Category Archives: Op-eds

Paul Reynolds

Iraq – 20 years on. A personal story.

By Paul Reynolds | Thu 23rd March 2023 - 11:55 am

In early 2003 I was in Sierra Leone working on post-war reforms and rebel disarmament. I was running past the run-down Russian UN helicopters on Lumley beach when I received the call. 

It was already known that British Forces had attempted to find a way to appoint the first regional government; in Basra, one of the four UK-controlled Iraqi governorates. By agreement with the US, the UK had been tasked with finding a model. They were looking for someone ‘reckless’ with relevant experience. Folks knew I was against the war, but the final make-or-break question from the official was ‘you’re not a bloomin’ tree hugger are you?’.

Following bio-weapons training, my first interaction was my car being attacked by stone-throwing teenagers after I crossed the border from Kuwait. There was a lot of audible gunfire, and on the main roads there were still uncollected bodies littering the way.

Saddam’s gaudy riverside palace had been looted and all the marble floors were deep in broken glass. There was no power at first. It was 51 degrees, down to 42 by 3am. Water was scarce. Catching a breeze on the roof at nighttimes was noisy, with explosive flashes and gunfire sweeping across the city below.

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Willie Rennie

Disagree well

By Willie Rennie | Wed 22nd March 2023 - 11:24 am

I have always felt very comfortable to be a member of a party that is able to disagree well. Sometimes Liberal Democrats have been so bloody reasonable we have taken the side of our opponents in a debate!

However, I have been increasingly concerned that this almost unique characteristic has at times been at risk of being lost in the recent debate on gender identity and the recent call for members who disagree to leave the party has compelled me to speak out.

I voted for the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in the Scottish Parliament. Several party members opposed the bill on perfectly understandable grounds. Many have been members for decades and are dedicated to the party and its beliefs. Now they are being told they are no longer welcome because they just can’t agree with the official position of the party.

Some seem to believe that to question the implications of self-identification, even in a nuanced way, is to question the very rights of trans people.  However, I believe it is possible to disagree but still defend the rights of trans people. I know these members; they are generous and kind liberals, and I would never describe them as transphobes.

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News Meerkat

IPCC on Climate Change: Act now or it’s too late

By News Meerkat | Tue 21st March 2023 - 4:18 pm

Embed from Getty Images

The Synthesis report of Sixth Assessment of the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published yesterday.

This is a open thread for you to give your views on this report, which you can read in full here.

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 20 March 2023 – how was it for you?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 20th March 2023 - 7:30 am

Train journeys back from Conference tend to offer a chance to reflect on the events of the past few days, especially for someone who likes to travel in a bubble of isolation (nothing personal, fellow Liberal Democrats, but sometimes I just like to be alone). And this Conference has been no different.

Was their journey really necessary?

Sadly, the culture wars that have poisoned our national body politic have come to the Liberal Democrats and, unlike our more authoritarian opposite numbers, we’re curiously more vulnerable in some ways. Many of us find confrontation enervating rather than enjoyable, and we have a tendency to wish away conflict rather than address it head-on. And I do get that – we’re (mostly) nice people who want to be welcoming. And that means that not so lovely people can get quite far into the Party’s core before anyone necessarily notices.

However, at some point, unless you draw lines in the sand in terms of behaviour and values, you find that what you had is gone forever, and that the liberal party you thought you were part of is no more. And it does happen, for example in Hungary, where it is now hard to believe we were once a sister party to FIDESZ, the conservative nationalist party which forms the most unpleasant administration in the European Union.

It is at times like this, therefore, that those who believe in the liberal values of tolerance and mutual respect have to step up as Conference did on Saturday.

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James Belchamber

It’s time for gender critical people to leave

By James Belchamber | Sun 19th March 2023 - 2:53 pm

This spring conference season Lib Dems filed into the auditorium to hear a motion that would amend this piece of the constitution, to remove all references to self-ID and non-binary people:

Whenever this Constitution provides for the election by party members to a Federal Committee, not less than 40% or, if 40% is not a whole number, the whole number nearest to but not exceeding 40% of those elected shall self-identify as men or non-binary people, and self-identify as women or non-binary people respectively.

And this spring conference, a weary bunch of Liberals – tired of the constant, fundamental attacks on our values from a determined and illiberal minority – moved to ignore it entirely, a vote that passed with such a staggering majority that you could weigh the result.

The message was clear: “go away”. And now it’s time for those critical of gender identity – in the footsteps of those critical of sexual identity – to leave the Liberal Democrats.

The writing is on the door – there is no space for bigotry in this party. And while our byzantine machinery has allowed this motion to reach the conference floor, no representative auditorium will pass it.

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Oliver Craven

Fantastic Fairer Society

By Oliver Craven | Sun 19th March 2023 - 12:50 pm

It is fantastic that Conference passed the Fairer Society policy paper yesterday. As a member of the working group, I spent a significant amount of time working across a number of aspects of the paper, including providing a lot of the drafting for the workers rights section, alongside fantastic contributions from Laura Gordon and others.

A brief aside, while I am very disappointed that UBI was not picked from the options, it was absolutely fantastic to see Members of Parliament rally behind a commitment to end deep poverty within 10 years. It will make a real difference to a great many …

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 19th March 2023 - 10:10 am

United States

US presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis this week said Ukraine is a territorial dispute. He also said that Ukraine is not one of America’s vital national interests. This puts him seriously at odds with President Joe Biden, America’s NATO allies and about 50 other countries who firmly believe that the war in Ukraine is a battle between democracy and autocracy, good and evil.

