Category Archives: Op-eds

Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 2nd June 2024 - 10:00 am

South Africa

Three decades of ANC rule in South Africa look set to end. The final votes from Wednesday’s election have yet to be counted and are expected to be announced on Sunday. But the general consensus is that the party that ended apartheid will garner about 45 percent of the vote. Which means it is coalition time.

The downfall of the ANC vote is evidence of the well-worn political truism that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. In 2004 the African National Congress won 70 percent of the vote. It dropped to 57 percent in 2019 and is projected to drop between 10 and 15 points in this election.

The reason for the collapse of the ANC vote is corruption, poor governance and economic mismanagement leading to a flight of capital and an unemployment rate of 37 percent.

Corruption reached its peak under the presidency of Jacob Zuma whose misuse of government funds led to his ousting in 2018. In 2020 he was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for contempt of court. He served only three, but he is still barred from serving in parliament.

Zuma’s successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, made some progress towards resolving the corruption problem, but it was too little too late> Unemployment – especially among the urban youth – remains troublingly high. Zuma, in the meantime has emerged as leader of a new KwaZulu Natal-based political party, Umkhonto we Size (MK) or Spear of the Nation.

MK has surprised political pundits by beating the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to take third place in the polls. Both the EFF and MK have adopted radical agendas which include the expropriation of white-owned land and widespread nationalisation. MK also wants to return more political power to the traditional trial chieftains.

MK took votes away from both the ANC and EFF. Another winner from this week’s was the Democratic Alliance (DA) who appear to have won the confidence the white South African voter. A fifth party is the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) is—like MK– also based in Natal. The most likely coalition is between the IFP, Democratic Alliance and ANC.

Europe

Europe’s far-right parties appear set to sweep the boards in European Parliament elections held on 6-9 June.

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy are on the rise. Marine Le Pen is current favourite to win the 2027 and her National Rally party is currently at 30 percent in the opinion polls. Viktor Orban’s Fidesz has a stranglehold on Hungary and Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom won elections in the Netherlands. Far-right parties, in Spain, Belgium, Slovakia, Sweden and Austria are growing or having a stake in government.

There is, however, a chink, in the far-right armour: Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland (Afd) has swung too far to the right even for Europe’s far-right. Recently, there top candidate for the European Parliament, Maximilian Krah, said that members of the wartime SS were not automatically “criminals.” Krah is also being investigated by the police for accepting payments from China and Russia. His problems followed a secret meeting in a hotel outside Berlin where senior officials in the AfD discussed the mass deportation of non-ethnic Germans, including German citizens.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Uncharted Waters

By Tom Arms | Sat 1st June 2024 - 9:56 am

Twelve New York jurors set the Good Ship USA adrift on uncharted waters in a troubled political sea.

They had no choice. They were chosen from nearly 200 Manhattanites and forced to listen to weeks of complex and at times lurid testimony while fully aware that the entire world awaited their decision.

And after carefully weighing all the evidence they delivered their verdict: Guilty in the first degree on all 34 felony charges. Now the real trial begins – the political trial with the verdict coming – as Trump has said – on November the fifth.

Because of the totally unprecedented nature of this election it is impossible to predict the voters’ verdict and the impact of the New York trial. Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for president from a prison cell in 1920, but never before has a convicted felon been the candidate of a major political party and not since 1860 has America been so politically polarised.

Eric Trump Jr declared after the trial that May 30 will go down in history as the day that Donald Trump won the 2024 election. Antony Scaramucci, former Trump Communications Director, said it will be noted as the day he lost it.

The country appears hopelessly divided. On one side of the political equation is those who argue that May 30th was an historic moment in which the US showed the world that no one is above the law. And on the other, that an American president is prepared to use the law to attempt to destroy their political opponent.

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Michal Siewniak

Should 16 year and 17 year olds be allowed to vote?

By Michal Siewniak | Fri 31st May 2024 - 12:21 pm

Here we go again! Elections: endless campaigning, debates, discussions with friends, family members, plenty of promises from all parties to convince the electorate to vote for them.

I find the whole election process fascinating. How do people vote? Do they vote in line with their conscience and political beliefs? Do they, to deselect the opponent, decide to support the “lesser evil”, as we often say in Poland? Do we actually believe in what we hear? Do we trust our politicians?

These elections will be no different. They will, in my opinion, magnify the political polarization. We will inevitably be talking about the immigration, NHS, education, social care, the economy, and the very challenging geo-political landscape. I don’t think that any of the main parties can offer a set of meaningful solutions to address a mountain of problems and issues that we face.

I was actually quite surprised when the Labour Leader suggested to potentially allow 16 and 17 years old to vote. It was one of the first policies that he announced. I actually like the idea. I think that it is really important to enable younger voters to shape our communities and their neighbourhoods. It is a no brainer, isn’t it? If you are 16, you can work, open a bank account without parent’s permission. If you are 17, you can hold a licence to drive a car.

To ensure that my opinion is evidence based, I asked this question to my daughter, who is currently taking her A-level exams, one of which is politics. I was actually surprised as my daughter thinks that it is too early for 16 year olds to vote. She also said that they can be easily influenced by their parents and in some cases, their schools. She also said that not all, but many teenagers are disconnected with the democratic process and therefore they are not “civically mature” to cast their vote. I disagreed and said that many adults might not be interested in the political process and often, their decisions are easily influenced by e.g. social media and/or by seeing a particular heading in one of the national newspapers. Do we, often enough, conduct of our own research to determine and decide our political choices?

However, there is one point raised by my daughter, which I would fully support. Particularly today, when so many people are simply fed up with “ping-pong politics”, negative campaigning, we need to do so much more to encourage healthy democratic debates. Our schools should teach, from a very early age, our children and grandchildren how politics tangibly affect lives. And it does! Some of these “civic values” should be strongly embedded in our curriculum so that we all understand the process behind making any informed decisions.

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Ben Wood

Stodgy Fabianism haunts Britain. The Liberal Democrats can offer an alternative

By Ben Wood | Thu 30th May 2024 - 1:50 pm

In just over a month’s time we will have a new government. But what kind of government will it be? We already know that Starmer is in love with councils, arms-length commissions, and quasi-public bodies of all kinds. Labour is committed to a British Infrastructure Council, a National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy (all under the sponsorship or direction of a Treasury Enterprise Growth Unit). There has also been a commitment to centralise policy delivery in Downing Street.

