Category Archives: Op-eds

Michal Siewniak

What next for the Catholic Church?

By Michal Siewniak | Fri 9th May 2025 - 5:53 pm

Although I am neither a theologian nor an expert on the teaching of the Church, I found the moment of choosing the next Pope deeply important. I would never shy away from the fact that faith plays an important part in my life. No, I am not better than anyone else because I believe. However, I find it extremely helpful to know that I have, to put it simply in lay terms, someone I can spiritually lean on or rely on.

I am also aware that, as we live in a more secularised society, religion to some is becoming less relevant. However, I am personally convinced that the faith communities continue to make such a positive and meaningful impact on our communities.

Now, back to the Vatican! Cardinal Robert Prevost becomes 267th Pontiff, as the first American Pope! He has chosen to be known as Leo XIV. Born in Chicago, he spent many years in South America, in particular in Peru. He actually holds dual citizenship. Some argue that he is young (69) and inexperienced as he was nominated by Pope Francis as a Cardinal only 2 years ago. He comes from the Augustinian order. Some say that he has a joyful, outgoing character and a very good sense of humour.

The Catholic Church is at a big crossroad. The tensions between the liberal and more traditional wings of the Church have deepened. I am delighted that he already emphasised the importance of building bridges and creating opportunities for dialogue. I am pleased that, although he is described as a moderate, he might continue and enhance the work that has been undertaken by his predecessor, Pope Francis.

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Andy Daer

When will we impose sanctions on Israel ?

By Andy Daer | Fri 9th May 2025 - 10:03 am

For years, many of us have been asking what it would take for the British government to officially recognise Palestine – in order to delegitimise the Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, and usher in the end of the territorial ambitions of Israel’s far-right.  Well, now we know it’s not Israel bombing Gaza flat in a lethal campaign involving deliberately targeting schools, universities and hospitals, killing tens of thousands of civilians including humanitarian workers, ignoring and disrespecting the UN and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and adding starvation as a war tactic.  The current British government has responded to the Gaza war with the usual evasions and denials.

And yet it was Great Britain which told the League of Nations when we took responsibility for Palestine after World War I that delivering a fair outcome for all the peoples of Mandate Palestine was “a sacred duty for Civilisation”.  Although the passage of time has dimmed that memory for us, it understandably hasn’t dimmed it for the generations of Palestinians who have lived under what Amnesty International calls a system of “oppression” and “apartheid”.  Israeli historian Ilan Pappe long ago called the West Bank an open prison, and Gaza a closed prison.

The key sticking point now is whether or not the destruction of Gaza and its people constitutes genocide.  If the UK government admits that Israel’s actions in Gaza seem like genocide it will be obliged, under the Genocide Convention, to act to stop it, and because of that, Foreign Secretary David Lammy has stood up in the House of Commons and said categorically that he does not recognise what is happening as genocide.

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Mark Corner

Electoral Reform must be a priority now

By Mark Corner | Thu 8th May 2025 - 11:55 am

When the Labour Party won its ‘loveless landslide’ in 2024, its interest in electoral reform became conveniently weaker. By the time that Labour had won a huge majority at the last election, The Guardian’s Peter Walker was reporting that ‘the leadership could barely be less interested’ in electoral reform, even though there was and still is significant support for it within the Labour Party. 

What about one year on, as the dust settles on the recent local elections? The results show that five parties are now competing and winning significant support. Will this lead to a different attitude towards electoral reform on the part of the Labour leadership? 

Probably not. There are already three arguments being used to suggest that nothing much has changed. The first is that Reform will have responsibility now. They’ll have to run some councils. People will then see how useless they are. I have no truck with Reform’s policies, but this is not a case of the lunatics taking over the asylum. The idea that Reform are no more than a bunch of nutters and bigots, often with a dodgy criminal past, will not do. It is more likely that as with other extreme right-wing parties, for instance in France and Germany, their influence will linger, and they will continue to have a base of support. The right approach is to take them seriously while being firmly opposed to their policies. And that means not having an electoral system where they might be able to take complete control with no more than one-third of the vote.

The second argument (perhaps unsurprisingly) looks away from our European neighbours to go further afield. See what’s happened in Canada and Australia, it says. Centre-left parties were written off there, but look at Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese, who both won recent elections. Yet these elections took place in very different circumstances. Carney’s victory, for instance, involved challenging Trump and being prepared to retaliate where appropriate. Not exactly the way Starmer deals with Trump.

 The third argument used to suggest that it will all soon be ‘business as usual’ again is that these five parties, like globules in a 1970s lava lamp, will end up recombining, Reform joining up with the Tories, perhaps the Greens with Labour or the Lib Dems. I think this is very unlikely. The five parties are now well-organised throughout the country and will not hesitate to put up their own candidates in future elections. I would also argue that there are still significant differences of policy between them.

 For these three reasons, I fear that the Labour leadership will not take electoral reform as seriously as it should. Might it change its mind as we get closer to 2029 (as it has before on this issue)? It might, but even if it does change its mind, will it legislate to reform the voting system? Or will it end up promising to have another Commission looking yet again into all the alternatives and making recommendations to be implemented after the next election – which may become a classic case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted?

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David Vigar

How do we deal with Reform?

By David Vigar | Thu 8th May 2025 - 9:30 am

Canvassing last month in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, we came across a middle-aged woman in her garden. “I’ve had enough of all of you. I’m voting Reform”, she said.

Our candidate, Julie, calmly explained that it was a local election and a chance to vote for someone who would work hard for residents on planning, potholes, housing and other issues. Reform didn’t have much to say about those things. And Julie also observed that while she was out meeting people, the Reform candidate was nowhere to be seen.       

A week or so later, when we were visiting postal voters, I knocked on the same woman’s door, inevitably with some trepidation. But it was good news. She’d thought about what we had said. She hadn’t been canvassed by Reform. And she voted for Julie because she’d met her and liked her.

So that’s one way to win over a potential Reform voter. And there are others. For some, a reminder that the Lib Dems are the party of carers, with a leader who is himself a carer, provides a positive alternative. For others, pointing out that Farage thinks Putin is the most admirable world leader prompts a rethink. 

So the rise of Reform creates both an opportunity and a challenge. As Ed Davey has pointed out, we’re seeing a surge in people joining the party because they are worried by Reform and believe we stand for true British values – compassion, tolerance, environmentalism and internationalism. That’s the opportunity.