DeSantis was not always of this opinion. In 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea, the Florida governor was in the forefront of those calling for Ukraine to be armed. The reason for the shift appears to be his political ambitions.

First hurdle in the race to the White House is securing the Republican Party nomination and at the moment  the opinion polls show him trailing his main opponent – Donald Trump, who is well known for his pro-Russian, anti-NATO and anti-Ukraine politics.

DeSantis clearly reckons that the only way to beat Trump is to out-Trump the former president. The problem he will face – once in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave – is moving from an anti to pro-Ukraine policy. De Santis’s rhetoric is a strategic gift to Vladimir Putin. He and his Kremlin coterie are banking heavily on a Republican victory in 2024. This means they only have to hold on for another 18 months or so before American disenchantment becomes official foreign policy.

France

The French, it is said, work to live. Americans, Brits, Japanese, Germans … live to work. This basic difference in outlook goes a long way to explaining why millions of Frenchmen and women are protesting and striking against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the start of the state pension from 62 to 64 years. It will deprive them of two years “living time” or, as the neighbouring Italians would say: “La Dolce Vita.”

The problem with this idyllic view of life is that it clashes with hard-nosed demographics. France’s population is growing older and less productive. The French Treasury can’t afford to arm Ukraine, switch to a green economy and pay for the pandemic as well as continue to pay for one of the world’s most generous pension schemes. Especially as the French population is clinging to life much longer than the insurance actuaries estimated when today’s retirees entered the workforce.

In fact, when estimating premiums and pay-outs, insurance companies calculate that their customers will live for five years after they start taking their pension. The current average life expectancy of a Frenchman is 82. The maths no longer work.

The demographic problems faced by France, are common throughout the developed world. Which is why governments are pushing up state retirement ages. But this has not stopped the French from arguing that their national motto of “Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité” makes them a special case.

As a result, for the last few weeks they have been out in their hundreds of thousands to protest against Macron’s plans. They were heard. More importantly, the Deputies to the National Assembly listened. This week Macron failed to garner the necessary Assembly votes to push through his pension plans. So he used Article 49:3 of the constitution which permits the government to enact legislation without parliamentary approval, but allows the opposition to table a quick vote of no confidence.

The reaction was immediate and brutal. Opposition Deputies banged their desks, waved flags and placards and sang the Marsellaise. They also tabled the aforementioned vote of no confidence in the government. Outside the National Assembly riots broke out across the country. More than 150 people were arrested by Friday morning.

If the no confidence vote is passed then the government of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne will fall and parliamentary elections will be held. Macron’s Renaissance party is already in a minority in the National Assembly. After an election with the pension age as the only issue, his representation will almost certainly fall further. This will make it more difficult for him to govern and be grist for the mill of his far-right opponent Jean-Marine LePen.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Shifting playing field

By Tom Arms | Sat 18th March 2023 - 8:55 am

The diplomatic playing field has shifted this week. The cause is China’s successful brokering of the resumption of diplomatic relations between Middle East arch-enemies and regional super powers Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Of course, the fact that new embassies will appear in Riyadh and Tehran does not mean that all will now be sweetness and light. Deep-seated differences remain between the founts of Sunni Islam and the world’s Shi-ites. But there is no doubt that jaw jaw is better than the undeclared war that has existed in the Gulf region for decades.

The biggest regional winner is Saudi Arabia. Iran has been sniping away at the kingdom’s oil and communications infrastructure and backing Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The eight-year Yemeni civil war has cost an estimated 300,000 lives; badly tarnished Saudi Arabia’s international reputation and drained the treasury. If diplomatic communications can shift the Iranian position on Yemen then it will enable Crown Prince to focus more on his economic plans as well as improving his platform on the world stage.

A definite loser in the current shift is Israel. Jerusalem’s implacable enemy is Iran. The Iranians support Hezbollah and Hamas and are on the cusp of developing a nuclear weapon which they say would be an existential threat to their existence.  Maintaining tensions between Arabs and Persians was a key element in Jerusalem’s divide and conquer diplomacy in the Persian Gulf.

The biggest loser, however, is the US. The biggest winner is China.  From 1945 to 1990 there were two super powers who competed for dominance on the world stage—America and the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War the United States has been the go-to nation for any government seeking support in a diplomatic struggle.

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Alistair Carmichael MP

Let’s take a stand at conference against the cruel Braverman Bill

By Alistair Carmichael MP | Fri 17th March 2023 - 9:55 am

The Conservatives are intent on dragging our country off a cliff with their Small Boats Bill. As Liberal Democrats, we must do everything in our power to stop it – starting at Conference this weekend.

Suella Braverman’s Bill says that anyone who enters the UK via a small boat will be immediately detained and deported to another country as soon as possible. Just like their botched Rwanda plan, this is immoral, unworkable and incredibly expensive for the taxpayer.

We all want to tackle people smuggling and prevent people from making dangerous attempts to cross the Channel, but this bill will do nothing of the sort. The Conservatives are still refusing to provide safe and legal routes to sanctuary in the UK. Instead, they are demonising vulnerable people and giving impunity to the real criminals – human traffickers.

At the same time, they are stripping back hard-won protections for the most vulnerable. The ban on child detention was a Liberal Democrat policy that we proudly put into law in 2014 – now under threat from this government. Important legal limits on how long pregnant women can be detained are also at risk.

The consequences go even deeper. By using the bill to exclude certain groups of people from accessing their rights – whether it is the protections under the Modern Slavery Act, the Human Rights Act or the European Convention on Human Rights – the Conservatives are setting a dangerous precedent.