The reflex to embrace concentrated bureaucratic power has deep ideological roots in the party, going all the way back to the Fabian Society in the 1890s. For someone like the redoubtable Beatrice Webb, Socialism could only become a serious political proposition if the intellectuals and managers within the young Labour movement learnt to use the State-machine more efficiently and imaginatively than Britain’s traditional stilted governing class. In this regard, the Fabians agreed with George Orwell’s later assessment that ‘(England) is a family with the wrong members in control’.

But in time Labour administrators became just as stodgy as the elites they sought to replace. Rachel Reaves, and Keir Starmer are inheritors of a long Labour tradition of peculiar complacency in the sphere of political economy. They display the naive assumption that Labour at the helm is enough to steady the ship. They dare not check to see if the ship is leaking.

It is easy of course to mock the Labour leadership’s current pretensions, but it’s not as if the contemporary Centre-Right has a compelling alternative. Confronted with bureaucratic blight, Conservative politicians (and on occasion some Orange Book Liberals) have alighted on two dubious remedies.

The first is to leave the structure and functions of the state intact but starve agencies of funds in a bid to drive up efficiency. Bureaucracy may wither in the short-term but faced with the social fallout of a dysfunctional governmental machine, pressures inevitably begin to mount for renewed expansion. The machine slowly drifts back into its old position, sometimes more centralised than before.

The second response of the Centre-Right is to leave state liabilities unchanged while contracting out core public functions to the private sector. Nearly thirty years on, we have seen the results. A ballooning public apparatus concerned with tendering, compliance, and targets has replaced inhouse services. The government spends ever more on consultants. Accompanying this explosion of external providers, we have seen a proliferation of arms-length semi-public bodies (Academy chains, Universities, the water utilities) that are neither fully accountable to citizens, nor to Parliament. We appear caught between life-sapping statism on the one hand and unresponsive corporate power on the other.

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Andrew Chandler

ITV debate is an insult to democracy

By Andrew Chandler | Wed 29th May 2024 - 8:50 pm

In a recent announcement, Conservative leader Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer have agreed to participate in a head-to-head televised debate on ITV. While it’s always good to be able to get that prime-time real estate during an election campaign, that reaches a wider audience and encourages healthy exercise in democratic engagement, the lack of mention of third-party participation from such a debate is not just an oversight; it is a deliberate slight against democratic diversity and civic participation.

It’s like organizing a dance-off and only inviting two dancers – talk about a political two-step with no room for a …

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Jack Lee-Brown

The Tories throw the unfunded kitchen sink at the election

By Jack Lee-Brown | Tue 28th May 2024 - 8:17 am

Desperate. The only word I can think of to describe this faltering, backfiring, sinking ship of a government. Oh wait, no, I accidently came up with four others. Not hard, I guess.

The Tories have, in the days since the announcement of the election, made some characteristically random and seemingly unfunded commitments for the sole objective of scraping up whatever support they have left. First, the announcement of national service, mandatory for all 18 year olds if they win. Thankfully, the government will give these young adults a choice: one year of military service or 25 days of community volunteering. Or they don’t do it at all because the government says they won’t arrest anyone who refuses. So it’s not mandatory. Now, at the time of writing this, they also announce a ‘triple lock plus’ or ‘quadruple lock’ meaning that pensioners will not pay income tax on their state pension. Punishing the younger generation as, to pay for this, everyone else will have to pick up the slack.

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David Brunnen

Fresh thinking required

By David Brunnen | Mon 27th May 2024 - 2:42 pm

As global climate concerns underscore capitalism’s flaws, who will lead the transformation of economics?

“A toxic combination of 15 years of low economic growth, and four decades of expanding inequalities, leaves the UK poorer and falling behind its peers” – not my analysis but that of the highly respected Resolution Foundation. And they go further, ‘Productivity growth is weak. Public investment is low. Wages today are no higher than they were before the financial crisis.’.

The view from the doorstep concurs, “We now pay far more for much less to enable wealth to be extracted by the few.”. That general despondency contributed massively to the anti-Tory sentiment that yielded so many LibDem Council seats earlier this merry month of May. But few local campaigners could confidently answer the question that will be asked time and again before the General Election. What do your lot think they can do about it?

Our parochial economic despair is symptomatic of a far larger malaise – an existential climate crisis. Mass migration is inevitable as large parts of our world are laid to waste, as nature is depleted, as societies collapse, wars rage, and coastal habitats shrink.

On top of a self-inflicted Poverty Pandemic and global unrest, we seem stuck – fresh out of imagination. We need to tackle the climate crisis and reverse societal decline. Fortunately, there is no shortage of guidance, but there is a political vacuum where none of the main Parties dare tread – rethinking our economic foundations. There is near zero confidence that anything can be done.

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Jack Nicholls

The National Service proposal is an authoritarian disgrace: liberals should call it out as typical coercive Tory populism

By Jack Nicholls | Mon 27th May 2024 - 10:06 am

Perhaps it was all a grand bluff. It is just possible that when the various panicked policies currently coming out of CCHQ were conceived, Rishi Sunak’s true intention was to hit enough trigger points for enough people that they rouse themselves in fury, join other parties and reinvigorate popularly engaged democracy on a mass scale. Maybe that is the true Sunak legacy, revealed like the final move in an elegant game of chess. I doubt it though.

The Conservative Party believe in a mythical creature – ‘ordinary people’ – and thinks it understands what they want. It has an instinctual, hazy vision of who that is. The ordinary person is probably employed, probably not in the public sector unless they are in the better paid white-collar end of it, probably has or wants children, has or wants to own a home and run a car, probably aspires to the suburbs – homo economicus, with a quietly patriotic sheen. MacMillan had a version of this concept, so did Thatcher, Major and Cameron. Johnson refocused it to make it altogether more brexity, and temporarily changed the Tory coalition to his short-term benefit and long-term cost (wide, shallow lakes cover more space but evaporate more easily).

The key thing to understand about this mindset is the way it informs policy announcements, especially in the build up to or during elections. When DWP ministers talk about punitive and vilifying reform of welfare services, they’re not talking to people who use them, they’re talking to the ‘ordinary people’. When education ministers pronounce upon the apparent dangers of ‘contested ideology’, all while insisting schools make explicit statements on British values (a contested concept if ever there was one) they aren’t addressing the parents of children who are questioning their gender and need empowering support – they are addressing their mythical ordinary people. So today, when Sunak announces that 18-year-olds will be conscripted into either military service or community ‘volunteering’, he is not talking to the young people he is planning to force into work; he’s offering bromides and comfort to his unicorn of ordinariness in the hope that it will vote for him. Never let it be said that the right don’t virtue signal.

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Paul Reynolds

What should we make of the increasing rate of government scandals ?

By Paul Reynolds | Sun 26th May 2024 - 1:55 pm

Scandals. Lots of them.