But it should not stop there. We need to step up to the challenge of stemming the rise of Reform. As we found on the doorsteps, not all Reform voters are nasty people. There are some outright racists out there, and some very angry characters, but also a lot of decent folk who feel left behind, don’t know much about politics and are attracted by simple but misleading messages. I’m sure others met voters who were choosing between Reform and us. The risk is that more of this group will fall for the Farage narrative. Our task is to figure out what will appeal just as powerfully to the positive side of their nature. As the examples above show, it can be done. It works. Julie is now a County Councillor.

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Pia Corbishley

The success of Reform in recent elections should be a wake-up call

By Pia Corbishley | Wed 7th May 2025 - 2:00 pm

How many times do we have to read the headline: “Migrants killed”, to realise that there is a tragedy in the world, a problem far greater than immigrants entering England. From the safety of our own homes it may feel difficult to empathise with people in such desperate situations. However, it is essential for the sake of humanity that we learn to understand and educate ourselves on the lives of immigrants before voting for a party branded as being anti-immigration.

Unfortunately, due to the current geopolitical climate, there are millions of people who have been displaced as a result of the violence and threat to their own lives. These innocent people have to make treacherous journeys, risking their own lives during it. Once they arrive in a safer country they often face racism, xenophobia and discrimination. Having just won the by-election and 677 council seats out of around 1600 up for election, there is now a huge risk of a growing support for Reform.

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Mo Waqas

National Insurance exemption in UK-India deal is a gift to populism

By Mo Waqas | Wed 7th May 2025 - 9:30 am

The recently finalised UK-India Free Trade Agreement is being sold as a triumph —promising billions in new trade and a “win-win” for both economies. But beneath the headlines lies a provision that risks inflaming division, undermining fairness, and feeding the very populism we as Liberal Democrats stand against.

Under this agreement, Indian workers on temporary assignment in the UK will be exempt from paying National Insurance contributions for up to three years. Crucially, their employers will also be exempt. In practical terms, this means a British worker earning £15 an hour, and their employer, will both be paying into our social safety net—the NHS, pensions, sick pay—while an Indian worker earning the same wage and their employer will not. That is not just a loophole; it’s a loaded gun in the hands of populists.

Unfairness that will not go unnoticed

Let’s be frank: this arrangement is grossly unfair. It creates a two-tier workforce, and British workers will feel it acutely. We already ask our citizens to contribute through National Insurance so we can collectively fund services like the NHS and social care. If they see others working here, earning the same wage, using the same roads, hospitals, and infrastructure—yet contributing nothing to the pot—they will rightly question why.

And it won’t take long for populist voices to weaponise this. “Foreign workers don’t pay into the system.” “British jobs undercut.” This isn’t dog-whistle politics—it’s a klaxon, and the government is ringing it. The Liberal Democrats have long championed internationalism, but we cannot let that blind us to how policies land on the ground in working-class communities.

This isn’t about being anti-India. It’s about ensuring that when you live and work her, whether for three months or three year, you contribute like everyone else. Anything less breaks the basic contract of fairness that holds our society together.

A direct undercut to British workers

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Victor Chamberlain

Planning reform must empower communities – not sideline them

By Victor Chamberlain | Wed 7th May 2025 - 7:30 am

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill could have been an opportunity to empower communities, speed up sustainable development, and unlock infrastructure delivery. Instead, the government has chosen a path that centralises power in Whitehall, undermines local decision-making, and erodes trust in the planning system.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Clause 46, which would allow ministers to impose a national scheme of delegation, stripping elected councillors of their role in deciding planning applications. In doing so, it introduces a sweeping ministerial power that amounts to a dangerous democratic deficit.

Liberal Democrats stand firmly against this kind of centralising power grab. We believe planning decisions should be made by local people, with local knowledge, for the benefit of local communities. Clause 46 does the opposite – delegating decisions away from elected councillors and allowing the Secretary of State to override local planning committees, rewrite council constitutions, and reduce the size of planning committees by ministerial decree. This is yet another “Henry VIII clause” – giving central government the power to silence local voices at the stroke of a pen.

As Deputy Chair of the Local Infrastructure and Net Zero Board, I’ve written a detailed briefing for our parliamentarians to ensure that the voice of Liberal Democrat councillors and councils is heard loud and clear during this Bill’s passage. I’m proud that Gideon Amos MP, the Liberal Democrats’ Spokesperson for Housing and Planning, and Olly Glover MP are leading the charge in the Bill Committee with clarity and purpose.

As Gideon said:

We want to see a Bill about communities leading in planning and development. Instead, the Bill is part of a growing trend that is taking powers away from local communities… Taking decisions out of councillors’ hands is taking decisions out of the hands of local people… removing people and their councillors from the system does not mean faster planning, but less democratic planning.

He’s absolutely right. The evidence is clear: councils approve more than 85% of planning applications – some studies say it’s closer to 90%. Councillors are not blocking development; they’re facilitating it. And they’re doing so with community consent and local insight – the very things that make planning sustainable and defensible.

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Samuel Jackson

Reform UK: Setting up themselves and their constituents for failure

By Samuel Jackson | Tue 6th May 2025 - 10:00 am

Embed from Getty Images

In this year’s local elections, we had a great showing. The Liberal Democrats gained 163 councillors, majority control of three county councils and now lead in five hung councils. The Conservatives and Labour were both clearly rebuked for their track records. Is it any wonder that a running theme of the election coverage has been the ‘death of two-party politics’?

However, we cannot deny that was a great night for Reform UK. They have won the concurrent Runcorn and Helsby by-election, and gained 677 new councillors, control of ten councils, and the newly created mayoralties of Hull and East Yorkshire, and Greater Lincolnshire. And they are now the leading party in three hung councils.

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Tom Reeve

Beating Reform will require a new economic settlement for the working class 

By Tom Reeve | Sun 4th May 2025 - 12:30 pm

Reform is on the rise. Led by the garrulous Farage, it is hoovering up votes across the country by doing one simple thing: articulating the grievances of the working classes. 

While it is generally recognised that populism rarely leads to stable government, there is a growing realisation that Reform has a point. It’s not easy, but if we look beyond their abhorrent views on race, religion and equality, they are articulating an economic critique. 

Okay, characterising it as a ‘critique’ is a bit of a stretch – it lacks intellectual rigour or depth – but Farage’s economic cri de coeur resonates with the working classes because it speaks to their lived experience. 

Reform can make the running on this because they are the only ones singing the song. 

Although GDP in Western countries has grown hugely since the 1990s, median wages have remained largely static. That’s the kind of dry economic statistic that is almost guaranteed to put half your audience to sleep while inciting the other half to argue vehemently over its causes. However, the reality of what that means is clear to see. The rich have got richer – much richer – while the poor squeak by. 

