Iain Donaldson

Liberalism, living our values and quotas

By | Fri 31st October 2025 - 9:15 am

Liberalism means you can do what you want as long as you don’t limit others’ freedoms. That’s why I have written to the party leadership asking them to step into the quota debate for the Federal Elections. Even if only a few party members are affected, making people register to stand for election by a gender they don’t identify with is wrong. It goes against our core values and must not happen.

Setting quotas in the way proposed may satisfy one group but harm another group’s basic rights, indeed the new interpretation forces quotas to work in the opposite way to what was intended. Until the law changes, which I hope our leadership will support, we shouldn’t allow this.

Denying gender reassignment and self-determination breaks the liberal values many of us stand for. Our party has fought for true equality, and abandoning these principles is deeply wrong. Just weeks after honouring a trans woman with the Patsy Calton award, treating her as a man in internal elections is cruel and must be changed if we want to keep calling ourselves Liberal.

I therefore ask that the voting be stopped and that we hold a special conference to remove all quotas. Only then can we start a new vote that is fair and does not require our trans siblings to declare a sex that they do not recognise.

Our party conference has consistently rejected prejudice against our trans siblings, and if the quotas we set to secure equality of representation within the party are, due to the law, going to harm any group then I for one am prepared to sacrifice the quotas set in my favour in order to prevent discrimination against others.

* Iain Donaldson is the treasurer of the Rochdale Liberal Democrats.

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