They are acting like they can pick and choose what rights our government must protect, while also picking and choosing who can stand up for their rights if they are harmed. Small wonder, then, that backbench Conservative MPs are rumoured to be plotting to use this legislation to push for the UK’s withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. Their dangerous rhetoric has only been emboldened by the Home Secretary.

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Caron Lindsay

Caron’s guide to the craziness of Conference – York 2023 version

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 16th March 2023 - 3:30 pm

By the time you read this, I will, fingers crossed and LNER permitting, be cosied up in my hotel in York. After 3 and a half years, I am ridiculously excited to see my friends. I may talk to a lot of them every day thanks to the wonders of social media, but it’s not the same thing as being in the room with them.

This Conference is going to be very different for me. Long Covid means that the usual whirlwind from breakfast fringes to late night drinking is just not possible for me this time. I’m treating it as more of a holiday with a bit of Conference thrown in. I will need to rest a lot and pace myself very carefully and curb my instincts to just push through because I am having fun because I will definitely pay for it later.

Given the the havoc that this virus has wreaked within my body, I am in no rush to come into contact with it again or to expose my family to it. I am still wearing masks in supermarkets and crowded spaces to try and minimise my exposure. When I went to Scottish Conference, I wore a mask in the hall, and when I was sitting anywhere else for a long time and not eating or drinking. But, entirely inconsistently, I found it impossible to resist in the moment when friends offered a hug. That balance between living life the way you want to and protecting yourself is tricky and everyone needs to make their own decisions about what is ok for them.

I have revamped my Guide to the Craziness of Conference for this year. Enjoy. And if you have any questions, ask away in the comments.

Federal Conference is probably the best fun that you will ever have in your life. You will thoroughly enjoy every exhausting moment. If you’re new, it can be a bit overwhelming until you get used to the sensory overload. I had a long break from going to them and when I returned, in 2011, I spent the first day wandering round in a state of wide-eyed amazement,  like a child in a toy shop. Spring Conference is smaller than Autumn, but a look at the agenda tells me that there are at least two things going on that I want to go to at all times.

So, with that in mind, I thought I’d throw together a fairly random list of tips and hints for getting the best out of the annual cornucopia of Liberal Democracy. If you have any other Conference survival tips, let me know.

1. Plan your days

The Conference day has a huge variety of things to do. As well as the debates in the hall,  there’s a comprehensive training programme.  There are spokespeople Q & As. There are competing fringe choices to be made.  You can guarantee that you will never be bored and that several things you want to see will be on at the same time.

Be aware as well that you can eat quite well for free by choosing the right fringe meetings – look for the refreshments symbol in the directory.

Believe me, it’s much easier if you sort out your diary in advance. The best laid plans will always be subject to a better offer or meeting someone you haven’t seen for years randomly in a corridor, but it’s best to at least try to get some order into the proceedings. The Conference App is a real help for this. You can download it from whichever App store you use on your phone (search for Lib Dem Conf). It allows you to add events to your schedule and has all the papers loaded on to it.

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Lord William Wallace

Liberalism: the delicate balances between democracy and market capitalism, between freedom and solidarity

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 16th March 2023 - 12:00 pm

When I first joined the Liberal Party many decades ago, it thought of itself as the party of ideas.  It wasn’t much good at campaigning, but groups of Young Liberals and old liberals, in universities and London clubs, held study sessions and published papers and books; and the Liberal Summer School devoted several days to serious discussions of policies and principles.  We took pride in the occasions when other parties pinched our ideas: we saw ourselves as the intellectual drivers of British politics.

Since then we have learn how to campaign, above all at the local level.  But that’s come at the cost of thinking and debating, of picking up new ideas and translating them into policies.  There are many reasons for this.  Politics in Westminster has become far more hectic, preventing our MPs (and peers) from spending the time with outside experts and intellectuals that their predecessors in the 1960s and 1970s enjoyed. Our policy-making process is slow and under-staffed, churning out policy papers over 9-12 months for conference approval.  Since Paul Marshall went over to the dark side of Brexit politics we have lacked a friendly think tank to push out proposals before they grind through our official processes – though there are some bodies to which we can and should turn for advice.  The Social Liberal Forum and other groups do their best, but cannot – without staff and funds – compete with the well-funded think tanks of the right.

With an election campaign in 18 months or less, now is hardly the time to sit back and reflect at length on alternative futures for British politics.  But we will fade away as a party unless we develop distinctive narratives about how to promote liberal values in our society, economy, environment and international policy.  We should, for example, be picking up the themes being developed by policy-related economists, criticising the dominance of free-market assumptions and reintroducing political economy and the moral concerns that Adam Smith addressed in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments but downplayed in The Wealth of Nations. 

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Kevin Langford

Towards a fairer society: Universal Basic Income vs Guaranteed Basic Income

By Kevin Langford | Thu 16th March 2023 - 10:00 am

On Saturday conference will discuss an important paper about tackling the many sources of unfairness in our society.  I wrote about this for Liberal Democrat Voice in September when we were expecting to discuss them, and, given the importance of the issues, thought it worth republishing the substance of that article now.

The paper on fairness includes essential short term measures to deal with the cost of living crisis but its main focus is more strategic – covering lifelong employment support, more power to local communities and better workforce protections.

The conference motion also offers a choice – and conference will vote between two ambitious long term proposals to end poverty – a Universal Basic Income (UBI), and a Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI).

(There is also a third option which reserves judgement until both of these approaches have been fully tested over a number of years.)