We shouldn’t be surprised to see that this leads to political unrest, but some people try to dismiss this as the politics of envy. After all, the reasoning goes, many people may be poor in relative terms, but in absolute terms, they are much richer than previous generations. So what are they complaining about? 

We also live in an unprecedented era of social mobility, in which numerous people have ascended the economic ladder, with some of them becoming fabulously wealthy. It’s self-evident, is it not, that people who don’t get ahead only have themselves to blame. 

Where the politics of envy narrative fails is in ignoring a fundamental facet of human nature, the sense of fairness. Fairness is intrinsic to human psychology – it even appears to be inherent to the psychology of other social animals such as wolves and other animals. We ignore this primal instinct at our peril. 

Is it fair that some people can afford to own several nice homes when many others cannot afford to own even one basic one? If the purpose of an economy is to allocate resources to the members of society, is it fair that some people spend lavishly on luxuries while many others watch every penny? Can we say that we live in a fair society when the poorest among us struggle to put food on the table for their families, or – that awful phrase – have to choose between eating and heating? 

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Caron Lindsay

Ed: Lib Dems on track to overtake the Conservatives at the next General Election

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 4th May 2025 - 10:27 am

Ed Davey was on Laura Kuenssberg for the second Sunday in a row to talk about the local election results. It was a good interview but I have one rather large note for him at the end.

Kuenssberg challenged him on the fact that our vote share didn’t move? Shouldn’t you have been hoovering up in share of the vote, she asked. Here is how the interview unfolded:

We had a fantastic night, Laura, winning a majority in Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire, becoming the largest party in and almost winning in Gloucestershire, Devon, Hertfordshire and Wiltshire so we were very pleased with our results. We are now the second party in local government, overtaking the Conservatives and I think we are on track to overtake the Conservatives at the next General Election so whichever way you look at it, it was a great result for the Liberal Democrats.

LK You are in the leafiest place I have ever seen, you are very obviously targeting leafy Middle England but does that mean that you have given up on other parts of the country

Ed:

I think Middle England is the rest of the country. It is the whole country. It is the vast majority of people who want common sense, practical policies to fix the things that need fixing whether it’s potholes or social care.

We are now the official opposition in County Durham. It was the Conservatives and Labour who lost seats to Reform there. We actually gained seats and we are going to hold Reform to account. In Hull and East Riding we didn’t quite get over the line there but it was a brilliant team performance. In next year’s local elections in many of those northern cities I expect us to do well. Actually it was in the south where Reform got beaten, the Liberal Democrats holding back Reform in places like Buckinghamshire.

I am really proud. I think this is a massive step forward for the Liberal Democrats. I think that it’s our community politics, our focus on the issues that matter to people is coming through. I’m proud that the Liberal Democrats are taking on Reform and I think it could work if we can show that their support for people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk actually isn’t very popular. Look what Mark Carney did in Canada, defeating a hard right opponent by standing up for patriotism for Canada. Anthony Albanese in Australia defeating the hard right candidate who liked Trump.

If we can expose the fact that Nigel Farage is so keen on Donald Trump that will mean that Liberal Democrats will come through. I have been very disappointed in the fact that Labour and Conservatives have almost copied Reform and moved towards Reform. I think we should call them out for what they stand for.

LK Nigel Farage said he took his inspiration from the Liberal Democrats, would you take any inspiration from him.

Ed

He clearly doesn’t share our values and we don’t share his. I think what’s going to happen now that they have to run Councils, we will see what they do. In the election, Farage said they would cut finding for special educational needs and disabled children and young people. I think families across the country will be really worried by that.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 4th May 2025 - 8:30 am

Kashmir

Donald Trump says that the Kashmir problem goes back thousands of years and is very complicated, which is his way of saying that he doesn’t want to be involved.

To be honest we can talk about the roots of Hinduism, the invasion of the Mughals, the British Empire, and etcetera. But in reality the Kashmir problem dates back to the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent.

At that time the semi-autonomous kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir was given the option to join India or Pakistan. But there was a snag. The monarch—Maharaja Hari Singh was a Hindu while the majority of the population was Muslim.

Initially, the Maharaja tried to solve the problem by opting for independence. However, in October 1947, tribal militias from Pakistan invaded Kashmir. This prompted the Maharaja to seek military assistance from India. In return, he signed the Instrument of Accession, formally agreeing to join India. The result was the First Indo-Pakistani War (1947–1948).

The conflict ended with a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in 1949, which established a Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir between Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistani-administered Azad Kashmir. The UN also called for a plebiscite to allow the people of Kashmir to choose between India and Pakistan. This never happened.

Kashmir has remained a flashpoint ever since. India and Pakistan have fought additional wars over the region—in 1965 and 1999—and tensions persist with frequent military skirmishes along the LoC.

In addition to the international dimension, Kashmir also faces internal unrest. From 1989 onward, a violent separatist insurgency emerged in Indian-administered Kashmir, fuelled by dissatisfaction with Indian rule, human rights abuses, and support for militants from across the border. This insurgency has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and widespread suffering among civilians.

Then in August 2019, Narendra Modi’s Indian government, revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which had granted Jammu and Kashmir a special autonomous status. This was followed by a heavy military crackdown, internet shutdowns, and the detention of local leaders.

Just to make things more complicated, China also holds a portion of the region (Aksai Chin) and has its own disputes with India and tends to side with Pakistan.

This is all very troubling, but what makes it more so is the nuclear dimension. In 1998 both countries started building nuclear arsenals and they both have about 170 nuclear warheads each. India has a No First Use policy. Pakistan does not. This presumably means that if Pakistan is faced what it regarded as an existential threat then it would feel justified in the nuclear option.

Following the recent murder of 26 Indian tourists in Kashmir, India has threatened to scupper the 1960 Indus Water Treaty and cut Pakistan off from water which it needs to survive. This has been interpreted as an existential threat.

To complicate matters further, Israel—with its estimated 160 nuclear warheads—is paranoid about the “Islamic bomb” represented by Pakistan. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu also has close relations with India’s Narendra Modi.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump is not known for ethnical behaviour. In fact, he may be one of the most corrupt presidents in American history. And American politics have been known for their corruption throughout the country’s nearly 250-year history.

In his first term, President Trump was attacked for promoting his newly-acquired International Hotel in Washington DC as THE Washington hostelry. His message was clear to foreign and domestic visitors: stay at my hotel and I will looking kindly on you. Guess where visitors stayed?

