Category Archives: Op-eds

Tom Reeve

Why does cautious Starmer keep getting it wrong?

By Tom Reeve | Tue 21st April 2026 - 10:51 am

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Yesterday, Keir Starmer faced Parliament to explain how a man who failed his security vetting ended up as Britain’s most important ambassador. It is a question worth asking. But there is a deeper one beneath it: how does a prime minister who presents himself as the cautious, process-respecting antidote to Conservative chaos keep finding himself in exactly these situations?

The Mandelson affair is, in miniature, the story of this government. A political decision was taken — to appoint a Labour grandee to a high-profile role. Warnings existed. Red flags had been raised. The vetting process that was supposed to filter out exactly these problems produced a recommendation to deny clearance. And yet the appointment went ahead, with civil servants apparently acting on the understanding that the prime minister wanted it to happen. When it collapsed, spectacularly, Starmer said he was furious he hadn’t been told. The civil servant who overrode the vetting was sacked. The prime minister, once again, was the victim of events – or was he?

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Mathew Hulbert

Mathew on Monday: is Keir Starmer the most incurious Prime Minister in British history?

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 20th April 2026 - 5:45 pm

There is something increasingly puzzling – and politically dangerous – about the way that Keir Starmer governs. It is not simply that things go wrong on his watch; every Prime Minister faces crisis, missteps, and the odd unforced error. It is that, time and again, Starmer appears oddly detached from the very events shaping his premiership. As if politics and government are things that happen to him, rather than things he actively directs.

That sense of detachment is beginning to harden into something more troubling: a complete lack of curiosity.

Effective leadership demands an almost relentless inquisitiveness – a desire to know what is happening, why it is happening, and what might be coming next. It requires a Prime Minister to probe, to challenge, to test assumptions, and, crucially, to anticipate problems before they spiral. Starmer, by contrast, too often looks like a man content to sail above the fray – until, inevitably, he is dragged under by a storm he neither saw coming nor seems prepared to confront.

We have seen this pattern repeat itself. Controversies emerge, decisions. Unravel, narratives take hold – and Downing Street appears on the back foot. The sense is not of a government firmly in control, but of one constantly scrambling to catch up with events. That is not simply a communications failure; it speaks to something deeper about how power is being exercised.

Of course, there will be those who argue that this is a deliberate style, that Starmer is seeking to rise above the noise, to avoid the hyperactive, personality-driven politics of recent years. That he is, in effect, trying to de-dramatise the office of Prime Minister. If so, it isn’t working.

Because the vacuum created by that approach does not remain empty for long. It is filled by speculation, by confusion, and by opponents who are only too happy to define the narrative in his absence. Leadership is not about constant noise-but it is about presence. And increasingly, that presence feels lacking. More fundamentally, there is a difference between calm authority and passive drift. The former reassures; the latter unnerves. At present, Starmer is very much in the second category.

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Jean-François Burford

Make Culture Really Count

By Jean-François Burford | Mon 20th April 2026 - 1:50 pm

Governments don’t just underestimate culture, media and sport, they depend on them, while systematically failing to sustain them.

In the UK, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport stands as a formal acknowledgement that these sectors matter. In practice, it has become a symbol of something else: a gap between rhetoric and reality that has gone unchallenged for too long.

That gap is indefensible. The creative industries contribute £145.8bn to the economy, around 5.5% of GDP and the wider DCMS sectors account for close to a tenth of all economic output. They employ millions, grow faster than the wider economy, and project British influence globally. By any serious economic measure, they should be central to national strategy.

Instead, they are treated as optional.

This isn’t just a matter of perception; it is built into the system. At local level, most spending on arts, culture and sport is not protected. Councils are not required to fund it. When budgets come under pressure, as they have year after year, these areas are cut first. Libraries close. Youth services disappear. Community sport collapses. What is lost is not just access, but opportunity and once gone, it rarely returns.

This is not inevitable. It is the result of political design.

Nationally, the imbalance is just as stark. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport operates with a fraction of the budget of departments such as the National Health Service or the Ministry of Defence, despite overseeing sectors that generate a significant share of UK growth. This is not about affordability. It is about priority and a persistent failure to align investment with economic reality.

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Mark Corner

What is the best way back into the EU?

By Mark Corner | Mon 20th April 2026 - 12:17 pm

I appreciated Gareth McAleer’s article in Lib Dem Voice on the economic power-up to be had from rejoining the EU, but while I support his desire to rejoin I think a different approach will be more effective.

Economic arguments are always difficult and precision hard to achieve. As the saying goes, an economist is someone who if you ask for a telephone number gives you an estimate. It would be better to say that rejoining the single market will be of obvious economic benefit and leave others to fill in the billions. The alternative view, the Boris Johnson idea that …

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Nina Wessel

The Labour threat to the Right to Protest

By Nina Wessel | Mon 20th April 2026 - 10:56 am

Last week, the government forced through parliament the controversial “cumulative disruption” power, which enables police to ban protests on the grounds that they take place repeatedly. This attack on the fundamental freedoms of assembly and expression has been strongly criticised by the UN and human rights organisations.

Introduced by the Lords as an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, this legislation was not subject to full debate and scrutiny in parliament, MPs were denied a separate vote on the cumulative disruption amendment, and the vote on the bill was pushed through before the conclusions of the independent review.

This is the latest measure in a trend to impose restrictions on the democratic right to protest, and raises serious civil liberties concerns.

As noted by Liberal Democrat peer Lord Strasburger in a recent article for Middle East Eye, banning repeat protests ignores a basic lesson of democratic history – that sustained action is central to achieving democratic change:

From women’s suffrage to civil rights to anti-war movements, meaningful change has always depended on people returning, again and again, to make their voices heard. Curtailing protest simply because it is persistent strikes at the heart of that tradition, and risks targeting the very causes that are most likely to be worthy of protest.

Together with Lord Marks and Baroness Doocey, our justice and police spokespersons in the Lords respectively, Lord Strasburger backed an amendment in the Lords to remove the repeat-protest provisions from the Bill. That amendment was not ultimately put to a vote after the Conservatives declined to support it.

