Category Archives: Op-eds

The Voice

Dominic Raab and Lib Dem Voice

By The Voice | Fri 21st April 2023 - 12:16 pm

Back in 2015 Lib Dem Voice had an interesting “conversation” with Dominic Raab, which we would like to share with you again.

The trigger for this was a post we published in February 2015 by Roisin Miller: Opinion: An MP who takes me for granted has left me feeling disenfranchised. In it she wrote:

Confession time. I’m a political activist and I’m not currently registered to vote. I have dropped off thanks to individual voter registration and I haven’t sought to redress it.

This is something which I find reprehensible, yet I am lacking the motivation to correct it.

I live in Esher and Walton which since 1906 has only ever returned a conservative MP. The lowest majority was in the 1930s, it was 16%. Dominic Raab got 58% of the vote in 2010, a majority of around 18,000.

I’ve written to Raab on a number of occasions and always got a reply. Often quite half hearted but it’s always come.

Do I feel represented? No. Regardless of party affiliation, he isn’t a particularly good MP. He was not really on local election literature, I’ve had nothing from him since I moved in 3 years ago and I’ve not once been canvassed.

Compare this to my parents in Havant, also a seat where the Conservative gets over 50% of the vote. David Willetts does not have to campaign as if his seat was marginal yet you always get an annual report, canvassing at local elections and a very heartfelt casework service (in fact I would go so far as to say the best of any MP I’ve come across, including worked for). Despite it being a safe seat, I was always compelled to vote, I felt it mattered.

Why the difference?

The answer is clear- it lies in the willing of local parties to engage with the electorate. Despite Havant being true blue Willetts clearly sees the importance of talking to his electorate.

It strikes me however that when someone as politically engaged as myself is left feeling disengaged by the state of my local politics, how must others feel? It comes as little surprise to me that many feel politicians don’t care when I know they do, yet at home I still feel like this.

The following day Dominic Raab added this comment below the post:

I have posted a full response to Roisin Miller’s post on my blog (for the record Liberal Democrat Voice declined to post it):

To which Mary Reid replied:

Dominic – Lib Dem Voice did not refuse to post it. You sent it to the personal email address of one of the editors instead of to the voice email address, so it was not picked up for a while.

As today’s editor I posted it a good 25 minutes before you placed your comment above.

So what was the full response that we received from him?  Here it is in full: Lib Dem Spin Doctor feels ‘Disenfranchised’.

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Laurence Warner

Don’t follow Iran in banning encrypted messaging like Signal and WhatsApp

By Laurence Warner | Thu 20th April 2023 - 4:49 pm

This month you received “Your Parliamentary Briefing: standing up to the Iranian regime” in your inbox.
After a British-Iranian woman at Conference Q&As was left “looking for inspiration” as to what she could do “from here in Britain” to fight totalitarianism, Lib Dem MPs have “called on the UK government to take a stronger stance against the Iranian regime”.

Let’s instead start here in Britain.

The Online Safety Bill’s ‘spy clause’ would follow Iran in banning Encryption and by extension Signal, WhatsApp and Proton. Will you oppose?

That was my 25-word question to Ed Davey. Alas it wasn’t asked, so now I get to tell you about it in 750.

I understand Ed, Daisy & their 12 disciples supporting the Online Safety Bill: I did too.
My Fulbright scholarship in technology uncovered the harms of technology dependence, an issue I struggled with as an adolescent as I reveal in my single “Honest” this month.
So I supported in December – onstage at a Unicef conference – the UK’s landmark attempts to hold Big Tech to account for public content they promote to minors like tragic victim Molly Russell.
And I support Wera Hobhouse’s intentions to help protect women and other communities most targeted with public online hate.

But thanks to digital-rights advocates Open Rights Group, we’ve since become aware that the child-protection rhetoric has been twisted to belittle all British citizens. They want OFCOM to scan all of our digital communications.
This potent clause that will require messenger apps to use OFCOM “accredited technology to prevent individuals from encountering terrorism or CSEA content” is buried 4 levels deep (110.2.a.ii), so it’s no surprise that the only Lib Dem who seemed aware of it at my first conference was tech-specialist Lord Clement-Jones.

Though vague, the clause clearly enough intends to break Encryption for Signal – and even WhatsApp who borrow their nonprofit encryption protocol – to cry foul on government surveillance and threaten to pull from UK app stores.
Quick reality check: WhatsApp’s owned by Meta, who recently had to compensate me 300 quid for a privacy-breach. They think HMG is threatening Britons privacy.

No more WhatsApp. Nice, no more Group Chat notifications, and Matt Hancock can get back to serving his constituents.
And no more terrorism or child-abuse?
Not quite. The educated and savvy – baddies included – will still find a way of multiplying their prime numbers to encrypt sensitive comms. About bad things they’re attempting In Real Life.

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Mary Reid

Judgement day for Dominic Raab

By Mary Reid | Thu 20th April 2023 - 11:04 am

The Deputy Prime Minister’s problems could come to head later today – or maybe not. The report into the allegations that he bullied civil servants is due to be handed to the Prime Minister this morning. Sunak will then decide on his response which will be published at the same time as the report itself. That could happen later today, or it could be delayed a few days. I don’t think it can be kicked into the long grass.

According to The Guardian “Senior MoJ officials ‘could quit if Dominic Raab cleared of bullying’” – or, no doubt, if there is an attempted cover-up.

Of course, Dominic Raab’s position is of serious political significance, and not just in the Cabinet. His seat in Esher & Walton, which is next door to Ed Davey’s in Kingston & Surbiton, is a marginal Blue Wall seat. In 2019 he took 49% of the vote, with Lib Dem Monica Harding on 45% (with a 27% swing to us).

The constituency lies within Elmbridge District Council, which is currently controlled by a coalition of Lib Dems and local residents associations. When we look at the Council wards within Esher & Walton, only 11 seats out of 39 are currently held by Conservatives, with 10 held by Lib Dems and the remaining 20 by various residents groupings. Next month sees a third of those seats up for election and Lib Dems are campaigning hard to increase their representation.

Esher & Walton has several neighbouring Lib Dem areas – it is bounded by the parliamentary constituencies of Twickenham as well as Kingston & Surbiton, and Richmond Park is close by. Those three constituencies are spread across Richmond and Kingston Boroughs, and the two Councils between them have the largest majority of Lib Dem councillors in the country. Two other neighbouring Boroughs (Mole Valley and Woking) are Lib Dem controlled and to the south lies Guildford Borough, where again we share power with various residents groups.

