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Category Archives: Op-eds

Observations of an Expat: Millions May Die

By Tom Arms | Sat 1st February 2025 - 9:37 am

Trump’s 90-day freeze on foreign aid could be the precursor to the collapse of the UN, its corollary agencies, the World Bank, the IMF and the entire post-World War Two international order. These are not my words. They come from Sir Myles Wickstead, Britain’s leading expert on development issues whom I spoke to on Friday.

“The whole international system,” said Sir Myles, “depends on each country paying its fair share based on their national income. If a major player like the US pulls out the entire edifice is endangered.”

He also said that many would die as an immediate result of the freeze and thousands of aid workers would lose their jobs, which would have an impact on distribution in the future even if there are no long-term cuts. “Philanthropic organisations such as the Gates Foundation will be able to fill some of the gaps,” said Sir Myles, “but they have only a fraction of the money available to the US government.”

The United States is the world’s largest contributor to international development aid. In 2023 it provided $73 billion in foreign aid—more than twice as much as the next biggest contributor—the EU at $35 billion. Germany was third at £32 billion, followed by Japan $28 billion and the UK (which reduced its foreign budget from 0.7 percent of GDP to 0.5 percent).

The American freeze and anticipated cut is expected to have an especially disastrous effect on Sub Saharan Africa. More than half a dozen countries rely on development aid—mainly American—for half of their GDP. It makes up 20 per cent for more for another dozen. All 54 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa receive proportion of their income in aid.

American aid has been especially important in combatting HIV/AIDS around the world through its PEPFAR programme. It is reckoned that PEPFAR has saved 25 million lives since it was initiated in 2003. A government spokesman for South Africa, where 19 per cent of 14 to 49-year-olds suffer from HIV/AIDS, said: “Millions may die as a result of this freeze. Patients need to receive their treatments on a regular basis. If they don’t they could die. And heavens knows what will happen if there is a permanent cut.”

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Tagged United states of America and USAID | 6 Comments

This Government needs help from the Lib Dems

By Mark Corner | Fri 31st January 2025 - 11:45 am

The Liberal Democrats, and the Liberals before them, have not had much time in power over the last century. 1906 was the last time a majority Liberal government was elected, though it has been the junior partner in coalition governments since then. However, the Liberals were certainly the party of ideas in the last century. The Labour welfare state established after 1945 owes a debt to the programmes of that 1906 government, and to the highly influential report on welfare reform written during the war by a Liberal, William Beveridge.

The great economist John Maynard Keynes was a Liberal, listened to by Liberal leader Lloyd George in the 1920s, who produced the radical manifesto ‘We can Conquer Unemployment’ for the 1929 election. It may have been ahead of its time then, but the ideas behind it were later implemented by both Labour and Tory governments in the generation after the War.

It is just as vital for the Liberal Democrats to be the party of ideas in this century, because ideas are in short supply.

The Labour Party fumbles along after its loveless landslide victory, much as the Labour-led government did in 1929, facing an economic crisis it doesn’t know how to cope with. It wants to spend but feels it can’t. That way lies Truss and another lettuce, it thinks. When it comes to taxes, it is afraid to raise the right ones and will get less than it wants from the wrong ones. Its hope is to produce growth, because that is the painless way to redistribute money to the less well-off, but it is afraid to talk about an essential precondition of growth, which is a return to the EU single market. It is full of big talk about an English Silicon Valley and the opportunities provided by Heathrow expansion, but it knows that even if these were measures to produce growth (which is highly debatable) the results will not be seen until long after the next election. Does Labour really want to campaign on the basis of: ‘We’ll be able to help the NHS properly when we’ve got more flights in the 2030s’? Meanwhile it stalls, blames the fading memory of its predecessor and in truth has no idea of what to do.

So what should it do? There are plenty of suggestions that can be made, but let us take one example, which is very clearly Liberal Democrat policy. It should introduce a system of free personal care and raise the pay of care workers so that there is a specific minimum wage for those in care work. This is a policy which Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has laid stress on and campaigned on in the general election last July. It would be a truly radical policy, one which made personal care as much as medical treatment free at the point of delivery. If that could be delivered, it would be a development almost as significant as the founding of the National Health Service itself.

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Tagged social care | 9 Comments

Creating a sense of family through sport

By Michal Siewniak | Fri 31st January 2025 - 9:37 am

Sometimes planting a small seed might produce the most extraordinary harvest. Sometimes, a simple idea might create incredible opportunities to boost our confidence, reduce social isolation and strengthen our relationships.

It all started rather spontaneously in a local park two years ago. A net, a couple of balls, Mariusz; dedicated coach with passion for sport, and a group of people, who wanted to socialise and play volleyball. Who would have thought that a year later, this idea literally transformed so many lives? Weekly training sessions, eagerness to set up a club, frequent travelling to watch and play competitive games. Moreover, this project helped people to build new friendships and empowered many to spend their time actively! In spite of some venue difficulties, lack of adequate infrastructure, this initiative “ticks” all the right boxes; it is simply fabulous!

The Polish Saturday School in Welwyn Garden City played an important part by accessing funding to help Mariusz gain appropriate qualifications. What a story! A few weeks ago, the club was visited by a Director from Herts Sport and Physical Activity, who popped in to say hi and see the players in action.

Also quite recently, the Polish Saturday School in Welwyn Garden City has received an ‘outstanding achievement award’ for its sporting activities. Sporting activities the school has offered over the years include dance, boxing, karate and health MOT days, working with coaches from Poland, Romania and Portugal.

But why is it important? It is really fantastic to see that the grassroots sport can make such a difference. Sport teaches us determination, stamina, willingness and enhances our ability to dream. By playing our favourite sport we work on our motivation, self-discipline, organisation; overall we feel more confident, we are often in a better mood. However, it is important to acknowledge that many of the sport activities are not always affordable to many parents. The parent investment needed to support our children to play sport is significant and effectively, it has increased during the cost of living crisis. In my view, the government, at the local and national level, as well as sporting bodies, should focus and prioritise supporting activities, which can help to create a long lasting physical and wellbeing change in our neighbourhoods.