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George Cunningham

Time is ticking: Britain’s defences need urgent fixing

By George Cunningham | Sun 19th April 2026 - 1:55 pm

This week, the government suffered its latest humiliation when Lord George Robertson, a former NATO Secretary-General, ex-Labour Defence Secretary and chair of the government’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review accused the government of “corrosive complacency” in risking the country’s security by dragging his heels on how the government will fund rebuilding its military in the face of the growing threat from Russia.

A rising crescendo of articles and speeches by ex-military, defence correspondents and experts – and our very own Lib Dem defence spokesperson James MacCleary MP – have been highlighting that the government’s Strategic Defence Review remains little more than rhetoric after one year. 

Poland (4.5%), Latvia (4%) and Lithuania (3.7%) have the highest GDP % expenditure of NATO members on defence. Germany is hugely increasing its defence budget by lifting its debt brake to spend nearly €650bn over the next five years. Even France has managed an increase in its defence budget by EUR 6.5bn for 2027, despite a debt level (117% of GDP), higher than the UK’s (110%). However, the UK is in last place (alongside France), in terms of growing its defence budget amongst European NATO partners during the past decade. 

The shocking state of British armed forces means that we cannot defend ourselves effectively. Aircraft carriers that cannot be adequately protected, an eviscerated Royal Navy with all major ships but one destroyer, one frigate and one Astute class nuclear submarine under maintenance or repair, an army that can barely pull together a functioning brigade of soldiers for immediate deployment. Surely, our armed forces, whose men and women put their lives at risk for the nation, deserve better.

Picture of a tankThe Defence Investment Plan – which our industry needs to produce the weapons and equipment – continues to be “missing in inaction”.   The Ministry of Defence is in a fight with the Treasury for more money – and not getting very far. We are meant to increase our defence budget from 2.3% (£68 bn) to 2.5% of GDP by next year, yet the defence chiefs are now being asked to find £3.5bn of savings, raising fears that weapons projects may be even further delayed. If the Chagos Islands deal eventually goes through, it will lop another 0.2% of GDP off the defence budget. Neither logic nor maths add up. 

Commentators are saying we only have 2-3 years to fix the problem at best we can because of the Russian threat. And already a year has been lost (and four since the second invasion of Ukraine). So the painful question is how can we raise the money for defence in the short time (let alone manufacture the equipment we need)? Some ideas:

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 19th April 2026 - 11:44 am

China

The invisible hand of Beijing has been busily pulling the backstage strings to try and organise Iran War peace talks.

Pakistan—which has been the lead country in mediation country—is a close ally of China and is clearly coordinating Its honest broker activities with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi who prefers to remain in the shadows.

Economically China desperately needs an end to Trump’s War. Ninety percent of its oil comes from Iran and, as the world’s second largest economy, China needs global stability to maintain growth.

At the same time, Chinese President Xi Jinping must be smiling to himself as Donald Trump entangles himself in a needless Middle East war which distracts him away from the Chinese priorities of Taiwan, the Philippines and the South China Sea. It also enables him to project China as a nation of calm reasonableness compared to an America run by an erratic president committed to riding roughshod over international law and conventions.

But what China does not want to do is be seen to be actively involved in discussions about the Iran War. This week a host of visitors including the Spanish prime minister and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi visited Beijing to try to persuade Xi Jinping to offer direct mediation.

Tehran, for its part, has called on China to guarantee its security. The Chinese have the facilities to do the job. They have a naval base around the corner in Djibouti on the Red Sea. Even closer is their port of Gwadar near in Pakistan near the Iranian border. It is currently used exclusively for commercial purposes, but it could be quickly adapted to military use.

But China’s rulers have looked at the sad experiences of the US and concluded that they have little desire to commit their military to the risk of being dragged into a costly war that will undermine their own strength and brand.

Behind the scenes, backstage, quiet diplomacy—yes. Anything more, No, for fear of being blamed for any failure. And where the Middle East is concerned, failure is the name of the game.

Hungary

It is now time for the big Hungarian clean-up. The new prime minister, Peter Magyar has promised just that, and he has a comfortable super majority to achieve it.

But it will not be easy, Orban has packed the media, industry and academia with his cronies. They have all said they would construct legal obstacles to dislodge them, and the courts have also been filled with Fidesz supporters.

From a foreign perspective Magyar’s biggest challenge will be clawing back funding for the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). The MCC poses as an educational institute but in reality, is the main financial vehicle for funding an international far-right network of institutions, political parties, pressure groups and think tanks.

The funds for MCC come from shares in Hungary’s massive state-owned energy company MOL. Orban organised a transfer of a large bloc of MOL shares to MCC. They in turn have sent funds to the Reform Party in UK, AfD in Germany, the National Rally in France and Vox in Spain. MCC also helps to finance the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC)

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Gareth McAleer

Why Cromwell’s Statue at Westminster Should Come Down

By Gareth McAleer | Sun 19th April 2026 - 9:53 am

As Liberal Democrats we like to think of ourselves as champions of liberty and the equal dignity of every person. That is why we should be uneasy with the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament. It is not just a carving in stone. It is a symbol of honour placed at the threshold of our democracy by a state that still chooses to celebrate a man whose rule was built on conquest, massacre and the systematic displacement of entire peoples across Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland. If we take …

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: The Cost

By Tom Arms | Sat 18th April 2026 - 9:43 am

Trump’s War against Iran has upended the world economy. And it has only just begun. As one economist said: “At the moment things are bad. They are going to get worse and they could become catastrophic.”

At the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) spring meeting of world finance ministers the IMF revised down world economic growth for 2026 from 3.3 percent to 3.1 percent. It then went on to warn that if the Iran War continued much longer there was a real risk of a global recession.

Of the world’s advanced economies, the UK is the hardest hit according to both the IMF and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Predicted growth in the UK is 0.8 percent for 2026, down from 1.3 percent.

