Category Archives: Op-eds

Kevin Langford

Updating our policies on the climate emergency; the new Tories are also dangerous here

By Kevin Langford | Tue 18th October 2022 - 5:51 pm

Unfortunately Truss hasn’t yet U-turned on the Tories’ post-Boris backsliding on climate change.  Kwarteng has left the treasury, but we still have Rees Mogg in charge of  BEIS, a secretary for international trade who thinks our net zero commitment is an arbitrary form of unilateral economic disarmament, and a governing party with increasing links with the fossil fuel lobby – including the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

This is frightening – and we need to dial up our focus on the climate emergency.

We agreed a good set of policies on the climate crisis in 2019 – This does a good job of bringing together the many aspects of the climate emergency, and setting out key priorities.

But a lot has happened since 2019! While the fundamental environmental challenge remains, the economic and political context is different. The wholesale price of gas has increased by 5-10x, and, unless the Ukraine war ends, this is likely to continue until at least 2025. Circumstance and government incompetence has made us all poorer. And after Brexit and the shambles on the economy, attacking net zero may be the Tories’ next trick.    

In that context here are some thoughts to amplify, update, and build on our 2019 work:

Support for insulation and energy efficiency. The costs of having a poorly insulated home have just sky rocketed.  If the state is going to protect people from this (as I believe it should) then reducing how much energy people use is better investment of public money than subsidising the cost of the energy.

Stamp Duty; there should be no stamp duty on houses EPC B and above. If someone buys a house and gets it to EPC B within 12 months they should be able to reclaim the stamp duty. Stamp duty is a bad and unpopular way of taxing property anyway and needs replacing long term. This will phase it out in a way which provides a substantial incentive to increase energy efficiency. 

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Barnaby Towns

Reality moves us closer to Europe

By Barnaby Towns | Tue 18th October 2022 - 12:40 pm

As Britain’s nationalist government implodes after transitioning from a self-believer to a true believer at the helm, geopolitical reality has crept up on the political opportunism of the previous administration—and the narrow ideology of its successor.  

Dalliances with distant and divergent America, India, and Australia have proved to be no match for the integrated single European market on our doorstep.  A market of nearly half a billion people even without the United Kingdom, the value provided by the European Economic Area nations in goods, services, capital, and people—its four central pillars—can be seen more clearly now that we have been cut adrift.  The most immediately visible deficiencies are the goods and labour shortages now plaguing the UK.

By contrast, the much-vaunted post-Brexit trade agreements lie mired in the mud.  A deal with India is reported to be on the verge of collapse after Home Secretary Suella Braverman questioned the idea that Indian immigration—a prerequisite of any agreement—would be on the same basis as that recently accorded to Australia and New Zealand.

Tory anti-immigrant sentiment risks scuppering trade and barring badly needed workers as Braverman follows in Priti Patel’s footsteps as another immigration hardliner; despite also being the daughter of non-white, non-European newcomers, and surely aware of the great contributions Indian subcontinent and Ugandan Asian immigrants have made to the UK.

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Simon McGrath

The Conservatives fail because they think they know best.

By Simon McGrath | Sun 16th October 2022 - 8:15 pm

One of the characteristics of this awful government is that they manage to present even ideas with a modicum of sense in a way which ensures they will be unpopular.

Yesterday we had a classic example in the news that the new Health Secretary, Thérèse Coffey as part of her ‘Plan for Patients’ is planning to allow pharmacies to prescribe antibiotics (and other drugs) in some cases. It has also come out that she has said that she has handed out her own antibiotics to friends who were feeling unwell in the past. Reaction to this news has been swift – Stephen Baker, Professor of Microbiology at Cambridge said widening access to antibiotics was ‘nuts’ and Professor Penny Ward, of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine was equally scathing: “The Health Secretary really should take the time to familiarise herself with what is a difficult topic”

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Freddie Poser

The Liberal case for street votes

By Freddie Poser | Sun 16th October 2022 - 1:46 pm

It’s no secret that our party has a housing conundrum. On the one hand, the Liberal Democrats acknowledge that we’re in a housing crisis and that we need to build new homes to have a chance of making things better. On the other hand, one of our foundational tenets – local control – commits us to listening to communities about their vision for the future. At times these have found themselves in tension, and the internal debate has been pretty heated.

Everyone here is a liberal and fundamentally we all want the same thing: for people to have the best opportunity to control their own destiny. There is a policy proposal currently being considered by Parliament that might be able to forge a thoroughly liberal way forward: allowing local people to control the development of their communities and letting them take the lead on enabling additional homes. We’re a group of young liberals who think that this should be a part of a liberal planning policy.

The idea is called Street Votes, and at its core, it’s a very simple concept. Allow an individual street to decide, by a two-thirds majority, to share in the uplift from permitting new, walkable, sustainable development on their street. Residents create a proposal – a ‘street plan’ that comes with a strict set of rules governing what can and can’t be built. They then vote and, should it pass, residents can decide in their own time to go ahead with development on their own land individually or in groups, while sharing part of the land value uplift with the wider community. If you want more details check out this briefing paper from Create Streets.

What makes this so thoroughly liberal is that only the residents can approve the vote, so local control is protected, but everyone is incentivised to deliver additional homes. Research suggests that this could deliver thousands of new homes close to existing transport infrastructure by empowering locals: it’s a win-win. In Tel-Aviv a similar rule, TAMA 38, has led to a huge increase housing led by existing local residents. The Strong Suburbs proposal is even stronger because it actually requires landlords to share the benefits with tenants. The evidence from Israel is clear: this policy works. Everyone has an incentive to say yes to new housing in their back yard.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 16th October 2022 - 10:21 am

Putin’s hold on power

Vladimir Putin’s hold on power must be slipping away. But which Kremlin insider might replace him? Well, according to the constitution, the Prime minister – who is Mikhail Mishustin – is meant to succeed the president if he has to suddenly resign or is incapacitated. Mishustin has been responsible for the dealing with the economy which is reeling from sanctions. He has done a reasonable job and is in the front rank of successors, but not regarded as a number one possibility.