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Tagged sport | Leave a comment

How to cope with populists

By Allan Tweddle | Thu 30th January 2025 - 2:33 pm

I’ve recently been reading ‘Meditations for Mortals’ by Oliver Burkeman (which I highly recommend). In the book, Burkeman recounts the story of Erik Hagerman who, following Trump’s 2016 victory, gave up all news and current affairs, right down to listening to white noise on headphones in his local coffee shop to avoid overhearing anything unpleasant. Apparently he was slated in the press and on social media – though if they were hoping to get him to change his ways then I think they’d rather missed the point.

I had my very own Hagerman moment last week when, despite being an avid podcast listener, I deleted dozens of episodes from my feed because I couldn’t face listening to endless rehashes of Trump’s inauguration and all the accompanying psychodrama.

The truth is it’s been coming on for a while. Over recent months I’ve found myself deleting episodes that mention Nigel Farage in the title. Elon Musk ditto, and even Kemi Badenoch gets my finger hovering over the delete key.

Of course I know that what Trump, and those around him, actually do will affect us all. The same goes for the Conservatives and Reform. But it all comes down to the theory of circles of influence versus circles of concern. If I let them, Trump et al will simply swamp my circle of concern. And, despite how important I think I am, nothing they do falls within my circle of influence. I can’t do anything about them. Filling my time consuming endless footage and commentary of their latest antics does nothing but increase my blood pressure.

Worse, it stops me from focussing on all those things that do fall within my circle of influence. It turns me from an active doer into a passive, and very depressed, consumer. Which, of course, is exactly what they want. This is what populist politicians do – and the good ones are really good at it. Trump, Farage, and those like them are experts at grabbing attention, and they will do it in any way they can. They want to fill our screens and our airwaves. They want us shocked, and on the back foot. They want us reacting, because if we are constantly reacting then there’s no time left for the proactive job of coming up with new ideas, doing real work, and generally making our little corners of the world better for those around us.

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22 Comments

Can you help us win in Hull and East Yorkshire?

By Mike Ross | Thu 30th January 2025 - 12:05 pm

The Liberal Democrats are on the up. We are back as the third-largest party in Britain with a record number of MPs. We have gained councillors at every set of local elections since 2018. We have won, quite literally, from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, winning the trust, support and votes of people right across the country – but we have never won a metro mayoralty.

Metro mayors have a wide range of responsibilities, from improving the local economy, to infrastructure and strategic transport. It is vital we have liberal voices at this level of government. So far, every metro mayor elected has either been for either the Conservative or Labour Party.

This year, I need your help to change that.

This May sees the very first Hull and East Yorkshire mayoral election, which will create a metro mayor responsible for all of Hull and East Yorkshire. With your help, we can make sure that mayor is a Liberal Democrat mayor.

The Conservatives are in disarray. They have no councillors in Hull and took a battering at the last election to the East Riding council.

Across Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire, the Liberal Democrats have the highest number of councillors and the highest combined vote share using the most recent local election results. We run Hull City Council and are the largest opposition group on East Riding Council. We stand as the only credible challengers to Labour in the region, with the Conservatives in disarray and the Greens lacking any local power base.

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Tagged hull and east yorkshire | 4 Comments

Seanad Éireann: Lessons from Ireland on Lords reform

By Ken Westmoreland | Wed 29th January 2025 - 11:55 am

This week sees elections to Seanad Éireann, the Irish Senate, following elections to Dáil Éireann, the more powerful lower house of the Oireachtas or parliament. Unlike other elected upper houses, and indeed its predecessor, the Seanad in the Irish Free State, it is elected completely in tandem with the lower house, and in its entirety, so when the Dáil is dissolved, so too is the Seanad.

Senators are a mix of indirectly elected and nominated members, 43 chosen by TDs (Teachtaí Dála or Dáil Deputies), local councillors and outgoing Senators, to represent five vocational panels, Administrative, Agricultural, Cultural and Educational, Industrial and Commercial, and Labour, having been nominated by organisations registered for that purpose, while 6 are elected from university constituencies, graduates of the National University of Ireland and Dublin University (Trinity College Dublin) electing 3 each and 11 nominated by the Taoiseach, or prime minister.

The vocational panel system was devised by Éamon De Valera, the architect of the 1937 Constitution, and inspired by Catholic teaching. On paper, it sounds quite attractive as a model for a reformed House of Lords (or Senate) in the UK, drawing upon various sources of professional expertise, but in practice, election to the Seanad has often been used as a consolation prize for those who have lost a seat in the Dáil, before trying to get back into it, or those unable to get elected to it first time around, making the Seanad more of an ante chamber than an upper chamber.

On a side note, the party De Valera founded, Fianna Fáil, is now the sister party of the Liberal Democrats in Liberal International, despite the former historically having been socially more conservative, though De Valera got on well enough with Lloyd George, the pair able to compare their respective Celtic languages; in Irish, ‘seanad’ means ‘senate’ in the sense of ‘second chamber’, but in Welsh, ‘senedd’ means ‘parliament’, preserving the original general Latin meaning of ‘senatus’.

Across the border, the Senate in the old Northern Ireland Parliament was elected by its House of Commons, with many members holding hereditary peerages or later acquiring them, but was even weaker than its counterpart at Leinster House, and all devolved legislatures at Stormont have been unicameral since. As for the House of Commons there, while it was initially elected by the single transferable vote, Unionists later scrapped this, gerrymandering constituencies, and only abolishing the Queen’s University Belfast constituency and property vote in 1969, 19 years after Westminster.