Whenever Trump upped sticks and moved to the Florida White House at Mar-a-Lago (which was quite often) he took with him a large retinue of Secret Service agents and White House staff. He charged the government for the privilege. This earned him an estimated $2 million net in his first four years. The practice continued when he was out of office and in his second term.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat:100 Days

By Tom Arms | Sat 3rd May 2025 - 10:13 am

The first 100 days of the Trump Administration has been among the most consequential in American history. Consequential does not necessarily mean good. In this case, it means very, very bad.

Let’s start with the elusive issue of reputation. In the eyes of the rest of the world, America’s reputation is probably the worst it has ever been.

It took years of painstaking work to establish the trust and relationships that made America the leader of the Free World. It has had its problems, but generally speaking, post-war America is the closest the world has ever had to a “shining city on the hill.” Poof! Gone in 100 days or less.

Make America Great Again has become America first then we win, you lose zero-sum international politics.

The United States has gone from supporting democracies around the world to cosying up to dictatorships. It has threatened to withdraw support from its allies and threatened them with annexation.

The United States was the chief architect of the post-war rules-based international order which has resulted in one of the most sustained periods of world peace and economic growth in human history. Trump has turned his back on the rule of law in favour of might is right at both the international and domestic level.

He appears willing to turn away from Ukraine and towards rule-breaking Russia because—as he told Volodomyr Zelensky—the Ukrainian president doesn’t “have the cards.”

Domestically, he is bypassing Congress to rule by decree with a flurry of Executive Orders. These EOs have thrown tens of thousands of federal workers out of work. They have led to major cutbacks at the National Institute of Health, university research programmes and the Centre for Disease Control which will cost umpteen lives in America and the world.

His row with the universities has damaged academic freedom and the well-deserved reputation for excellence in America’s higher education.

He has called into question America’s much-admired system of checks and balances not only by bypassing Congress but by also ignoring the courts who have criticised him for arresting and deporting people without due process of law. Freedom of association, the press and speech (all of which are enshrined in the First Amendment) mean nothing to Trump.

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Caron Lindsay

Some thoughts on the brilliant Lib Dem results in the local elections

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 3rd May 2025 - 7:30 am

As usual, the Liberal Democrats are not getting the coverage we deserve for some pretty spectacular election results. The BBC spent most of its coverage talking up Reform, Lewis Goodall on the News Agents spent a disproportionate amount of time on Farage and not enough on Ed Davey. Everyone picked up Farage going on about what he wanted to do in the future,  but paid little attention to the other stars of yesterday, us.  I mean, we won more councillors than the Conservatives and Labour and beat the Tories into fourth place in terms of vote share.

It is, frankly, horrifying, to see Reform in charge of so many crucial services and I fear for people from marginalised communities who need the support that the Council provides.  Our goal for the future must be to offer a kinder and more compassionate and practical alternative to their divisive rhetoric.

And while the BBC showed acres of Farage and his fireworks in Kent, Ed’s sundown speech in Oxfordshire got a few frames. But, don’t worry, you can watch it here:

We are on track to overtake the Conservatives at the next General Election, he said, adding that the Liberal Democrats will stand up for true British values to counteract the rise of populists like Nigel Farage.

Ed wasn’t the only leader to comment on our success. Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

It’s clear from the spectacular results that the Liberal Democrats are putting up that not only is the Conservative Party toast but if you want to stop Reform we are the party you should put your trust in.

It takes a bit of cheek for John Swinney to talk about populism, deception and false hope. When is he going to cut class sizes, dual the A9 and abolish the council tax like his party have been promising for almost twenty years?

People deserve better. With a year to go until the Scottish Parliament election, my party will be setting out plans to give people swift access to local healthcare and set their communities back on the right track.

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Jim Coupland

Good… but still a long way to go

By Jim Coupland | Fri 2nd May 2025 - 8:11 pm

Yesterday Jim Coupland offered us his election predictions. Here is his follow-up.

Well, it’s done. We’ve seen the overall results of the local elections and what a brilliant result for us Liberal Democrats! Congratulations to all the fantastic Liberal candidates and members for their hard work and success on the campaign. As I said in my prior prediction, Reform made massive gains, and we made considerable gains too. Conservatives are the biggest losers and the public’s current view of the Labour government has been delivered… and they’re not happy.

Of course, these are only the local elections and the big one (the general election) is a few years away. However, these are important elections for three reasons:

  1. People mainly vote on national issues

Did Reform make all these gains because they had detailed policy on bins, parks and potholes? Of course not. The public, unfortunately, feel that Reform has the right answers to the national issues and are dissatisfied with the status quo. People, whether you define their votes as a protest vote or not, want change.

  1. Local issues

At the same time, local issues matter. These elections are a form of direct democracy that affect our lives. We Liberal Democrats are rightly impassioned by local politics. We wear Kemi Badenoch’s church roof insult as a badge of pride, the more Liberal councillors the better.

  1. Two party politics is over

The calls for proportional representation in Westminster should and will be bigger. People are fed up with Labour and the Tories, they want something different.

Going Forward

So, going forward, what do all these results mean? Where should we go as a party from this? Yes, we had a successful campaign, and we made net gains but where do we want to be after the next general election? We know that with first past the post, we can’t win the general election. That is a fantastical thought. I feel that in the long run, what we should aim for is another coalition. That would mean we, at least, have roughly the same number of MPs in the commons and rely on Labour making enough losses where they would need us to stay in Downing Street.

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Jim Coupland

My predictions for the local elections

By Jim Coupland | Thu 1st May 2025 - 10:30 pm

I’m challenging myself with a prediction of how the local elections will pan out. Admittedly, I don’t quite have the time or energy to go through each ward of each council up for election in England and estimate who I think will win. However, what I will predict is the general overview of each party and how they will fair nationally. Do they make net gains or losses? What will be the spin on their reflections of their results? Will it have a big impact in British politics over the coming year? For clarity, to make a good prediction, I will have to take my Liberal hat off and look at everything objectively.

Gains and Losses

Overall, the party I believe will have the most gains are… Reform UK. Why? Unfortunately, there are two reasons. Firstly, the national polls. Reform UK have been polling at virtual tiebreak with Labour, with the latest MRP poll showing that Reform would be the largest party in Westminster if a general election were to be held today. It is quite unusual to see a party (other than Labour or the Conservatives) be near the lead in the polls. Also, with the huge membership drive in their ranks, they have an impassioned base with many candidates and members on their campaign trail. 