So Esher & Walton is a perfect Blue Wall challenge for the Lib Dems. We will be watching the results on 4th May with great interest, whatever the outcome of today’s report.

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Caron Lindsay

Cole-Hamilton: Reasonable minded people are re-thinking their support for the SNP

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 19th April 2023 - 9:19 am

In a way I feel a bit sorry for Humza Yousaf.  Not because he’s taken over a failing Government that he has been a part of, but because of the way his party is imploding around him in a way that he probably didn’t expect. He definitely knew that he was inheriting a deeply divided party, but maybe didn’t realise that the chalice was so full of poison.

Since his election as First Minister 3 weeks ago, two senior figures in the SNP have been arrested and released without charge in an investigation in to the Party’s finances and he has discovered that the party’s auditors resigned six months ago. You can tell that my husband is getting way too interested in this story because he’s been getting adverts for camper vans on Facebook. Yesterday he faced the press in an encounter that will be shown at media training courses as an example as how not to do it for years to come:

We’ve been very used to Nicola Sturgeon’s very controlled media appearances for the past 8 years, so this was a massive contrast. Journalist Rob Hutton’s critique was brutal:

And let’s be clear, these surely are his thoughts, unmediated by anything as sophisticated as “spin” or “damage control”. The first minister seems to be gripped by a compulsion to speak whatever words have just popped into his brain, without the slightest consideration about what impact this might have on the situation. It’s compulsive viewing, the political equivalent of watching a toddler determinedly trying to work a fork into an electrical socket.

Our Rural Affairs spokesperson Molly Nolan drew another comparison on Twitter:

I know there’s many more pressing things going on at the moment but good grief. Mr Bean himself would surely have given a better interview than this

It was not the best build up to Yousaf’s big moment when he unveiled his programme for Government at Holyrood yesterday. And to be honest it wasn’t so much a programme for Government as a series of screeching U-turns. The deeply flawed deposit return scheme paused till next year, their flagship National Care Service paused. Those are both welcome, but I mean, if the only headlines that come out of such a statement is what you are not doing, you are in trouble.

Scottish Lib Dem Leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said that our party will be part of the change that is coming:

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Callum Robertson

Maths reforms – the argument that the Conservatives (and we) should be making!

By Callum Robertson | Tue 18th April 2023 - 3:58 pm

£20 Billion per year or 1.3% of our GDP is nothing to be sniffed at. That means, in real terms, more jobs staying in the UK, a more competitive economy and a scenario where we aspire to more from our young people. This is something to be admired.

A two minute conversation with the standard Liberal Democrat campaigner will tell you that we are not exactly fond of the Conservatives, with their politicisation of human rights issues, woeful running of the economy and the lowering of our standards in public life, those are just some of the many reasons why.

However, where we should agree in principle, is with the Maths reforms. Our population is functionally innumerate and, large parts functionally illiterate, for one of the largest economies in the world, that is a damning indictment on the United Kingdom, it is also a legacy of low standards in education that existed under Major.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 16th April 2023 - 9:22 am

France

It is a case of mixed messages coming out of Paris. On the one hand, we have President Emmanuel Macron telling homeward bound journalists that Taiwan should not be a European concern and that France (and Europe by extension) should not let its China policy be determined by American “extremists”.

On the other hand, while Macron was speaking after his state visit to China, the French frigate Prairial was steaming through the Taiwan Straits while the Chinese Communist Party was flexing its muscles with an encirclement exercise of the island.

France,  is unique as the only European nation with substantial holdings in the Indo-Pacific region. It has seven territories with 7000 troops protecting a total population of 1.65 million. Ninety percent of France’s exclusive economic zone is in the region.

China is a clear threat to French interests. That is why the French navy regularly conducts exercises with its American equivalent and military equipment sold to Taiwan in the 1990s is still maintained by French technicians.

But Macron wants a bigger slice of the growing Chinese pie. This is why 53 business executives accompanied the president on his state visit. He also does see France as a counter balance to America—allied with but independent of the super power, a foreign policy that France has pursued in varying degrees since the days of Charles deGaulle.

In short, the French are doing what they do best: Juggling a dozen diplomatic balls at the same time.

USA

1.25 million Americans have top secret clearance. They include contractors as well as military personnel, civil servants and politicians. Therefore it is not surprising that one of them was a low-level 21-year-old right-wing, racist, gun enthusiast who decided to be Mr Big to his friends by posting secrets on an internet gaming site.

Jack Texeira, who worked in the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, will have the rest of his life to regret his vanity.

So will millions in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. Texeira’s leak disclosed CIA assessments of the Ukraine military on the eve of their counter offensive against Russian forces in the Donbas. It revealed which brigades are the best equipped and trained. It exposed both weaknesses and strengths which the Russians can now exploit.

Texeira also released a CIA assessment of the political machinations within the Kremlin. There were probably few surprises for Moscow, but knowing that the CIA knew something enables the FSB (Russian intelligence) to track the information back to its source and thus endangers American agents in Russia.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Africa

By Tom Arms | Sat 15th April 2023 - 10:19 am

It is big. It has deserts, jungles and rolling veldt. It is wracked with disease, poverty, tribal divisions, civil wars, political instability and corruption. Millions are trying to escape it.

It is Africa. It is the future. Or at least its natural resources are.

The US Geological Survey has identified 34 key minerals that a 21st century developed country needs. Twenty-nine of them are in Africa.

In the case of one of them – cobalt – 70 percent of the world’s known resources is in the war-wracked Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Africa’s potential, and the West’s growing dependence on its resources is the major reason for a string of recent high-profile American visits to the continent. Vice President Kamala Harris has just returned from a three-nation tour. She was preceded in the recent past by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas- Greenfield. In December, the Biden Administration hosted an Africa Summit in Washington for the continent’s political and business leaders.

But the America’s African initiative could be too little too late. Twenty years ago the US was Africa’s biggest trading partner followed by Britain, France and Germany. Today the West’s trading figures with Africa are dwarfed by China.

And with trade comes political influence and access to the minerals needed for computers and batteries for a green, prosperous and secure future.

The West is big with aid. The US leads the pack. Last year it gave African countries a staggering $6.2 billion in humanitarian aid – twenty percent of all the aid received. European countries and institutions combined provided about half of the continent’s aid. China was not even in the top ten.

Beijing is not big on aid. It is ginormous on win/win investment and trade. Chinese investments in Africa are currently estimated to be worth $2 trillion and are generating $200 billion a year in trade. There are an estimated 20,000 Chinese technicians and managers nursing Beijing’s investments which are primarily in infrastructure projects such as ports, airports, roads and railways.