Talking of university constituencies, this Seanad election is significant as it will be the last one in which Senators will be elected from them; at the next election, there will be a new six-member Higher Education constituency, for which any Irish citizen with a tertiary education qualification will be eligible to vote or stand, if not less elitist, then at least less of an anachronism.

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged ireland | 2 Comments

FCC report following agenda selection meeting

By Nick da Costa | Wed 29th January 2025 - 9:55 am

The Federal Conference Committee met on Saturday to run through a number of items leading up to Spring Conference in Harrogate, which is being held from 21 to 23 March 2025. This will be our first return to Harrogate in almost 16 years.

We had a large number of items submitted to Conference, in addition to report backs to the Committee from our Constitutional & Standing Orders Working Group.

We are delighted that so many people have already registered for Conference and we encourage any members who have not yet signed up to Conference to do so via: LINK

We aim to publish the agenda in the next couple of weeks.

The upcoming deadlines are:

Amendments and Emergency motions drafting advice deadline – 13:00 on 24 February 2025

Amendments and Emergency motions deadline – 13:00 on 10 March 2025

We received a large number of motions from across the party, and are extremely grateful for the time and effort that members make in formulating policy motions and ideas for debate at Conference. We really wish that we could select so many more that ended up on the final list, but as always time at conference is at a premium and a large number of motions, although selected in the first round, did not make it through the second round or third rounds when we then started to look at reducing timings.

As regularly mentioned, time is tight at conference, and especially this Spring Conference. There are a number of items that the Federal Conference Committee has very little control over, which we are forced to take at Conference. This signficantly reduces the time available at Conference for Policy Motions. For example, the FCC has to take Constitutional Amendments and Standing Order Amendments if they are ‘in order’ and thus have little leeway on rejecting these in order to allow more time for policy debates. Furthermore, we have a number of items (including one constitutional amendment) which the Committee felt needed a reasonable time to debate at Conference, and thus this also reduces the time available.

Furthermore, I would also like to mention the drafting advice service that the Federal Conference Committee offers. This service is provided by the Committee to offer drafting and language advice on motions submitted to conference and cannot always cover advice on policy matters; I would, in these instances, recommend reaching out to members of the Federal Policy Committee, spokespeople, and party AOs, who may have people within the their groups with specific policy expertise and would be able to assist with formulating policy. If you also want to find out more about how to write policy, the FCC will be undertaking a training session at Conference on how to write a good policy motion, and this information will be published in the Conference Agenda and Directory.

From the motions submitted, we selected: five policy motions and four constitutional amendments. The committee went through various rounds of selection, and it is always a very challenging decision to select which motions should or should not be added to the agenda. I would like to thank the staff who attended the full-day meeting and also the members of the committee for their contributions and hard work.

I have included the list of motions submitted, including the names of the motions and if selected/not selected and the brief reasons for non-selection, please note that some of the names of motions may vary between now and the publishing of the agenda.

We are looking forward seeing you at Conference, and if you have not yet had a chance to register, please do so via https://www.libdems.org.uk/conference

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Also posted in News | Tagged 2025 spring conference, featured, federal conference committee, federal conference committee report and lib dem conference | Leave a comment

Alex Cole-Hamilton writes: Our decision on the Scottish Budget

By Alex Cole-Hamilton | Wed 29th January 2025 - 7:30 am

Sometimes you have to sit down and talk if you want to get things done.

By any metric the SNP are failing the people of Scotland. An early election had already been ruled out (Labour are abstaining). It’s why all along we’ve been trying to shape the Scottish Budget to unpick some of the damage the SNP have done over the last 18 years.

The result? Our priorities will now be backed by hundreds of millions of pounds of government investment. Thanks to the Scottish Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Budget now includes:

Further investment in drugs and neonatal services totalling £2.6m, with a special focus on creating new services to help babies who are born addicted to drugs. As a youth worker, I saw first-hand how substance addiction blighted the lives of newborns and mothers, so I know just how transformational this investment will be.

£3.5m so that colleges can deliver the skills our economy and public services need, with new programmes focused on care and offshore wind to create a pipeline of skilled workers.

Allocating in the budget £700k worth of support for the young people with complex and additional needs attending Corseford College in Renfrewshire, and at least the same amount again the next year.

£5m for hospices.

Ahead of the Infrastructure Investment Plan, we’ve persuaded the Scottish Government to look much more closely at replacing the Gilbert Bain Hospital in Lerwick, Kilmaron Special School in Cupar and Newburgh Railway Station in Fife.

This is all on top of what Scottish Liberal Democrats secured in the first rounds of talks:

The reinstatement of a winter fuel payment for pensioners.>
Extra funding for social care.
Additional funding for local healthcare to make it easier to see a GP or NHS dentist.
Funding for new specialist support across the country for Long Covid, ME, Chronic Fatigue and other similar conditions.
The right for family carers to earn more without having support withdrawn.
Progress on business rates relief for the hospitality sector.>
Funding to build more affordable homes.
Ringfenced agriculture funding.
More money for local council services.
Enhanced support for local authorities operating ferry services.
More money for additional support needs to help pupils and their teachers.
Replacements for the Edinburgh Eye Pavilion and the Belford Hospital in Fort William.

It’s a long list that will improve the lot of our constituents, and of people right across Scotland, which is why we will be backing this year’s Scottish Budget.

We cannot underestimate the importance of getting things done, especially in the current climate. Right now, public services are on their knees, the direct casualties of the SNP’s mismanagement. You can see it in the people ringing their GP surgeries hundreds of times a day to get an appointment, the care homes struggling to find staff and Scottish education slipping down the international rankings. Many businesses are struggling to make ends meet and affordable housebuilding has collapsed.

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Tagged Alex Cole-Hamilton, featured, holyrood, Scotland and scottish budget | 1 Comment

Lib Dem MSPs to vote for SNP Budget

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 28th January 2025 - 7:56 pm

Alex Cole-Hamilton announced today that Lib Dem MSPs would support the SNP’s budget next week. This does not in any way mean that we’ve suddenly become fans of the SNP Government but it does mean that we’ve managed to get some measures put in the budget to repair the damage they have done to Scottish public services rather than wait for their likely defeat in the elections in 2026.