Of course, there is the debate over whether national polls matter in local elections. Don’t voters vote on local issues? I’m sure there are and I’m sure that it will have some effect in certain areas. When the Tories held onto Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the by-election a couple of years ago, it did buck the national trend in the polls. However, in my opinion, the majority will vote on national issues. When they see the party logos on the ballot paper, they don’t think about potholes or bins (unless you’re in Birmingham), but they think of what they see of the parties today. They see what the government are doing, and the people are not happy.

Secondly, Reform UK in numbers, have nothing to lose. The seats are from the 2021 cycle, which the Conservatives overwhelmingly won. They are taking the right-wing vote, and they will make many gains in these circumstances.

Moving onto the Liberal Democrats, I think we will make some modest net gains. Aiming to be the party of ‘Middle England’ is a smart strategy where we can gain some further ground from the Tories. So far, a smooth campaign from Sir Ed Davey and avoiding any major blunders, I think it will be a successful campaign… fingers crossed!

Labour will make losses. Unlike 2021, incumbent governments have struggled in local elections and Labour has certainly lost support since the election win last year. There is plenty of fertile ground for Reform UK to make gains from Labour too, especially areas like Runcorn and Helsby where a by-election is taking place.

The Conservatives best brace for themselves. I am sure Kemi Badenoch is having nightmares right now, picturing the scenes of despair. Crestfallen colleagues in parliament, Tory councillors losing their jobs and the headlines. Oh, the headlines… I bet Robert Jenrick and James Cleverly are rubbing their hands in glee. With the Tories currently losing to Reform UK in the polls, hardly being mentioned in the news (for now) shows that the country do see Reform being the ‘real’ opposition to Labour and voters have not yet forgiven the Tories on their record in government and there are plenty of seats to lose. This election could not have come at a worse time for her.

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Gordon Lishman

Risk, Strategy and Reform UK

By Gordon Lishman | Thu 1st May 2025 - 12:50 pm

Our Party is working on strategy for the next Parliament and, I hope, beyond.

A key part of business strategy is assessment of risk.  A major element in risk is competition – what will competitors do and what risks does that create for us?  Strategy must understand context, including the competitive environment.  Our market-place is politics, including the structure and future of the party political structure in Britain.  There are differences in Scotland, but the broad analysis holds true.

The biggest changes in the political environment are:

  • The demise of the two-party system. Both traditional leading parties have lost their sense of identity, which is based on a twentieth-century division between capital and labour. A sentence which had most resonance in my Council Chamber is quoting a Labour member that “this isn’t the party I joined and even less that my parents joined”; some Conservatives accept that it also applies to them.  Voters have more important things on their minds than outdated stereotypes.
  • First Past the Post, where 30% of the vote can now mean victory.
  • The challenges: the lost credibility of underlying economic analysis of the last 45 years; unwillingness to set out the Liberal case and the facts on immigration; the breakdown of consensus about the state and welfare; climate change; the global threat of nationalist populism.

These factors are playing out throughout the democratic world.

What are the risks of a strategy based on the assumption of Reform and Conservatives continuing to fight each other with more or less equal shares of the vote, so allowing Liberal Democrats to come through the middle?

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Nick Baird

A future written by Generative AI looks miserable

By Nick Baird | Thu 1st May 2025 - 9:44 am

I’ll start by thanking Hugh Andrew for his excellent LDV post from the 23rd April – ‘A thief in the night’, which I completely agree with. I’m old enough to remember the Napster file-sharing era when ordinary people started downloading music over the internet for free. This mightily offended big business in the form of the music industry who, pretending to care about the artists they profited from, declared this was stealing and so successfully lobbied Governments to change the law and make it easier for them to prosecute file-sharers.

Fast-forward 20 years, and now other big companies are downloading creative works over the internet for free, often created by ordinary people who are aspiring or actual artists, writers or musicians. This is also stealing, but those big companies are once again lobbying Governments to change the law, weaken copyright in their favour and legitimise what they are already doing anyway. And Governments, forever in thrall to the lure of the ‘next big thing’ are listening to them.

Where does this leave creatives such as artists, musicians, writers and academics? An aspiring musician might now put their work on Spotify, who will typically pay the princely sum of $0.004 per stream. A new author self-publishing on Amazon might earn a couple of quid per Kindle download of their book. A talented or lucky few may create a buzz, go viral or build a following that allows them to make a living doing what they love. However the vast majority will earn peanuts, but at least their work is out there to take pride in and get credit for, and those that enjoy it will know the creator’s name.

Or so we thought. Now their creative work could be swallowed by a machine and regurgitated without credit by anyone who can type the right prompt into an AI model.

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Mike Bell

Council Tax is broken – It’s time for Liberal Democrats to lead reform

By Mike Bell | Wed 30th April 2025 - 4:25 pm

Council tax is one of the most outdated and unfair taxes in the UK today — and yet it continues to underpin the finances of every local authority in the country.

The system we use now was introduced over 30 years ago, and it still relies on property valuations from 1991. In that time, the housing market has transformed, but the tax bands have not. As a result, households are paying wildly different amounts of tax for properties of similar value today, simply because their homes were assessed differently decades ago. That’s not fair, and it’s certainly not progressive.

In places like North Somerset, we see the effects every day. A modest three-bedroom home in Weston-super-Mare might be paying more council tax than a far more valuable property in central London, simply because of the quirks of the old banding system (and then compounded by the government funding formulas). Families on modest incomes, pensioners, and young renters bear a disproportionate share of the burden, while those in high-value homes often pay less, relatively speaking.

Even the Institute for Fiscal Studies has called council tax “outdated and arbitrary”. And they’re right. Research shows that the poorest households pay a higher percentage of their income in council tax than the wealthiest. That’s not just bad economics — it’s bad ethics.

The Lyons Review, commissioned by the last Labour government in 2007, highlighted many of these problems and suggested a path forward. It called for regular property revaluations, new council tax bands to reflect modern housing values, and greater flexibility for councils to shape local taxation in ways that match their communities. Yet nearly two decades later, little has changed.

It’s time to revisit those ideas — and go further.

What would real reform look like? Here are steps we should be seriously considering:

  1. A full revaluation of properties across England and Wales, bringing council tax bands in line with today’s market values.
  2. The introduction of new, higher bands for very expensive homes, so that the wealthiest households contribute a fairer share.
  3. A shift towards an income-based local tax, such as a local income tax, which the Liberal Democrats have long supported.
  4. Greater devolution of fiscal powers to local councils, so they can tailor fairer funding systems to their communities.
  5. Stronger protections for those on low incomes, including national support for relief schemes and discounts.