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Lord William Wallace

The Republican colonization of the British Conservative Party

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 14th April 2023 - 11:12 am

Liz Truss has just made her second visit to Washington since she stepped down as prime minister: this time, to deliver the ‘Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture’ to the Heritage Foundation.  She pleased her audience by declaring that ‘It was Anglo-American individualism that made the world prosperous…Low taxes, limited government and private enterprise were what won the Cold War’ – and warning that ‘stagnation, redistributionism and woke culture’ are weakening the West in the coming struggle with China.

There are many untruths in such a statement.  It was Rooseveltian social democracy, on both sides of the Atlantic, that secured and revived democracy to win the Cold War.  The Thatcherite revolution swept in as the Cold War was ending, low taxes aided by the ‘peace dividend’ of cutting spending on defence.  ‘Woke culture’ is an invention of the American right, with racial undertones.  ‘Redistributionism’, otherwise known as progressive taxation, is an essential element of any democratic economy and society, resisted only by radical libertarians and authoritarian free marketeers.  But she was no doubt at home with her ideological Republican audience, far more than she would have been with almost any audience in London.

The colonization of the British right by American ideas and American money is one of the most worrying developments in national politics.  We cannot tell how far the well-funded think tanks of the right depend on US funding, since none of them publish where their funds come from.  Policy Exchange has a US Foundation to ease US giving, and the Taxpayers’ Alliance and the Institute of Economic Affairs have close US links.  There are rumours that US Evangelical bodies have promoted and funded ‘family-friendly’ campaigns against abortion and trans rights, in the ‘battle against woke culture’.  And the links with the Conservative Party are evident, in the flow of MPs and advisers to Washington conferences and of American visitors to events over here.

From May 15-17 the US-led National Conservatism movement will hold its seventh conference in four years, this time in London.  Its listed keynote speakers include Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, together with Suella Braverman, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Douglas Murray (author of ‘The War on the West’). Other speakers offer a parade of right-wing thinkers from the UK and elsewhere. The most important intellectual figure is Yoram Hazony, an Israeli-American philosopher and Old Testament scholar, whose writings on national conservatism reject much of the enlightenment tradition as well as the tenets of liberal thought.

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Christopher Hudson

What I wish I’d known when I started out in the Lib Dems

By Christopher Hudson | Fri 14th April 2023 - 7:54 am

Bright eyed, bushy tailed and knowing almost nothing in 2017, being handed the keys to run a Local Party’s finances was a bewildering and exciting moment. I’m sure there are thousands of people who have had similar feelings.

There was always a mountain of things that needed to be done, matched by an enthusiasm to get going. As I moved through other roles, and went through elections, I picked up skills as I tried to work out what I should be doing and the best ways of doing it. While there were hugely experienced people around willing to teach what they knew, I realised quickly that there was no complete manual or guide. As people came and went from local politics, so too did the institutional knowledge they had nurtured.

So, I decided used my time in lockdown productively reading up, interviewing and collating best practice from different people who had done different roles across the country.

While there may have been quirks to Local Parties there were also many common problems and bright ideas. For me the big lessons from the process of writing Winning Here Winning There were:

  1. Keeping a group of volunteers organised and motivated is no easy task
  2. You can quickly get distracted and consumed by immediate issues
  3. You need a long-term multi-election strategy to win
  4. Working hard will not guarantee success, you also need to work smart
  5. Local Party know-how is easily lost when people leave/retire
  6. Coming up with reasons to logically vote Lib Dem is easy, creating an emotional argument is much more difficult
  7. There’s so much more to being in a political party than delivering leaflets
  8. Get a head start by learning the lessons of the past rather than replicating their mistakes

Having been a Local Party Chair, Treasurer, Agent, regional executive member, and campaigner in London, as well as helper at by-elections, I have witnessed the enthusiasm of campaigners keen for success, as well as the disappointment of wasted effort reinventing the wheel.

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David Chalmers

LibDem EU Liaison Councillor Scheme

By David Chalmers | Thu 13th April 2023 - 5:44 pm

At the Spring Conference in York, one of the Saturday lunchtime fringe debates, hosted by LibDem European Group (LDEG), focused on developing links at local government level between the UK and the EU. As several speakers pointed out, whilst we were still members of the EU, numerous channels existed to keep these channels open. But not anymore – which is yet another example of things that we once valued, lost through Brexit.

For the past year I have been holding discussions with the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) to find a way for the UK – initially led by the LibDems – to participate in the informal network of local councillors, which is being set up across the member states of the EU, responsible in their local communities for keeping up to date with EU affairs, sharing relevant information with other councillors in their community and informing constituents via newsletters, social media posts, surgery-style meetings or engaging with them on the streets or in cafes and other places where the local community comes together.

As the relationship between the UK and the EU develops over the coming years, helped hopefully by the policies the LibDems are crafting ranging from education to science to trade and farming, we will be reconnected with our European neighbours, and it would help our cause to offer our fellow citizens a source of contact offering factual information from trusted people in their community, that would help to foster greater awareness of the benefits to be gained from a closer relationship with the EU and lead eventually to the UK regaining its star as a member state.

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Mary Reid

There is a solution to fly-tipping

By Mary Reid | Thu 13th April 2023 - 2:06 pm

Tim Farron has been speaking out about fly-tipping; specifically the fact that only 1 in 500 incidents last year led to prosecution. He claims that it has been “effectively legalised”.

He says:

The fact that fly-tipping is going unpunished is simply appalling. If people aren’t being fined, it’s no wonder that they think they can dump their rubbish on the streets without consequence.

Brits do the right thing with their waste, but a badly behaved minority is spoiling our environment.

The lack of action on this issue from the Government sends out the message that they do not take it seriously enough. They have effectively legalised littering through their inaction.

The Lib Dems take more action against fly-tippers by increasing the cost of the fine and using the profits to crackdown on fly-tippers.

With local elections around the corner, communities must vote to clean up the mess that the current government has created.

Fly-tipping is a good issue for campaigners in the current local elections, because it is visible and no one (apart from the culprits) likes it.

I’m sorry, though, that he didn’t mention some of the innovative solutions that are being used where Lib Dems are in control. It’s not simply a matter of increasing fines – it has to be about identifying and chasing the perpetrators. We learnt about one approach in a recent post from Cllr John Sweeney in Kingston upon Thames, who has a portfolio that includes waste and recycling. “Beyond potholes … addressing fly-tipping is an issue LibDems can campaign on in cities everywhere“.