Since Labour announced in early January that they would abstain on the Budget, any chance of bringing the Government down and forcing an election disappeared. They got absolutely nothing for getting the SNP out of trouble. We, however, by that point had already got money for things like Winter Fuel Payments next year, Long Covid clinics, social care, replacements for the Belford Hospital in Fort William and the Edinburgh Eye Pavilion. In January, our negotiators did even better securing investment in colleges for training in skills to benefit the renewable energy sector, funding for hospices, and funding for specialist treatment for babies born addicted to drugs.

Alex Cole-Hamilton explained:

The final list of what we have achieved is pretty impressive and remarkably similar to the kind of things we’ve been banging on about for years.

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Tagged Alex Cole-Hamilton, holyrood, Scotland and scottish budget | 3 Comments

They’ll like us when we win

By Daniel Stylianou | Tue 28th January 2025 - 12:42 pm

Quite often, when I talk to Liberal Democrats about politics “across the sea”, the ideal is that of The West Wing. A Democratic President, able to fight his way past the red tape of a gargantuan bureaucracy and, often by sheer force of will – and the assistance of hard-working staffers – push through a legislative agenda that is both liberal and optimistic.

Any fan of the show will know Toby Ziegler, the acerbic but quietly optimistic communications director. There is a scene in Night Five (season 3, episode 3) when Toby defends a speech drafted to be confrontational with the Arab world. Frequently, in the midst of a tirade, he shouts: “They’ll like us when we win!” (you can watch the scene here).

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6 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 26th January 2025 - 10:07 am

United States

A stroke of the pen is not enough to end America’s birth right citizenship laws. Donald Trump has so many more political and legal mountains to climb before his presidential decree can take effect.

First there is the law. Already 24 Democratic states have launched lawsuits opposing Trump’s sudden end to birth right citizenship.

They are on firm ground. The Fourteenth Amendment of the US constitution says: “All persons born…in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Trump claims that birth right citizenship has never challenged in the courts. That is wrong. In the …

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Tagged india, ukraine, United states of America and Venezuela | 14 Comments

Observations of an Expat: And So It Begins

By Tom Arms | Sat 25th January 2025 - 8:58 am

At the end of the first week of Trump 2.0 the world is left shell-shocked trying to find a way through an artillery barrage of presidential decrees.

He promised the decrees. He promised action. He didn’t lie. Not enough people believed him.

In less than a week Trump has—among other things—announced that he is going to end the right of citizenship for those born in the United States; closed America’s southern border and dispatched the army to help guard it.

Because Trump clashed with Anthony Fauci—the man who coordinated America’s response to covid—he has ordered that the websites for the National Institute for Health, Centre for Disease Control and Federal Drug Administration to stop issuing health advisories.

Department of Justice lawyers who worked on his prosecution plus the DoJ’s International Division and Criminal Division, are to be sacked and replaced with MAGA loyalists

Federal employees have been told that they will suffer “adverse consequences” if they refuse to turn in colleagues who “defy orders to purge” their departments of diversity, equity and inclusion measures and personnel.

The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act were signature achievements of the Biden Administration and universally welcomed by the American business community. But they were Biden’s. Trump has scrapped them at the cost of tens of billions of dollars.

Tariffs have yet to be imposed. They are slated to be slapped on Canada and Mexico—at the 25 percent level—from 1 February. On Thursday Trump told the Davos Economic Forum that unless foreign companies moved their businesses to America they would suffer “trillions of dollars in tariffs.”

But perhaps the most disturbing of Trump’s decrees was the 1,500 pardons for the January 6 Capitol Hill riots. Not even his own vice president—JD Vance—thought he would go that far.

The Fraternal Order of Police—America’s largest police union, asked: “What happened to Republican Law and Order? This completely undermines the rule of law and is a stain on Trump’s legacy.”

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Tagged donald trump | 16 Comments

LibLink: Ed Davey on Elon Musk and his malign powers

By Mary Reid | Thu 23rd January 2025 - 8:42 pm

Ed Davey has written an article for The Guardian under the headline “Elon Musk has shown his hand. If politicians like me won’t curb his malign powers, who will?”

He writes:

Much of the coverage of Musk centres on his bizarre actions and declarations, and the controversies that have followed. It’s easy to tune it all out as the dronings of a bore. But he’s so much worse than that. He’s already one of the most powerful people on the planet. He’s the world’s wealthiest man, with a fortune of more than $400bn. And despite turning millions of people away from Twitter with his damaging changes to the platform (not least trying to rebrand it as X), he still controls what hundreds of millions of people around the globe see on their feeds.

…

As a liberal, I am instinctively deeply alarmed by the concentration of so much power in the hands of one individual. Even if I liked Musk, I’d say it was dangerous. I see it as the fundamental purpose of liberals – whether capital L members of the Liberal Democrats, or like-minded people beyond our party and around the world – to hold the powerful to account and put real power in the hands of ordinary people.

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Tagged ed davey, elon musk and featured | 2 Comments

How do we defend free speech from absolutists and others?

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 23rd January 2025 - 12:40 pm

Elon Musk has declared himself an absolutist on free speech. It’s a declaration which defines the enemy as ‘the woke virus’, which is condemned as shutting off criticism of minority opinions and groups and shouting down those who express views outside their permitted consensus. It’s also a demonstration of how far the concept of ‘free speech’ has been weaponised by the right and twisted in in its meaning. If we want to defend free speech from those who twist the principle to fit their prejudices, we need to be clear about it meaning and its limits.