That could be Nikolai Patrushev, former head of Russian intelligence organisation the FSB. He is known to be a hard-line ultranationalist. Another hardliner is Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov who has been publicly urging the Russian president to use tactical nuclear weapons. Also in the running is Mikhail Mizintsev, another hardliner who is known as the “butcher of Mariupol” and has recently been brought back from the front to be Deputy Minister of Defense. Dmitry Medvedev kept the presidential chair warm for four years from 2008 while Putin sorted out the constitution. He is another possible and recently warned that Putin “is not bluffing” about nuclear weapons. There are several more potential usurpers in the Kremlin wings. At the moment they all have one thing in common—they are ultra-nationalist right-wingers committed to the war in Ukraine.

China

Public protests involving banners, smoke and loud hailers are rare in China. They are virtually unheard of on the eve of a Chinese Communist Party Congress. The reason is that they can be life-threatening for the protesters.

But that did not stop two brave souls from unfurling banners from an overpass. One read: “Let us strike from schools and from work and remove the dictator Xi Jinping.” The other focused on Xi’s unpopular Zero Covid strategy and said: “No restrictions. We want freedom. No Lies. We want dignity.” The protesters were quickly surrounded by police and carted off, but videos quickly made it onto social media. China’s censors meant they were just as quickly erased from the local internet, but not before they could be reposted for the rest of the world to see. The protests are a huge embarrassment for Xi who is expected to be confirmed as president for a third term by the 2,500 delegates gathering in Beijing on Sunday. The fact that the men were willing to risk – quite possibly sacrifice – their lives for their protest indicates the depth of opposition to Xi Jinping.

Donald Trump

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Michal Siewniak

What happened to British Democracy?

By Michal Siewniak | Sat 15th October 2022 - 10:45 am

“Time is up” – Daily Mirror

Tory MP’s turn on Liz Truss – BBC

“Truss sacks Kwarteng in bid to save the premiership” – Financial Times

“Truss fights for survival” – The Times

“A day of chaos” – The Guardian

Many thought that after Mr Johnson left 10 Downing Street only a couple of months ago, the outlook for British politics couldn’t get any worse. I was proved wrong.

So many people, who often might not have been interested in politics, are now really “switched on”. While picking up my daughter from school yesterday, someone simply asked: what is going on in the UK? The second conversation, also in passing, was equally quite interesting. This comment gave me an idea of how much the standard of politics fell in Britain. In the past, people with opposing views might have looked up to politicians as people with conviction and integrity. Many people, even if they strongly disagreed with various government policies, could see some rationale behind implementing them.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Tactical Nukes

By Tom Arms | Sat 15th October 2022 - 9:14 am

The problem with great power is that using it is too often an abuse of power and if you abuse it, you lose it.

This is especially true of nuclear power as Vladimir Putin may soon discover.

The Russian President has been rattling his nuclear sabres since before his February invasion of Ukraine. He hopes that rattling alone will be enough to bring the West to heel.

This appears to be another of his miscalculations, leaving him with two unpalatable choices: put up or shut up.

If he decides to put up (i.e. use nuclear weapons) then there are a number of options available to him. To start with he will probably start at the bottom of the nuclear leader, that is with tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons. He has a wide range of such weapons to choose from.

The explosive yield of Russia’s tactical nukes ranges from 10 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to less than 0.3 percent of the 1945 explosion. They can be delivered by missile, artillery, landmines, drones, bombers, mortars, even recoilless smooth-bore rifles.

There are different types of explosions. There is the air burst which was used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This bomb explodes in the air above the target. The force of the explosion destroys people and property on the ground but the effects of radiation are minimised.

A ground burst maximises radiation damage because it irradiates the ground which it hits and throws thousands of tons of dirt and rubble into the atmosphere where air currents can move it hundreds of miles from the bomb site.

A neutron bomb, also known as the capitalist bomb, explodes in the air and kills people within its range but leaves property intact.

Russia has about 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons. NATO used to have a massive Cold War superiority of tens of thousands but now only has about 100.

The reason for its former superiority is that NATO relied on tactical nuclear weapons to slow down a Soviet attack in order to give time for American troops to be rushed across the Atlantic.

Then the Cold War ended and there was a concern that the weapons might fall into the hands of terrorists so NATO tactical nuclear weapons were dismantled. The Russians returned their tactical weapons to storage depots but did not dismantle them.

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Lib Dem MPs on health crisis: government has got it badly wrong

By Andy Boddington | Thu 13th October 2022 - 4:04 pm

One of the most stunning non-answers in the House of Commons of late was Liz Truss’s response to Daisy Cooper at PMQs yesterday on the danger of collapsing hospital buildings. The here today, and possibly gone tomorrow, prime minister either didn’t hear the question or did not know how to respond (Hansard).

In a debate in Westminster Hall, Daisy Cooper was again in action, this time on the preventive covid-19 drug Evusheld. This is a pre-exposure prophylactic drug administered by injections that gives a degree of protection against catching Covid-19. There are around half a million immunosuppressed people in the UK who could benefit from this treatment, including people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. But the government refuses to make it immediately available, instead waiting on a NICE review which may not conclude until well in 2023, after the expected winter surge in illness, including Covid and seasonal flu. Cooper said the government had got this “badly wrong”.