And this brings me to one of the most glaring inconsistencies in the current system: Council Tax Support (CTS) or council tax benefit in the old terminology.

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Mark Pack

Mark Pack’s report to Members

By Mark Pack | Wed 30th April 2025 - 2:23 pm

Thank you and good luck

Due to an impressive collective effort, our candidate tally for this May’s elections is our best showing since May 2009. That is, the proportion of seats we are contesting this time, compared with the proportion Labour and the Conservatives are contesting, is the best since before the 2010 Coalition government.

We still have more progress to go to get to matching their numbers of candidates, but this year is another important step forward. It shows a continuing spread of our grassroots campaign efforts beyond simply our held and target Westminster constituencies.

Thank you to everyone who has played a part in that, especially those standing for the first time this May and the many agents who have taken on agenting for extra candidates.

A particular shout out to the team in County Durham, where we are standing at least one candidate in every ward across the whole council for the first time ever, ensuring that there is a Lib Dem alternative to Labour, Reform and the Conservatives in every single community.

If we can also go on to make net seat gains in the local elections that will make it seven rounds of net gains in a row – again an important spreading of our grassroots strength, and the longest run of such gains since the 1980s. Even more importantly, it will mean more Liberal Democrats in office, able to implement more of our policies in order to make people’s lives better.

In a neat demonstration of both these points – the importance of putting up candidates and of winning more political power to improve people’s lives – we already have the first Liberal Democrat council gain in. It is Melksham Town Council, guaranteed to have a new Lib Dem majority after not enough other candidates got nominated.

Lib Dems secure limits on emergency new government powers

While supporting the government’s emergency legislation to safeguard the Scunthorpe steel works, the Lib Dems successfully pressed in Parliament for important safeguards on the use of the emergency powers the law grants the government.

In the Commons, Daisy Cooper secured a promise from the relevant minister that, “the powers that he is giving himself will be repealed as soon as possible, within six months at the latest, and if they are still required after that, whether he will come back to this House to ask for another vote”.

Following up on that in the Lords, Chris Fox got an assurance from the relevant government minister that the powers granted in the bill would be debated in six months in a substantive motion that will be voted on – further locking the government into allowing Parliament to have a say in their continuation or cessation.

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Simon McGrath

A great victory for Liberals everywhere

By Simon McGrath | Tue 29th April 2025 - 11:00 am

Embed from Getty Images

Mark Carney and the Canadian Liberals have won an extraordinary victory which seemed impossible a few months ago.

In hispowerful victory speech in English and French, he said that he would be guided by 3 values ; Humility , Ambition and Unity and stressed the importance of bringing the whole country together to deal with the new world we are in.

He could not have been clearer about the threat and the fundamental change: “America wants our land, our resources, our country …. President Trump is trying to break us, so that America can own us. Our old relationship with the United States is over ….. The system of global open trade .. is dead”

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 28 April 2025 – this time, I’ll give it to someone special?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 28th April 2025 - 7:30 am

In July, voters across the country decided that what they wanted more than anything was to give the Conservatives a good electoral kicking. And so they did. In seats where there was an obvious challenger (or at least, where someone could establish themselves as the obvious contender), voters flocked to them. In other seats, where that choice wasn’t really so obvious, they appear to have leant towards Labour based on the national polling figures at the time.

In my own county of Suffolk, that led to Labour victories in places like Suffolk Coastal, where Labour had come fourth in the previous year’s council elections, and Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, where they had no electoral presence outside of Bury St Edmunds itself. The challenge for other parties was to establish themselves as the obvious choice on the ground and, in some places, we/they were successful.

But, as a voter, what do you do when Labour are unpopular too and there isn’t an obvious national choice either? Well, we had a preview of that this week in Suffolk, where all five parties fought the St Johns division by-election as though they meant it. The result:

  • Labour – 600 votes (28%, -19.7%)
  • Greens – 458 votes (21.4%, +13.6%)
  • Reform UK – 442 votes (20.6%, new)
  • Lib Dems – 323 votes (15.1%, +9.8%)
  • Conservatives – 318 votes (14.9%, -24.3%)
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Victor Chamberlain

Labour’s welfare cuts are a choice – Liberal Democrats choose compassion

By Victor Chamberlain | Sun 27th April 2025 - 10:30 am

The welfare cuts – which according to charities are bigger than the Tories’ – are set to impact 15,000 disabled households here in Southwark alone, costing most thousands of pounds a year. That is not what people voted for. That is what Rachel Reeves and the Labour Party has chosen to do.

When people put their cross next to Labour in 2024, they did not vote to push 250,000 disabled people, including 50,000 children, into poverty. But that’s exactly what’s happening – not to fund hospitals, or schools, or social care – but because Labour refuses to tax tech giants and the super-rich.

This wasn’t a mistake. This was a choice.

Here in Southwark, I’ve seen the impact of these decisions firsthand. I’ve knocked on the doors of people waiting on disability assessments for months, carers juggling unpaid work with relentless bureaucracy, and families living with the daily pressure of foodbanks and fuel debt.

And yet, this Labour government is offering nothing but more of the same.

Southwark Labour councillors – who once campaigned against austerity – have twice voted unanimously against Liberal Democrat proposals to push for change. In November, they refused to call on the Government to reinstate the Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners. Then in March, they rejected our motion to scrap the two-child benefit cap – a cruel and arbitrary limit that is currently affecting 7,670 children in 2,170 families across Southwark.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 27th April 2025 - 8:30 am

Pakistan and water

Pakistan is a water-stressed country. It is totally dependent on the Indus Valley Basin for survival.

That is why it has threatened war in response to India’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty following the killing of 26 Indian tourists in Kashmir.

The 1960 Indus Waters Treaty is considered the most successful treaty of its kind in the world. Probably in the history of the world. It has held through three wars and numerous skirmishes between two countries whose religious difference mean that they truly detest each other.

There are six rivers in the Indus Basin (Indus, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, Jhelum and Sutlej). India administers the three eastern rivers and Pakistan the three western rivers. Both countries use the network for transport, drinking water, hydro-electricity, agriculture and industry.

But here is the rub. The main headwaters for the Indus Basin are in India which gives it the power to control the flow of water downstream. And Pakistan needs the water more than India.

Ninety percent of Pakistanis live in the Indus Basin. The rivers provide 90 percent of the irrigation water needed for Pakistani farms which provide 24 percent of the country’s GDP and employ 34 percent of the labour force. Eighty percent of the water needed for domestic and industrial use comes from the basin and nearly a quarter of Pakistan’s electricity is hydro based.