Even harder hit are the Asia Pacific countries who are dependent on the Persian Gulf for their gas and oil-based energy. Asia is also the most populous continent and accounts for more than half of global manufacturing which means that economic hits to that region have major global impact. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) reckons that the war has already cost Asia-Pacific countries $300 billion.

Fossil fuels are not the only vital commodity exported from the Persian Gulf. The region is the world’s major source of urea which is a derivative of natural gas and a major component of fertiliser. There is a real danger that the lack of fertiliser will hit global crop yields.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned that forty-five million people could be pushed into “food insecurity” and that food shortages could reach “catastrophic levels.”

The Eurozone has also been hit. IMF growth predictions for the Eurozone have been revised down from 1.3 percent to 1.1 percent and inflation is expected to go up from 2.1 percent to 2.6 percent. Trump’s war has made it unlikely that the European Central Bank can cut interest rates. In fact, they may have to raise them. This view is being echoed by central banks around the world.

Germany is the hardest hit of the Eurozone countries. This is because its economy is heavily geared towards manufacturing which in turn is fuelled by oil and gas. Because France derives a large part of its energy from nuclear power plants it will escape a lot of the pain, but the French finance minister has warned about inflation and supply chain risks.

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Mills Dyer

The Quiet Revival, my Roman Empire, and other times that I’ve been proven right

By Mills Dyer | Fri 17th April 2026 - 1:38 pm

It is rare that a podcast will make me immediately stop what I am doing.  However, this was the case last summer, when the brilliant ‘Since Churchill and Attlee’ podcast highlighted a study from The Bible Society called ‘The Quiet Revival’. The report claimed to show that 16% of 18-24 year olds surveyed (by YouGov) in 2024 were Christian and went to church at least once a month, rising from 4% in 2018. This survey result was not just extraordinary, but frankly, unbelievable. As I read the Bible Society report for myself and googled the coverage surrounding it, I realised with shock that this report was being picked up as if it was itself gospel.

This brings me to my Roman Empire, something that a person thinks deeply about on a regular basis. My Roman Empire is that, Christianity worldwide (but particularly in North America and Western Europe) is dying out, and that no one else is noticing. This is not to say that I do not have skin in this game. I left Christianity a few years ago, when I realised that I could no longer believe in a deity, much less attend a church, that was less compassionate than I was. A ‘casualty’ of the Christianity’s move towards the political right.

As an observer of the church in the UK and certified data nerd/psephologist, I knew that the data in the Bible Society’s report went against all available evidence. Attendance data from the Church of England and the Catholic Church, data from the UK Census, and the British Attitudes Survey all disagree to a sharp increase in Christian attendance or identification as the Bible Society are suggesting. The British Attitudes Survey even showing the reverse pattern the The Bible Society claim for an uptick in the identification with Christianity. Moreover, the consistent data picture is one of decades of steady decline.  In 1960, just under 7% were on the Church of England’s electoral roll, in 2019, that had dropped to just 1.5%. The 2021 Census shows that identification with Christianity has dropped below half the population for the first time in England and Wales (46.2%, down from 59.3% in 2011).

Why this is all relevant now is because a fortnight ago (27th March) The Bible Society pulled the report and the data/claims that went with it. Now YouGov, which carried out the research, has told the Bible Society that an internal review of the data found that some of the respondents who completed its survey were “fraudulent”.

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Josh Matthews

A UK Wellbeing Economy: The start of a Liberal Democrat vision and plan

By Josh Matthews | Fri 17th April 2026 - 10:07 am

We are at our best, as Liberal Democrats, when we have radical vision, challenge the status quo, AND have the plan to match.

Too few people in positions of power truly realise just how deep the failing of the current economy goes. It does not work for too many people.

But the question is not just what a new economy looks like, but how we unpick the old one and move forward.

This article outlines how the Liberal Democrats could construct and communicate a plan for a Wellbeing Economy in the UK. You can find more detail on each of the seven steps below published recently at Critical Mass for Sustainability.

The next stage of economics must be a transition to an economy judged not only by GDP, but by whether people can access care, find fulfilling and secure work, access a thriving local environment, afford a decent home, breathe clean air… all on a liveable planet.

A wellbeing economy matches our party’s deepest values: liberty, equality, community, democracy, and environmentalism.

Freedom, fairness, and equality of opportunity also cut across Liberal Democrat values and form the core of what a wellbeing economy could be:

  • A platform and the freedom to live your version of a best life.
  • Freedom in a fair society that works especially for the least advantaged.
  • Genuine equality of opportunity, not just theoretical opportunity written in law.

That new economy needs a practical route from the current, complex, globally connected system to a better one, built from inside the institutions, incentives, and fiscal realities we have now.

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Tom Reeve

Three chords and the truth

By Tom Reeve | Thu 16th April 2026 - 11:58 am

The new Fabian pamphlet, Common Endeavour, has one of the sharpest lines written about populism this year. In chapter 8, Labour MP Liam Byrne borrows the old country music saying that all you need is “three chords and the truth.” Populism works, he argues, because it plays three simple emotional chords: patriotism, nostalgia, and moral combat. Pride, loss, fight. Simple, repeatable, and perfectly tuned to social media algorithms that reward feeling over thought.

He’s right. And he’s honest enough to admit that mainstream politicians have been answering with word salads while populists holler a battle cry. Reform UK doesn’t win arguments. It wins feelings.

But Byrne’s own answer is where it falls short. His formula for beating populism is “optimism plus fairness plus performance.” That’s a strategy memo, not a song. It tells a government what to do. It doesn’t tell a movement what to feel. You can’t knock on a door and sing optimism plus fairness plus performance.

Liberals need our own three chords. Here are mine.

Power. Security. Respect.

Start with power, because that’s where liberals are different. Labour’s instinct is to fix things for people from the centre. Reform’s trick is to offer the feeling of power by handing it to a strongman. One is paternalism. The other is surrender dressed in a flag.

As countless leaders of radical movements have noted, power is not given, it is taken. I believe that’s not only a radical proposition, it’s liberal as well. 