Liz Truss has just told the Voice of America that ‘The left-wing media of Britain including the BBC, including organizations like the Times and the Guardian and the Financial Times, do not like free speech, free market policies, and they don’t like the status quo in this country being challenged and I will take them on.’ Mark Zuckerberg has declared that his fact-checking teams were ‘politically biassed’, and moved a reduced team from California to Texas, to encourage them to check ‘facts’ in a more Trump-friendly way. Free speech is being redefined as part of the ‘anti-woke’ culture war – to insist on the right to express uncomfortably reactionary opinions, and to bend facts to suit different types of right-wing narratives.

Free speech is central to democracy and to liberal values. But the right to free speech is not the right to say anything to anyone, regardless of evidence, context or consequences. Laws against libel and slander protect reputations – though often misused to protect the rich and powerful against criticism. SLAPPS (strategic litigation against public participation) have allowed media magnates and offshore oligarchs to stifle hostile comments. Misinformation, or worse deliberate disinformation, is on the line between legal but antisocial and illegal because of its harmful consequences in promoting disorder. Holocaust denial is banned in some countries; medical disinformation can be prosecuted in others. Language that stirs up disorder or promotes criminal or terrorist acts is, rightly, prosecuted.

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Tagged donald trump and free speech | 15 Comments

Pension Funds and Economic Growth

By Chris Perry | Thu 23rd January 2025 - 9:40 am

Rachel Reeves’ proposed merger of Local Government Pension Schemes and consolidation with defined contribution pension schemes to create a mega-fund to unlock investment and boost growth is high risk and needs safeguards and guarantees. This is not Government or taxpayers’ money but belongs to the members of each particular pension scheme and is in effect their retirement savings. When Gordon Brown altered the tax position of pension funds he sent many into deficit which brought about the demise of defined benefit final salary schemes – with even the Local Government Schemes moving from “final salary” to “average salary”. The index linking used to be to earnings, then RPI and more recently changed to CPI – even for pensions in payment.

These changes are not being made by the Chancellor to improve pensions but to use pension funds to boost investment in search of growth. Economic growth is the Government’s priority. But what are the risks and knock on effect of this proposal for pensioners? One cannot fix whole systems problems with component level solutions.

There is a wealth of empirical evidence into the social determinates of health which has demonstrated the correlation between income and demand upon the NHS. 3/5ths of the expenditure of the NHS is on older people. Therefore, to constantly reduce or risk the income of older people, who got no benefit from the two pre-election reductions in National Insurance but do pay more income tax due to the freezing of the tax free personal allowance, recently lost their free TV licence and now their winter fuel allowance will increase the pressures on the NHS at the very time Government is committed to reducing waiting times.

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Tagged pensions and rachel reeves | 19 Comments

Mark Pack’s January report to members

By Mark Pack | Wed 22nd January 2025 - 10:55 am

Farage and Musk are the past, not the future

Seeing someone called a “snivelling cretin” may reinforce all your worst fears about social media. But when it was Elon Musk saying this of Ed Davey, it counts as a badge of honour.

It also illustrates a bigger, and more important, point than ‘look how thin skinned and short of things to say a billionaire is when anyone stands up to him’.

It is about how little to say about our future the likes of Nigel Farage and Elon Musk have beyond nostalgia for an imagined version of our past. For all Elon Musk’s facade as a visionary man of the future, much of his vision is a shrunken, twisted piece of fake nostalgia: a world where the super-rich get to run things, democracy is an optional extra, international borders are high and only his favoured few select demographic categories are worthy people.

Their joint desire to turn the clock backwards is in contrast to our positive liberal vision for a better future. Just because someone is not like me is not a reason to dislike them. Just because someone has different views of religion than me is not a reason to fear them. And just because someone lives in a different country from me is not a reason to treat them as an enemy.

The likes of Farage and Musk excel at grabbing the headlines, but the quiet reality of 2024 was a year in which in Britain us Liberal Democrats took more political power. We won more council seats than the Conservatives and Reform combined in May – and then we had our best general election result in a century, gaining far more seats than Reform, in July.

General Election Review

An important part of building on those successes is our General Election Review, which was headed up by Tim Farron.

Thank you to Tim and the whole team for turning around the review promptly, so that we can get stuck into implementing its lessons as soon as practical in this Parliamentary cycle.

As with the post-2019 review, this one has been shared with all party members because, even though this review is a happier one, it is important once again that members can hold to account those in power at all levels of the party on delivering the review’s recommendations. As Tim explained in the email to members, there are some further recommendations on membership to follow.

The review is asking Federal Conference Committee (FCC) for time to present their findings to our Federal Spring Conference in Harrogate. Alongside that, the Federal Board has agreed to draw up an implementation plan for the recommendations, and you will get more news on that through these monthly reports.

Party Awards

Our Spring Federal Conference in Harrogate is now coming up fast. Which also means it is time to nominate wonderful colleagues for our next round of Party Awards too.

You can read about which awards are up this time, and how to make nominations, here.

Registrations for conference, both in person and online, are also open. I hope to see many of you there.

Congratulations to…

North Devon Liberal Democrats were the top recruiting local party in England in December, topping the charts for the second month running. All but one of the new members were recruited locally by them – giving the party’s local bank balance a handy boost too as local parties receive larger membership payments for locally recruited (or renewed) members.

Congratulations too to the top local recruiters in Scotland – Dumfriesshire and Highlands local parties, tied with each other – and in Wales – Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan.

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Also posted in News | Tagged Mark Pack and party president | 13 Comments

Consign Trump’s “God” to the dustbin of nonsensical religiosity

By Geoff Reid | Wed 22nd January 2025 - 8:44 am

In 1963 an Observer headline “Our image of God must go” rocked organised Christianity in these islands, primarily because the call came from John Robinson, the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich. He was addressing the problem of “anthropomorphism”, making God into a person, a quasi-human who sat above the clouds, waiting to catch us out like a grumpy and arbitrary tyrant. Many people spoke about God as a being who could simply turn on or off hurricanes, earthquakes or serious illnesses. Robinson’s take on God seemed eminently refreshing to many of us studying theology at the time. A couple of decades later, many liberal/radical Christian thinkers would come to see John Robinson as relatively conservative, particularly with regard to the authorship of books in the New Testament.