John explains here:

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Samuel Jackson

Douglas Ross: A tale of two voting systems

By Samuel Jackson | Thu 13th April 2023 - 11:28 am

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has recently called for a Unionist tactical voting pact in Scotland during the next UK general election to unseat Scottish Nationalist MPs, with free rein given to Labour in urban seats and to the Conservatives in rural ones. However, this proposal was ultimately rejected by both Scottish Labour and the UK Conservatives.

Ross inhabits two different worlds, having won one election under Additional Member System and another under First Past the Post. He is simultaneously one of seven regional MSPs for the Highlands and Islands elected via Closed Party List, and the sole MP for Moray. His position at Westminster is precarious, having won just 513 votes more than the SNP runner-up, whilst List-PR grants him greater job security at Holyrood. For the Conservatives generally, they are the second-largest party in Scotland at both Westminster and Holyrood. However, at the 2019 general election, the Conservatives won only six of Scotland’s fifty-nine seats with a quarter of the votes cast there, whilst at the 2021 Scottish parliamentary election, they won thirty-one out of 129 seats, or around twenty-four per cent, in line with their constituency and regional vote shares.

It cannot be denied that Douglas Ross has practical, real-world experience of both FPTP and PR, making him a unique figure in British politics. However, given how their Scottish branch has fared better under PR than they have under FPTP, he is also an uncomfortable paradox for the Conservatives, to which the story around his proposed pact is testament.

A prominent feature of FPTP is vote splitting, whereby electoral support split amongst several likeminded parties or candidates can result in an ideological opponent winning. Whilst this has historically benefitted the Conservatives, it has recently given a boost to the SNP, and for not dissimilar reasons. Both parties have virtually monopolised their voting bases – the right and Nationalists respectively – allowing them to disproportionately win more seats than any one party amongst their diverse oppositions.

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Jack Clark

Every scandal is one of one thousand cuts to our institutions

By Jack Clark | Tue 11th April 2023 - 12:11 pm


Last Wednesday, I Whatsapp’d my mum a screenshot of a BBC Breaking News article with the headline “Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell arrested in SNP finance probe”, along with the message, “What a way to start the day!”.

As someone deeply involved in politics and with some strong opinions on the SNP, I will admit I was rather gleeful. The news came just a day after Donald Trump was arrested over “hush money” payments, Robert Jenrick was disqualified from driving for 6 months for speeding, and on the same day that Blackpool South MP Scott Benton was was reported to have been involved in a lobbying “sting”.

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Simon McGrath

My complaint to IPSO about a story in the Telegraph about the Lib Dems

By Simon McGrath | Tue 11th April 2023 - 10:11 am

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me about an article in the Telegraph by Iain Dale entitled “Trans activism is eroding tolerance in politics” which included this passage:

Last weekend, in a little noted decision, the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference passed a motion which urged anyone in the party who didn’t subscribe to full self ID and the wider trans agenda to leave the party. How very “liberal” of them.

The original article is behind a paywall but an amended version can be found on Dale’s website.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems should stand up against EHRC claims on sex and Equality Act

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 9th April 2023 - 2:39 pm

In February, the Women and Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch wrote to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to ask them to consider the current definition of “sex” in the Equality Act.

It should not be a surprise that the EHRC replied this week identifying eight areas, ranging from book clubs to sport to access to single sex spaces in which amending the Equality Act so that sex means what they call “biological sex” would bring “greater legal clarity.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that this, if implemented, would have a massive impact on trans people’s ability to live their lives. Not only that, but women who aren’t trans, but who don’t look “feminine enough” could face challenge in single sex spaces. It would essentially make life more miserable and dangerous with no gain for anyone.

Not only that, but part of the requirement for getting a Gender Recognition Certificate is that you do use single sex spaces after you have transitioned. So restricting those to sex on your original birth certificate creates a Catch 22.

The EHRC is led by Kishwer Falkner, who was once a Liberal Democrat Peer but now sits in the Lords as non-affiliated after leaving the Party over our continued opposition to Brexit. She was appointed by the Government to her current role in December 2020 and the organisation has been adding to the anti-trans mood music since.

I have spent my adult life campaigning for women’s rights and I’m far from being done. The Scottish Lib Dem Women constitution cites smashing the patriarchy as an aim and I am here for that.

I know what it is like to be on the receiving end of threatening behaviour from men in a public place and to actually fear for my life.

None of that makes me think it is ok to stop trans women accessing women’s spaces, or fail to do them the most basic courtesy of respecting their identity. Because if you don’t accept them as the women they are,  how on earth are they supposed to go about their lives? What facilities are they supposed to use?

Falkner says in her letter to the Government that she wants to see a more informed and constructive debate on these issues. One way to do that would be to target the misinformation and fear being spread by anti trans groups and to recognise that this is part of a global effort to undermine women’s rights and LGBT rights.

Liz Barker pointed this out in her International Women’s Day speech in the Lords:

Women have different life experiences, different economic circumstances and all sorts of differences between us, yet we have common aspirations for safety, health, autonomy and prosperity. It is important to bear that in mind as we have this debate, because it takes place against the background of a campaign originated and orchestrated by Christian nationalists in the United States, Europe and across Russia, which is very definitely about curbing the aspirations and autonomy of all women.

In the United States and places like Poland and Hungary the focus is on anti-abortion activities. In Africa, the focus is against equality and LGBT rights. In the US and UK, the key focus of this campaign is anti-gender.

The constant drip feed of anti trans stories in the media brings to mind the constant drip feed of anti EU stories over many years. And we know that didn’t end well.

It is therefore hardly surprising that trans people are worried and fearful about their safety in this sort of environment as hate crimes against them soar.

Women are equally understandably worried and fearful about their safety as violence against women and girls increases. The threat to women’s safety is not trans women though – it is predatory men in a society structured in such a way that those men are rarely  held to account for their behaviour.

If we turned our attention to dismantling the power structures and the culture that enables that to happen rather than picking on trans women, the world would be a lot safer for all women.

EHRC officials met LGBT representatives the day after the letter was released. And it is fair assessment, from Jane Fae’s account, that they do not fully understand what they are talking about. I am in awe of our own Helen Belcher for keeping her cool through that meeting and calmly and forensically questioning them on their assertions:

Well, I can understand that might be an aspiration but when your letter talks about reasons for, erm, excluding trans women from women’s spaces, how, how do you expect me to live my life? How do you expect me to be a councillor and represent my constituents? How do you expect me to do my work in Parliament if I cannot use women’s facilities? …

That’s a really basic element of human rights and the proposal seems to me to demand that I am openly identifiable as trans in any interaction with public services. So how does that square with my right to privacy?

