Caron Lindsay

Happy 100th Birthday to the BBC

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 18th October 2022 - 7:24 pm

The BBC turns 100 today. We’ll all have our special memories of it. For me, my first ever favourite tv programme was Play School which I wanted to watch every single day. One of my favourite presenters was Floella Benjamin, now of course a Lib Dem peer. The BBC shared a video of her singing Happy Birthday with Hamble, my favourite of the toys

Blue Peter was such a big part of my life as a child, and particularly the annual appeals which gave everyone a chance to help others.

It was watching Roots in 1976 and seeing the appalling depiction of slavery that started me off on the journey to being a Liberal. The Doctor encouraged me along that road with his curiosity, respect for others and eccentricity.

The BBC World Service has kept people informed in good times and bad.

It is revered across the world, for the quality and range of its programmes. We need to protect its funding model and status as a unique public service broadcaster.

Senior Lib Dems have marked the centenary.

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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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NewsHound

Christine Jardine: We should treat Ukrainian refugees with respect, not leave them in limbo

By NewsHound | Tue 18th October 2022 - 11:10 am

In her Scotsman column this week, Christine Jardine takes both UK and Scottish Governments to task for their failures to support Ukrainian refugees and  asylum seekers from other parts of the world.

She highlights that the Home Office is taking way too long to deal with asylum applications:

In a recent Freedom of Information request, the Home Office confirmed to me that, as of July, fewer than 2,500 of 48,540 asylum applications submitted in the previous year had received a decision. Indeed, 14,000 applications submitted in 2020 were still outstanding six months into 2022.

Every week my office, and that of every other MP I know, spends hours chasing up long-standing, legal applications which simply are not being dealt with.

Each one represents someone who has fled persecution in their own country and has come here, not for some mythical easy life, but simply to survive, and is waiting. In limbo.

Often, they bring the vital skills and qualifications that are in short supply in our employment market and not only can they make a real contribution, they want to. But they cannot because they must wait.

And she highlights the failure of the Scottish Government to find permanent accommodation and support for Ukrainian refugees, many of whom are staying on a boat on the Water of Leith.

At the moment more than 1,000 Ukrainian refugees – twice as many as originally envisaged – are living on board a ship off the Edinburgh coast, unwittingly caught up in the log-jam caused by suspension of the Scottish Government’s super-sponsor scheme. They and thousands of others are waiting, unsure of their future.

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Caron Lindsay

Olney: PM’s apology brings nothing but cold comfort

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 18th October 2022 - 9:38 am

Yesterday afternoon, Penny Mordaunt was given an impossible job – defending the indefensible. She was asked to deputise for the Prime Minister in the Commons for Labour’s urgent question on the sacking of the Chancellor.

Mordaunt did much better than Truss ever could have done. She had a reasonable balance of “**** you”, humility, and even a bit of sincerity in the face of quite an onslaught from opposition MPs. It is hard to imagine anyone having a go at the opposition when they were part of a government that had made a crap economic situation much worse.

Labour missed a trick …

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Mark Valladares

17 October 2022 – (the rest of) today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Mon 17th October 2022 - 11:20 pm
  • The British public don’t need more economic turmoil
  • Hunt’s out of touch advisory panel of asset managers
  • Hunt hints at windfall tax u-turn

The British public don’t need more economic turmoil

Responding to the news that the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is to fast-track measures to pay for Liz Truss’s mini-budget, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson Sarah Olney MP said:

The Conservative Party have used the British people as an economic football for far too long.

Jeremy Hunt now expects families and pensioners to cope with increased mortgage costs, soaring energy bills, sky-high petrol prices and rising food costs while the unfair bankers bonus is still in place.

As

…

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The Voice

Mini-Budget goes down with all hands…

By The Voice | Mon 17th October 2022 - 12:34 pm

The inevitable abandonment of the “Kamikwazi” budget by Jeremy Hunt has been greeted by the derision one might expect, even if there was no easy alternative. No cut in the basic rate of income tax, the withdrawal of IR35 changes and the withdrawal of guaranteed support for energy costs beyond April, none of this will win votes, even as it placates the markets.