In the sixties, at the cutting edge of exploratory approaches to Christian faith was “Christian/Marxist dialogue”, which was the backdrop to my spending three weeks behind the Iron Curtain with a group of youngish people training for ministry in the churches. Fifty-five years later that all seems like a world away, not just because of the implosion of Soviet style Marxism, but also because we live in a time when engagement with secular issues going hand in hand with the development of interfaith relationships informs the agenda of the mainstream Christian denominations.

So what do we make of Donald Trump’s claim to have God on his side and that he was saved by the said God to make America great again? I am not going to say that Trump’s image of God must go. I’m not sure that he has any notion of image or religious symbolism. It is tempting to think of a traditional God being humbled in the presence of the Donald but let’s put that to one side!

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Tagged donald trump, religion and US politics | 8 Comments

It’s time for the Liberal Democrats to embrace limitarianism

By Chris Whiting | Tue 21st January 2025 - 1:48 pm

Ed Davey recently summed up the essence of liberalism: empowering those without power and holding the powerful to account. These words are not just a rallying cry—they are a blueprint for action. If the Liberal Democrats truly want to live up to this mission, we must embrace limitarianism as a core economic policy, and we must do it now.

Limitarianism is the idea that there should be an upper limit to personal wealth. Beyond a certain threshold, the accumulation of wealth ceases to serve individual well-being and begins to entrench inequality, distort democracy, and hoard resources that could benefit society as a whole. Elon Musk, the member of the US government who just performed a Nazi salute at the inauguration of the world’s most powerful politician, and incidentally, the richest man alive, earns the national median wage every single minute of every single day.

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Time to go low if we want democracy to survive

By John Marriott | Tue 21st January 2025 - 11:48 am

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“When they go low, we go high” Michelle Obama told the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Well, a fat lot of good that did the Democrats back then and in 2024 as well. The problem that the responsible left is facing in nearly every country where a democratic system purports to exist is a failure to recognise unfortunately that it’s bread and butter issues that a lot of people, many with a short memory, care about more and are frankly satisfied with the modern equivalent of what Roman poet, Juvenal, cynically termed “bread and circuses”. The ‘Glory of Rome’ favoured just a chosen few; just as would the ‘Greatness’ of America.

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Tagged president trump | 23 Comments

Welcome to my day: 20 January 2025 – “ask not what your country can do for you”

By Mark Valladares | Mon 20th January 2025 - 9:45 am

The past week has seen a series of Liberal Democrat interventions, boldly calling for stronger links between the United Kingdom and Europe. Ed Davey reads every word I write, apparently…

But seriously, it’s nice to see our Party making the weather on Europe, and interesting to see the media response. And it’s not that there’s any sense of desperation – we are, after all, the largest third party in Parliament for a century or so – but the approach is consistent with our core beliefs over decades. In the absence of a credible centre-right political force in this country (and I’m really not suggesting that we fill that vacancy), offering positive reasons to support us has to be a good thing.

The suggestion that we need to rebuild our relationship with the European Union is obviously linked to the rather menacing threat of tariffs on imports from whatever countries offend Donald Trump on any given day, but I am surprised to hear British politicians who say that we should prioritise seeking a trade deal with the United States. And yes, a decent trade agreement with the world’s largest economy would undoubtedly be helpful but is any such deal viable with an “emotionally erratic billionaire with the temperament of one of those kids in Willy Wonka”?

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Drugs – the risk of taking the wrong approach – Part 2

By Daniel Stylianou | Sun 19th January 2025 - 11:55 am

Continuing where we left off yesterday, let’s look at some of the other proposals in Policy Paper 47.

Those who work in the criminal justice system know that the ‘simple’ possession offence is the one that comes most often before the criminal courts, and Class B is frequently the most common because it covers cannabis, easily the most ‘popular’ of drugs. I can count on one hand (maybe slight hyperbole) the number of people who have said “yes, I had that drug for supply”. It is always for ‘personal use’ and if that’s the case, how do you prosecute those people if personal use is legal? People could legitimately stockpile large quantities for their own use, or cultivate it, and it would be extraordinarily difficult to prove supply without further intelligence gathering – the very expenditure that this policy paper suggests is inefficient.

The policy paper suggests that a policy of imposing imprisonment for simple possession should be avoided. The situation must have changed since 2001 because anyone – probably everyone – who works in the criminal justice system today will tell you that unless they are charged with dozens of offences, defendants do not receive imprisonment for simple possession. These offences are most usually dealt with by way of a fine and forfeiture and destruction of the drug. I can honestly say, in years of working in the field, I have never seen someone given imprisonment for a simple possession offence where that is the only offence before the court.

Conversely, the policy advocates a zero-tolerance policy on drug driving. That has been overtaken by changes in legislation, as there are now legal limits for drugs use when driving. However, it is hard to imagine reconciling a “use as you see fit” policy on drugs with an “absolutely not” policy on drug driving. People typically do not realise how long drugs stay in the system as they metabolise and I can easily foresee scenarios where people are charged with drug driving and plead not guilty, arguing the government has said they can use drugs, and they didn’t know it was still in their system. This will only pour fuel on the fire of the court backlog issue. This would perhaps be manageable only if, as the policy paper suggests, more was poured into drug awareness and education.

At one point the paper suggests imposing a public policy instruction that it isn’t in the public interest to prosecute certain drugs offences. The drafters of this policy clearly didn’t appreciate the role of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), and the role of the legislature. If you don’t want something to be prosecuted, you repeal the offence. You do not try and dictate what the CPS – an arms-length, independent prosecuting agency – does and does not prosecute. Down that road lies madness and a corruption of the role of both the government and the prosecuting agencies.