The preamble to our party’s constitution states that power belongs at the lowest level that works. The implication is that the centre must justify each power it possesses, not the other way around.

Yes, the consequences of this are significant at the local level – neighbourhood budgets and planning decisions made by people who live with the outcome. But power isn’t only a local question. 

As a species, we are wealthier than at any point in history, but the people in the bottom half of the economy aren’t feeling it. That’s not a local problem; it’s a national and global failure of power. Who sets wages, who controls housing costs, who decides where investment goes, who writes the rules of the economy, and for whose benefit? 

Liberals may have cracked the local argument. The national one – dispersing economic power, not just political power – is harder. But it matters, and we haven’t begun to answer it seriously.

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Josh Babarinde

100 things @ 100 days

By Josh Babarinde | Thu 16th April 2026 - 9:31 am

Hello lovely Liberal Democrats!

This week, we reached 100 days since I took office as Party President – and what an honour it’s been so far!

I’ve been working with incredible members, activists, councillors, parliamentarians and staff across our party to help us to reach more people – voters, donors, volunteers, media and more – with our liberal message and to reinforce our position as the last line of defence against populism and division in our country.

Below are 100 things that I’ve been doing since I was elected to play my part in that fight as Party president. It’s not an exhaustive list but I hope it gives a flavour of what I’ve been up to!

(PS It’s in a random order, so please don’t read too much into that!)

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Jack Meredith

Attendance Allowance should not stop at the hospital door

By Jack Meredith | Wed 15th April 2026 - 1:30 pm

My grandfather, or as I affectionately call him, Bampa, is currently in the hospital awaiting urgent heart treatment.

It’s frightening enough on its own. The hospital is 40 minutes away, so I’m relying on phone calls during the day to keep up to date on my bampa, get on with my work day, and keep my family members updated on what the hospital tells me; suffice it to say, it’s a lot.

And then, recently, my mum had a letter. My mum has been told that, due to how long my bampa has been in the hospital, if he is still there by Sunday, 26 April, his Attendance Allowance will stop.

Now, we’re not expecting him to be in there that long, and he should (we hope) be home by the end of the week. But what kind of state treats its citizens like this? A man who has worked his entire life, never complained about the cards he was dealt in life, having lost his wife only a few months ago, is now in the hospital, and the response from the state is, “Yeah, sorry about that, but if you’re there any longer, we’ll punish you.”

It’s one of those moments when the welfare state shows you why, once again, it is not fit for purpose. What should be a humane system built around the realities of illness, frailty and care is just an administrative machine that is constantly scanning for the point at which it decides support no longer counts.

Attendance Allowance is designed to support older people with the extra costs of disability and ill health. It can range from £76.70 to £114.60 per week. But if someone has the misfortune of being ill and being in hospital for 28 days, their support is suspended, and only resumes when they’re back home.

While this makes sense to Whitehall, considering they fund the hospital stay and therefore the benefit is not needed, life is not lived on a spreadsheet.

Extra pressures do not disappear when someone is in the hospital. Families need to travel, buy essentials for the person in the hospital, spend money on food, parking and transport, manage calls and paperwork, chase updates, prepare for discharge, and carry the emotional and practical stresses of caring. Depending on the treatment, the person coming home from the hospital will need more support than before, not less.

This is what makes the rule on Attendance Allowance so cruel. It operates on a fantasy version of illness, one in which the hospital somehow automatically removes the burdens of care, rather than intensifying them.

The impact on Attendance Allowance has a knock-on effect on the carer’s allowance, too. If the Attendance Allowance stops, the linked Carer’s Allowance also stops, triggering a second financial impact on the same family. This is a direct penalty on ill health and care itself, delivered by a system supposedly in place to support both.

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Jenny Wilkinson

Why Birmingham is ready for a Liberal Democrat administration 

By Jenny Wilkinson | Wed 15th April 2026 - 11:28 am

Ed Davey with Lib Dem campaigners in BirminghamBirmingham is at a turning point. After years of Labour failure, a sense of frustration is palpable across the city. A year-long bin strike, which has left streets filthy and strewn with litter, combined with bankruptcy and council tax increases of 24% over 3 years have left residents fed up and looking for an alternative to the failed Labour administration. This widespread discontent has created a unique opportunity for the Lib Dems to provide the leadership that residents are crying out for. With all 101 Birmingham City Council seats up for election on May the 7th, we have the opportunity to make this a reality. 

As a member of Sutton Coldfield local party in Birmingham, I’ve witnessed first-hand voters turning away from Labour and the Conservatives. When Steve Darling MP visited us recently, he found scores of residents looking for an alternative and expressing their support for the Liberal Democrats. They are tired of being let down by failures in local and national government, and they see in us a party that champions local communities. 

Our candidates across the city are finding that the tide is changing towards us and this isn’t just anecdotal. In October we gained a seat from Labour in the Moseley by-election. This win sends a message to the electorate – that the Liberal Democrats are capable of taking on Labour and winning. 

Our leader, Sir Ed Davey, emphasized this last week when he visited Birmingham for the launch of our manifesto stating:

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Paul Walter

A very warm Highland welcome for soft southerners

By Paul Walter | Tue 14th April 2026 - 1:23 pm

It was a huge privilege and pleasure to spend an extended weekend in the Highlands. Blue letter delivery rarely comes with such a vast helping of scenic delights.

We were very fortunate to have very sunny weather as we delivered in Fort Augustus – a fine tourism centre for Loch Ness (above) visitors.

A stiff breeze on Saturday made our Isle of Skye (below) outing even more photogenic – with white horses on the surrounding sea.

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Gareth McAleer

Rejoining the EU – what £1.2 trillion really means for Britain (part 2)

By Gareth McAleer | Tue 14th April 2026 - 12:37 pm

If the UK economy were permanently £180 billion larger every year, and that translated into around £54 billion of extra tax receipts annually, the real‑world impact would not be abstract. It would be measured in hospitals built, nurses hired, waiting lists cut, teachers recruited and classrooms made smaller. This is where the story moves from macroeconomics to people’s lives and to the choices a government can make with new, sustainable revenue.

