The results are in. To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. I am sure many of you are feeling the same way.
To fight off the doldrums of despair, I’ve been looking at positive ways forward. To that end I am championing the ‘change one thing’ ideas campaign.
What is it?
Change one thing is simple. Challenge yourself and other members and supporters to think of one campaign which, if successful, would make a big positive difference to people’s lives.
We’re not just talking big things here either (though there is no harm in aiming high!).
It could be campaigning for more baby changing facilities in spaces accessible by all genders. Let’s not just shove the changing table in the women’s toilets please.
Or preventative, for example Cllr Emma Sandrey has suggested mental health check-up as standard. The mental health equivalent of a dental visit or eye exam. Embedding good mental health in to our medical routines and helping spot problems before they become crises.
Or strategic, Maria Pretzler highlights how giving more control over bus routes to councils can help local communities and reduce our reliance on cars.
Small steps which can have a huge impact. Not just on our own campaigns but on the people we want to support and represent.
What is your change one thing idea? Please comment below.
* Jayne Richmond was Chair of the European Movement Council of Wales and worked for Peter Black in the Senedd on Wales' first private member's bill helping secure better rights for park home leaseholders in Wales.
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13 Comments
Will the People’s Govt release the People’s Reports on Russian donations to election campaigns, and publish the People’s economic forecast for the impact of Brexit??
We stand for openness. Boris’s govt has been and will be based around secrecy.
Labour enacted FOI so we can ally there, once Corbyn has gone.
@Chris: Johnson has cleared the report so it’ll be out in Jan when the new committee is in place. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-russia-report-brexit-interference-general-election-release-a9248446.html
I think there’s still much more to be done on minimising the impact of maternity on women’s careers – so more support and encouragement for sharing the burden of parenthood through paternity/maternity support, flex working rights (particularly on return). It feels like baby steps so far and there is still a stigma around things like flex working, with it being too easy for employers to create an environment where people can’t get (or are afraid to ask) for flex working. Also support for parents returning to work after years out of the workplace – eg CV preparation, interview skills, all the sorts of thing that might be rusty if you’ve been looking after children for years. Not all of this should be the sort of thing the State provides, but more can be done to create a genuinely supportive environment and reduce the career vs childcare dilemmas.
The country’s wealth can only be increased by improvement in productivity.
Productivity (and hence the country’s wealth) has been static over the last decade.
So the one over-riding thing that will make life better is a campaign to get companies and organisations to improve productivity.
This applies to the public sector, like the NHS, as much as the private sector. In fact the NHS has been concentrating on and improving productivity whilst the private sector has been static.
David Evershed,
You may find this of interest https://www.progressive-policy.net/publications/reasons-to-be-hopeful-clean-and-inclusive-growth-is-possible
“Carolyn Wilkins, Chief Executive, Oldham Borough Council highlighted the importance of finding economic strategies that support people and their communities, incorporating and investing in social infrastructure – health, education, youth services, childcare – as a driver of productivity.”
“Clean, inclusive growth demands structural shifts in the way our economy operates so that it enables as many people as possible to contribute to and benefit from increased productivity and broad-based prosperity within environmental limits.”
The crossbench economist and former Chair of Goldman Sachs Asset Management divsion, Lord Jim O’Neill, speaking as vice-President of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, was unperturbed about the longer-term economic impact of Brexit – “whether we leave or stay in the European Union will matter little in the grand scheme of things. Global business cycles will come and go. How we choose to invest in the economic and social fabric of places within our country will have much greater impact on the degree to which we will improve productivity and create broad-based prosperity.”
How about allowing ‘Zambrano’ carers of British children to be a right of residence for welfare benefits and housing? It’s limited to a particular group, and it supports carers of British children. Time and again I see this as a housing lawyer, often the carer has experienced abuse as well. This discrimination has no basis after the ending of free movement (which I regret deeply).
“Let’s not just shove the changing table in the women’s toilets please.”
Too late. Plenty of them in men’s loos and in unisex baby changing facilities.
In the old adage: “Think global, act local”.
Hi Ken – in big shopping centres yes, but the amount of times my husband struggled to find changing facilities he could access as a dad during his 13 weeks SPL was pretty shocking.
Ken – great idea. How would you phrase this as a campaign/ policy?
Joe and David – interesting report. Keen to hear ideas?
Dan – good points. We were lucky enough to be able to use SPL earlier this year. But it didn’t feel like quite enough time.
I needed recovery time (separate but concurrent to being a new parent) after a complicated pregnancy. The mandatory two weeks fell way short of that. Do you think increasing paternity leave would help? Or what do you think of going down a Canadian model where patents can take up to 18 months – most of which is available as SPL?
In some way I’d like to getting involved in putting on pressure if medication shortages begin to bite.
Change? If we want to change anything we have to get power or at least a fair share of the vote. Virtually every statement we make should include a reference to unrepresentative MPs, particularly on the right. It took fewer votes to elect a Tory than Labour; far fewer than to elect a LibDem, and far, far fewer than to elect a Green. If we are stupid enough to accept the result without regularly complaining about it, we deserve to be forever sidelined.
The Tories did NOT win a majority of votes.
Hi John,
No one is suggesting we don’t do that. Indeed pushing for fairer democracy and PR has been a goal of the Lib Dems for as long as I can remember. We shouldn’t lose sight of that.
But it’s not an either or. We are a party of heart that makes lives better and pushes for reforms that have real impact on people. We need to include that from a grass roots level up.
What we’re asking for here are lots of different ideas that we can campaign on and include in manifestos that will resonate with the electorate.
We can do that and STILL push for electoral change. We can do that and STILL hold the government to account.
Most things in politics are not mutually exclusive.
With that in mind, what would you campaign on as well as the points you’ve made here?
I agree with most of the above, outlining laudable and perhaps achievable intentions and policies. However I believe there is a bigger idea which has begun to be noticeable on the progressive horizon — largely thanks to other non-Conservative parties, it must be said! — and you’ve probably guessed what it is, and groaned: please hang on a mo, or two.
It is in the Green’s recent Manifesto. Labour have looked at it and chickened out. Small thinkers in all directions throw up derisive hands and move on, looking ahead hardly more than a week or a month.
There are two kinds of objection or resistance to UBI. The first is the kind of thinking that still believes “neo-liberal” sounds just our forward-looking kind of thing, still unaware that it means Thatcherism and Austerity. The other kind has either worked hard all its life to get where it is today, thank you, and cares little for those less blessed. No that’s the first kind. Sorry.
So it’s a third kind that is probably actually the most prevalent. Fortunately, I believe this is the kind most easily converted, because it believes UBI is daft morally as well as daft Economics and ridiculous Politics. The Lib Dems now have the chance, which we cannot afford to miss, I.M.O., to promote the idea of UBI as a sensible way, not to “eliminate poverty” ( as many LDs currently demand), but to transform our society — or what we might still call “the British Way of Life” — into one no longer based on suspicion and contempt and material competition: one where the lucky grudgingly hand out scraps to the supplicant needy . . . to transform our society into one recalling the good old word Commonwealth, in which all share an equal standing as tax-paying participants in the enterprise called the United Kingdom.
The main difficulty in making this idea more acceptable to future voters is getting it understood: its transformative character, and the value of that transformation. We should begin by ditching the name UBI, a term with several serious flaws, and calling it a National Income Dividend. And then get on with it in earnest.