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 9th April 2023 - 10:17 am

USA

America’s looking glass politics dominated the news agenda again this week. Donald Trump is not a perp. He is a victim. And he is exploiting his victimhood to the maximum political advantage.

The ex-president has re-galvanised his base with classic hyperbolic claims about Democratic witch hunts. The sad thing is that in the case of this week’s indictment – the first of a past or present American president – he may actually be right.

The office of District Attorney for South Manhattan is an elected one, and Alvin Bragg won the vote on the back of a promise to bring Donald Trump to trial and convict him. Lady Justice is portrayed blindfolded with her sword and balancing scales. She is not elected.

The law is meant to be based on precedent.  No man (or woman) should be protected by their political position but neither should their political position be the determining factor in their innocence or guilt.

Of course, Donald Trump, is more than prepared to play both sides of the legal coin. His 2016 campaign rallies were marked by the endless chant/rant of “Lock her up” related to Hillary Clinton’s use of private emails for government use. The demand was dropped as soon as Trump entered the White House.

Possibly the saddest aspect of Trump’s indictment is that DA Bragg’s case is the weakest against the ex-president. Secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, the January 6 riots and attempts to fix the Georgia election returns all look more promising. Legal eagles believe he can beat the rap on the Stormy Daniels case – if only on one of several technicalities. If Trump is acquitted then he could use that acquittal to fight off other legal challenges and ride the victimhood express all the way to the Republican Party nomination and possibly beyond.

China

Diplomats say interesting things sometimes. Fu Cong, Beijing’s ambassador to the EU was certainly in expansive and interesting mode when he spoke to the New York Times on the eve of the Macron/von de Leyen state visit to China.

At the top of President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda in Beijing was Ukraine. In fact, his feet had barely touched Chinese soil when he was telling Xi Jinping: “I am counting on you to bring Russia to its senses.”

France, America and the rest of the West are terrified that the Xi/Putin “friendship without limits” will eventually lead to Chinese weaponry supporting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Ambassador Fu, however, dismissed the “limitless” phrase as “rhetoric.” He also pointed out that Beijing has refused to recognise the 2014 annexation of Crimea or the more recent Russian land grabs in the Donbas.

All of the above is true. It is also encouraging that a senior Chinese diplomat has gone on record to try and balance the debate. But friendship with Russia and Putin remains at or near the centre of Xi’s world strategy. To put it bluntly, Xi sees Russia as key to his plan of eroding the Western-oriented world order and replacing it with one that is more autocracy-friendly.

The Chinese president hinted at his big picture plan in his opening remarks to Macron’s visit when he said that China and France have the responsibility to transcend their differences “as the world undergoes proposed historical changes.”

To realise this plan, Xi wants to drive a wedge between European and American policymakers. To do this he is dangling the financial incentive of improved Sino-European trade links. That is why EU Commission President Ursula von de Leyen and an accompanying herd of French businessmen have been tacked onto Macron’s state visit.

The question remains whether the fine words that come out of the Macron/von de Leyen visit will be mere “rhetoric.”

Finland

Russia’s border with NATO is now 800-miles longer. Finland has ended decades of neutrality and joined the Western Alliance. Simultaneously it has changed its government.

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Caron Lindsay

Good Friday Agreement anniversary reminds us that politics should be about healing divisions

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 8th April 2023 - 10:49 am

I grew up at a time when every week had a grim story of loss of life from Northern Ireland. I remember being inspired as a 9 year old by the efforts of Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for their efforts in trying to bring about peace. It was so disappointing when their efforts failed.  I had skin in this game as my favourite Auntie and Uncle lived there – and still do along with my cousins and cousin’s children.

It was another 22 years before we’d see a stable peace there, and it was another woman, the incredible and much missed Secretary of State Mo Mowlam who put her heart and soul into bringing it about.

I remember being on the edge of my seat that Easter weekend, hoping for the breakthrough that eventually came. It was barely a year into Tony Blair’s Labour Government. A lot of the ground work had been laid by the previous administration. I remember Paddy Ashdown paying sincere tribute to John Major’s leadership in getting people talking to each other.

I thought it might be good to look back on the exchanges in the Commons when the agreement was first discussed in Parliament.

Mo Mowlam spoke first, announcing the deal:

This is a unique agreement born of a unique set of negotiations that involved Unionists, nationalists, republicans and loyalists around the same talks table. This is a situation in which, although compromises have been made, everyone can be a winner. Everyone’s political and cultural identity is respected and protected by this deal. Northern Ireland politics, for so long, has been seen as a zero sum game. This agreement demonstrates the potential for the people of Northern Ireland to move beyond that, into a new type of politics in which everyone can gain. This agreement represents a sensible, fair and workable way forward for both communities.

I should like to pay a particular tribute today to the negotiating teams of all the parties involved. I should also like to pay tribute to a group who, though often vilified, have worked for many years to bring about this agreement, often at personal risk to themselves and their families—the civil servants in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.

It is important, when we are talking about all the positive developments, that at the same time we do not lose sight of the terrible price that has been paid by the victims of violence and their families. No amount of progress in the search for lasting peace will bring back those loved ones who have been lost, or take away the pain felt, day in and day out, by their families. I hope that Ken Bloomfield’s victims commission, which we have set up and which I hope will report later this month, will provide us with some practical suggestions as to how we can best recognise the suffering endured by the victims of violence and their families.

Even at such a dramatic moment, she showed her heart and sense of fun. Our then leader Paddy Ashdown opened his comments with:

The Secretary of State will have received enough plaudits, well justified and well deserved, from enough quarters not to need me to add to them.

She responded:

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Israel’s political demographics

By Tom Arms | Sat 8th April 2023 - 8:30 am

Supreme Court changes. West Bank settlers. Fighting on Temple Mount and renewed missile exchanges between Israel, Lebanon and Gaza.

They are the result of growing divisions within Israeli society and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is as much a reflection of these realities as he is a driver and exploiter of the splits.

Roughly a quarter of Israel’s 9.2 million Jews are Orthodox. Another quarter regard themselves as Secular. The 50 percent balance are a variety of in-between shades which means a more or less even split between the two sides of the debate.

And it is a debate. A vicious and increasingly divisive one. Virtually everyone is agreed on Israel’s role as the Jewish homeland. A big majority support the 2018 law which defines Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and were pleased that the Israeli Supreme Court upheld that law with a 10-1 vote.

But there are heated arguments about what should be the values of the state of Israel and how to achieve them.

One big difference is the special treatment handed out to religious Jews. Until 2014 they were exempt from military service– a big deal in a country which prides itself on a semi-professional citizen’s army. In that year the Supreme Court ruled the exemption unconstitutional. They have, however, allowed postponements for the purposes of religious studies. They have also allowed the exemption for Orthodox Jewish women to continue.

