless, all people are free to explore their full intellectual and emotional potential, and, for some reason, the French are now from Yorkshire. Not only that, but they drink Earl Grey (“hot”), play the flute, read detective stories, and make sexy baldness look effortless. Or maybe that’s just this particular Frenchman. I give you Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the USS Enterprise, NCC 1701-D.

Picard is a decisive, brilliant commander, whose own emotional reserve and professional detachment from his crew does not stop him from drawing on their suggestions and stratagems to help do the right thing, crack the problem of the week, and make the Federation a little wiser, and better. Aided by his Commander William Riker (“Number One”), Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge, Counsellor Deanna Troi and many others, the Enterprise crew is an example of collective discipline combined with useful, diverse ideological debate, and respectful divergence of opinion. The model, perhaps, for an effective liberal Party?   

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Caron Lindsay

“Opportunity, community, sustainability and an open mind.” Willie Rennie’s liberal values for today’s Scotland

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 5th August 2015 - 2:15 pm

On Sunday night, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie made a speech in St John’s Church in Edinburgh. He talked about his vision of liberalism and what it means for today’s world. He looked at the consistency of liberal values in practice through the ages and quoted Charles Kennedy on finding the way forward from the history books.

There’s nothing particularly new in there, and I’m not sure about this “militant for the reasonable person” phrase. Reasonable, is, after all, a very subjective phrase. I’m sure Nigel Farage thinks he’s being reasonable, but generally liberals find what he says deeply unpleasant. Nor am I sure about militant. Maybe that’s because I remember the Labour lefties in the 1980s. We liberals are passionate, certainly, but militant? I’m not so sure. I prefer his summary of liberal values – opportunity, community, sustainability and an open mind. Those are very consistent themes for him and he’s been talking about them ever since he became leader. What he now needs to do is show how these values underpin all our policy ideas.

I also liked the bit where he praised the Church’s strong support for equal marriage, saying that they had shown that tolerance, faith and love were “comfortable allies.”

He also talks about how he and Tim Farron come from similar backgrounds and have similar perspectives on liberalism. He ended with a list of things that his small team had done. What he needs to add when he does that is to say how these have actually persuaded or provoked changes in SNP government policy. It’s not a bad record for a small team of 5 MSPs out of 129.

Here’s his speech in full. What do you think?

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A smaller state is a liberal ideal to be proud of – the question is how you get there

By Max Parish | Wed 5th August 2015 - 12:54 pm

 

New leader, new members, wins in the Lords – the fightback is on. But Liberal Democrats shouldn’t ditch the crucial debate about what the party is for.

A values-driven blueprint for opposition is essential, but doesn’t answer the killer question. If the Lib Dems didn’t exist, why invent them? The party cannot simply become a vessel for virtue signalling. I believe that a bold, liberal vision should rest on a progressive case for a smaller central state.

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Keith Aspden

How should we approach the devolution debate? A perspective from York

By Keith Aspden | Wed 5th August 2015 - 11:45 am

York Liberal Democrat Council GroupSince the elections in May Liberal Democrats in York have been faced with ongoing questions surrounding devolution. The recent Summer Budget announcements on devolution pose us with many challenges however they also gives us a welcome opportunity to ensure that decisions can be taken closer to the communities they affect, rather than in Whitehall.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority has paved the way for devolution in England with Nick Clegg announcing their City Deal in March 2012. They will hold the first elections for a directly elected metro-mayor in 2017. Authorities across the country and in Yorkshire now have the opportunity to follow this path and submit a bid to gain similar access to devolved budgets and power.

Yorkshire is an enormous geographical area which already has two Combined Authorities and three Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs) in its boundaries. The number of possible deals is almost endless. There are debates raging about which towns and cities should and should not be included in any proposals to government.

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Anton Georgiou

Let’s appeal to lovers of a big- hearted Britain and win the immigration argument.
 


By Anton Georgiou | Wed 5th August 2015 - 10:22 am

I felt compelled to put into words my thoughts on the situation in Calais following David Cameron’s intervention, describing those seeking refuge in the United Kingdom, as ‘swarming’ over the border.

To invoke the language of the BNP, UKIP, the National Front, and the English Defence League is irresponsible and inflammatory. Similar language was used by the Daily Mail in the 1930s when describing Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.