Economists reckon that Indian withdrawal from the treaty would lead to a flight of capital from economically hard-pressed Pakistan and the destruction of the country’s economy. Even worse, it raises a spectre of a war for survival between the regions two nuclear powers.

The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny played a centre-stage diplomatic role this week. When Donald Trump announced the death of Pope Francis this week he stood next to an actor dressed as the Easter bunny.

The juxtaposition was symbolic. Trump hated the Pope and wanted to demonstrate this by belittling the announcement of his death.

He has proven form for such occasions. When the widely-admired Senator John McCain died, Congress directed that America’s flags be lowered to half-mast. McCain and Trump were enemies. Trump ordered that the White House flag stay up.

Donald Trump and Pope Francis could not have been more different. The Pope lived a life of poverty. Trump lives a life of gilded ostentatiousness.

There was also policy substance behind the stylistic differences—mostly on the issue of immigration and migrants. The centrepiece of Trump’s first election campaign was a “big beautiful wall” to keep out illegal immigrants.

On a trip to Mexico, Pope Francis said: “A person who thinks only about building walls…and not bridges, is not a Christian.”

Pope Francis believed that Christian love required compassionate care for migrants. Trump called them “rapists, murderers and terrorists.”

After Trump’s second election victory, the Pope gave a television interview in which he said it would be a “disgrace” if Trump implemented his mass deportation plans. He followed that up with a letter to America’s Catholic bishops in which he said: “I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”

The Pope’s last visitor before he died was Vice President JD Vance, himself a Catholic convert. What the two men discussed is not known. But it was reported that after the audience JD Vance was sent to a Vatican cardinal to be lectured on the responsibilities of a Christian leader.

Who benefits from the Chinese/American trade war?

South American farmers are delighted with the Sino-American trade war. Especially those in Argentina and Brazil.

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Em Dean

What is “biological sex”, according to the UK Supreme Court?

By Em Dean | Sat 26th April 2025 - 1:12 pm

In its recent judgement on “biological sex”, the Supreme Court avoided defining what “biological sex” is. It says it is “commonly understood”, however the phrase does not appear in most leading dictionaries. 

This is of particular interest to me. As an intersex person, I am not, in UK legal terms, transgender, and I am comfortable presenting as a man in many contexts. I typically use men’s loos, and play men’s sports. But I would not call myself “biologically male”, except in some very peculiar contexts. Reading the recently released EHRC guidance, this seems to imply that I should not use men’s loos or play men’s sports. Does it?

Wiktionary, the only dictionary I have to hand that attempts to define the phrase, defines biological sex as “assigned sex”, that is, the documented sex one receives at birth from a brief identification of one’s observable sex characteristics. Unfortunately, this is clearly not what the Supreme Court intended, as it does not mention birth certificates or medical identification at all, and it explicitly distinguishes between “biological sex” and “certificated sex”. It also wouldn’t help intersex people, who have all sorts of fantastic claims made on their birth certificates.

It also cannot refer to how “biological sex” is sometimes used in genetics, that is, to chromosomal sex. Chromosomal sex is almost never observed in humans, and when it is, it is observed to be only one of many factors that contributes to the meat (as it were) of what is observable “sex”.  

One must infer, therefore, that the UK Supreme Court intended to define biological sex as “some observable sex characteristic or characteristics at birth, which is typically recorded on a birth certificate”. And perhaps this is what they mean by “commonly understood” – that is, sex at birth is what is observable at birth to some common analysis. 

Now, nobody is a woman or man at birth – these are terms we use for adults – and trans people have all sorts of biological and biochemical characteristics, depending on their medical transition or absence thereof. Unless the Court imagined transgender people as springing like Athena from the mind of a god, one must therefore further infer that what they mean by “biological man” is “a person who was identifiable as male at birth due to some bundle of biological characteristics”, and the same for “woman” and “female”. 

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Jim Coupland

The ridiculous war on headphone dodgers

By Jim Coupland | Sat 26th April 2025 - 11:00 am

The Liberal Democrats have recently announced a new policy. A policy that transforms the political landscape, changes our society for the better and inspire millions… enforce a legal fine of up to £1000 on people who play loud music on public transport. Of course, I’m being sarcastic and quite frankly this is embarrassing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that our party has come up with the right approach on lots of the big issues of the day, but this policy is a stinker for many reasons. Firstly, let’s look at the morals of this policy. Yes, I think we can all agree that when we use public transport and a fellow passenger plays loud music, it is annoying. Very annoying. However, this policy goes way too far.

As I referred to in my previous op-ed on Lib Dem Voice, My Journey from Socialism to Liberalism, I called for our party to go back to our core principle of freedom. Yes, so called ‘headphone dodgers’ may be irritating (to say the least) but they are in a public space. Whether we like it or not, they shouldn’t have to face the consequences of the law. Another reason why this policy is so bizarre, as referred to in the BBC article, is that people are already prohibited from playing loud music on public transport. So, this policy already feels redundant.

Let’s also look at the justifications made by our party. The BBC article also refers to a poll that are party created on this ‘issue’. 38% of respondents said that they have experienced other people playing loud music on public transport ‘often or sometimes’. I don’t want to point out the obvious but that is less than half. Our Home Affairs Spokeswoman, Lisa Smart said “Everyone deserves to feel safe and respected on public transport”. While I agree with that blanket statement, I would never say that I have felt unsafe when another passenger has played loud music on public transport.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: The big split

By Tom Arms | Sat 26th April 2025 - 8:59 am

The possibility of a “Big Split” between Europe and America has taken another giant leap forward with a take-it-or-leave-it Ukraine plan from President Trump.

In addition, there are dangers of widening chasms opening up between EU and European members of NATO.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and chief negotiator Steve Witkoff were expected in London this week for talks on Ukraine with key European leaders. But at the last minute they pulled out, saying that the president was tired of negotiations and demanded that all sides accept an agreement hammered out in Moscow between Witkoff and Putin.

The proposal on the table is basically a sell-out to Putin: International recognition of the annexation of Crimea; defacto control of Eastern Ukraine; Ukraine banned from NATO and the end of sanctions. Ukraine gets undefined “robust security guarantees” the return of small slice of the Kharkiv Oblast and undefined sum to rebuild the country. The US gets a minerals deal with Ukraine; operating rights for Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and increased cooperation with Russia, especially in the energy and industrial sectors.

Trump’s proposal makes no effort to uphold any principle of international law. It turns back the diplomatic clock to pay homage to the pre-war axiom might is right.