Unsurprisingly, secular Jews are angry that they bear the brunt of physically protecting their homeland.

The situation is exacerbated by generous welfare subsidies paid to Orthodox men to allow them full-time study of the Torah. Sixty percent of Orthodox Jewish men live on welfare compared to 10 percent in the population as a whole.

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Colin Bloodworth

Today is a sad day for half a million pensioners

By Colin Bloodworth | Thu 6th April 2023 - 8:55 am

Why on earth should it be a sad day? On this day around 11 million British state pensioners are due a 10.1% uplift in their state pensions. That is, all except some half a million living around the world who have been denied annual increases. This is due to the legacy of an unjust policy that was set in very different times over 70 years ago, but has since been maintained by successive governments to save money. 

Lib Dems Overseas have been supporting a campaign for several years to ‘unfreeze’ these pensions and we have the strong support of our leader Ed Davey alongside Lords William Wallace and Chris Rennard and Lib Dem MP Wendy Chamberlain. We are also working closely with British overseas pension organisations in Australia, Canada and elsewhere and we are pressing for our case to be backed in the party’s next general election manifesto.

Under the frozen pension policy, those who live in certain countries that do not have reciprocal agreements with the UK are denied an annual cost-of-living increase, even though they paid their national insurance contributions in full during their working lives. The countries affected include most commonwealth nations as well as most developing countries. Some of the ‘frozen pensioners’ are fortunate in that they emigrated to Australia or Canada where the host governments provide a social net that prevents them from becoming destitute. This should be a cause for shame and embarrassment to the British government.

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Lord William Wallace

The changing media for public debate

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 5th April 2023 - 5:41 pm

How do Liberal Democrats get our message across to the wider public?  When I was briefly the party’s assistant press officer, over half a century ago, the answer was fairly straightforward.  There were mass-circulation newspapers, with a range of political perspectives, which welcomed stories and Op-Eds; there was also a thriving regional and local press.  And there was the BBC, stolid and serious, to hold the national debate together.  I pride myself that the largest audience I have ever reached was when I wrote an Op-Ed for the News of the World for Jo Grimond: its circulation then was over 4 million.

The situation now is far more confused and difficult.  Newspaper circulation is in steep decline.  No national paper sells more than a million copies, and the ‘quality press’ sell a few hundred thousand each.  Few people under 40 bother with printed newspapers; they go straight to websites, to newspapers on-line or alternative sources.  The BBC website is reportedly the most trusted for news, but most heavily accessed by people over 40.  Younger generations choose between a very wide range of channels, on-line, audio-visual and printed.  Political campaigners struggle to keep up with changing tastes and fashions in following news and public debates.

Our written media have become absurdly biased.  I’ve almost given up on The Times, after 50 years reading it over breakfast while my wife reads the Guardian.  Over the past week it has carried articles downplaying the threat of climate change, supporting Netanyahu in his attack on Israeli judges, and a two-page spread on the pernicious ‘liberal elite’ that allegedly runs Britain – as well as the usual undercurrent of anti-BBC stories and culture-war scares.  The Telegraph appears to live in another world, in which Daniel Hannan, David Frost, Julia Hartley Brewer and others rage against political correctness, modernity and evidence-based arguments.  The Mail is even more hysterical in its headlines than it used to be.  Their influence lingers on in the way the BBC still follows the cues of their news stories, and covers ‘the papers’ in its reporting; but the evidence from surveys is that the majority of the public trust the BBC for news far more than any newspaper.

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Mary Reid

Where are the women?

By Mary Reid | Wed 5th April 2023 - 1:10 pm

Earlier this week the Fawcett Society published a report on the gender balance on Councils across the UK. The headline story is that only 36% of elected councillors are women. In only 5% of Councils were at least half of the councillors female.

It gets worse. You might imagine that Lib Dems would be ahead of the other parties on this, but tucked away in the report is the embarrassing fact that only 35% of our councillors are women – a figure below that achieved by five other parties and only higher than the Conservatives and some Northern Ireland parties.

This is a subject dear to my heart, and I have provided training and mentoring across the party on candidate diversity with a particular interest in encouraging more women to stand. In my own local party I have co-ordinated the recruitment, approval and selection of Council candidates for over 10 years, only recently handing on to two other members. Kingston upon Thames is a London Borough so we have all-out elections every 4 years, and this is what we achieved on my watch:

  • In 2014, we lost control to the Conservatives and took 18 seats out of 48, of which 10 (55%) were held by women.
  • In 2018, we regained control with 39 seats, and 22 (56%) were held by women.
  • In 2022, we increased our majority by winning 44 seats, including 20 (45%) women.

Not surprisingly, I was called to account by our local party Executive for the drop in female representation last year. I explained that finding 48 electable candidates during a pandemic was challenging; in fact, the outcome demonstrated the effectiveness of the strategies that we had used in previous cycles but were unable to use during Covid lockdowns and restrictions.

So what needs to be done?

There are four stages in the election of a councillor – recruitment, approval, selection, election. It is easy to assume that discrimination must be at play at each of those stages; but whilst it is important to examine both conscious and unconscious biases we must be careful to avoid pointing the finger at the electorate or our members and instead should examine our own practices.

In fact, using the language of blame, discrimination and victimisation is not helpful. Rather we should be asking what we need to do to encourage women to participate. And we should be concentrating on our target seats, where the real battles lie.

So let’s see what we can learn about each stage, taking them in reverse order.

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Mark Valladares

3 April 2023 – some reflections as the day ends…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 3rd April 2023 - 11:50 pm

Tomorrow sees the deadline for nominations for local elections in England and, like many of you, my nomination papers are with my local District Council for inclusion on the ballot on 4 May. We take on a serious responsibility, especially for those of us with prospects of victory, as representing our communities is not to be taken lightly, regardless of the level and scale of that position. But, whether you’re a target seat candidate, or an incumbent, or even just a name on a ballot paper, thank you in anticipation of what you’ll be doing over the next thirty-one days.

It’s been a testing few weeks for the Scottish Nationalists, with a leadership contest which exposed the philosophical divides within their ranks, and a new Leader who has attracted much ad hominem criticism from, it must be said, the usual English media suspects. I don’t pay enough attention to Scottish domestic politics to really know whether or not Humza Yousuf is up to the job, but he has a huge challenge on his hands following on from Nicola Sturgeon, whose leadership transcended the ideological question marks within SNP ranks.