The NHS: more staff, shorter waits

Take the NHS first. Recent estimates suggest that one additional NHS doctor costs the public sector roughly £100,000 per year when salaries, training and overheads are included, while a nurse costs around £40,000 to £50,000. If even a quarter of the extra £54 billion a year – about £13.5 billion – were directed into health and care, it would support a transformation on the ground.

That level of funding could pay for roughly 135,000 extra doctors or around 270,000 extra nurses, or a mixed workforce of, for example, 60,000 doctors and 110,000 nurses. In practice, a phased approach would be more realistic and more powerful. A government could plan to recruit 5,000 new doctors and 20,000 new nurses each year for a decade, backed up by thousands more radiographers, physiotherapists and paramedics, as well as sustained capital investment in scanners, theatres and digital systems.

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Lord William Wallace

Defending Liberalism against the illiberal counter-attack

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 14th April 2026 - 9:37 am

In Britain, the USA and across Europe an active cultural war is being fought between liberalism and nationalistic reactionaries.  I regret that British Liberal Democrats are playing so small a part in this conflict – fought through the intellectual media and think tank world, within Christian churches (and within Judaism) and across university campuses. Anti-liberal tracts and articles spill out from well-funded think tanks and newspapers in the USA, Britain and elsewhere. Liberal rebuttals are fewer. But Allen Lane/Penguin have just published one full-length rebuttal: ‘Centrists of the World Unite: the lost genius of Liberalism’, by Adrian Wooldridge, who has spent most of his career on the staff of The Economist.

In over 300 pages Wooldridge takes us from the 16th and 17th century origins of liberalism to its contemporary dilemmas. His underlying theme is that liberalism – defined as ‘the belief that society starts with the individual rather than the collective that power is so dangerous that it needs to be restrained, that truth can be striven-for only through open discussion’ – has twice been successfully reinterpreted to meet the challenges of social, economic and international changes, and that we now need a third confident reinterpretation to counter the anti-liberal onslaught we face today.

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Patrick Baga

The Independent View: Lib Dems would be backing a winner on greyhound racing ban

By Patrick Baga | Tue 14th April 2026 - 8:55 am

This week, greyhound advocates and adopters assembled at a parliamentary reception hosted by Neil Duncan-Jordan MP. Our organisation, international greyhound protection group GREY2K USA Worldwide, jointly released a report entitled Reaching the Finish Line, alongside the League Against Cruel Sports. It is the most comprehensive policy argument in favour of phasing out greyhound racing in the UK ever assembled.

The timing of this release coincides with reporting that there are Labour MPs, as well as sympathetic Labour Ministers, urging Keir Starmer to follow Scotland and Wales and call time on greyhound racing.

It is our belief that it is now time for the Liberal Democrats to adopt a party position of banning greyhound racing. After all, this is both the mainstream consensus and in line with Lib Dem compassionate instincts on animal welfare and gambling harm. Polling in both Scotland and Wales showed approximately 60% support for ending greyhound racing versus 20% opposition. 

Further, Lib Dems are already leading on this issue. Jane Dodds MS played an integral role in securing the Welsh ban and Liz Jarvis MP is carrying the torch in Westminster. Her Early Day Motion calling for an end has 34 signatories, including 22 Lib Dems. 

The evidence base for a ban is also clear. Animal welfare experts in Scotland determined that racing greyhounds sustain more traumatic injuries than companion greyhounds and that the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) is incapable of safeguarding their welfare.

For most of these dogs, the journey begins in Ireland, where they must survive an initial cull of thousands of greyhounds that are deemed too slow. They are then transported from Ireland to the UK, where hundreds are lost.

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Mathew Hulbert

Mathew on Monday: Hungary shows us that the populist Right can be defeated!

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 13th April 2026 - 5:00 pm

For years, Victor Orban’s Hungary has been held up – by admirers and critics alike – as proof that the populist Right, once entrenched, is almost impossible to dislodge. A self-described “illiberal state,” tight media control, constitutional engineering, and a politics built on division and grievance all seemed to point in one direction: permanence. And yet – politics has a habit of reminding us that nothing is permanent.

Yesterday’s election result in Hungary has sent a jolt through that assumption. After more than a decade and a half dominating Hungarian politics, Orban’s grip has been broke by a broad, pro-European opposition. It wasn’t inevitable. It wasn’t easy. But it was possible.

For liberals and democrats here in the UK that matters. Because too often we hear a weary fatalism: that once populists take hold, the game is up; that institutions bend and never recover; that voters, once captured by grievance politics, don’t return. Hungary suggests otherwise.

Here are five takeaways we should take seriously.

  1. Unity beats purity. Hungary’s opposition didn’t win by fragmenting into ideological silos. It came together-liberals, social democrats, greens, conservatives who believe in democracy-around a shared goal: restoring democratic norms. In the UK we too often default to internal squabbles. Hungary shows that when the stakes are high, cooperation across traditions isn’t a betrayal of values-it’s how you defend them.
  2. Democracy still matters to voters. Orban’s project relied on the assumption that voters either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care about the erosion of democratic checks and balances. But, over time, many did. People care about fairness. They care about whether the system works for them. They may not always use the language of ‘liberal democracy,’ but they recognise when something isn’t right.
  3. High turnout changes everything. One of the most striking features of the Hungarian result was turnout. When more voters engage, the electorate becomes broader, less polarised, and less easily captured by a narrow base. If liberals and democrats want to win, we shouldn’t just persuade-we should mobilise. Apathy is the populist Right’s quiet ally.
  4. The populist Right is not invincible. Orban cultivated an image of inevitability. That’s a core part of populist strategy: to appear unstoppable, to sap the opposition’s confidence before a vote is even cast. Hungary punctures that myth. However dominant a movement may seem, it is still subject to the same basic truth: if enough people vote against it, it can be removed.
  5. Offer hope, not just opposition. Crucially, Hungary’s opposition, led by the new PM-elect Peter Magyar, didn’t just say “not Orban.” It offered a different direction-pro European, outward-looking, and rooted in democratic renewal. Here in the UK, liberals must do the same. Critiquing the populist Right is necessary, but not sufficient. People need something to vote for.
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Gareth McAleer

Rejoining the EU: A £180 Billion‑Per‑Year Power‑Up for Britain (Part One)

By Gareth McAleer | Mon 13th April 2026 - 11:11 am

Imagine the UK economy suddenly becoming £180 billion richer every single year – not as a one‑off sugar rush, but as a permanent, compounding uplift. That is what rejoining the European Union could mean: a structural transformation that boosts national income, raises living standards, strengthens public finances and restores Britain’s economic confidence. It would mark a deliberate, strategic shift away from managed decline and towards a confident, outward‑looking economic future.