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Tagged drugs and drugs law | 7 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 19th January 2025 - 9:41 am

United States

Trump’s run of good luck continues. It seems likely that all but one of his cabinet nominations will be confirmed by the Senate. Congressman Matt Gaetz was the longest of long shots for Attorney General. The Ethics Committee investigation into his drug-fuelled sex antics ruled him out.

Fox News presenter Pete Hesgeth was also expected to fail in his bid to become America’s next Secretary of Defense. A seedy past and lack of experience worked against him. But Hesgeth put up a good show against tough questioning from the Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. There is nothing the Republican senators like more than a conservative who successfully fights his corner. He is expected to be confirmed on Tuesday.

The same with Pam Bondi who replaced Matt Gaetz as Trump’s choice for Attorney General. Ms Bondi sort of mollified senators when she denied that there was a “enemies list” compiled of people Trump wants prosecuted. But she then qualified this by refusing to rule out taking action against Jack Smith, the Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate the president-elect.

Smith, for his part, is clearly angry that he will not be able to drag Donald Trump into court. This week he released a partially redacted set of documents which clearly stated that if Trump had not been elected president he would be seeing his tailor for an orange onesie. The documents claimed that Trump was guilty of election interference, disrupting an official proceeding of Congress, stealing and hiding classified documents and, almost certainly, trying to overthrow the US government.

Jack Smith is, according to FBI nominee, Kash Patel, at the top of his “enemies list”. Patel has yet to be questioned by a Senate Committee, but he has publicly said that there is an enemy list. Patel, however, will be reporting to Pam Bondi.

Trump meanwhile has insisted that there is a “patriot’s list.” That is an unidentified number of people who were prosecuted for invading the Capitol Building on January 6, 2020. He has promised that he will pardon them. He does not need the assistance of Patel or Bondi to do so. He just needs a pen and paper.

Russia

They call it hybrid warfare. Russia is becoming a master practitioner across Europe and beyond. It involves, misinformation campaigns, cyberattacks espionage and sabotage of military facilities and critical infrastructure, damaging undersea pipelines and electricity cables and interfering in democratic elections.

This week Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the Russians were even plotting to blow up airliners, “not just against Poland, but against airlines across the globe,” he insisted.

Meanwhile the German government this week ordered police and the air force to shoot down the growing number of drones flying over German and American military bases and critical infrastructure. The Interior Minister said they were suspected of sabotage and espionage.

But the most disturbing incidents have involved undersea cables and pipelines in the Baltic. They carry gas supplies, electricity, 95 percent of the internet traffic and $10 trillion worth of annual financial transactions.

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Tagged donald trump, india, NATO, russia, taliban and United states of America | 6 Comments

Drugs – the risk of taking the wrong approach – Part 1

By Daniel Stylianou | Sat 18th January 2025 - 11:55 am

As a solicitor working in the field of criminal law, I see people charged with offences involving controlled drugs every day. There are many offences, but to name just some:

Possession with intent to supply
Being concerned in the supply
Cultivation
Driving under the influence of drugs
Fraudulent evasion of a prohibition on importing/exporting a controlled drug
Supply (and intent to supply) psychoactive substances

And of course, the one everyone is most familiar with, the offence of simply being in possession of a controlled drug.

The Law

The law on controlled drugs is quite simple and codified in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. I won’t go into it in much detail, but it might be an interesting read for those not already familiar.

For those unfamiliar with the way courts in England & Wales sentence cases, the sentencing bench (whether that’s a bench of magistrates or a District Judge in the Magistrates’ Court, or a Circuit Judge in the Crown Court) are assisted by sentencing guidelines. Drugs offences come under various different headings, but the guidelines helpfully include a search function, and searching “drug” brings many of them up (hopefully this link will assist).

Liberal Democrat Policy

The 2024 manifesto has a section on Crime and Policing, but does not touch on the party’s policy regarding drugs. However, Policy Paper 47 is based entirely around the policy and offers some interesting perspectives and suggestions. Published in 2001, many of the suggestions have now been outstripped by advances in the law, but I believe – and may well be proven wrong – it remains the most complete policy proposal drafted. On speaking to Liberal Democrats over the years it seems to me that many would support the policies contained within.

I’ve included above a link to the policy paper. To name just a few of the suggestions, we have:

Implementing a policy of non-prosecution for possession, cultivation for own use, and social supply of cannabis. This would not involve repealing the offence but would involve a public policy declaration that it is not in the public interest to prosecute these types of offences.
Re-classifying cannabis as a Class C drug and permitting medicinal use of cannabis derivatives.
Ending imprisonment as a punishment for possession of a Class B or Class C drug, where it was for personal use.

All of these suggestions, and the rest, are said to come with many benefits, primarily:

Reducing the impact of drug-related crime on law-abiding citizens
Encouraging more “problem” drug users to come forward for treatment, without fear of being stigmatised
Increasing the resources available for, and the credibility of, drugs education.

My Response

In my view this policy paper, and subsequent suggestions that the Liberal Democrats should be the party of legalisation, is wrong. I do not doubt the motives or beliefs of those who support legislation, but in my view, legalisation takes us down the wrong path.

The statistics are obviously quite old now, but it was suggested in the late 1990s that the number of “hard” drug addicts (i.e., those using Class A drugs, like crack cocaine) had risen to 270,000, and the size of the drugs market in 1998 was estimated at £6.6 billion (then 0.66% of GDP). The suggestion in the paper is that the policy of criminalising drug use – especially for personal use – was disproportionate and when the figures were balanced (62% of spending then went on prosecutions, as opposed to only 25% of education) the policy clearly favoured criminalisation above everything else. This, the paper suggested, was forcing drug-users to hardened criminals for supply and away from possible education and support resources. All of this, in turn, would only drive drug use up.