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Dr Yeow Poon

We Stand Together Against Racism

By Dr Yeow Poon | Wed 12th October 2022 - 9:00 pm

NationalHCAW has been running National Hate Crime Awareness Week in October every year since 2012.  NationalHCAW aims to “encourage the authorities (Government, Police and Councils), key partners (the anti-hate crime sector and voluntary sector), and communities affected by hate crime to work together to tackle hate crime across the UK“.

For 2022/23, the theme is “We Stand Together Against Racism”. The Candle of Hope and Remembrance was lit in St Paul Cathedral on Sunday 9th October with a special dedication to Chinese, East and Southeast Asian victims of hate crime. The speakers included myself and Claire Waxman OBE (Victims’ Commissioner, London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime).

As can be seen in the table below, police recorded hate crime has increased year on year.

Hate crime, England and Wales, 2021 to 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

In fact, hate crime has been increasing steadily since 2014.  The 26% increase from 2020/21 to 2021/22 “was the biggest percentage increase in hate crimes since year ending March 2017, when there was a 29 per cent rise”.

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Taking a stand on mental health

By Jason Perysinakis | Wed 12th October 2022 - 5:33 pm

The recent pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have caused a severe deepening of a mental health crisis that was already facing the nation. It is astonishing that mental health has not featured at all in the Conservative Party’s conference. Contrast this with the commendable motion put forward by the Young Liberals on “Taking a stand on mental health!”

Dr Adrian James, Head of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, in reference to mental health, notes that we are faced with a “threat of pandemic proportions” due to the deepening cost of living crisis, whilst earlier Jo Bibby, Director of Health at the Health Foundation, citing ONS data in May last year noted that depression rates had doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and forewarned of a growing mental health crisis in the UK. Mental health charity Mind has reported since 2017 that “approximately 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year”.

Trying to make mental health a political priority can be hard, yet it is necessary. Whether directly or indirectly we will all be affected. It is essential that those of us with lived experience of mental health issues speak out, raise awareness and help eradicate stigma.

My personal journey, which at times resembled a Sisyphean struggle and more often has proven an arduous marathon, has seen me receive both hospital and outpatient support, through crisis management, diagnosis, stabilisation and re-claiming normality. I have had occasion to both appreciate the available service and the personal efforts made by many, but also to notice the shortcomings of a system at breaking point, which is not always fit for purpose, and which often relies on individual altruism or family support as a substitute to state or community structures.

All too often young people, in particular, fall through the cracks of the mental health system, myself included. The signs of me having a mental health disorder were there much earlier in my teenage years when I first experienced major depressive episodes but was unable to receive any real support as the CAMHS waiting lists were over a year and not much support was offered to me at the time other than being given anti-depressants which in retrospect only made my condition worse. Additionally, no support such as counselling was available at my school. Mental health is important for a myriad of socio-economic reasons, one being that it is much harder to be productive at work or achieve good grades at school.

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Why our Country and our Party need an Emergency Lib Dem Special Conference – Now

By Cllr David Evans | Wed 12th October 2022 - 12:15 pm

In less than 26 minutes on Friday 23 September Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng took an axe to what remains of the British Economy and the hopes and prospects of so many ordinary people, and totally destroyed the last vestiges that the Conservatives are the party of Economic competence. By the end of the day the pound had crashed over 4% in value (and is still falling) and the FTSE a further 2%, undermining the savings, pensions, and prospects of workers, the retired and the unemployed, be they Teachers, Doctors, Farmers, workers in industry or workers in entertainment. It affects them all.

However only a few days before, Federal Board and Federal Conference Committee decided to completely cancel Party Conference and put everything on hold until Spring Conference is held In York next March. While the decision that it would be seen to be inappropriate to hold conference during the period leading up to the Queen’s funeral was totally justified, it was totally misguided to think that the Lib Dems, as a party, should have no opportunity to say anything about the new prime minister and her deeply damaging new ideas for six months.

Every Lib Dem who met Liz Truss when she was, temporarily, a member of our party, seems to have quickly formed the view that she was a young lady with an eye for self-publicity and an extremely radical view on things – but it wasn’t a Liberal Democratic view, as she quickly found out as they began to question the reasoning behind her vision.

Everyone who works in Business knows that real growth and progress comes slowly, and need careful planning and sustained amounts of effort over years and sometimes decades.  The desire for a quick fix, a dash for growth based on throwing vast amounts of borrowed money at its supporters, underpinned by a total lack of understanding of simple economic realities is no substitute for hard work and effort.  Sacking a Permanent Secretary on Day One and calling the most outrageous gamble with our nation’s economy “A Fiscal Event” in order to avoid OBR scrutiny shows linguistic cunning that Vladimir Putin would be proud of.

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Charley Hasted

Black History Month Messages from Ed Davey, Alex Cole-Hamilton and Jane Dodds

By Charley Hasted | Tue 11th October 2022 - 5:30 pm

As we near the middle of Black History Month Ed Davey Alex Cole-Hamilton and Jane Dodds have all made statements which LDV reproduces in full or part below.

In the UK we use October to highlight and amplify the amazing contributions black people have made in the UK and around the world, to spotlight the struggles and oppression they have faced throughout history and the impact these had and continue to have on black communities. Most importantly it is a time we should remember and commit to continuing to support black communities including making our party and our politics more diverse.

Ed Davey writes:-

“October is Black History Month – a time to celebrate the Black British community, recognise their contributions and discover their stories. We owe a great debt to the Black pioneers who have transformed our society’s cultural and political landscapes.
{…} So we will keep campaigning to abolish the Conservatives’ cruel and discriminatory Hostile Environment, and end the disproportionate use of Stop and Search.  And we will keep working to combat racism – whether conscious or unconscious, individual or institutional – wherever we find it. As we honour the legacy of the Windrush generation and the countless others Black pioneers who helped shape our country, we owe it to them to stand up to bigotry, hate and injustice. I hope you will join me in this fight for equality.”