An economy on turbo

Britain’s economy today is worth around £2.7 trillion. Add £180 billion more in real GDP each year and you get a 6–7 per cent permanent uplift – a lasting improvement that compounds over time. These step changes happen when countries remove trade barriers and integrate fully into large markets, allowing businesses to plan, hire and invest with far greater certainty.

Rejoining the EU would cut through customs red tape, restore full access to the single market and send a clear signal that Britain is open for business again. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s analysis of fiscal multipliers shows that deeper trade integration raises GDP permanently. Over a decade, the result is not just recovery but renewal – a richer, more stable UK economy with stronger foundations and better prospects in every region.

More revenue without raising tax

A stronger economy means higher revenues without increasing tax rates. Britain currently collects about 27 to 28 per cent of GDP in taxes, mainly through income tax, national insurance, VAT and corporation tax. As GDP grows, revenues rise automatically through higher wages and profits, rather than through stealth tax raids or emergency fiscal events.

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Michael Taylor

Another cockup by this ham-fisted government

By Michael Taylor | Mon 13th April 2026 - 9:04 am

For years, our political opponent, especially the hypocritical Labour party, have lambasted us for our role in tuition fees during the coalition, conveniently overlooking Labour’s role of introducing them in the first place after saying they wouldn’t and then introducing top-up fees when they said they wouldn’t.

This ham-fisted government has messed about with student fees ever since getting back into power, first raising the interest rate and then capping it. Saying they would reintroduce maintenance grants and then not doing so.

Now a group of mainly poor working-class students are being told that the people responsible for student loans have mistakenly …

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 12th April 2026 - 10:04 am

UK and Russia

UK-Russian tensions have been ratcheted up several notches this week. It started when Vladimir Putin sent a Russian frigate to escort two shadow fleet oil tankers through the English Channel.

The move was a response to Sir Keir Starmer’s threat to board and impound any of the sanctioned tankers moving through British waters. Result: stand- off.

The tankers issue was followed by a press conference at which Defence Secretary John Healey announced that British forces—in cooperation with Norway—had foiled a Russian attempt to cut a key undersea cable north of the UK.

Not revealed at the press conference was that the cable in question is the FARICE-1 undersea cable which goes through the Faroe Islands to Iceland and then along the west coast of Greenland into the Canadian Arctic. It is the only cable in the region and is used extensively for military communications in the Arctic where the Russians have established military superiority.

NATO has recently awakened to the Arctic. Trump’s move on Greenland is part of that awakening. Another part is Britain’s decision to this summer send a carrier group to the “Far North.”

The Russian cable-cutting attempt by three Russian submarines was a clear bid to disrupt communications between the carrier group and its command headquarters. If the submarines had been successful, then the British force would have had to rely on satellite communications. These are highly sophisticated but more susceptible to jamming and cyber-attacks than communications through an undersea cable.

Britain should expect more Russian attempts to cut seabed communication cables. The UK is a global hub for undersea communications. Seventy cables run in and out of Britain. They carry normal internet traffic, trillions in financial data and military comms. To cut these cables the Russians have developed a new Gugi and Akula class of submarines that can operate deep undersea levels.

To counter this Defence Secretary Healey this week’s press conference to announce that he is investing $137 million in RAF sub hunters. The government is also increasing the overall defense budget to $350 billion—or 2.5 percent of GDP—by the end of next year.

Germany

Germany is also upping its defenses. But it is created domestic problems on the way.

In January, the government launched its Military Service Modernisation Act. This requires that all men—when they turn 18—complete a government questionnaire about their suitability and willingness to serve in the military. Women can also volunteer to complete the questionnaire.

The aim is to build a database of people who can be called upon to voluntarily serve in the military if there is a sudden increase in tensions.

Many however, fear that the act is a step towards conscription. Their fears seemed to be justified by a clause in the act that all men—regardless of their willingness to serve or not—must notify the Bundeswehr (the German army) before leaving the country for more than three months.

This week Defense Secretary Boris Pistorius tried to allay conscription fears by announcing that men would NOT have to reveal that they were leaving the country for more than three months.

However, fears remain, that Germany’s Military Modernisation Act is a back door to a return to conscription.

Hungary

It has been a long-established diplomatic convention that governments do not interfere in other countries domestic affairs—especially elections.

The Trump Administration is no respected of conventions and this week they proved it by dispatching Vice President JD Vance to Hungary to campaign for incumbent “illiberal” prime minister Viktor Orban.

Vance claimed that his appearance did not really constitute interference in Hungarian elections. He went on to say that he was not telling people whom to vote for “but what I am telling you is that the bureaucrats in Brussels…should not be listened to.” He added the clarion cry: “Go to the polls… stand with Viktor Orban because he stands for you.”

To counter any claims that he was not interfering in the Hungarian electoral process, Vance said that he was in Hungary to counter interference in the elections by the European Commission.

The truth of the matter is that Brussels has carefully refrained from making any comment for fear that they would be accused of interference. Orban and Vance submit that this silence is a form of interference.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Two-State Solution

By Tom Arms | Sat 11th April 2026 - 9:59 am

TWO-STATE SOLUTION. That is the only answer to the Palestinian conundrum; the Arab-Israeli problem and now, the Iran War.

Neither the US nor Israel can bomb the Palestinian issue out of existence. It only creates recruiting sergeants for future generations.