Responding to Jeremy Hunt’s mini-budget statement, Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey said:

So much damage has already been done by these Conservatives and they will force millions of struggling families and pensioners to pay for it.

The Conservative

…

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The Voice

Metropolitan Police – a welcome admission of past failings, but what next?

By The Voice | Mon 17th October 2022 - 10:29 am

Following the release of the Casey Report into the Metropolitan Police’s disciplinary systems, Liberal Democrats have been quick to respond.

Wendy Chamberlain, the only former female police officer in the Commons, said:

This devastating report must not be ignored. From decent vetting at the recruitment stage to real diversity, the Met must change dramatically and at lightning speed.

Investigations and whistle-blowing must be also prioritised and concluded quickly.The Home Secretary must come to Parliament and explain how the largest police force in the country has come to this under the Conservative’s watch.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner with the Metropolitan Police, and now Liberal Democrat Peer, Brian Paddick, was quick to highlight what the report means;

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 17 October 2022 – as the S.S. Brexit sinks under the weight of its own contradictions…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 17th October 2022 - 7:47 am

Aside from the obvious crisis the Government is in, the past few weeks have demonstrated once and for all why Brexit was doomed to failure as a means to transform the nation for the better.

There were always three key arguments in favour of Brexit – sovereignty, immigration and deregulation. During the campaign, the fact that they were inevitably contradictory didn’t matter, for all that was needed was to harvest the votes sufficient to win. And whilst those of us on the losing side assumed that, having won, there was a strategy for handling the transition. As it turned out, what strategies existed were contradictory too.

But now, each of the arguments has been eviscerated, one by one.

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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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Caron Lindsay

Olney: Jeremy Hunt expects people to pay for Conservative mistakes

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 15th October 2022 - 12:15 pm

Jeremy Hunt’s media round this morning was sobering stuff. Tax rises and public spending cuts seem to be the order of the day.  While he might talk about protecting the most vulnerable, Conservatives have never been good at understanding how to do that.

Our Treasury spokesperson Sarah Olney had this to say:

This may be a new Chancellor but it’s still the same old Conservative party whose failed economic experiment has cost this country billions.  Now Jeremy Hunt expects struggling families and pensioners to pay the price for those mistakes.

Thousands of families are facing increased mortgage costs and rising prices at the checkouts while our struggling public services will have their spending slashed.

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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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Mary Reid

Lib Dems demand Parliament must sit tomorrow

By Mary Reid | Fri 14th October 2022 - 4:43 pm

On a fast moving day in Downing Street, Lib Dems have called for Parliament to sit tomorrow so that Jeremy Hunt can deliver a new fiscal statement. This is sorely needed to calm markets before they open on Monday.

Sarah Olney is our Treasury spokesperson and she says:

This government has overseen a slow-motion car crash as Britain’s economy barrels towards disaster. For weeks Ministers have sat on their hands as their mini-budget unfolded. Parliament must sit tomorrow so we can hear from this new Chancellor.

Every day this disastrous Conservative Government staggers on, it plunges Britain into more turbulence and pain. Rather than show leadership, they’ve just delivered more chaos and confusion. After shamefully cutting her press conference short this afternoon, the Prime Minister and her new Chancellor must come to the House of Commons tomorrow to face questions from MPs.

As the revolving door at Number 11 continues the very least the latest one can do is come to Parliament tomorrow and deliver an urgent statement putting the final nail in the coffin of this budget.

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Mary Reid

Reactions to the churn

By Mary Reid | Fri 14th October 2022 - 2:15 pm

So Kwasi Kwarteng is out and Jeremy Hunt is in. How long can Liz Truss last after today’s extraordinary moves?

Prominent Lib Dems have, of course, been giving us their take on the news:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think we can see a clear message here!