Full text here

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Helen Morgan

Helen Morgan: 12 hours with an ambulance crew

By Helen Morgan | Tue 11th October 2022 - 1:45 pm

It’s midday on a wet and windy Friday afternoon. Normally I’d be in a village hall for a surgery with constituents. Instead, I’m hurtling down an A-road being deafened by a siren in the back of an ambulance.

I’m with paramedics Steve and Julie and we’re responding to the first call of our 12-hour shift. It’s only minutes since we clocked on but the elderly lady in need of help has been waiting more than three hours. She’s got Covid symptoms and chest problems making her a category two call with a target response time of 18 minutes.

Indeed, by the time we pack up just before 1am we’ve been to four category two calls, all of which had been waiting at least two hours, and one category three with a 12-hour delay.

All of our response times are around 10 times longer than the target and today is a ‘good’ day by recent standards in Shropshire.

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Samuel Jackson

How do we win the arguments for Proportional Representation?

By Samuel Jackson | Tue 11th October 2022 - 12:15 pm

Labour’s National Executive effectively vetoed a motion passed by an overwhelming majority of party delegates at its Annual Conference to replace First Past The Post with Proportional Representation for British general elections. Doubtless this decision was influenced by recent opinion polling and seat projections which, if accurate, suggest that Labour are on course to win a majority in excess of three hundred seats. Who knows, perhaps such a disproportionate result may be the catalyst for electoral reform.

Before the next general election, whilst Labour grassroots members continue to pressure its leadership into supporting PR, we Liberal Democrats should change the terms of debate over electoral reform, and to that end educate the public about what PR entails.

In Britain, when electoral reform is debated, FPTP and PR are horrifically misrepresented. FPTP is portrayed as a standalone voting system, rather than just one of many majoritarian systems such as Alternative Voting or Two-round System. Meanwhile, PR systems are homogenised to the extent that majoritarian systems other than FPTP, namely AV, are misrepresented as forms of PR. Public miseducation about PR has allowed its opponents to craft horror stories of unworkable fragmented Parliaments and headache-inducing means of calculating results, patronisingly presenting FPTP as the safer, simpler system. If we hope to ever replace FPTP, debate over electoral reform should be about how we adopt PR rather than whether we should. This requires us to inform the public how the different systems work, not Single Transferable Voting, particularly in countering common anti-PR arguments.

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Caron Lindsay

Cabinet Minister suggests tax cuts for women who have more children

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 9th October 2022 - 8:13 pm

One thing that we have all learned in recent years is to be wary of saying that the Conservatives have jumped the shark because they will likely do something even worse the next day.

However today’s Sun report, that an actual current Cabinet Minister has suggested that women be given tax cuts to persuade them to have more children in order to “wean the country off its addiction to immigration” is a definite contender for the shark jumping accolade. This is an idea that comes from Orban’s Hungary, where women with more than four children don’t have to pay any tax for the rest of their lives.

Where do you begin with this one?

Let’s start with the fact that a series of unfortunate  Conservative Government actions,  culminating in the recent crashing of the economy, has made it increasingly difficult for any young person contemplating having a family to either buy a house or rent one that is suitable for a family. I was talking to a family member who had been hoping to buy a house next year. Their predicted mortgage payments had almost doubled, making the prospect impossible.

This also from a Government whose actions have ensured that 27% of children in the UK are living in poverty – and that was before the cost of living crisis. Three quarters of those children have parents who are in work. A perfect storm of benefit cuts (including the despicable removal of benefits for third and subsequent children), soaring childcare food and energy costs are about to make their completely preventable suffering much worse.

Not only that, but women already pay most of the price for having children in terms of lost earnings over their working life and pensions after as well as facing maternity discrimination in the workplace.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review: Russian setbacks, Ukraine, North Korea, Saudi, Trussonomics, Hurricanes

By Tom Arms | Sun 9th October 2022 - 2:30 pm

Setbacks for Russia

The Chinese, according to senior diplomatic sources, have told Vladimir Putin that they will not support his use of nuclear weapons. This is unsurprising given that Beijing used a recent UN meeting to reaffirm its long-standing policy of “assured retaliation” which basically means no first use and no support for first use of nuclear weapon by other countries.

The Chinese position is one of a series of mounting Russian diplomatic setbacks that are running alongside a series of battlefield defeats.

On Friday there was a Cold War echo when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to jailed Belarussian activist Alex Byalyatski, banned Russian dissident organisation Memorial and Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties. The award was clearly meant to undermine Putin.

Meanwhile 44 European heads of government (all of them except Belarus and Russia) met in Prague to present a united Euro-front against Russia.

At the same time, NATO defence ministers gathered in Brussels with arms manufacturers to discuss beefing up assembly lines.

And finally, because success breeds success, the US Congress voted another $542 million in economic and military aid to Ukraine.

Signalling success in Ukraine

NATO’s investment in Ukraine is starting to pay intelligence dividends. Any war scenario provides opportunities for testing equipment and ideas as well as learning about the strengths and weaknesses of the warring parties.

European military chiefs learned the rudiments of trench warfare during the American Civil War. There are also coups from captured equipment such as the T-90M tank which I wrote about last week. But of even greater significance is Ukrainian success in the signals war.

Modern warfare depends hugely on the ability of a warring state to 1- send and receive signals 2- block homing signals from the opposition’s guided missile and artillery systems and 3- deploy effective homing signals so that your ordnance reaches its target. The NATO equipment supplied to Ukraine is scoring high marks on all three. This is playing a major role in hobbling the Russian military and providing NATO with vital battlefield SIGINT (signal intelligence).