The sub-postmaster scandal. The contaminated blood scandal. The DWP carer scandal. The continuing Windrush scandal, The Grenfell prosecutions scandal. The HS2 costs debacle.

There are others not so much in the headlines.

The scandal of unused border facilities post-Brexit. The long list of NHS IT scandals. The TFL and rail contract scandals. Regulation of Thames Water. The Crown Court backlog scandal. The GP appointments and finances scandal. There are dozens more; most the public doesn’t get to hear about..

But the general public is the victim, and the general public knows it.

There is also an extensive list of decades-long astonishing military procurement scandals, that have weakened our defences; Scout/Ajax, al-Yamamah, Warrior CSP, £8bn aircraft carrier problems, and the £100bn+ Dreadnought submarines. Billions and billions wasted. When money is short.

Any scan through the NAO and Public Accounts Committee archives show not only an accelerated rate of major government scandals, but that the public harm from them is increasing.

Are all the problems scandal-specific or is there something wider underlying the problems ?

Here’s an analogy. Your football team goes a whole season without a win. The supposed causes are all match-specific; that missed penalty, your player wrongly sent off, the substitution mistake, the goalkeeper injured… Wouldn’t you find it odd if deeper, season-wide issues are never raised ? Well, that’s where we are in the UK with government scandals.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 26th May 2024 - 10:55 am

United Kingdom

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is gambling on British xenophobia to return him to Downing Street. Or at the very least limit the damage to his troubled and divided ruling Conservative Party.

Of course, there are other factors he is throwing into the electoral mix. The lowering of inflation, the threat of China and the Ukraine War being a few of the political ingredients he is hoping will counter 14 years of Conservative austerity, corruption and misrule.

But playing on the average British voter’s deep-seated fear and mistrust of foreigners is one of the few issues the prime minister can control. And at the same time claim that the opposition Labour Party will not or cannot control.

Immigration played a major role in the Brexit vote. It should not have. But it did and being tough on it proved to be a vote winner. The average Briton dislikes foreigners, especially when they speak differently, pray differently, dress differently and eat different foods. They are perceived as a threat to British culture.

The “small boats people” – as they are known – are in their own xenophobic category. Not because there are a lot of them (29,347 in 2023), but because they are visible. They are shown on the nightly news and British Coast Guard vessels are sent to rescue them and long-faced quayside crowds watch them land.

Rishi Sunak’s policy of shipping them off to Rwanda as soon as their feet touched British soil has been one of his government’s top priorities. It was blocked by the UK Supreme Court because under British law people cannot be deported to unsafe countries. So the Sunak government passed a law which said parliament had the right to declare a country safe and to overrule the courts if they ruled otherwise.

With the legislation in place, Sunak pledged that the first refugees would be Rwandan-bound “within weeks.” That was another untruth. More legal challenges – and possibly industrial action by civil servants – are planned and would have delayed the Rwandan flights for several more months.

Calling the election for the 4th of July has turned the Rwanda Policy into an election issue. Vote for me, says Sunak, and  we will air freight the refugees to Rwanda. Vote for Labour and the Rwanda policy is lost.

Iran

The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi provides Iran’s political elite with a massive opportunity. They won’t take it.

Elections to replace President Raisi have to be held within 50 days of his death. The candidates for the job are chosen by religious leaders on Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. They could dramatically change their country by opening up the nomination list to reformers.

This would mean that 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini would be willing to risk the country taking a different course from the hardline anti-Western, anti-Israeli, heavily Islamic direction that he has pursued. This would be a major break with all past and present policies.

Ebrahim Raisi was more or less hand-picked for the presidential job by Khameini because of his impeccable hardline Islamic revolutionary credentials. His nickname was “Butcher of Tehran” and it was well-deserved. According to Human Rights Watch, during five months in 1988, Raisi ordered the execution of between 2,800 and 5,000 political prisoners.

Raisi was the favourite to succeed the ageing and ailing Ayatollah Khameini. So his death creates a dual problem for the regime – finding a replacement for the presidency and the supreme leadership.

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Caron Lindsay

The problem the Tory “National Service” idea is trying to solve

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 26th May 2024 - 9:22 am

Most people who read this site are well used to being sickened to their stomachs by not just Conservative policy ideas but what they have done in practice.  In the past few months alone, we’ve seen them pick on disabled people, sick people, vulnerable people seeking safety in this country, people coming to this country to share their skills in the workplace and pay taxes,  trans people and anyone over 50 who isn’t working full time.

Today their big idea insults a generation of young people who have been failed by the Conservatives in spectacular style. A generation who, for the first time in a long time, is less well off than their parents.  According to the Conservatives, the way to fix this generation is national service, forcing them into either a year of military service, or 12 weekends of volunteering.  At a cost of £2.5 billion.

It doesn’t take long to think of better uses for that sum. Perhaps more housing so that young people don’t have to live with their parents into their 30s, perhaps by removing the discrimination in the minimum wage, perhaps by increasing social security to help the 1 in 4 children growing up in poverty, perhaps by making sure young people in distress can access mental health treatment quickly, perhaps by rebuilding youth services so young people can get the support they need in their communities. Perhaps by doing more to save the planet for future generations.

And then you come to the practicalities of all of this. Many young people are stuck in low quality, minimum wage jobs where they are treated badly – and which require them to work at weekends. And will they get expenses for travel to and from their volunteer placement? What if they are carers, or parents, or disabled?

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Love, Hate and the International Criminal Court

By Tom Arms | Sat 25th May 2024 - 10:05 am

America has a love-hate relationship with the International Criminal Court (ICC). At the moment it is a virulent hate.

Ironically, Washington also claims to be the chief supporter of International law. “The United States does believe that international law matters,” said John Bellinger, the State Department’s chief Legal Adviser. “We help develop it, rely on it, abide by it.”

The problem is that you cannot cherry pick the law. To do so is to choose the road called hypocrisy which leads – eventually – to chaos.

It is the charge of hypocrisy that America risks in its relations with the ICC. It applauded seeing the world’s top criminal court send brutal African dictators to prison. It has celebrated the court’s warrants for the arrest of Vladimir Putin. But it has condemned as “outrageous” the decision of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan to request warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Gaza War.

There are several reasons for American duplicity. Washington fears that the arrest warrants will only make the Israelis more intransigent. It also believes that it is important to be seen to be supporting an ally; and, finally there is the sovereignty issue. As a super power, Washington has difficulty with any international law or organisation which appears to supersede American law.  The US, for instance, has failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and will almost certainly pull out of the climate change convention – again – if Donald Trump is elected.