Vladimir Putin must be turning somersaults. If this proposal is accepted by Zelensky and his European backers the Russian president will have won. As German Chancellor said, if the Russian-American agreement goes ahead, Putin can say: “I can afford such aggression. I will prevail and I will achieve my goals.”

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Simon McGrath

Russia sanctions ten Lib Dem Parliamentarians

By Simon McGrath | Fri 25th April 2025 - 10:04 am

The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry have banned 6 peers and 15 MPs from entering the Russian Federation for:

Hostile statements and unfounded accusations coming from members of the UK Parliament, including public statements in favour of seizing Russian assets “immobilised” in Western jurisdictions

Lib Dems are very well represented on the list. Among the  peers are Lord Purvis and Baroness Smith (and Lord Alton, a cross bencher was a Liberal MP for 18 years ) and Russia has sanctioned no fewer than 8 of our MPs – Alistair Carmichael, Chris Coghlan, Helen Maguire, James Maccleary, Mike Martin,  Manuela Perteghella, Cameron Thomas and Will Forster.

Alistair Carmichael said :

“In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting to travel there anytime soon,” he said.

“On one view, it’s nice to know they hear the criticism, even if they don’t like it.

“I wear this ban as a badge of honour.”

James MacCleary said on X :

and

Helen Maguire said on X :

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John Grout

Say hello to the Groper’s Charter

By John Grout | Thu 24th April 2025 - 1:04 pm

In delivering the Supreme Court’s ruling last week, Lord Hodge went to great lengths to stress that it should not be portrayed as a victory for one side over the other, and that the rights of trans people remained protected under both the ‘gender reassignment’ and ‘perceived gender’ clauses of the Equality Act.  He urged caution.

It’s a shame that nobody listened to him.

One of the first things I was taught in the first week of my archaeology and ancient history degree in 2006, was that it is impossible to accurately sex a human skeleton due to the chaotic and often contradictory combination of genetic, epigenetic, endocrine, physical and neurophysical factors that go into it, few of which survive very long – for instance, one thing that stayed with me was that up to 8% of the population have chromosomes inconsistent with their gender, and there are XY women who have given birth, and XX men who have fathered children.  (This, incidentally, is why the IOC stopped doing chromosome testing of athletes in the 1990s, and why chromosome testing is not done in schools, because halfway through your Biology GCSE is really not the time to find that out.)  The overlap between the ranges of typically male and female builds, proportions, skeletons, etc., is too broad to give any certainty either, particularly when one considers how many people were doing physical labour in historical times.

The scientific implications of attempting to define sex biologically aside, a very real practical consequence of doing so is coming down the rails towards us.  Within hours of the ruling, the British Transport Police announced that trans passengers would now be strip-searched by officers of their sex as registered at birth, rather than of their destination sex.  This was met with celebration from some, and much consternation from elsewhere.  Our own MP Tom Gordon has now written to the BTP to seek urgent clarification on the legality and presumption of this change.

But there’s a more insidious implication, and it’s lurking behind the ruling as a whole.

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Mo Waqas

Kashmir in Crisis: Navigating the Aftermath of the Pahalgam Attack

By Mo Waqas | Thu 24th April 2025 - 10:00 am

I write from Pakistan, where I’ve been visiting family and reconnecting with my roots. What began as a peaceful visit has been overshadowed by two tragic events that have shaken the region and pushed tensions to the brink.

On 22 April 2025, militants from a group calling itself the “Kashmir Resistance” carried out a brutal attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir. Twenty-six tourists—25 Indian nationals and one Nepalese—were killed, and 17 others injured. The group claimed the attack was in response to what they view as demographic change and “outsider” settlement in the region.

Just weeks earlier, on 11 March, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) hijacked the Jaffar Express, which was travelling from Quetta to Peshawar. Over 400 passengers were taken hostage. The standoff resulted in the deaths of 31 people—21 civilians and four security personnel among them.

These twin tragedies are not isolated; they are part of a deeper, escalating conflict across South Asia that risks boiling over.

The powder keg of South Asia

This region is on edge. Fear is palpable. Each attack deepens distrust and fuels calls for retaliation. But this is not just another regional skirmish—it’s a dangerous game involving two nuclear-armed states. Miscalculation could be catastrophic.

Retaliation is easy. Restraint, though harder, is the only way forward.

To New Delhi: direct your fury toward diplomacy, not retribution. To Islamabad: confront and curb extremism with sincerity, not just soundbites.

Military theatrics may please TV studios, but they don’t bring back the dead. Nor do they bring peace to the farmer who works beneath the looming threat of war.

The global community, particularly the UN Security Council, must not be passive. Kashmir is not only a political flashpoint—it is a humanitarian crisis. Years of international neglect have allowed violence to fester.

Pakistan’s power in uniform

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Andy Daer

The responsibility of Parliament to act on the Gaza War

By Andy Daer | Wed 23rd April 2025 - 3:19 pm

Following World War II, in which tens of millions of non-combatants were deliberately targeted and killed, internationally agreed laws were drawn up to safeguard civilians in future conflicts.  A heavy responsibility was laid on signatories, first to ensure that their own forces didn’t commit the newly specified war crimes, and second to take action to prevent others from doing so.  Sadly, the Israeli military action in Gaza since late 2023 has shown that the noble aspirations Great Britain solemnly signed up to have vanished into the ether.  Israel’s retaliation after the Hamas attack has turned into a one-sided slaughter which has been horrific to watch and has involved multiple breaches of humanitarian law.

The idea that the UK has had no power to stop the killing destruction in Gaza is totally false.  We could have ended verbal support and military assistance to Israel in November 2023, when it first became clear that for many of Israel’s military leaders the real target was the Palestinian people of Gaza, not Hamas.  We could, and should, have followed that up with sanctions – imposed not on a few of the West Bank settlers, but on the whole of Israel.  Such action by the British would have been welcomed and imitated by France, Spain and Ireland, putting pressure on the rest of Europe to follow suit.

Although it may seem too late, we can still do this now.  With Trump in the White House, those who feared challenging Biden’s US position have a much easier question to answer: do we want to be seen to side with Trump’s America and support a genocidal land-grab by Israel, or is it in our own interest to dissociate ourselves from it ?  Not only would we be doing right by the Palestinians, but a European refusal to continue supporting Israel would put Trump in a difficult position.  He might feel he had to follow our lead, but if he didn’t, the American public would find themselves isolated as supporters of what will very likely be officially declared a genocide; home support for Trump could be damaged as a result, which would be another win for the action I’m proposing.  

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