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Tagged drugs and drugs law | 3 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Gaza Ceasefire

By Tom Arms | Sat 18th January 2025 - 9:34 am

They were celebrating in Gaza City when the ceasefire was announced on Wednesday. Men, women and children ran into the streets to shout, cry and pray.

Then the Israeli bombs started to fall again. 110 more Palestinians died. Shortly afterwards it was announced that a last-minute hiccup had delayed Israeli cabinet approval. Will the ceasefire hold?

The deal is the result of constant 24/7 negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the US. The bones of the agreement were announced by Biden in May. Benjamin Netanyahu, however, rejected it at the time.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden can both take a share of the credit. Biden for negotiating the deal and winning UN backing. Trump for saying he would back what Biden parleyed. It was a rare moment of cross-party foreign policy-making and undercut Netanyahu’s hopes of a better agreement from Donald Trump.

The ceasefire itself is in three clear phases. Phase one is due to start on Sunday and last six weeks. It involves the partial withdrawal of Israeli forces; an increased flow of humanitarian aid and the release of some Palestinian prisoners.

Phase two—also six weeks long—calls for the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. The return of all remaining live hostages and the release of more Palestinian prisoners and “the return to a sustainable calm.”

Phase three is the start of the reconstruction of Gaza. The return of the bodies of an estimated 32 dead hostages and the release of more Palestinian prisoners. The US, Egypt and Qatar are all committed to ensuring that both sides comply and that the ceasefire goes well beyond the first few months and becomes the basis of further agreements.

But there are a host of hurdles at which ceasefire could fall. Possibly the biggest is opposition from the Religious Zionist Party led by Finance Minister Ben Smotrich. He has said he would vote against the ceasefire unless there is a clear commitment to resume fighting once all the hostages are released. He said: “Our continued presence in the government depends on the absolute certainty of resuming the war with full force.”

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Tagged gaza and israel | 12 Comments

The Green Book podcast

By Peter Wrigley | Fri 17th January 2025 - 12:48 pm

For those who, like me, prefer to absorb information, arguments, proposals and inspiration from reading print rather than listening to podcasts I present below what I believe to be the key points from the Green Book podcast featured on LDV on Wednesday 15^th January, in which Chris Bowers chairs contributions from Layla Moran, Lynne Featherstone and Timothy Garton Ash.

An important feature of Liberalism is its (our?) capacity for self-criticism.
Fundamental to Liberalism is to place limits on ALL forms of power.
Over the centuries in the West Liberalism has had considerable success in placing limits on public power.
However, especially in recent years, we’re failing to limit private power. (eg Musk and the tech companies, fossil-fuel lobbyists, newspaper owners, et al.)
Aspects of both “neo” Liberalism and “woke” Liberalism have caused large sections of the electorates to stop listening to us.

“Neo” liberalism because the economic gains have gone largely to the “already haves” and not improved the lots of the “ordinary working family.”

“Woke ” liberalism, with its laudable concerns for the fair treatment and respect for the feelings of eg people of colour, the disabled, gays, lesbians etc., tend to make the white working class, especially the men (defined vividly by American commentator Tucker Carlsen “people who can actually change a flat tyre”) feel that Liberals “are concerned about everyone but me.”

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Tagged green book podcast | 11 Comments

Hope is not just desirable, it could be the key to defeating populism!

By Chris Bowers | Wed 15th January 2025 - 12:59 pm

They say that to be a Liberal you have to be an incorrigible optimist. Yet, even with a record number of Lib Dem MPs, it’s hard to be optimistic in a global political environment witnessing the onward march of populism.

But what if discovering a seam of hope and optimism and representing it in British politics was in fact the best way of countering the rise of populism? With a tired and irresponsible government making way after 14 years for a new administration with an awful inheritance that’s made some errors in its first few months, it’s difficult to see where any optimism is going to come from. Then again, if any is to emerge, it’s likely to be from that optimistic creed known as Liberalism.

That is the underlying premise behind the latest in the series of Green Book podcasts, which has seen discussions among leading liberal figures on a range of subjects. For the series’ first post-election podcast, the subject was the less easily defined issue of ‘hope and optimism’, and the discussion brought together the Lib Dem health select committee chair Layla Moran, the former minister Lynne Featherstone, and the professor of history and liberalism Timothy Garton Ash, with me as moderator.

Again hosted by LibDem Podcasts, listen in to their discussion on all the main platforms or watch here:

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Tagged featured and green book podcast | 6 Comments

Elon Musk’s X ownership amplifies the far-right agenda in Britain and beyond

By Jack Wilkin | Tue 14th January 2025 - 5:08 pm

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Since billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the platform has become a stage for amplifying far-right views, sparking widespread concern across the political landscape. Musk is far from a free-speech absolutist. He frequently bans accounts because they criticise him and praises authoritarian leaders. Musk’s interventions, both direct and through the accounts he boosts (and his alt-account he uses to praise himself), have elevated controversial far-right groups.

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Tagged elon musk and x | 13 Comments

Candidates – a route to fixing a recurring problem

By Callum Robertson | Mon 13th January 2025 - 4:42 pm

The Farron Review is an excellent piece of work, the east option as a party would have been to paint a glowing image of success following our General Election. Yet the review does not shy away from asking some difficult questions of our structures and what we can improve going forward.

The main area singled out for criticism is our candidates process. At the moment, our candidates process is that people who wish to stand for any office above that of a local councillor, must attend and pass, an approval day (think grad scheme assessment day). Once they have done so they are on the list of approved candidates and can put their name forward for any seat that advertises.

In addition to this, if someone wishes to stand for a body such as the London Assembly, or as a Police and Crime Commissioner, they must first pass the Westminster approval day, then take a conversion test to become an approved candidate for that body.

In England, this entire process is run by the English Party, leading to an extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of very few people. In Scotland and Wales, the state parties have control over their selection processes particularly for Holyrood and Cardiff Bay.

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged candidate selections | 8 Comments

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