Washington has had doubts about the ICC since before its founding by the Rome Statute in 1998. It refused to sign the treaty documents, although 123 other countries (including Britain) have. If a country is a signatory to the Rome Statute then they are obligated to detain and extradite anyone for whom the ICC has issued an arrest warrant. Being a non-signatory, does not protect a country’s citizens from investigation.

The problem for America was the activities of its soldiers and the CIA around the world. In August 2002 President George W. Bush signed the American Service Members Protection Act, aka “The Hague Invasion Act”. This gave the president the power to “use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or Allied personnel being detained, or imprisoned, on behalf of, or at the request of, the International Criminal Court.” Effectively this meant that any country that carried out an ICC arrest warrant against an American citizen risked the wrath of Washington.

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Paul Hindley

In this General Election, we must offer Britain hope for a real progressive future!

By Paul Hindley | Fri 24th May 2024 - 7:21 pm

If on Monday you had told most people, MPs and political pundits that a general election would be called before the end of the week, very few would have believed you. Yet here we are. At long last, tens of millions of voters across the country have the opportunity to throw our disgraceful Conservative government out of office. Expect the next six weeks to be dominated by a bitterly fought campaign by all the major parties.

But as we go to the country, what should the Liberal Democrats offer to an electorate that is still struggling with the NHS crisis, the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis (to name just three)? In a word, hope! Real hope! Not half-hearted soundbites, but true meaningful hope. Hope that is accompanied by real policy substance and political commitments. Hope that there is an end in sight to the many crises that bedevil modern Britain. Hope that a real progressive future is possible.

One of the biggest crises we face is the diabolical state that our National Health Service finds itself in. The NHS is dangerously underfunded and understaffed. Swathes of the country have become dental deserts as patients struggle to find NHS dentists. Most parties still struggle to grasp the nettle of guaranteeing decent social care for the elderly.

We have a very ambitious and progressive platform on health and social care. Our current health policies include: a GP Guarantee; a dental action plan to solve the dental crisis; a two-month cancer treatment guarantee; giving mental health support parity with physical health support; and introducing free personal care for the elderly. Added to this, we have just announced plans to recruit an extra 8,000 GPs. We have the bold policies needed to save the NHS. I strongly believe that the Liberal Democrats ought to proudly become the Party of the NHS.

Another major crisis is the continuing cost of living crisis, as millions languish in poverty. Both food poverty and child poverty are increasing. The Trussell Trust charity that runs many food banks has reported that it handed out a record 3.1 million emergency food parcels in the year up to March 2024. While a third of the food parcels went to children. To put it bluntly, it is a moral stain on the conscience of our nation that food poverty and child poverty still exist in one of the richest countries on Earth.

However, we Liberal Democrats have the radical policies needed to address entrenched poverty. We are committed to transforming Universal Credit into a Guaranteed Basic Income, so that we can lift up the poorest people in our country and abolish deep poverty within a decade. Added to this, we are committed to scrapping the two-child benefit cap and to introducing free school meals for all of the poorest children. These policies will drastically combat poverty across our country. We as a party have long been committed to building a progressive liberal society whereby “no-one shall be enslaved by poverty”.

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John Marriott

Will a General Election make any real difference?

By John Marriott | Thu 23rd May 2024 - 3:16 pm

The heavens passed their verdict on this sorry government yesterday, as a waterlogged PM announced a July General Election. Many were surprised that he jumped before he was pushed. Cynics might say that, clutching at straws, he was perhaps hoping for a good run for the England team in next month’s Euros to brighten the gloom and to improve his chances. However he should remember what happened to a previous much fancied England team, whose exit from the World Cup contributed, some argued, to the Labour government’s surprise defeat back in 1970.

To be honest, after 14 years of basically Tory rule, according to the opinion polls this latest iteration has run its course and needs to go. The result on 4 July could however be closer than many pundits think. Ironically, First Past The Post could throw up some surprises, particularly for the Lib Dems, despite national polling figures of around 12%, who will be furiously targeting mainly Tory held seats. Don’t rule out a surprise or two from the Green Party either. If the Reform Party does field candidates everywhere and take votes off the Tories the SNP vote collapses in Scotland in favour of Labour, we could see a result similar to 1997.

I get the feeling that apathy might win and that the turnout generally might be low. People are generally fed up; but many still are not convinced that the Labour Party has all the answers, hence Sir Keir Starmer and Co’s cautious ‘torylite’ approach.

We could end up with a situation similar to 2010, with Labour the largest party this time and the Lib Dems in the rôle of king makers. If so, the most Ed Davey should offer if he gets that phone call from Sir Keir Starmer, is ‘confidence and supply’. Coalition governments are something that many our electorate still find hard to handle. Clearly mistakes were made, although, in fairness, if I had to live through any period of the previous decade again, I know which half I would choose.

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Caron Lindsay

And we’re off: Lib Dems welcome the 4th July General Election!

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 22nd May 2024 - 6:39 pm

Who would have known when I booked my dentist appointment for 5:30 tonight that the Prime Minister would choose 5pm on a wet Wednesday in May to make the most farcical General Election launch announcement I have ever known.

It could have come straight from The Thick of It. The Prime Minister standing in the pouring rain, his suit getting shinier by the second, his words drowned out by anti Brexit campaigner Steve Bray blasting “Things can only get better” by D:Ream, Labour’s campaign anthem from 1997.

Our Press Office tweeted: “Things can only get wetter.”

Ed Davey welcomed the General Election as a chance to kick out the Tories and deliver the change the country needs. He said:

This General Election is a chance to kick Rishi Sunak’s appalling Conservative government out of office and deliver the change the public is crying out for.

For years the Conservative Party has taken voters for granted and lurched from crisis to crisis while the problems facing the country are getting so much worse.

The NHS has been brought to its knees, people’s mortgages and rents have soared by hundreds of pounds a month, and water companies have got away with pumping filthy sewage into our rivers and beaches. All because this Conservative Government is more interested in fighting between themselves than standing up for the needs of the country.

Every vote for the Liberal Democrats at this election is a vote for a strong local champion who will stand up for your community and health services. It’s clear that in many seats across the country, the best way to beat the Conservatives is to vote for the Liberal Democrats.

Scottish Lib Dem Leader Alex Cole-Hamilton highlighted his ambition to see liberals replace nationalists as the third party in the House of Commons.

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Caron Lindsay

Autumn Conference: What did Federal Board decide?

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 21st May 2024 - 8:32 pm

We have known for some months that the Federal Board was going to decide at its May meeting what to do with Federal Conference in Brighton this Autumn. Last night they discussed the matter looking at feedback from party committees and staff as well as a consultation exercise carried out in March.