Hitler tried it with his Final Solution. Even though six million Jews died in horrific circumstances he failed. The Jewish state rose from the ashes of the Holocaust with a determination that they will never again face extermination and that the land of Israel is theirs by right of God’s promise to Abraham.

Problem was that the Biblical land was occupied by other people who called themselves Palestinians. They were not a state. They were more like a tribe within the Ottoman Empire and later the British Mandate. They had land. That land was taken from them by the Jewish state in wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967.

But Israel’s religious right-wingers demand the Biblical lands of Eretz Israel and the entire country fears that a Palestinian state on their borders will create a permanently hostile nation as their next-door neighbour.

Wake up Israel, a permanently hostile neighbour is exactly what you have created with decades of on-off bombing campaigns and land attacks. The only answer is a two-state solution which recognises that both sides have more to gain from peace than war.

It will not be easy. It will take years of carefully crafted negotiations, and both sides will need to keep the goal firmly in sight. It will start with confidence-building measures. They can be trivial things which create an obvious benefit to both sides. Once those are in place and creating results than it will be more difficult to return to war because it will mean giving up the gains achieved with the confidence building measures.

This has been done before. The best formerly intractable example is Northern Ireland. In the 1970s no one could envisage an end to the Troubles in the province. The IRA and Ulster paramilitaries were busy shooting each other and the British army and government was caught in the political and military crossfire.

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Jack Meredith

It is time for a new social democratic chapter in Lib Dem thinking

By Jack Meredith | Thu 9th April 2026 - 2:40 pm

The Liberal Democrats have a habit of arguing through books. The Orange Book, the Little Yellow Book, the Green Book; each tried to say something important about the future of our party. But taken together, they still leave one tradition unnamed: liberal social democracy.

These books aren’t just publications, but attempts to define what kind of party we are.

The Orange Book laid out a deliberate statement of intent in 2004. It was a serious effort to restate one kind of liberalism and carve out a path that distinguished us from the Conservative and Labour Parties at the time.

The Little Yellow Book argued for a more socially liberal, people-centred direction, one that grounded us in progressive thought and provided us a home on the centre-left.

The Green Book widened the frame by placing environmental limits and stewardship at the heart of our party, providing us with a framework to tackle one of the greatest challenges of our time.

Yet for all this intellectual activity, the party still has not fully named one of its own inheritances: the liberal-social-democratic tradition that runs through Jo Grimond’s realignment vision, through the Alliance, the merger, and the best of the SDP strain in our history. This did not begin at Limehouse alone. Grimond had already begun to sketch out a politics that rejected the stale binaries of British public life and looked instead to a radical centre grounded in liberty, reform, and a fairer distribution of power.

It must be said, this ground has not gone entirely uncovered. The Future of Social Democracy, published to mark the 40th anniversary of the Limehouse Declaration, made an important contribution to the argument of our inheritance. But commemoration is not the same as consolidation. The party still lacks a central statement of how its liberal social-democratic traditions fit together now, not just historically, but politically.

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Sarah Dyke

Improving our food resilience is essential to managing food price volatility

By Sarah Dyke | Thu 9th April 2026 - 11:34 am

Food prices have become one of the biggest pressures on family budgets in Britain. Yet behind the rising cost of the weekly shop lies a deeper problem: a food system that is failing households, farmers and the economy alike.

In the past decade, we have experienced the highest food price inflation in 40 years. UK production of some of our most nourishing foods, such as beans, fruit and vegetables, is stalling as they no longer offer a viable livelihood for farmers. Domestic fruit and vegetable production has dropped by 16% since 2015, and we see the largest trade deficits for fruit and veg – relying on imports for 83% of our fruit supply and 45% of our vegetables. New evidence from a cross-party Parliamentary report shows that, without urgent reform, this could exacerbate across the board, with domestic food production potentially falling by up to a third by 2050.

This increasing dependence on food imports at a time of heightening geopolitical instability and climate disruption has made us more exposed to these shocks than ever before. The outbreak of war in Iran reveals how successive government policy has left the UK’s food supply chain exposed to global factors.

The solution is clear: Britain needs a Good Food Bill. By setting long term targets for food security, production and affordability, legislation could give farmers the certainty to invest while protecting families from future price shocks. Supporting farmers to produce more fruit and vegetables is essential to our food security, while also helping to manage food price volatility in the long term. Too many families are struggling with the cost of the weekly shop as they are subject to volatile prices, making the job of feeding children that much harder for struggling parents. While short-term inflation may fluctuate, long-term forces are pushing costs higher.

The Prime Minister has made tackling the cost-of-living crisis his number one priority this year to rectify Labour’s falling position in the polls. Yet, addressing the challenges within our food system appears to be low on the Government’s agenda. Since the publication of the food strategy last summer, this has yet to be sustained into anything concrete despite 65% of the public supporting a Food Bill which would introduce duties and targets on government bodies to make healthy food more accessible and affordable. We cannot allow a system that delivers rising bills and diminishing domestic production to continue.

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Tanya Park

Cheaper fuel isn’t a liberal transport policy

By Tanya Park | Thu 9th April 2026 - 10:06 am

Last week, the party announced an emergency transport package: 10p off fuel duty, £1 bus fares, a 10% rail cut, lower VAT on public EV charging. And the reaction from members has been… pretty muted. I think that tells us something. There’s a shared instinct here that the package doesn’t quite land, and it’s worth working out why.

It’s not that responding to a crisis is wrong. People are paying more to get around because of a war they didn’t start, and a responsible opposition should have something to say about that. The question is whether what we’re saying is distinctively liberal, or whether we’ve produced the package that any of the three parties could have announced on any given Tuesday.

Start with the centrepiece: a 10p cut in fuel duty. This is, bluntly, a regressive measure wearing compassionate clothing. Higher-income households drive more, drive larger vehicles, and capture more of the benefit. The “parent in rural Devon” does real rhetorical work in the press release, but the primary beneficiaries of a universal fuel subsidy are people who drive a lot, and that correlates reliably with income.