The UBI proposal scraps income tax and national insurance personal allowances for everyone of working age, so that we all pay tax and national insurance on the first pound that we receive. That costs anyone currently paying tax £78 a week. The proposal also introduces a new payment to all working age adults of £78 (the “Universal Basic Income”) – so if you were previously paying tax you end up in the same place as before, but if you aren’t earning enough to pay tax, you are better off.  The current benefits system is retained but the UBI is treated as income under it – so that benefits are reduced; someone on Universal Credit would typically see a net benefit of £35 a week.  This way of delivering UBI is the output of two years of development by working groups – on which I served – and is very similar to proposals by some of the leading think tanks advocating UBI.

The GBI proposal is more directly targeted on ensuring everyone has a decent minimum standard of living. It establishes a commitment over time to get all households to a certain income level, and uses a reformed version of the existing benefits system to steadily increase the amount of this ‘guaranteed base’. An independent commission is set up to hold the government to account in terms of setting the right level over time – in much the same way as has been successfully done with the minimum wage.

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Simon McGrath

The Lord Mayor, the packets of dates and the lie

By Simon McGrath | Thu 16th March 2023 - 8:00 am

An extraordinary case was concluded  in the election court in Birmingham last month    in which a former Labour  Lord Mayor of Birmingham  was given leave by the Election Court to withdraw an election petition  seeking to overturn his loss at the May 2022 elections to two Lib Dem Councillors.

The background is that in the election Labour’s Muhammed Afzal and a colleague were  defeated by Lib Dem Cllrs – Ayoub Khan and Mumtaz Hussain  – the  relevant bit of the result was:

Ayoub Khan (Liberal Democrat) 3012 votes

Mumtaz Hussain (Liberal Democrat) 2542 votes

Muhammad Afzal (Labour) 2463 votes

Nagina Kauser (Labour) 2223 votes

During the election the Lib Dem candidates had said that Mr Afzal   had been ‘treating’  voters –  by giving out packets of dates with a Labour sticker on while canvassing. Cllr Khan had said on his Facebook page

Such is Labour’s desperation in the Aston Ward…that the current sitting councillor has decided to bribe the people of Aston for votes by giving them a special treat. They ought to know better…this is not Pakistan where you can buy votes.

The election petition said that this claim was false  and intended to defame Mr Afzal’s personal character and that therefore  the result of the election should be overturned.

This was clearly a very serious allegation: apart from losing their hard won council seats, losing the petition would make the 2 Lib Dem councillors responsible for heavy costs putting their homes at risk, possible criminal charges and  and as Cllr Khan is a barrister it  may have had  very serious consequences for his career.

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Rob Parsons

I have about twenty years left

By Rob Parsons | Wed 15th March 2023 - 7:32 pm

I have about twenty years or so left on this planet. I very much hope that before I shuffle off, the UK will have rejoined the EU. I think it will be touch and go whether we manage it. Apologies to our more enthusiastic Europhiles if that disappoints you, but I think it is realistic.

The EU needs to see a steady majority in favour of joining over a period of time. We don’t have that stable majority yet, though I expect we will. It will then need to remain stable for a number of years (particularly important for us, given Britain’s current and immediate past tendencies towards exceptionalism and fascism). Then the process of accession will take several years even if, in the meantime, we have laid the groundwork by joining the EEA, rejoining the single market, rejoining Horizon, or whatever we choose to do.

It will take a lot of work, and although we are enthusiastic about this ourselves, it is very difficult to persuade other people of an objective that may be fifteen or twenty years off. So it is not necessarily helpful to make a greater noise about wanting to rejoin, as some would have us do. It may make more sense for us to stand for an intermediate objective, one which is necessary for this country, as well as necessary if we are to have any realistic prospect of rejoining.

If we are to hope to rejoin, we need to make this country different to what it is now. We actually need to do that anyway. Regardless of our chances of joining the EU, I do not want to live in a country where millions rely on foodbanks to fend off starvation while the Prime Minister changes the grid to have electricity delivered to his swimming pool; a country where a previous Prime Minister seeks to ennoble his wife-beating father; a country where the Home Secretary uses language about asylum seekers reminiscent of 1930s Germany (yes, I will say that, because it is true); a country where the heroism of NHS staff is rewarded with applause but not with a pay rise.

So I propose a slogan: “Let’s fix this country”. Let’s fix things so that they actually work for the people and not just the elite.

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Nigel Lindsay

Lib Dems and Europe – Scotland shows the way

By Nigel Lindsay | Wed 15th March 2023 - 1:24 pm

We know that if the UK were in the European Union, GDP would now be £120bn higher, and tax revenues £40bn higher every year. We know that the UK is the only major European economy not to have returned to its pre-pandemic size. And polling shows us that there is a growing majority view that Brexit was a mistake which has delivered negligible benefits and has done substantial damage to Britain. Yet the Party’s leadership at Federal level still does not seem keen to explain these things to voters, nor to offer leadership to the large number of people across Britain for whom becoming part of the EU again is a political and economic priority.

Grassroots members, fortunately, see things differently. On Saturday, the Scottish LibDem conference in Dundee considered a motion calling for the party to re-commit itself to re-joining the EU. Conference unanimously supported the motion, which also called on the UK government to develop a roadmap towards re-joining the EU and initially re-joining the Single Market and Customs Union. Speaker after speaker stressed internationalism as a fundamental thread of Liberalism, and the personal, cultural, and economic gains that would accrue if the UK could work its way back to full membership of the European Union. There were calls for MPs and MSPs to mount a communications campaign explaining the benefits of membership, and for activists and party members to support this.