They had a lot to consider. What if Rishi Sunak called the General Election and we ended up having our Conference in the short campaign? What opportunities were there from having Conference just before the General Election if he didn’t? And what damage could it inflict on our campaign if we did not take the opportunity to set out our stall when the other parties would at their own events? What impact would two major events in quick succession, a conference and a General Election, have on staff?

So what did they decide?  Well, Conference is going to happen – sort of. It’s going to be shorter. It will now only run from Saturday 14 to Monday 16th September and technically will be a special Conference.

Party President Mark Pack explained on the party website:

After extensive feedback from members, the Federal Board has agreed a plan for our Autumn Federal Conference.

We agreed that it would be in the best interests of the party to hold such an event if possible, and that due to the unusually close proximity between the event and the next Westminster general election, the maximum benefit would come from amending our normal conference plans so that it can be tailored to the requirements, opportunities and risks of an event so close to a general election.

These include making it a 2.5 day event (14-16 September 2024 in Brighton), providing the best trade-off between a shorter conference lowering costs and staff time while also preserving enough time to maximise the benefits of conference, including commercial income. The Tuesday rather than the Saturday would be dropped in order to maximise the chances for members to participate.

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Samuel Jackson

Coalition with Starmer’s Labour?

By Samuel Jackson | Tue 21st May 2024 - 10:03 am

In principle, it should not take the Conservatives’ disastrous record in government for the past fourteen years for Labour under Keir Starmer, which does not seem to stand for anything other than vaguely promising change, to win by a landslide. Labour’s double-digit lead unfortunately begs to differ.

However, after the recent local elections in England, as well as the Blackpool South by-election, Starmer did not rule out entering coalition with our party if Labour failed to win an outright parliamentary majority at the next general election. In contrast, he categorically ruled out doing so with the Scottish Nationalist Party owing to a ‘fundamental disagreement’ on Scottish independence.

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Caron Lindsay

All the fun of Scottish Conference!

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 20th May 2024 - 3:05 pm

Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference in Hamilton was upbeat this weekend.  The party sees progress in its sights at the next Westminster, Holyrood and local authority elections.

From the moment the event was opened by West Lothian’s Cllr Sally Pattle, there were serious debates,  keynote speeches, anniversaries celebrated and a lot of fun and laughter.

The most emotional moments of Conference came during the debate on Christine Jardine MP’s motion on supporting bereaved children and young people. The motion called on the Scottish Government to create a protocol for the “collation and dissemination of information to bereaved children about relevant support services” alongside a new duty to inform which would apply to people like health professionals and teachers. Mandatory training would also be given to all those who would have a duty to inform. Contributors shared sometimes shocking but always incredibly sad experiences of loss.

Amanda Clark, our PPC for Perth and Kinross, rightly won the award for the best speech of Conference for her summation, which was heartfelt, inclusive and showed everyone who spoke that they had been heard.

Conference also voted for a national strategy to improve literacy, to bin the National Care Service that the SNP Government is blowing a billion on and which has little  prospect of actually improving care for vulnerable people, to increase access to sport, for a housing strategy that secures affordable housing for key workers and on support for Scotland’s flood-hit communities.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 19th May 2024 - 10:09 am

Russia and China

It took Vladimir Putin just nine days for Putin to go from his inauguration in the Kremlin to Zhongnanhai – the seat of China’s political power and the home of President Xi Jinping.

At the end of the two-day visit the “partnership without limits” had been elevated to one in which there are now “no forbidden areas of cooperation.”

The two countries – and the two leaders – are united in their common goal of dismantling the liberal Western political order that has dominated the world since 1945. Democracy, they are convinced, has had its day. It is time now for Sino-Russian orchestrated autocracy.

The current pivot of the Beijing-Moscow axis is the Ukraine War. This war presents both problems and opportunities for China. On the one hand, Russian failure would be regarded as a disaster. On the other, Xi Jinping is conscious of the need to prevent Sino-American relations from deteriorating too quickly. China is not ready to step into American shoes.

So, Xi Jinping exploits Russia to poke, needle and goad Washington. He talks of “no forbidden areas of cooperation” but then urges Putin to row back on the nuclear rhetoric. China has yet to recognise the Russian annexation of Luhansk and Donetsk and – so far—has refused to supply Russia with obvious weaponry. It buys more oil from Russia but is playing hardball on the Russian request for a gas pipeline that would replace revenues that Gazprom has lost in Europe.

China, has however, ignored Western sanctions against Russia. In 2022 Russian imports of Chinese machine tools grew by 120 percent and in 2023 they rose another 170 percent.

Machine tools are just one industrial category which Secretary of State Antony Blinken has complained loudly about as helping the Russian war effort. This equipment either has a hidden defense element or it is categorised as dual-use, which means it can be used for civilian or military purposes.

Other similar categories of Chinese exports have grown exponentially since Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border. Semi-conductor exports rose from $230 million in 2021 to £407 million in 2023. The machinery for making computer chips grew from $3.5 million to $180 million over the same period. Computer chips are essential for the conduct of high-tech 21st century warfare.

Russian oil

Russian oil and gas are financing Putin’s Ukraine War. So, this week, the Russian president had good news and bad news about his war coffers.

Oil revenues are up. Gas revenues are down.

Gazprom – the state gas monopoly – lost $6.9 billion in 2023. Its first annual loss since the bad old days of Russian financial chaos 20 years ago. The reason for the drop is Western sanctions and the closure of the gas pipelines Nordstream 1 and 2. Russian gas sales to Europe were down 55.6 percent. They will be even lower next year.

The picture provided by Rosneft – the Russian oil equivalent – is much rosier. Its profits were up a record 13 percent to $14.07 billion. The reason for its financial success were India, Putin’s friends in OPEC and the end of the pandemic.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has completely ignored Western sanctions and exploited Putin’s difficulties by buying huge quantities of oil at discounted prices, India then reaps a nice profit by selling the processed oil to third countries via the world market.

The OPEC countries meanwhile, have obliged President Putin by keeping oil production down and prices up. At the same time demand for energy has grown as the world economy recovers from the Covid pandemic.

But what about the coming year. Gazprom’s revenues are unlikely to rise. It takes time to build alternative destination pipelines and storage facilities. As for oil prices, demand is starting to fall. India has reached the limits of how much oil it can process and world economic growth is expected to drop to 2.7 percent in 2024 compared to 5.5 percent in 2022.

So, what Putin needs is a first class money manager to ensure that the maximum efficiency is squeezed out of every rouble. That is why he has appointed economist Andre Belousov as his new Minister for Defense.