More fundamentally, we are in the middle of an energy price shock caused by a war over fossil fuels. The liberal response to that should not be “let’s make fossil fuels cheaper.” You cannot credibly argue for the energy transition while subsidising the thing you’re transitioning away from the moment prices rise. Policy should help people through that shift, not reverse the price signal whenever it bites.

There’s also a basic supply-and-demand problem here. If the Iran war continues or escalates, fuel supplies could be seriously constrained. In that scenario, higher prices do useful if painful work: they reduce consumption, which is exactly what you need when there might not be enough to go around. Cutting duty does the opposite. It stimulates demand at the moment you most need to conserve. That’s not just bad climate policy. It’s bad crisis management.

The bus and rail elements are better. A £1 bus fare is genuinely progressive and I’d love to see it become permanent. A 10% rail cut is at least the right direction. But both are temporary, set for three months, and three months of cheaper tickets doesn’t restore a single cut route or reverse the structural decay that created the problem.

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Jack Wilkin

Trump may be about to burst the tech bubble. 

By Jack Wilkin | Wed 8th April 2026 - 11:29 am

Trump’s war on Iran is impacting more than just the price of oil. It is also impacting fertiliser shipments, which, combined with the UK government decision to tax fertiliser (being introduced in January 2027) will cause food prices in the UK and around the world to increase – hence why the government needs to seriously start looking at food security. Although both are incredibly important, the increase in the cost of oil and food resulting from Trump-Netanyahu’s attack on Iran and the Iranian retaliation is well known. What is perhaps less covered is its impact on the export of helium.

At first glance, the lack of gas that makes your voice squeaky at children’s birthday parties may not seem like a big deal. But it is the foundation of the modern global economy. 

The impact this disruption of helium will have on the global tech industry was brought to my attention by a recent video by Phil Moorhouse. The Gulf States don’t just export oil, gas and annoying influencer videos but also helium, with Qatar exporting 30% of the global helium supply. 

The US economy, for all its supposed strength, has been leaning heavily on one thing: tech. AI. Last year, AI-related capital expenditures were the second-biggest driver in US GDP growth, but all that might be coming to an end now. I do think the overvalued tech sector in the States was going to burst anyway, but Trump’s war might have sped the process up and made it far worse. 

The reason for it is that the tech sector needs helium for the production of microchips – something that is already being impacted by higher energy costs caused by Trump’s war. Chip fabrication involves extreme heat, particularly when lasers etch microscopic circuits onto silicon. Helium is used because it excels at absorbing and dissipating that heat, preventing defects and keeping production viable. Without it, yields fall, costs rise, and output slows.

Blocking Qatar’s helium exports (Qatar sits on the world’s largest single natural gas field) means that the price of helium will skyrocket anyway but repeated Iranian drone attacks on Ras Laffan, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas plant, state-owned QatarGas reported “extensive” damage that will take years to repair and cut annual helium exports by 14%. That means helium exports will continue to be 14% lower even if the Straits are reopened. 

This is already disastrous for microchip manufacturers. Worse still, helium cannot be stockpiled like oil. It leaks, it evaporates, and within weeks it’s gone. There are no strategic reserves to fall back on. This is a supply chain that only works if it keeps moving.  The clock is ticking on the helium in factories around the world. 

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Chris Bowers

We need to learn to respect the Greens

By Chris Bowers | Tue 7th April 2026 - 9:32 am

This column is going to make me very unpopular in parts of the party, but there are times when the elephant in the room needs calling out: we have to learn to respect the Greens.

I’m not saying we should love them, I’m not advocating standasides, certainly not a merger; I’m also all for highlighting how we’re different as parties. But I am getting irritated at the number of cheap shots coming from our party that denigrate the Greens. The fact is: Lib Dems and Greens perform a similar function in British politics. We need them, and they need us.

Much is made of the current realignment in politics. This realignment is and isn’t happening. It is in the sense that Reform and the Greens will have a much bigger presence at the next general election – even if their current poll ratings aren’t sustained – which will create a five-party system, or six in Scotland and Wales. It isn’t in the sense that there will still be two main blocs: the progressive/centre-left made up of Labour, Lib Dems and Greens, and the regressive/far-right made up of the Conservatives and Reform.

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Chris Perry

Cost of Living crisis

By Chris Perry | Fri 3rd April 2026 - 10:01 am

Never a day goes by, or so it seems, without mention of the cost of living crisis and programmes on the television helping people to make their money go further. And yet according to the new Forbes billionaire list Elon Musk added $373.5billion dollars (or £373.5billion) to his fortune in just one year. That is £3.5bn more than the £370bn it was estimated the entire COVID pandemic cost the UK. And according to the Equality Trust, this is the biggest ever increase in one year with Elon Musk’s total worth now the 22nd largest economy in the world, beating Belgium.

According to Oxfam global billionaire wealth increased by £1.5 trillion in 2024. In contrast according to the Office of National Statistics the median household income in the UK for the year ending 2023 was £34,500. This was a 2.5% decrease on the previous year

Widening income inequality and increasing poverty are the great social evils of our time and the root cause of so many of today’s problems. It will, therefore, be very difficult for the Government to achieve its objectives whilst operating within the present system and abiding by the rules when it is the system itself which needs changing.

Unless Government addresses pay differentials, bonuses and excessive profits within the larger corporations, utilities and banks, chasing inward investment in search of growth will make the rich richer and create low paid jobs for the masses as it has for at least 40 years. There needs to be a fairer distribution of income within organisations so that everyone gets a fair and proportionate return for their hard work. Extensive studies by the Equality Trust have found that people are becoming increasingly aware that the economy is a human-made system that can be changed,

In April 2024 there were 4.5m children being brought up in poverty, 70% of whom had a parent in work. Although the removal of the two child cap on child benefit will help it should never have been imposed in the first place as it is a child and not a parent benefit. And although the provision of free school meals is to be welcomed this will not reduce child poverty. The definition of poverty is an income of less than 60% of median household income. Free school meals are not an income which is available if the child is off school.

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