The motion ended with a call for Liberal Democrats to put campaigning for our European future at the heart of our approach. Gratifyingly, Scottish LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton gave a speech on the same day in which he committed himself wholeheartedly to a European future and stressed the importance of internationalism to his Liberalism.

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The Voice

Reactions to the Budget – “Conservatives so out of touch they are living on another planet”

By The Voice | Wed 15th March 2023 - 1:19 pm

Here’s some of the Lib Dem reaction to today’s Budget. Mary and Caron will keep updating it as the day goes on.

First up:

And Wera Hobhouse amplified this point:

Ed Davey’s first reaction was that the Budget showed how out of touch the Conservatives are:

This Budget shows the Conservative Party is so out of touch they might as well be living on another planet.

Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak had a chance to show they care about the cost-of-living crisis that’s hitting millions of Britain’s families and pensioners but they failed miserably.

People are desperate for real help especially a cut to their energy bills – but all the Chancellor could offer is empty words and more unfair tax hikes.

We also saw a total failure to invest in fixing our crumbling hospitals and supporting local health services. It shows the Conservative Party doesn’t understand that you can’t get Britain ‘back to work’ without fixing the crisis in our NHS and social care.

Tim Farron was quick to get a cheeky comment in after the story about Rishi Sunak paying for the grid to be upgraded for his private heated swimming pool.

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Jeremy Hargreaves

Raise a glass in York

By Jeremy Hargreaves | Wed 15th March 2023 - 9:03 am

Conference has always been a central element in my involvement in the Liberal Democrats. Like many of us, all year round I spend a large proportion of my waking hours doing things for the party – and being able to make links, exchange ideas and, yes, gossip with people from across the country at conference not only makes doing that year-round work easier, but also makes it very very much more fun. I have really missed them over the last three and a half years – with the final cruel punch of the last-minute cancellation for non-pandemic reasons of last autumn’s big return conference feeling particularly unfair.

So I will be thrilled to be back in York this weekend, surrounded by Liberal Democrats.

But as I finally get to catch up again with many of you, I will be giving more than a thought or two to some of those who I will not get the chance to see again at conference.

That last conference we held, in Bournemouth in 2019, “the one where Jo Swinson was leader”, was the last time I saw my former boss, Steve Hitchins, previously Leader of Islington Council. Steve was certainly not about to allow his walking difficulties stop him from getting up on to the stage and telling us how the health policies we were debating seemed to him as a former chair of an acute NHS Trust. Steve tragically and unexpectedly passed away just a few weeks later – a much too early sad loss of one of the party’s most robust campaigners and one of its most effective champions of frontline diversity.

In York I will, as always, go to an LDEG fringe meeting. But I will not see Derek Honeygold sitting – like Ted Heath – in a corner seat on the front row, as he must have done at pretty much every LDEG fringe meeting ever. In March 2020 Derek became one of the first victims of covid. LDEG fringes will not be the same without his twinkling eyes and intriguing contributions to the debate.

When I make it to the bar later, I will not turn round from ordering drinks to see there the beaming smile of Robert Woodthorpe-Browne, long a smiling stalwart of the party’s international scene, with something funny and interesting to say to me. Always so enthusiastic and encouraging, from LI Congresses in Africa and being chair of the international relations committee (FIRC), to the streets of London that I once went canvassing with him on, Robert’s utterly irrepressible energy made a huge contribution to the party before his very sudden death from a stroke this last autumn.

I will not have the chance to sup again from the well of the erudition of Jonathan Fryer – another deeply committed Liberal Democrat internationalist, former chair of the international relations committee and eternally super-enthusiastic MEP candidate. But too a regular BBC broadcaster, public Quaker, lecturer and so many other things – including, astonishingly, biographer and friend of Christopher Isherwood – before his awfully sudden and tragic death from a brain tumour.

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‘That’s if they really *are* children’

By Anonymous | Tue 14th March 2023 - 3:45 pm

I recently attended an event in a civic capacity. The event, although unrelated, was just next door to an underutilised hotel in which the Home Office has recently placed a number of refugee families with children.

Because of its isolated setting, I was concerned that the people housed there would have insufficient access to facilities including medical care, schooling and shops to supply small daily needs. I was also concerned that due the corporate nature of the premises it would be inappropriate for the needs of young children.

Accordingly, I arrived early at the event venue and had a quick walk about the outside of the hotel. As I expected, there was no evidence of any play equipment or any toys, which would have softened the experience a little for already traumatised children.

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David Chalmers

Liberal Democrat European Group visit to Berlin

By David Chalmers | Tue 14th March 2023 - 10:01 am

Last week Liberal Democrat European Group LDEG made its first study trip overseas since the pandemic to brave Berlin’s wintery weather. In the past, regular visits to Brussels helped to foster a greater understanding of European politics and develop relations with our sister parties. Germany was chosen as this year’s destination, because of its pivotal role in European affairs and because, post Brexit, we are going to need allies within the EU like our German sister party the FDP – who currently form part of the ‘traffic light’ coalition with the Social Democrats and Greens.

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Robert Harrison

The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank – what does it mean for the UK?

By Robert Harrison | Mon 13th March 2023 - 1:37 pm

A few days ago, I started writing a piece for Liberal Democrat Voice about the creation of the new Department of Science, Innovation and Technology and what it might mean for the entrepreneurial science-based economy. I was going to look at financing of science-based companies and how it could be improved. The news of the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on Friday came as the piece was almost finished and has overtaken some of my conclusions in that article.