Putin is his own commander-in-chief. He already has a Chief of Staff in the form of General Valery Gerasimov. What he needs is someone who can organise a defense budget that is now 6.7 percent of the country’s GDP before oil prices start to go the way of gas prices.

United States

In 1923, the US Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, was hauled before the courts for accepting a $350,000 bribe that allowed an oil company to drill in protected reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

This is the crux of the Teapot Dome Scandal which was recognised as America’s biggest political scandal until Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Robert Fico – from sinner to saint to martyr

By Tom Arms | Sat 18th May 2024 - 10:05 am

The man who shot Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has inflicted major damage on the cause of liberalism.

Fico is a far-right populist who started his political life as a far-left populist. He supports Putin and opposes Zelensky. He is anti-immigrant, anti-vaxer, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim and hates journalists. While Fico is fighting for his life in a Bratislavan intensive care unit, far-right politicians in Slovakia and beyond are using his fate as a rallying cry.

In short, Robert Fico is a sinner who has been turned into a saint by an attempted assassination and may yet become a martyr.

When the Soviet Empire collapsed, Robert Fico was a staunch member of the Communist Party and when the first post-Soviet Czechoslovak parliament was elected he successfully ran as a candidate of the communist successor party.

But as the communists fell from favour, Fico jumped ship and in 1999 formed his own political vehicle – Direction Social Democracy (SMER-SD). Seven years later, his party won the most seats in Slovak Parliamentary elections and Fico became prime minister for the first time. He served again 2006 to 2010, 2012 to 2016, 2016 to 2018 and finally from 2023.

In 2018, Robert Fico resigned the premiership after mass demonstrations in protest against the murder of young investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée. A short spell in the political wilderness followed, but Fico’s career was saved by the Covid pandemic. He took an increasingly anti-lockdown, anti-vax position in direct opposition to the government’s policy. At one point his support for during an anti-lockdown demonstration resulted in his arrest.

In 2023 Fico was back in the prime minister’s chair at the head of a coalition which included the far-right Slovak National Party and the far-left Voice-Social Democracy (HLAS) Party. On the face of it, his political partners were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but in reality they shared an ultra-nationalist populist agenda with Fico’s SMER-SD.

Fico’s own views became increasingly far-right and ultra-nationalist. Same-sex marriages and adoptions by same-sex couple are “a perversion.” His views on immigration also follow the same line as other European nationalists:  We will not, said the prime minister “accept a single Muslim immigrant.”

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Andrew Chandler

A case for radical pragmatic ideas

By Andrew Chandler | Fri 17th May 2024 - 7:21 pm

During my book-hunting escapades, I stumbled upon Harold MacMillan’s “The Middle Way.” Its weathered cover, nestled among forgotten tomes, bore striking images: Mussolini’s Fascist emblem and the Soviet hammer with sickle; symbols of Europe’s political divide in 1938. Between them, the book’s title, “Middle Way,” almost asking politely: “Do things have to be this way?” The lack of evocative symbol of its own hints at thoughtful ideas contained within its pages. Intrigued, I purchased it, eager to explore its ideas before the rain set in.

If some of your readers are familiar with my previous (and first) blog entry, where I discussed Harold Wilson and his purported working-class persona, you might remember I discussed the stark contrast between his political imagination and his lifestyle reality. Just as Wilson’s persona was far removed from true working-class experiences that that of Del Boy, Harold MacMillan’s aristocratic lifestyle would fit more kindly in Hyacinth Bucket’s aspirations.

Yet, it was the devil in the detail from his book that surprised me: how strikingly compassionate and concerned about the lack of social coalescence.

His book doesn’t present itself as a warning about how too much government would lead to the formation of regimes and their state apparatus. Instead, if anything, he argues how too little government creates conditions that help extremists prey onto an unsuspecting public. In his book he calls it a study rather than a philosophy, “The Middle Way: A Study of The Problems of Economic and Social Progress in a Free and Democratic World”. The word study is rather methodical but doesn’t go too far for being called abstract.

MacMillan’s assertion of the need for a more interventionist government role is equally crucial in a free society. He advocated for pragmatic, evidence-based approaches, clear-sighted good sense; even going so far as to call for nationalization where market failures we’re evident or private interest was incompatible to public interest.

I noticed quickly upon joining as a new member that we LibDems come in all political colours. While critics may argue that this diversity muddies the Party’s image, painting it as too broad a church, wishy-washy, colourless, and just a bit ‘meh’; we centre our values on personal freedom and liberty. I always found the words “freedom” and “liberty” can be misleading sometimes. I often found its use, by extension, as the establishment’s way to excuse our collective responsibility. The freedom of choice is only as convenient if people have the economic resources needed to fully participate. The freedom from: social injustice, poverty, inequality etc. The “freedom to” is needed for a just society, but in cohabitation with the “freedom from” narrative.

So how could we envision this? Here is a list of a few ideas and thought experiments that I had in mind to share in this discussion.

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Andy Daer

The failure to defeat Hamas

By Andy Daer | Thu 16th May 2024 - 5:25 pm

As was confidently predicted by military experts in the days following October 7, Israel has not destroyed Hamas by invading Gaza, and it’s clearly not going to.  Despite having to re-engage with Hamas in the previously “cleared” northern Gaza, it has started to inflict further suffering on the one and a half million people seeking refuge in Rafah, in what Netanyahu says is the final stage of clearing Gaza of Hamas fighters.  He knows most of the people are civilians, and that many are women or children, but he has no other plan, and would probably have seen the collapse of the fragile coalition he leads if he hadn’t pressed ahead.  He may be hoping that if “finishing the job” won’t entirely get rid of Hamas, it may end up inflicting sufficient revenge on the people of Gaza for him to remain in office.

International condemnation of the proposed attack on Rafah was led by US President Joe Biden, and initially echoed by the British government, but although Biden has now sent a message to Netanyahu by halting the supply of bombs which are too big to be used in urban warfare, when the Rafah phase began, British government spokesmen became suddenly silent.  As with Biden after his conversion to limited respect for international law, our government is driven by domestic politics, and Sunak may prefer to avoid the inevitable humiliation of being rebuffed by Netanyahu by keeping quiet about the invasion of Rafah.  Others might say he has been influenced by lobbying groups which support Netanyahu’s Israel unconditionally.