Attention Seeking Kim Jon-Un

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: China Peak

By Tom Arms | Sat 8th October 2022 - 11:04 am

History may well record the 2022 Chinese Communist Party Congress which starts next week as the Party’s peak.

It is certainly the apex for Xi Jinping who has climbed the greased pole to become the only Chinese leader since Mao to serve more than ten years in the top job.

China itself now has the second largest economy, army, air force and navy on the planet. It also has the largest population.

Beijing also has the world’s largest foreign aid budget and has invested trillions of dollars in foreign infrastructure projects for its belt/road initiative.

A third of the world’s goods are manufactured in China.

China is a super power and the Communist Party can claim credit for most of the country’s success. It united a country destroyed by ruthless colonialism, invasion and civil war and wiped out the stain of what the Chinese refer to as “the century of humiliation.”

But in the years to come the Chinese may well refer to the first quarter of the 21st century as the halcyon days for there are signs that the Communist Party is laying the foundations for serious problems for the future.

Xi Jinping, who will be crowned next week as China’s second “Great Helmsman” can claim both the success and the blame. He has substantially reduced corruption, boosted GDP, increased the military and turned China into a showcase alternative to Western democracy.

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What should the Liberal Democrats do now?

By Michael Berwick-Gooding and Katharine Pindar | Fri 7th October 2022 - 3:55 pm

We need to be careful with our responses to the government’s economic policy. We had been calling for a freeze of the energy price cap, and wanted it to be at the April level of £1,971. The government has frozen it at £2,500 a year, saying this will cost £31 bn, up to April 2023. They also responded to widespread demand to provide similar support for businesses at the cost of £29 bn for the six months they are providing it.

So we are broadly in favour of these policies, as with the government’s reversal of the National Insurance increase, which costs £16.96 bn over a full year.

Our own policy is to cut VAT by 2.5% for a year, which will cost £18.75 bn more. We have said that this cut would increase economic growth, perhaps in the region of 0.4%.

We have to consider priorities now, and we believe our first aim must be to protect the poor and campaign against a further rise in poverty. We wish to spend about £7.5 bn in a full year restoring the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit and extending it to all legacy benefits. Unlike the Labour Party we do not support the proposed one pence cut in the basic rate of income tax, since we are still talking about the need actually to increase the rate by a further penny to pay for social care.

In paying for its proposed new taxes, expected to cost about £43 bn more, the new government is contemplating savings in welfare benefits and in local government essential services, all of which we need to resolutely oppose. We should point out that if tax cuts are paid for with public expenditure cuts there can be no increase in economic growth. Our own proposals to spend around £40 bn on capital spending on green growth and growing our regions outside London and the south-east are far more likely to promote economic growth.

The Tory financial mismanagement which is leading to thousands of home-owners now facing the prospect of having to pay hundreds of pounds more in interest payments on their mortgages means that there will be much discontent among the population at large, already struggling with the cost of living increases including the energy costs which were already greater than a year ago. But protecting the poorest may not seem a priority, if people also dwell on the massively increased borrowing costs the government is now incurring to pay for their tax cuts, although defending education, health care and social care spending remains popular, and wage claims because of high inflation often seem not unacceptable.

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Mark Argent

The £500,000 donations for Liz Truss’ Tory leadership campaign

By Mark Argent | Fri 7th October 2022 - 12:18 pm

The Guardian has broken a horrifying and believable story that Liz Truss raised £500,000 in donations for her Tory leadership campaign with “about half of it coming from donors linked to hedge fund bosses, venture capitalists and other City financiers”.

In August Liberal Democrat Voice ran an article where I suggested that the Tory leadership campaign was looking like a presidential election — with a tiny, and unrepresentative electorate. That tips power further from Parliament to No.10 and pretends that the new leader has an entirely false legitimacy.

News of these donations takes this to a whole new level.

Of course, a leadership campaign costs money. A large number of small donations from Tory members would have been an early indication of support. But the actual donations are large, mostly in excess of £5,000, and the largest being £100,000. That looks like a small number of people having a large influence. Have we just seen a Prime Minister chosen by the 172,437 members of the Conservative party, or by the handful who put up the money?

Is Liz Truss’ perception of “the national interest” shaped by the perspectives of those who funded her campaign? Or did some wealthy backers find someone who could be bent to their interests?

The Guardian article is worth reading in full. Among its observations is that one donor gave similar donations to Rishi Sunak and Penny Morduant, which I hear as gaining influence over whoever was elected. It’s hard to track from donations to policy, but one donor also supports a think tank that supports the denial of climate change, and King Charles has withdrawn from plans to attend COP27 on the “advice of Liz Truss”. The article also says the expenditure limit was £300,000.

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Kevin Langford

Politics of Growth: Bring it on

By Kevin Langford | Thu 6th October 2022 - 6:15 pm

The best answer to Liz Truss’s assertion that the Liberal Democrats (among others) are in some way ‘anti-growth’ is the truth; our growth policies are better than hers. Fairer, more popular, and more likely to work.

Consider these five points:

  1. The most fundamental consideration for investment and growth is a stable macro-economic backdrop. Truss and Kwarteng could not have crafted a better way of sabotaging the UK’s reputation as a place for investment to thrive. The likelihood of the Tories being out of government may now in itself lead to more positive business sentiment and a more positive outlook for growth.
  2. We back working with our main trading partners in Europe rather than antagonizing them. Joining the single market is near the top of most economists’ lists of actions which would increase the UK’s rate of growth.
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Michal Siewniak

The importance of community consultation

By Michal Siewniak | Thu 6th October 2022 - 12:37 pm

Quite recently, I was sitting in a council chamber when the topic of consultation was brought up by one of my fellow councillors. It made me think! I often wonder what springs to our minds when someone says – ‘community consultation’. I often have mixed feelings. On one hand, I am glad that someone asks a question which may be relevant and important to me. However, in too many cases, our actual contribution is not necessarily taken into the consideration. Far too often, the decision is already made and we can’t really influence it. It feels like we are fed up with simply ‘being consulted’ for no real reason.