It’s likely that most Liberal Democrats will never have actually heard of the SVB until this weekend. As its …

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Keith Melton

Multilateralist, respecting international law and learning from history

By Keith Melton | Mon 13th March 2023 - 11:38 am

International security is a hot topic since Putin`s “Special Military Operation” launched against Ukraine a year ago. Most people recognise it for what it was, an invasion by a despot of questionable sanity. A wide debate has been prompted by Putin having “moved the goalposts of the conditions under which Russia would launch a first nuclear strike.”

The Lib Dem “Defence Team” has put together a motion which is an ultra-cautious approach to defence policy, probably not wishing to rock the middle-of-the-road approach thought to be necessary in order not to frighten off the soft conservative vote. But it is a …

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 13 March 2023 – a Byrd in the hand?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 13th March 2023 - 8:54 am

This year sees the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, one of this country’s great composers. As a Catholic myself, I am reminded that he converted to Catholicism in his thirties at some personal risk given the culture of the day. It is a reminder that state-sponsored attacks on minorities and other vulnerable people is not a new concept, and that the conservative right have never been afraid to secure power through the demonisation of others.

My colleague, writing about the Lineker saga over the weekend, said:

And of course what is particularly ironic is that Tory MPs, who are usually championing the right of people to be as racist, sexist and transphobic as they like in the name of free speech, are now going after Gary Lineker.

There is a perfectly obvious reason for this, which is that not only are these people hypocrites, but they don’t care that they contradict themselves over and over again. It’s all about stirring up anger and distracting attention from their failure and incompetence. Find the smelliest, deadest cat they can find and hurl its foul carcass on the table so that we’ll talk about that rather than stick to the issues that matter.

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Caron Lindsay

Sue Miller highlights falling breastfeeding rates in Lords International Women’s Day debate

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 12th March 2023 - 2:30 pm

Back in the day, I spent a few years as a breastfeeding counsellor, doing what I could to support parents when they hit trouble and helping them find solutions that worked for them.

I got involved in that because I wanted to give something back after my breastfeeding journey was helped back on track by a lovely and patient volunteer called Louise who came to my house and sorted me out with great empathy.

Her help motivated me to help other women who desperately wanted to breastfeed but hadn’t been able to overcome their problems but hadn’t had the support that they needed. The guilt that comes along with that is huge, but misplaced. It is not their fault. Those running the health services failed to provide it.

I also became very interested in the implementation, or lack of it, of the International Code for the Marketing of Breastmilk substitutes and the ways that formula manufacturers got round it and how their powerful lobbying of governments kept regulation at bay.

I was also struck by research at the time that, in this country that showed  a poor breastfed baby had better long term health outcomes than a formula fed baby from an affluent background.

You would hope that we might have made some progress with providing support and regulating the manufacturers in the intervening 15 years.

Unfortunately, Lib Dem Peer Sue Miller, in her contribution to the International Women’s Day debate, highlighted that we are actually going backwards. You can read her whole speech here, but here are the highlights:

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Chris Bowers

Standing up to government is the only way the BBC will get out of the corner it’s backed itself into

By Chris Bowers | Sun 12th March 2023 - 10:59 am

It would be easy to conclude that if you want to have an influence on British political life you have to be a name in top-level football.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford succeeded where many politicians had failed in getting free school meals to disadvantaged children. In the past fortnight, the England women’s football team, the ‘Lionesses’, have used the leverage from their 2022 Euros title-winning run to secure over £600 million in government funding to give girls the same opportunities in sport that boys currently enjoy. And over the past few days, the former England striker Gary Lineker has been the focus of opposition to the controversial proposals by Rishi Sunak’s government to severely curtail the right of asylum in the UK (although the story of Lineker’s future as presenter of the BBC’s football highlights programme Match of the Day is threatening to overshadow his opposition to the asylum policy).

If suggesting that footballers are more influential than politicians seems a flippant remark, it’s not. We may well have reached the point where ‘celebrities’ (however you define them) have more clout than politicians, in which case their comments have to be taken more seriously than just to dismiss them as celebrity fluff – they become part of the checks and balances of a democratic society. And when Lineker talks about something of which he has direct experience – he has taken refugees into his own home – his comments come with added gravitas.

It’s important to note what he’s actually said, as some of the more hysterical reporting of it might lead you to think he’s accused the British government of sending people to gas chambers. Having described the policy as “beyond awful” in an initial reaction on his personal Twitter feed, he said in a second tweet that the proposed new UK asylum policy was “an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s.” Note the important nuance that the reference to Germany in the 1930s was about the language, not the policy.

I must declare an interest here. My father’s side of my family came from Germany and were thrown out for being Jewish. My father came to Britain as a Kindertransport refugee, my grandfather spent 12 days in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and great aunts and great uncles perished in other camps.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 12th March 2023 - 9:42 am

UK

British Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s “Stop the Boats” policy is in danger of being torpedoed by the European Convention on Human Rights. But then Ms Braverman may have an answer to that problem: Withdraw from the convention and the jurisdiction of the administering European Court of Human Rights.

The Illegal Migration Bill – as it is officially called – is aimed at stopping the estimated 50,000-plus people who are expected to cross the English Channel in small boats this year. It is one of the five cornerstone goals of Rishi Sunak’s premiership.

A key element of the policy is that any small boat refugee crossing the channel to seek asylum in Britain will be detained for 28 days without access to the law. At the end of that period, if they are not granted asylum, they will be flown to Rwanda or transported back to their home country. There will be no right of appeal and anyone deported will be banned from future asylum applications.