In November last year, the inept James Cleverly was replaced as Foreign Secretary by David Cameron, and we saw a welcome shift in the government’s position on Gaza.  Lord Cameron had one last chance to salvage his reputation before he disappeared from the political arena, and he quickly made the bold announcement that when the fighting ends, the ‘two-state solution’ will have to be a given, and on the table before peace talks begin, not as the prize for Palestinians at the end of the process, if they behaved themselves.  Unusually, the British seemed to have made a foreign policy decision which diverged from the US position, although cynics would say Cameron probably had behind the scenes permission from the Americans to do so.  However, when Israel crossed what had been a “red line” by attacking Rafah, the line was suddenly no longer red, and Cameron was no longer laying down the law to Netanyahu, his brief day in the sun having come to an abrupt end.

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Peter Wrigley

J K Galbraith and the Liberal Society

By Peter Wrigley | Wed 15th May 2024 - 7:55 am

A friend who hoards his newspapers for years has just passed on to me an interview by Roy Hattersley with JK Galbraith in the latter’s 90th  year (1998)

The article is headlined “Sage of the Century”* and there is no doubt that, after Keynes’s  death, Galbraith  was the pre-eminent economist of the second half twentieth century.  He got most things right (including opposition to the Vietnam War) and many of the issues raised in the interview are as relevant today as they were  a quarter of a century ago. Indeed, having ignored his views provides a good explanation as to why we are now in our present  dire predicament.

The following quotes (in italics) are from the article;

To The Affluent Society we owe the prediction of “private affluence and public squalor.” Which we can see all around us, in spades after the Margaret Thatcher inspired dominance of the inadequately regulated market since 1979.

Galbraith’s first success was his analysis of “The Great Crash” of 1929.  In 1998 he predicted: “A sump will surely happen again, sooner or later. . .they are a normal feature of the market.”  

Well, it did happen again, in 2008 and we are still paying for the consequences.  Keynes was in favour of “animal spirits,”  but I think he had in mind investors in the “real economy” rather than manipulators of the financial markets, allowed to over-reach themselves by Mrs Thatcher’s Big Bang.

“The poor are politically emasculated.  They don’t vote so they don’t have a strong expression in Congress or the White House.”  

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Andrew Chandler

Labour’s turmoil presents the LibDems as the home for those with centre-left progressive values

By Andrew Chandler | Tue 14th May 2024 - 10:36 am

Embed from Getty Images

Quoting Labour’s Harold Wilson might stir some feathers to our LibDem audience, but amidst the political whirlwind, it’s fitting to recall our famous working man’s pipe-smoking ex-Prime Minister who seemed to be born into a trench-coat, rather than a birthday suit. His famous quip was “a week is a long time in politics.” And my goodness, what a week it has been.

We witnessed Natalie Elphicke, one of three former Conservatives who have recently joined Labour. Whilst the previous two defections might have surprised some and been welcomed by all within Labour, Elphicke’s departure was one that surprised everyone and was not welcomed by some from within Labour. Honestly, if you had asked me personally, I would have put better bets on her throwing herself into the coast in her constituency in Dover, to help toe a boat of Refugees onto British shores, than this. We are still yet to see the full political fallout of this choice accepted by Labour, given her right-wing views on immigration, culture wars, and, not too long ago, unflattering remarks she made about the Labour leadership. And this is only scratching the surface, given the comments she made about her husband’s victims that got caught up in his sexual misconduct trial and her attempts to influence it.

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Zachary Barker

What Should Peace Look Like?

By Zachary Barker | Mon 13th May 2024 - 10:58 am

I was sitting outside a polling station on telling duty during the Bristol 2024 local elections when a concerned lady approached me who wore a badge with a Palestinian flag on it. She earnestly asked me what the Liberal Democrats’ position on Palestine was. Since I was the candidate for the concerned ward, I thought about cheekily informing her that if elected, my remit would not extend beyond South Bristol, never mind the lands of the former Mandate of Palestine. Instead, I carefully explained to her how I legally could not influence her vote this close to a polling station, but if she met me further down the road then maybe we could speak more freely.

I felt a bit like that young woman two years ago when I met my fellow friends and colleagues who would form the Executive of Liberal Democrats for Peace in the Middle East (LDFPME). I was still contemplating my long-term future in the group when our Chair Leon Duveen said something that gave me pause for thought. After discussing his previous life as a young Israeli conscript Leon said that he wanted to do what he could for peace “so no more scared teenagers with a weapon in their hand, will be put in the position where they may make a terrible mistake”. He clearly stated his belief that Israel maintaining the Occupied Territories and expanding settlements in the West Bank, in addition to be a crime against Palestinians is corrosive to Israeli Democracy. After hearing this I knew I was in the right place.

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 13 May 2024 – and then there were two…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 13th May 2024 - 7:40 am

Natalie Elphicke? Really?

Well, you have to admire whoever it is in Labour who is handling Tory defectors – they’ve managed to smuggle out one of the more unlikely “converts” to their cause. And, if you really wanted to engender a sense of paranoia amongst the Conservative leadership, what better than to recruit someone like Natalie? Is anyone with a blue rosette above suspicion now?

But, beyond the Westminster bubble, how does this look? What message does it send in terms of principles? How big does a “big tent” get to be and still retain any sense of exclusivity?

Now, I do get it. We’ve welcomed a few controversial recruits over the years – I won’t name names and you’ll all have your own ideas – but in most cases, there was a big political principle at stake. And whilst, as I’ve noted in the past, expecting any new recruit to sign up to every dot and comma of our policies is naive at best, it should be reasonable to expect a significant philosophical overlap.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 12th May 2024 - 9:26 am

Russia

It was a week of military parades, trumpets, nuclear sabre-rattling and an inauguration in Russia this week.

It started with another threat from President Vladimir Putin when he announced on Monday the start of military exercises involving non-strategic nuclear weapons. This was in response to America releasing its $61 billion aid package to Ukraine, and the repetition of French President Emmanuel Macron’s threat to consider sending French troops to Ukraine.

Then there was Putin’s inauguration as he started his fifth term in office with a long walk past applauding crowds lining the red-carpeted corridors of the Kremlin. Putin’s first inauguration in 2000 was hailed as Russia’s transition to democracy. This one followed an election in which he “won” 87.5 percent of the vote while all his political opponents were either dead, in exile or in prison.

On Thursday it was the Victory Day Parade to mark the end of what the Russians call “The Great Patriotic War.” May Day was the big parade in Soviet days. May 9, was important, but it was not even a public holiday until 1965. Putin, has revived the celebration and elevated it to a collective remembrance resembling a religion.

One of the highlights of the parade is the march of the “Immortal Regiment” in which relatives troop past the reviewing stand holding aloft pictures of family members who died in the war. The scene is reminiscent of icons being carried in Russian Orthodox Church services. The 60th and 70th anniversaries of the war’s end (in 2005 and 2015) were the biggest public holidays in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the inauguration and Victory Day were marked by increased Russian bombardments and missile attacks as Russian troops tried to gain the military upper hand before the latest batch of Western military aid arrived.