Local authorities, government, businesses, they all want to listen to our opinions. We are always told that our ‘voice’ matters. Examples? Closure of a local hospital, cuts in bus provision or even Brexit which in my opinion could fall into the category of ‘community consultation’ (it was an advisory referendum). More recently, some would argue (not me) that the selection process of the Conservative Party Leader was part of a consultation. I also wonder whether any elections could be called a “consultation exercise”. We ask residents’ their opinions on topics, often in line with a party policy, of local or national importance. This is how, I hope, we would make our political judgment. Moreover, we actively encourage people to vote to enhance and strengthen our civic participation process.

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Lord William Wallace

Public spending and the social contract 

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 5th October 2022 - 12:43 pm

Raising the rate of domestic economic growth, against the background of a global economic recession which may well be worsened by the current downturn within China, cannot have been the main rationale for the Truss and Kwarteng’s ‘fiscal event’.  The underlying purpose was to force public spending cuts, to shrink the size of the state and to make it more difficult for a successor government to raise taxes sufficiently to restore the social democracy that adequate public spending underpins.  Simon Clarke, now ‘levelling up’ minister, has specifically remarked on what he sees as the over-extension of the UK’s welfare state.

If current ministers were serious about introducing supply-side reforms they would recognise that public investment is needed to repair current inadequacies.  Low productivity is partly the result of inadequate education and training, most evident in basic skills for our domestic workforce.  Years of under-funding for pre-school support (yes, we should have fought harder against the coalition’s killing of the ‘Sure Start’ programme), for state schools and further education colleges, are to blame.  But as the Conservative chair of the Commons Education Committee has just protested, the new government has only talked about grammar schools and entry to Oxbridge so far, leaving education and training for the vast majority of British citizens to one side.

The UK has a lower proportion of its population in work or looking for work than many other advanced countries.  That’s not just due to the rising number of retired; it’s also because we have such a high proportion of people under 66 who are unfit for work or long-term unwell.  Underfunding of the NHS, and in particular of public health programmes that focus on healthy lifestyle, explains a good deal of this.  Lengthy waiting times for treatment translate into absence from the workforce.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 2nd October 2022 - 9:35 am

UK

The freshly minted British Conservative government of Liz Truss is on the ropes. They have only themselves to blame. The “mini-budget” of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has plunged the economy into a downward spiral. The pound is plummeting. Interest rates are rocketing. People are literally on the cusp of losing their homes, and the problems of the world’s fifth largest economy is having a knock-on effect around the world.

The Opposition Labour Party has soared to a 20-point lead in the opinion polls. The Truss-Kwarteng policy of borrowing billions to cut taxes in the middle of a recession has been totally rejected by the markets. One reason for the traders’ emphatic thumbs down is Kwarteng’s refusal to support his budget with an assessment by the independent Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR). Such support is usually a pre-requisite for any budget announcement. The market has interpreted its absence as a sign that the chancellor knew that the OBR would refuse its seal of approval.

Well, now the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, has demanded that Kwarteng organise a retrospective OBR report by the end of October at the latest – and, if the OBR report is as scathing as the statements emitting from the corridors of the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund – amend the budget accordingly. In the meantime, the Truss-Kwarteng duo are doing what every politician does these days when caught in a mess of their own making – doubling down and blaming someone else. In this case Ms Truss has hummed and hahed through a series dramatically misjudged local radio interviews. Putin, Ukraine, covid and world energy prices – everything except Brexit – were blamed for the reaction to the budget. But the fact is every other developed country has the same problems (except self-inflicted Brexit) and they have succeeded in propping up their troubled economies. The markets, therefore, have decided that Britain’s problems can be ascribed to political competence.

Baltic

Who blew up the Baltic Sea gas pipe lines on Tuesday? And who is the legal victim? It is almost universally agreed that the explosions were sabotage that involved a state military operation. But which state? Officially neither the Russians nor NATO are pointing a finger, but both are implying that the other is responsible. Sweden said it detected Russian submarines and surface vessels in the sabotage area shortly before the explosions. Russia retorted with a claim that there were even more NATO naval forces in the neighbourhood. Furthermore, the UN Security Council meeting to discuss the issue has been called by Moscow.

The identity of the attacker is important because the attack occurred in Danish territorial waters which means that it can be construed as an attack on a NATO member. On the other hand, it was an attack on Russian property and so Moscow might be able to claim that it was a NATO attack against them. It is quite possible that we will never know who was responsible because revealing the identity would further escalate the Ukraine War.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat – Russia: Chinese Vassal

By Tom Arms | Sat 1st October 2022 - 9:06 am

Russia’s dependence on Chinese markets, sanctions busting finance and political support is turning it into a vassal of Beijing.

The bromance between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin was unbalanced to begin with. The Chinese economy and population are ten times that of Russia.

Russia is a primary commodity producing country which makes it more susceptible to the economic winds of change should its raw products – mainly grain, gold, oil and gas – drop. China, on the other hand has emerged as an advanced, complex economy which is far more dependent on good relations with its Western markets than on relations with Russia.

The only arena in which the Russians have been perceived to have the upper-hand in the Sino-Russian relationship is in the defense arena. But now that is on the wane. Putin’s litany of Ukrainian failures has severely damaged Russia’s reputation for military prowess.