Most legal eagles agree that the proposed law is a breach of the International Convention on Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights which binds the British government to protect people (including refugees) from being killed or subject to inhumane and degrading treatment. It also exposes the Home Secretary to the charge of unlawful imprisonment and the denial of basic legal rights.

In anticipation of these obstacles, Ms Braverman has said that the European Court of Human Rights is “at odds with British values” and the “will of the British people,” thus raising the spectre of British withdrawal. It was British lawyers in the early post-war years who were largely responsible for drafting the European Convention of Human Rights and establishing the court. For their template they used Magna Carta and the 1689 English Bill of Rights with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, the US Bill of Rights and the UN Declaration of Human Rights thrown in for good measure. Ms Braverman would appear to be “at odds” with legal history.

Ukraine

Russian missile attacks on Ukraine reached new levels this week and raised the danger levels at Europe’s largest nuclear reactor at Zaporizhzhia.  The missiles temporarily knocked out the outside power source which was needed to cool the reactors.

Power was restored on Thursday, but this was the sixth time that outside power has been cut off and workers have been forced to switch to emergency diesel generators to protect the reactors. Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Entergy Agency, said: “Each time this happens we are rolling the dice. One day our luck will run out.”

He accused the international community of complacency over the fate of the Zaporizhzhia power plant and urged the Russians, Ukrainians and all other interested parties to “commit to protect the supply and safety of the plant.”

Not all, nuclear experts agree with Senor Grossi’s dire warning. Some say that the reactors have been shut down to such an extent that they require little or no power to stay safe. They all agree that the ones in greatest danger are the Russian soldiers guarding the site and the Ukrainians working there.

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Caron Lindsay

Has the BBC been impartial over Lineker?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 11th March 2023 - 12:30 pm

There was a moment last night when I wondered if we were going to see tonight’s Match of the Day presented by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries after pundits and commenters alike responded to Gary Lineker’s suspension with solidarity.

Gary Lineker is a national treasure and sports presenter. While he is on telly, he talks about football. If he talked about politics, I doubt he’d have the following among football fans that he has. I never watch him because I am not a football fan. However, I have a very positive opinion of him from Twitter, where he has, for years, been chatting away about all sorts of stuff. He wasn’t a fan of Brexit, you know.

Lineker is far from the first BBC star to have political views. One of the first I remember was Kenny Everett, with his Let’s Bomb Russia comments and cruel jibes about Michael Foot back in 1983 at a Conservative Party election event.

And what about Ian Hislop and Paul Merton? They have rarely been complimentary about any Governemnt? Are they next in line for the chop?

When Rishi Sunak tweeted on Tuesday with some pride that he was removing modern slavery protections from people who arrive in this country illegally,  anyone with a commitment to human rights was rightly concerned:

Here was our Prime Minister basically giving a free pass to slavers who could then tell their victims, correctly, that there was no recourse to help. It’s hardly surprising people were angry.

Lineker’s response was strong but justifiably so. He called the Bill:

An immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s

The way in which the Tories have been othering vulnerable members of society, from immigrants to people who need social security to survive to trans people to fat people to those suffering from addictions, disabilities and mental ill health has been of concern for some years. Remember when David Cameron described migrants crossing the Channel as a “swarm?” It’s dehumanising and creates a culture where vulnerable people are seen as a threat and not as fellow human beings just like us. It’s done to set people against each other to distract from a failing government.

Our Tim Farron is both a mad football fan and passionately pro supporting refugees. He tweeted:

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Lord William Wallace

Are we ready to fight the Culture War?

By Lord William Wallace | Sat 11th March 2023 - 10:30 am

Two op-eds in the Sunday Telegraph in recent weeks have hailed Ron de Santis, Governor of Florida and strongest alternative Republican candidate for the US Presidency in 2024 to Donald Trump, as showing the way forward for British Conservatives: to fight the culture war as vigorously as possible. It looks as if the Conservatives are already doing so.

The whole point of culture wars is to distract the attention of voters from economic difficulties and concerns about inequality by attacking ‘the liberal establishment’ which – it is claimed – is betraying the instincts and traditions of ordinary people. Migration, friendliness with foreigners, intellectual sophistication (instead of ‘common sense’ and ‘what you know in your gut’), concerns about diversity, gender, rewriting history and what used to be called political correctness and is now called ‘woke’ make up the mix.

De Santis is a graduate from Yale University, where he now claims that he was ‘taught that communism was superior’, and Harvard Law School, who is now attacking the autonomy of Floridan universities. He’s tightened state laws on abortion, thrown doubt on climate change, resisted the Covid lockdown and removed tax privileges for the ‘woke’ Disney Corporation. That’s the example that many Tory strategists want to follow.

Over the past week we have seen the political technologists of Tory political strategy take over from the reasonable face Rishi Sunak has been presenting. ‘Stop the boats’ is a three-word slogan borrowed from Australia rather than the Trump phrasebook. A ‘new’ deal has been launched which is much the same as last year’s anti-migrant initiative, with no clearer indication of how its targets can be reached or those who manage to reach the UK removed. At Prime Ministers’ Questions on March 8th a ‘red-wall’ Tory MP raised the threat of ‘graphic lessons on oral sex, how to choke your partner and 72 genders’ to children in English schools, and the Prime Minister promised an ‘urgent review’ into sex education. And the following day Conservative HQ circulated a digital message in Suella Braverman’s name blaming “an activist blob of leftwing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour party” for blocking her attempts to stop the flow of undocumented migrants across the Channel.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Adjusting the thermostat

By Tom Arms | Sat 11th March 2023 - 8:33 am

European thermometers dropped this week. But generally speaking it has been a relatively mild winter and temperatures are starting to rise. This is good news for Ukraine. Good news for Europe. Bad news for Russia and great news for America.