I’m an agnostic on Scottish independence (sorry about that, Caron) as I respect the notion of self-determination. I’ve always said that independence comes with a price in terms of “blood and treasure” and, if Scots are allowed to make a properly informed decision and vote to go ahead, then so be it. That said, one does wonder if the SNP would long survive a victory given the loss of the one obvious factor which currently unites them.

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Andy Daer

A Way Out of the Chaos in Israel

By Andy Daer | Mon 3rd April 2023 - 3:13 pm

Joe Biden has lost patience with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Previous US Presidents must have been exasperated by the succession of Israeli Prime Ministers who paid lip service to international law, UN resolutions and human rights, and then ignored them in practice, but this time the frustration is public. Netanyahu is no longer welcome in the White House, and Biden has told him he must end his attempt to destroy democracy in Israel. Jewish organisations like Yachad in the UK have demonstrated around the world that Israel’s leader must not be allowed to join the autocrats’ club, along with Putin, Erdogan and Orban. In stark contrast to Biden, the UK government kowtowed to Netanyahu only days before the US condemnation of his latest moves, and has published what must now be a deeply embarrassing ‘roadmap’; it ticks off virtually everything on Netanyahu’s wish-list.

Netanyahu’s initial response to Biden’s announcement was to say Israel could manage without US help, and to call on his supporters to stage counter-demonstrations opposing those seen over the last few recent weeks. Tens of thousands have shown their disapproval of the planned legal reforms, both in Israel and in cities around the world. The truth is that Israel needs its friends more than ever, and dismissing Biden’s call to end his attack on the Israeli judiciary was a mistake.

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Caron Lindsay

Polls put SNP majority in doubt

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 2nd April 2023 - 3:33 pm

Humza Yousaf has been Scotland’s First Minister for 5 days and it looks as though he’s not going to get a honeymoon. Two polls this week have shown the SNP vote falling and Labour surging while Lib Dems look as though we will gain and, in Alex Cole-Hamilton’s catchphrase of the moment, “be part of what’s next”

A Savanta poll published on Friday put us on 7 seats, giving us and Labour 49 seats between us. Between 2007 and 2011, the SNP minority government had just  47 MSPs.

This weekend, a Sunday Times/Pnaelbase poll showed a slightly different outcome, but still a significant drop for the SNP.

Humza Yousaf’s win by the cursed ratio of 52% to 48% means that the divisions opened up by a febrile campaign will be more difficult to heal. The refusal of Kate Forbes to take the post of Rural Affairs Secretary, a role which would have put her on a collision course with the Greens over the introduction of controversial Highly Protected Marine Areas  leaves her as a powerful rallying point on the back benches.

Unforced errors such as abolishing the job of Social Security Minister, sending its previous holder Ben Macpherson to the backbenches, have also raised concerns. It seems ridiculous to have a Minister for Independence and not one to be over the transfer of disability benefits to the new Scottish Social Security Agency.

The commentary on Yousaf’s debut at First Minister’s Questions was not positive. In fact, the Herald’s Tom Gordon  was brutal:

The banks of schoolkids flagged visibly, hating their teachers, hating democracy.

It was like detention without end. Oh, think of the children!

On and on Mr Yousaf went, clubbing his audience with the cliches of Nicola Sturgeon and the charm of Alex Salmond in a lift.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 2nd April 2023 - 8:25 am

USA – Trump

I may have written too early and ill-advisedly when last week I predicted the political decline of Donald Trump.

His delayed indictment in the Stormy Daniels case has finally hit the newsstands and the ex-president is deftly using his victimhood to rally his political base. “This is,” he said “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.”

Clearly the man never studied the classics or medieval European history.

But this has not stopped the conspiracy theorists from flooding cyber space with outlandish claims and threats of civil war. Qanon was quick to tweet that Trump is waging a secret war “against a network of Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media.” It added ominously: “We are ready when you are…Mr President.”

Trump’s opponents in the race for the Republican nomination – Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis – are also lining up behind the ex-president to condemn the indictment as a witch hunt. They are all afraid of alienating Trump’s political base.

But how big is that base? For a start, a significant proportion of Trump’s base in the 2016 and 2020 elections were White evangelical Christians. They comprise roughly a quarter of the American population and 80 percent of them voted for Trump.

However, a large proportion of the Evangelicals are one issue voters – abortion. They have won that battle with Trump’s Supreme Court nominees. They are unlikely to shift their allegiance to “socialist” Joe Biden but Trump’s apparent lack of morals could pull them towards one of the other Republican hopefuls, an independent third candidate or abstention.

That still leaves a sizable chunk of Trump supporters who have now been galvanised by their leader’s imminent arrest. Their reaction is the major unknown in American politics, and, following the Capitol Hill riots, potentially worrying. There may even be enough Trump supporters within the Republican Party to secure him the nomination. In fact, as of this week, he is 30 points ahead of his nearest challenger Ron DeSantis. But that could be the end of Trump’s political road. The country is hopelessly split between Republicans and Democrats. The balance lies with the roughly thirty percent of the voting population who are registered independents. They, and disenchanted evangelicals and moderate Republicans are unlikely to cast their vote for a felon, or even an alleged felon.

USA – guns

There are lots of reasons Americans have more guns than people – 395 million shooters for 336 million people.

There is the pioneer Wild West culture, Hollywood’s glorification of gun culture, personal and family protection, law enforcement, recreational target shooting, hunting and, of course, the pursuit of criminal objectives.

To my mind, the most worrying reason is protection of the individual from the government. This is one of the arguments by the National Rifle Association and politicians such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. It is a justification which dates back to the 1689 English Bill of Rights when citizens were guaranteed the right to carry guns as a defense against the imposition of a Catholic monarch.

This fear of “big government” using its power to deny Americans basic human rights was one of the reasons for the Second Amendment. They had, after all, just fought a revolution against a government which had blocked their liberties.

The problem for gun advocates is that society and politics has moved on from the 18th century. We have now had 240 years of American governments elected by universal franchise (except for women who did not secure the right to vote until 1920) to pass laws to protect them. If the gun lobby has a problem with lack of representation in federal government then it should use the legal instruments in the US constitution to amend it.

Instead its solution is more guns. Guns in schools. Guns in churches. Guns in shops and theatres and guns in homes. Following the latest school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, there are new reasons. Shootings are not a gun problem. They are a mental health problem. There are also, it is being argued post-Nashville, now a transgender problem because the shooter was a transgender person.

Very few Americans dare to suggest that the guns themselves are the problem. This is because the Second Amendment has become a political sacred cow.

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Caron Lindsay

Happy April 1st!