Palestine

The two main Palestinian factions – Hamas and Fatah – hate each other almost as much as they do the Netanyahu government.

They have barely spoken since 2007 when Hamas won elections in Gaza and booted Fatah and the Palestinian Authority out of the seaside strip.

That is why it is significant that representatives from the two factions met recently in Moscow and Beijing. The Chinese meeting was especially interesting because Beijing is keen to project itself as Middle East peace broker as opposed to its characterization of the US as Middle East war monger.

The Chinese have already successfully brokered the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between regional rivalries Iran and Saudi Arabia. Shortly after that success, foreign minister Wang Yi wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offering to mediate in the decades-old Arab-Israel conflict. Netanyahu politely refused.

Brokering a rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas could be a diplomatic back door for Beijing to constructively inject itself into the Middle East conflict. It is generally agreed that the two-state solution is the logical solution to the conflict.

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Stephen Harte

Why Eurovision gives me hope

By Stephen Harte | Sat 11th May 2024 - 12:55 pm

 Happy Eurovision!

Today is the highest and holiest days of the camp calendar – the grand final of the 68th Eurovision Song Contest from Malmo, Sweden.

Growing up in Thatcher’s dismal 1980s in West Lothian (immediately to the west of Edinburgh but with none of the cosmopolitan colour of Scotland’s capital and getting all of the bust and none of the boom of those Tory years), I never travelled abroad until I left school. Eurovision was a glimpse into another exotic world. Eurovision wasn’t cool in the 1980s (and ABBA were yet to be reborn in Gold) and I often thought I was the only person I knew who was drawn into the spectacle. It never occurred to me that I was one of many queer people for whom Eurovision gave life.

Camp theory teaches that we can often find the most profound truth in the silly and irreverent. Eurovision has been that to my liberal, European heart. Our shared European home has been a place of war and division – and remains so today, with war in Gaza and Ukraine and the spectre of the far right stalking virtually every country (not least this ugly Tory Brexiteer government in the UK). The fact that something as camp and outrageous as my beloved Eurovision Song Contest unites us speaks to me and gives me hope in the way that a speech from Macron never could.

For example, in the 1993 contest in Millstreet in rural Ireland, at the height of the Bosnian war, the Bosnian act had to be flown out, under fire, in a UN helicopter. We had a jury in Sarajevo under siege calmly give their votes over a crackly UN line. The Irish compère thanked Sarajevo and simply told them to take care. Not a dry eye in the house!

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Allan Tweddle

Is pornography really free speech?

By Allan Tweddle | Fri 10th May 2024 - 2:21 pm

Pornography is notoriously difficult to define, but it is estimated that it accounts for 12% of websites and 30% of all web traffic. And while broadcast media is subject to ever more content warnings, or outright censorship, on racial or cultural grounds, explicit sexual content has become ever more acceptable on our screens.

Now, porn isn’t my thing. Watching porn as a blind person is akin to standing outside McDonalds, engulfed in the delicious aroma of Big Mac and fries, while not being able to find the door. Despite that, being a staunch believer in free speech, I’ve always supported the right of its makers and consumers to get on and enjoy themselves, provided they are not harming others in the process.

I suspect this is a common view, but an episode of The philosopher’s Zone podcast I recently heard has left me wondering. The Philosopher’s Zone, published by ABC, examines a different philosophical topic every week with the help of experts. You can listen to the relevant episode here in which Caroline West, a philosopher from the University of Sydney and author of the chapter on pornography in the Oxford Handbook of Freedom of Speech, considers whether pornography should be classified as free speech, or even as speech at all.

It isn’t written speech, at least not at the point of consumption. And it would be hard to argue that what passes for a pornography movie script can stand in as a representation for the final product. It is also not, for the most part, spoken speech either. I don’t suppose many folks consume pornography for the witty repartee.

But even if we assume that pornography does count as speech, it still may not fall under the protective umbrella of free speech. Legal scholars and philosophers have argued that there are plenty of things we would count as speech in the normal sense that no one would argue should be protected. Examples include criminal solicitation, defamation, perjury, and whites only signs. In a similar vein, there are plenty of things that would be counted as free speech that are not normal speech. These include flag burning, silent vigils, and sit-ins.

The conclusion, as far as I understood it, was that when we define free speech, what really matters is the underlying justification for why that speech should be free. John Stuart Mill’s argument that rational debate and the free flow of ideas is more likely to lead to true and justified beliefs feels relevant when discussing the activities of Extinction Rebellion, but less so when considering the latest R-rated movie. The same goes for the vital role free speech plays in a well-functioning democracy.

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Neville Farmer

Strong Parliament is better than strong Government

By Neville Farmer | Thu 9th May 2024 - 9:35 am

Kier Starmer’s invitation for Natalie Elphicke to join him on the Labour benches is a dreadful piece of political opportunism. At a time when public trust in politicians is at an all-time low, welcoming an MP who was a member of the ERG and whose views have long placed her to the far right of Ghengis Khan is a staggering shot in the foot. The backlash the following morning runs from the Guardian to the Express. Few see this as the move of a statesman.

So, why has he scored this own goal? He doesn’t need her to improve Labour’s polling, and he will soon discover what a thorn in the flesh she is to any party. But he just couldn’t resist sticking the knife into Rishi Sunak and twisting it a little further. It’s pathetic. Such naiveté is troubling for anyone viewing him as a viable Prime Minister, especially for many Labour MPs and members. It will undoubtedly lose him more votes than it gains.

For the Liberal Democrats and other progressive parties, he has created an opportunity. Many centre-left voters will baulk at the idea of someone with such poor statecraft having an overwhelming majority in Parliament. For decades, the pushback against electoral reform was that proportional representation promised coalitions and ‘weak’ government. But since 2015 we have seen unassailable majority parliaments wielded like wrecking balls by a slew of dreadful Prime Ministers. Boris Johnson alone proved how dangerous unfettered majority government can be in the hands of a maniac.

Of course, the LibDems are still hampered by the residual disdain for coalition that both Labour and the Tories disseminated throughout the electorate. But it is residual and Rishi Sunak’s inept steering of Johnson’s legacy majority is much more in-your-face vote influencer.

The path the LibDems must surely follow now is one of vision, maturity and common sense. Whatever the Jenricks, Bravermans, Andersons, Tices and Farages, or even the Corbyns may think, the majority of British people are centrist – that’s why it’s called the centre. They want change, indeed they may be desperate for it, but they don’t want more ideology forced upon them.

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