Twelve months ago the Western Alliance was seriously worried that Europe’s reliance on Russian gas and oil would render it powerless to stand up to Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The outlook is now considerably brighter. Cash-strapped consumers turned down thermostats. Russian gas supplies have been cut by two-thirds. Nordstream pipelines have shut down (thank you saboteurs whomever you  may be). New storage facilities have been built for liquefied natural gas (LNG). The US has increased its shipments of LNG and Europe is moving faster towards renewable energy sources.

Glitches remain. Landlocked countries such as Austria, Hungary and Slovakia remain heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas and some 20 billion cubic metres (BCM) of Russian gas is still being pumped by pipeline into the EU. Ironically, the pipeline runs through Ukraine. Also, Europeans have increased purchases of Russian LNG, but moves are afoot to reverse that.

The bulk of Europe’s gas is now coming from America. Exports from the US are up 137 percent from a year ago. Companies such as Chevron and Exxon have stepped up fracking operations in Texas, Appalachia, New Mexico and Louisiana. They freeze the gas in terminals and then ship it to Europe. There it is transferred to either newly built storage facilities or specially adapted ships where it is returned to its gaseous state and piped to homes, power stations and factories.

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Mary Reid

Nepotism

By Mary Reid | Fri 10th March 2023 - 11:01 am

I can’t remember an actual case of nepotism – strictly offering a leg-up to one’s nephew – but the spirit of nepotism lives on. The word was coined to refer to the practice of mediaeval popes when they appointed family members, usually nephews, as cardinals.  It is used more broadly today to include family members and friends, although cronyism is a variant that specifically refers to friends and associates.

Donald Trump famously practiced the art and gave White House and advisory posts to members of his own wider family (although he actually denied his nephew essential medical care).

Is there a word for favouring one’s father? Not paternalism, which refers to a benign form of dictatorship. Can we invent one, as it seems to be a thing? Maybe paterism?

Anyone in public office who offers jobs or awards to people close to them can expect to be ridiculed and criticised. This is true even where the recipient genuinely deserves the honour – those decisions should be left to others.

As a councillor I was well versed in the need to declare an interest when a proposal was being discussed.  That would certainly have included instances when members of my family or close friends would have been affected, for better or worse, by the outcome. If in doubt we were encouraged to take advice, if necessary from the Council’s Monitoring Officer (usually the Head of Legal Services). If the interest was substantial or pecuniary then I would remove myself from the debate and not vote. This is standard practice in local government.

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Caron Lindsay

My highlights of International Women’s Day

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 9th March 2023 - 2:11 pm

The internet always goes wild for International Women’s Day. If we thought more of improving women’s lives for the rest of the year, the world would be a much better place for half its citizens. For example, how can you have decent economic growth if women are being forced out of work because of the cost of childcare.

From the Guardian:

Data for 2021 showed the gender pay gap widening four times faster in the UK than the average for the OECD, primarily due to the financial penalty from motherhood.

Larice Stielow, a senior economist at PwC, said: “An 18-year-old woman entering the workforce today will not see pay equality in her working lifetime. At the rate the gender pay gap is closing, it will take more than 50 years to reach gender pay parity.

“The motherhood penalty is now the most significant driver of the gender pay gap and, in the UK, women are being hit even harder by the rising cost of living and increasing cost of childcare.

“With this and the gap in free childcare provision between ages one and three, more women are being priced out of work. For many it is more affordable to leave work than remain in employment and pay for childcare, especially for families at lower income levels.”

That said, here are some of my highlights of yesterday:

Wera calls for misogyny to be made a hate crime.

Predictably the replies are an absolute bin fire.

Later she talked about the importance of understanding the impact of sexual assault on victims:

Gender pay bot

Social media is awash with platitudes from every organisation in the country, trying to show that they are there with the women.  Gender Pay Bot’s Twitter account calls them to account by highlighting their gender pay gap.

Of course all of this is possible because Jo Swinson introduced the legislation requiring companies with more than 250 employees to report on their gender pay gap.

It’s worrying that so many of them are NHS related;

The Daily Express had a gap of 15.7%, although this is down 6.8% in the last year.

Sotheby’s is doing terribly.

Emma Ritch Law Clinic

Some of you may remember Emma Ritch, (pictured here back right) who spoke at our 2018 fringe meeting at Brighton Conference on how Scotland’s feminist and LGBT organisations worked together to help achieve better rights and status for all. She talked about the concept of “radical kindness” which underpinned relations between these organisations – something that we could do with in these awful times.

Sadly, Emma died suddenly in July 2021. She was an outstanding feminist, with the sharpest and wisest of minds, the best sense of humour and a flair for snazzy pencil cases. Scotland misses her a lot. Yesterday, Glasgow University announced that a law clinic, specialising in rape and sexual violence, opening this September would be named for her.

From Glasgow University’s announcement:

As well as offering legal advice, through a specially constituted legal practice unit, the Emma Ritch Law Clinic will offer innovative teaching to students, enabling the next generation of Scottish lawyers to gain critical legal and ethical skills. It will also produce valuable research, providing an insight into the difference that specialist legal advice and representation can make to complainers’ experiences of prosecution, and gather data to better understand why cases might fail to reach, or progress, through the criminal justice system.

The Clinic will also instil awareness of trauma-informed lawyering, and the practice of criminal law, an area with longstanding issues in terms of recruitment and retention.

Engender’s Making work visible

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