My family are refugees; my grandparents and their three young daughters were forced to flee their homes following the invasion of Cyprus in 1974. This issue is therefore very close to my heart. The UK gave refuge to my family in the 1970s, and for this they will be eternally grateful. They became part of London’s mosaic society. As with many other immigrants at the time, they were welcomed by both the government and society. Immigrants were seen as beneficial to the country, they brought with them skills, and a willingness to work long hard hours to better their lives. They saw the UK as a safe haven, and respected the native population. At the time the British people, by and large welcomed them, and accepted that immigrants were good for both society and the economy.

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Ed Fordham

Good luck, Jeremy

By Ed Fordham | Tue 4th August 2015 - 7:27 pm

Okay so here is the rub (possibly more than one): I massively feel sorry for friends, colleagues, opponents in the Labour Party who are faced with the very real election of Jeremy Corbyn. I genuinely believe that his election and his pitch would be a retrograde step for any party. An equivalent would be Nigel Farage tipped to win Leader of the Conservatives… which in the current climate Farage might want to think about.

But one of the jibes I hear most from Labour folk, and it is Labour folk, is that Liberals (and they can’t get the name right and choose not to) are too pure, to small and too broad stroke in our politics.
And yet, if I understand their concern over Corbyn-mania correctly it’s that he will confine them to unelectability for a generation.  And so they demonstrate their flaw. They quite like Corbyn – but they can’t vote for him because he won’t give them power. They might agree with him, but dare not.  That they can’t leave Labour and create either a new party or join with another non-Tory alternative because they are Labour folk – that is what I loathe about their politics. That their tribal instincts are so deep that they can’t be honest and advocate fair votes for local government, let alone our national parliament – even though they have allowed a series of different voting and counting systems across the UK.
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Elwyn Watkins

Asylum: Let’s look at the numbers

By Elwyn Watkins | Tue 4th August 2015 - 2:32 pm

I thought that I would do a little bit of number crunching on the asylum seeker figures for 2014. I have given the link below. It needs a little bit of expertise to wade through the data, but I would be more than happy to help out if someone is interested.

Firstly, let’s be clear about the overall numbers. In 2014 just under 25 thousand people claimed asylum in the UK. In context this represents about 4% of people coming to our country. But actually the real number that should be used is the number of people who are granted asylum. Of the nearly 25,000 that claimed asylum in 2014 only 7,270 were granted asylum. Hence just over 1% of the immigrants to the UK in 2014 were people that we have granted asylum to.

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Steve Walpole

Avoiding a ‘Munich moment’

By Steve Walpole | Tue 4th August 2015 - 12:43 pm

 

In October of 2010, the coalition government published its Strategic Defence Review into the future of the UK’s armed forces. It spoke of the need to counter the threat from an enemy which fought an asymmetric campaign, citing the growth of Al Qaeda and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In doing so it ignored the writings of David Kilcullen, perhaps the foremost expert in asymmetric warfare and the hard won experience of our Armed Forces fighting a 30 year conflict in Northern Ireland. Instead it advocated reducing its greatest asset for fighting an asymmetric war, the army, down to 80,000 from its then establishment of 102,000. This loss of 20% of its fighting force was supposed to be offset by raising the countries reserve forces up to 30,0000. Needless to say the MoD is having great difficulty in recruiting reservists.

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Daisy Cooper MP

What if your boss could check your internet browsing history? 

By Daisy Cooper MP | Tue 4th August 2015 - 10:17 am

What if your boss could check your internet browsing history?

What if you became a criminal just because you attended a rock concert?

And what if a supermarket knew you were pregnant before you did (actually a true story)? And they could sell that information on?

Most people don’t know that all three things are entirely possible thanks to the Conservative’s Snoopers Charter, the SNP’s use of facial recognition software and the power of supermarkets to track your changing shopping habits against your personal data.

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Mike Biden

“An Engaged and Constructive” policy for Europe

By Mike Biden | Mon 3rd August 2015 - 11:12 am

 

Austin Rathe has launched a consultation of Lib Dem members on our views regarding the European Union and the forth-coming referendum. I was quick to reply.  As a long term supporter of the European Union and its aims and having played an active role in the European election campaign last year I have definite views.

The referendum is not simply about what we like and don’t like about the EU, but more fundamentally about what sort of country we want to be and what role we seek to play in world affairs. A recent study rated Britain as the world’s leader in “soft power”, a result that supports the view that Britain is the most influential country in the world.

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