Nuclear weaponry is the only arena in which Moscow retains an overwhelming advantage with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. But rest assured that the Chinese are just as worried as everyone else about Putin’s threats to use nukes, and is applying the maximum political pressure to deter him. They will gain nothing and lose everything by allying themselves with a country that uses nuclear weapons to illegally annex another country’s territory.

The one thing holding the Xi and Vladimir together is their mutual suspicion/hatred of the West coupled with a firm belief that the days of Western liberal democracy are numbered and the rise of firm autocratic governments is inevitable. For that reason, China is unlikely to ditch Russia, but it will extract a hefty price for its support.

The question is: What is the price? For a start, Russian oil and gas. Since the 1980s most of Moscow’s energy exports have headed west to Europe. Russia is already redirecting 76 percent of its oil which formerly went to Western Europe. China has upped its annual Russian oil imports by 135,000 barrels daily. But the Chinese – like the Indians – are being offered discount prices to keep them on board. China will demand that they pay even less, and if Russia continues to lock itself out of Western markets than the law of supply and demand will support their case.

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Matthew Green

Productivity isn’t everything: understanding the growth debate

By Matthew Green | Fri 30th September 2022 - 7:31 pm

Economic growth is at the heart of the current political debate. And yet growth is a complex aggregate statistic, and few people take the trouble to pick apart what is actually happening to it, as opposed to speculating what in theory might be happening. That has created a vacuum into which think tanks, economic commentators and politicians project their own hobbyhorses without fear of serious challenge. So what really is going on?

The main mistake people make is to assume that the main driver of growth is productivity. This is exemplified by the famous quote from American liberal economist Paul Krugman: ”Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.” Cue a furious debate on a “productivity puzzle” or “gap”, especially here in Britain – supported by  unreliable productivity measurements. Productivity is such a heterogeneous and hard-to measure phenomenon that measurements depend heavily on assumptions – and it is hard to understand their significance anyway. Prior to the crash, for example, improvements to Britain’s measured productivity depended almost entirely on two narrow sectors: financial services, whose profits proved largely illusory, and “business services” a shadowy sector the real value of whose output is hard to be sure of.

But help is at hand. American economist Dietrich Vollrath decided to pull apart growth figures to settle the debate on why American growth had slowed so much in the 21st Century compared to second half of the 20th – this debate isn’t just a British thing. As it happened, he had his own hobby horse which he was convinced was behind the issue – the growing market power of large companies. Vollrath found that two thirds of the decline in growth rates (1.25% per annum per capita at the time he was doing the work – a very similar figure to the UK) was down to demographics – the proportion of working people to the population as a whole, which has been declining as the dynamics of the baby boom work themselves out. Nearly half of the rest was down to what economists call the “Baumol effect” – named after an economist who pointed out that increases in productivity lead to a shift to economic sectors with lower productivity. As we get more efficient at making mobile phones, for example, we don’t buy more mobile phones – we spend the surplus on things like healthcare or designer clothes instead. Incidentally, he found little evidence that his own hobby horse, market power, had much effect, and none that tax changes and deregulation did – except changes that restricted worker mobility, and especially restrictions to house building. He called the two principal phenomena the problems of success and published his findings in a book: “Fully grown: Why a Stagnant economy is a Sign of Success.” This was rated as one of The Economist magazine’s books of the year for 2020, though its writers have failed to take its findings to heart.

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Truss car crash interviews on BBC local radio on cost of living and fracking

By Andy Boddington | Thu 29th September 2022 - 1:33 pm

Having absented herself from the media for days, the prime minister chose to defend her decisions and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget on BBC local radio. Truss appeared on breakfast shows on BBC Radio Leeds, Norfolk, Kent, Lancashire, Nottingham, Tees, Bristol and Stoke. Her media advisers clearly thought local radio would be a soft touch with presenters more used to talking about a church fete. So very wrong. The interviews were sometimes excruciating. You could hear pauses at times, as she struggled to find her scripted reply and to remember which radio station was interviewing her.

First up for the prime minister was an interview with on BBC Radio Leeds. As the first of the day, it wasn’t so much of a car crash for Truss as the later interviews.

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Michal Siewniak

What does the election in Italy mean for Europe?

By Michal Siewniak | Thu 29th September 2022 - 11:19 am

Surprised? Predictable? Avoidable win for a right-wing party in the most recent Italian elections to their Parliament? Did we have time to think about the result of the elections? Have you registered the fact that it really is, in many ways, a historical moment for Italy and quite possibly for Europe. However, as there is so much going on at home, on our British soil, I don’t think that we are paying too much attention to a potential “tsunami of political changes and repercussions” across the sea.

I have a lot of sentiment for Italy. I remember that, as a young member of the Focolare Movement, Christian based organisation founded in Italy, I had a number of opportunities to visit Italy and travel in particular to Castel Gandolfo, a small town just outside of Rome. Magnificent buildings, incredible architecture and heritage; it all left a huge impression on me. I think that I appreciated Italy even more when I had an opportunity to live there, in Tuscany, between November 2004 and June 2005. I still travel to Italy quite a bit; I speak the language and I have a lot of Italian friends here in the UK as well as back in Italy.

So, what happened? It is very likely that Italy has just elected their first ever female Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni.

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Prue Bray

Outraged about failure in the party’s complaints system?  Try this…..

By Prue Bray | Wed 28th September 2022 - 6:26 pm

Ed: I am sure you will understand why we are pre-moderating comments on this post. We will not publish comments that name an individual, nor ones that clearly reference specific cases. 

As a party the Liberal Democrats believe firmly in evidence-based policy-making. We put huge amounts of effort into collecting and triangulating views and information, into scrutinising and testing ideas and suggestions, and into ensuring whatever policy proposals we put forward are robust and properly thought through, with all the consequences understood.