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 1st April 2023 - 12:00 pm

We hope you enjoyed our traditional offering as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

The star of the piece, our party President Mark Pack, had his own news splash on Ed Davey’s battlebus with a difference.

And so the party’s cheese-merchants-in-chief have been bashing around ideas to replace a traditional battlebus with something more eye-catching.

Which is why that local election launch featured Ed Davey in a tractor.

If you watched very closely, you’ll have seen that he wasn’t driving it, but rather had a driver beside him, a press officer squeezed in behind them both next to a compact coffee machine, with a trailer pulled along behind loaded up with a group of mannequins.

For the choice of a tractor wasn’t a subtle jibe at the previous Conservative MP for Tiverton and Honiton. Rather, it was a test for doing a leader’s election tour by tractor.

Neil Fawcett, who also featured briefly in our piece, made his own announcement on Facebook, presumably to detract attention:

Two recent events have triggered a decision I have been mulling over for some time:
1 The refusal by Party President Mark Pack to allow an emergency meeting of the FCEC to discuss my proposal that we should use an electric tractor, rather than a diesel one, for the recent ‘blue wall’ stunt;
2 The release of the frankly excellent album, I Saw, A Star Behind Your Eyes, Don’t Let It Fade Away, by my talented Green councillor colleague Robin Bennett. (Fans of the Byrds, CSNY etc. will love it.)
As a result, I will be switching to join the Greens with immediate effect.

Given that Neil is genuinely indispensable, I’m very glad this is an April Fool.

One of my personal favourites was the Scotsman’s scoop of a new statue of Nicola Sturgeon to be erected in the Scottish Parliament. One of the big real news stories in Scotland at the moment is the absolute horlicks the SNP Government has made of building ferries but every cloud appears to have a silver lining:

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Asian Stew

By Tom Arms | Fri 31st March 2023 - 7:18 pm

The current president of Taiwan is in America. Her immediate predecessor is in China. Meanwhile Beijing and Washington are slipping deeper into a dangerous stew of suspicion, enmity and mutual recriminations.

The visit to America by President Tsai Ing-wen is unofficial. It has to be to mute Chinese objections. But even unofficial visits by the Taiwanese raise the ire of Beijing and in this case the protests will be louder than usual because on April 5th President Tsai flies to California to meet Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and other Republican leaders.

President Tsai and her Democratic Progressive Party are not flavour of the decade in Beijing. They lean towards a separate and independent Taiwan, although President Tsai is careful to avoid an explicit policy. She has cautiously declared: “Taiwan is already an independent state, thus rendering a formal declaration of independence is unnecessary.”

President Ma Ying-jeou was Taiwanese president from 2008 to 20016. He and his Kuomintang party lean towards a rapprochement with Beijing. Ma is currently on a 12-day unofficial visit to Mainland China. The first such visit by a past or present president of Taiwan. Like Tsai, he hedges his bets on relations with Beijing. In his first inaugural address he pledged: “No reunification, no independence, and no war.” He might have added: no commitments in any direction.

It was during Ma’s administration that shipping and other transport links with the mainland were re-established as well as a family reunification plan and a number of commercial ties. Some of those ties have been suspended by the Chinese Communist Party during Tsai’s administration.

Elections are scheduled in Taiwan in January and relations with the mainland are likely to dominate debates.

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Mary Reid

Christmas Tree Bills – and the backlog in the Lords

By Mary Reid | Fri 31st March 2023 - 9:25 am

The concept of a Christmas Tree Bill was new to me. Don Foster has been talking to PoliticsHome about them.

There are very many bills like Christmas Tree Bills, where it’s perfectly possible to move amendments that dangle further baubles on to the Christmas tree.

A very good example of that is the Levelling Up Bill, which really opens up the possibilities for almost anything to be moved as an amendment.

He has been commenting on the backlog in the House of Lords caused by hugely complex legislation making its way through the system.  In particular the Levelling Up And Regeneration Bill has attracted over 500 amendments, earning it this description as a Christmas Tree Bill. The Report stage is now not expected until the summer.

Don said it can be …

…extraordinarily difficult for a government and for the business managers of that government to timetable everything so it works.

You have one further complication which is ‘events dear boy, events’ where things emerge – for example we’ve had the issue around the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Having carefully planned well in advance what might be a timetable that works, events come along and things get totally screwed up.

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Mary Reid

Why health is the theme for the Lib Dem local election launch

By Mary Reid | Wed 29th March 2023 - 1:20 pm

The Liberal Democrats have been analysing the latest data from the NHS. It shows that there are 547 fewer GP practices in England compared with 2019 – during a period when patient numbers have been rising. Now some of those could be due to mergers of practices, but not all, because we also know that GP numbers have fallen as well.

In fact, there are now 850 fewer NHS GPs than four years ago. Remember that in the last election (in 2019) the Tories promised to recruit 6000 more GPs.

Rural communities suffer most from losing their medical centres. There are 206 villages where patients have a journey of more than 5 miles to see a doctor – this figures is up on previous years as well.

We all know that the NHS is in crisis – appalling ambulance waiting times, long waits for transfer from A&E to hospital beds, unnecessary waits for discharge, unprecedented waiting lists for hospital appointments and for surgery.  On top of that there are huge pressures on GP practices, who are the first point of contact for anyone with a medical worry. It seems that over the last year 29% of UK adults have tried and failed to get a GP appointment.

There is clearly widespread anger and anxiety, although most people realise that none of this is the fault of the medical professionals.

Our simple policies of recruiting 8000 more GPs, and giving patients a legal right to see a GP within seven days, will go some way towards addressing the problems.

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Wayne Chadburn

OfSTED needs urgent reform now – and the Lib Dems should be leading calls for it

By Wayne Chadburn | Tue 28th March 2023 - 6:30 pm

The tragic news that Primary headteacher Ruth Perry took her own life after the primary school she led was downgraded from Outstanding to Inadequate after an inspection in November 2022 has shone a spotlight on the schools inspectorate, OfSTED. It has led to calls to review how these high stakes inspections take place and into the aftermath they wreak. It took over a week for the Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman to publish a rather tin-eared statement outlining sympathy with Mrs Perry, her family and the school but making it very clear that inspections will continue unabated and unchanged. At least they responded – however Inadequately. This much – unless I’ve missed something – cannot be said for those that drive education policy in the major political parties, something I find perplexing. There is no way that the tragic death of someone should be used as a political football and this may lay at the heart of the relative silence of Gillian Keegan, Bridget Phillipson and Munira Wilson, but will it take another suicide or 2 more or 3 more before those in power stop, look and realise that putting their heads in the sand and hoping it goes away isn’t the right response?

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