Given all that entirely rational, logical behaviour when it comes to policy. what on earth happens to the critical faculties of Lib Dem members when it comes to other issues within the party?  And specifically, just why is it that so many people simply lap up anything they are told if it is critical of the party’s complaints system?

Now don’t get me wrong.  I am certainly not arguing that the complaints system is infallible. Nor am I arguing it should not be criticised.  All I want is for the criticism to be well-founded, and – preferably – constructive, rather than confrontational, which will improve nothing and generally just makes matters worse.

I am on record as not being a fan when the complaints system was originally set up in 2019. I thought the principle of having an independent system was right, but that the rules by which it was going to operate were not going to be effective. And even though It has evolved over the past 3 years, there are clearly still issues.

According to the report that was due to go to Federal Conference, the overwhelming majority of complaints are dismissed. This suggests that either people are submitting trivial or spurious complaints, or that they don’t understand how to submit a complaint or what evidence they need to provide. Much more needs to be done to explain the system to would-be complainants.

But also, panels sometimes come to some very odd decisions, not always corrected on appeal. But the fact that panels may sometimes make the wrong judgement doesn’t mean they always make the wrong judgement.

And, more pertinently, the fact that I or you may personally disagree with a decision doesn’t mean the decision must be wrong.  What makes us so sure we know better than the panel? They have seen all the evidence and heard from both sides. We haven’t.

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Samuel Jackson

How to achieve Electoral Reform in the light of Keir Starmer’s obstructionism

By Samuel Jackson | Wed 28th September 2022 - 1:00 pm

On Monday, members at Labour’s Annual Conference voted in favour of a motion to replace First Past the Post with Proportional Representation in general elections. This comes after Unison, Unite, and the GMB, three of Britain’s largest trade unions, came out in support of PR in the months following the 2021 Labour Conference, where the withholding of such resulted in the failure of a similar motion despite nearly eighty per cent of Constituency delegates supporting it.

However, it seems as though Labour’s National Executive Committee will ignore the motion, preventing such a promise from becoming part of their next manifesto. With Keir Starmer saying that ‘it’s not a priority’, he plans to ignore the wishes of the majority of his party’s members, the red wall voters he needs to win back, and indeed the wider British public, and reap the rewards of disproportionate, unstable FPTP and gross Conservative mismanagement to win an unwarranted parliamentary majority.

As the next general election is likely to be upwards of two years away, the Labour leadership could yield to popular demands and adopt PR as official policy if pressure on them is maintained. Nevertheless, moving forward, we Liberal Democrats must consider our strategy for how to abolish FPTP given official opposition to such by one of the major parties against the wishes of its own supporters and its own self-interests.

Whilst FPTP is favoured by the larger parties for supposedly providing strong single party governments, recent history has proven otherwise. Seven out of the ten years of the 2010s saw the election of hung Parliaments, with the Conservatives losing their majority in 2017 despite increasing their vote share to 42.3% up from 36.8% in 2015. It may be possible that FPTP delivers unto Labour a plurality or a razor-thin majority, rather than a working majority. If we manage to poach enough blue wall seats, we would be the most palatable option for Labour as a potential coalition or confidence-and-supply agreement partner.

We should learn from our party’s previous experience with negotiating with a major party in achieving electoral reform. In 2010, we entered into coalition with the Conservatives on condition that a referendum be held over replacing FPTP with Alternative Voting. With still-majoritarian AV being a dissatisfactory substitute to both FPTP and Single Transferable Voting, our party’s preference then and now, the Conservatives and Labour alike depicted it as scary, confusing, and distracting. The defeat of AV wrongly signified for some, most notably David Cameron, the defeat of PR, stymieing momentum for years afterwards.

If we find ourselves in the same position again but with Labour, we must be more determined. If the Conservatives were the only adamantly anti-PR party in Parliament, and all others were broadly in favour of it, we could insist that electoral reform be achieved via a simple Act of Parliament without a referendum. A broadly pro-PR supermajority in Parliament would have sufficient a mandate to do so.

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Kevin Langford

Sorting out the mess

By Kevin Langford | Wed 28th September 2022 - 10:47 am

The country already had big issues to deal with before last Friday: price increases that are severely reducing the standard of living for many, a health service which is struggling to cope, climate change which is becoming more visible, and a  war in the Ukraine.

To this the government has added a completely unnecessary financial crisis. Another major unforced error following on from Brexit.

The best thing we can do to help sort out the mess is to get elected and to contribute in some form or other to a sensible and effective government. In this respect at least, the last week has moved us forward.

First, the Tories are making it easier for us to evict them (if more difficult to deal with the chaos once they have gone). They are backing policies that are both wrong and unpopular. Tax cuts for the rich. Incompetent economic management. Refusing to implement a windfall tax. Fracking. (Winchester, Wells, Lewes, Guildford and Esher are all interesting seats with fracking licences within the constituency or its hinterland)

Second, Labour is adopting reasonable political positions and has not yet messed up.  It would be naïve to assume that the Tories will lose (or that we will make significant progress) in the absence of a decent showing from Labour.  So it is therefore to be welcomed that hey had a largely successful conference this week on an electoral platform with many similarities to ours. There are obviously areas where policy is different, but there is a very large core we agree on. Look at the ‘pre manifesto’ prepared for our conference (Policy paper 149)  and Labour’s conference road map to a ‘Fairer, Greener, Future” and ask how much difference a neutral observer would see.  Conversely consider the clear water between what both parties are now saying compared to the Tories.  We know where we all stand.  (Labour members even voted in favour of PR – though it seems unlikely that this will be adopted by Starmer any time soon.)

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