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Caron Lindsay

Ed Davey calls for General Election after Chancellor leaves office

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 14th October 2022 - 12:48 pm

We know now that Kwasi Kwarteng is out as Chancellor just hours after Downing Street told the BBC’s Chris Mason that he and Liz Truss were “in lockstep.” Whether he jumped or was pushed is for the journalists to work out.

I would be very surprised if we see them leaving Government in lockstep together, which seems unfair given that he was basically implementing the policies she put forward during her leadership campaign. In fact, he blinked first when the markets first went wild, putting out a statement after what was described at the time as a heated row between him and Truss.

It’s going to be interesting to see who she appoints as Chancellor – and who would be willing to do the job. Could we see Penny Mordaunt in No 11, or some  have suggested Jeremy Hunt.

We just have to wait to see what Liz Truss says at the press conference later this afternoon. She’s not a great one for humility and if there was ever an occasion that called for that in huge amounts, this is it.

While a u-turn, or partial u-turn (a j-turn?) on the Budget of Chaos will likely calm down the markets, the damage has been done to people’s mortgages and they will be feeling that for years to come.

Ed Davey has called for a General Election to get this lot out of office:

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NewsHound

Carmichael: Scottish Independence is a double dose of Brexit disease

By NewsHound | Fri 14th October 2022 - 11:20 am

Alistair Carmichael is in blistering form in a Scotsman article in which he argues that the SNP’s push for independence is like treating the Cold with Flu.

He compares Nicola Sturgeon’s pursuit of independence against all the evidence to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s ideological trashing of the economy:

The accusation has never been that leaving the UK would be “too good” for our economy. The concern was that those advocating the nationalist cure-all were blithely or intentionally ignoring the harm to businesses and livelihoods.

In Brexit and the disruption of recent weeks, we have had an abject lesson in the harm caused by ignoring reality in favour of fervently held beliefs. The only surprise is the SNP think that these failures are an endorsement.

He reminds us all what the SNP Government does (or doesn’t) with the powers that they already have:

Set aside for a moment the cack-handed, indifferent approach taken by the SNP over the aspects of the economy they are already responsible for; the drip-drip of scandals around hundreds of millions spent on overdue ferries, the reckless gambling of our taxes in the Lochaber deal, or businesses’ struggles under their watch.

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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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Mary Reid

Daisy Cooper on PMQs

By Mary Reid | Wed 12th October 2022 - 7:18 pm

Daisy Cooper had a question about hospitals with dangerous roofs at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Bizarrely Liz Truss seems to be answering a totally different question.

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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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Graham Lippiatt

Harold Wilson – The Winner

By Graham Lippiatt | Wed 12th October 2022 - 3:14 pm

The Lloyd George Society will be holding a meeting on the evening of Tuesday 18 October in The Lounge at the National Liberal Club starting at 7.30pm.

Our guest speaker will be the Labour MP for Torfaen and Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, Nick Thomas-Symonds. Mr Thomas-Symonds, who is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, published a new biography of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in September: Harold Wilson – The Winner.

Mr Thomas- Symonds has already published biographies of Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan. His book on Wilson, which makes use of new and previously restricted material, aims to rehabilitate the politician’s widespread reputation for political chicanery and explore his numerous achievements in government as the only Labour leader to win four general elections. Nick will be talking about his book and we have asked him to comment on Wilson’s relationship with the Liberal Party over the years as part of his presentation.

The meeting will be chaired by Liberal Democrat peer, Baroness Smith of Newnham (Julie Smith). Please come along for what should be an entertaining and fascinating new insight into one the most successful practitioners in British politics in the post-war era.

Admission is free and open to all.

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Mary Reid

Candidates announced for internal party elections

By Mary Reid | Wed 12th October 2022 - 2:13 pm

Nominations for the party elections closed this week and the full list of candidates has now been published.

There are three candidates for Party President: Lucy Nethsingha, Mark Pack and Liz Webster, but only one for Vice President: Amna Ahmad.  Only three people have been nominated for the three places for Scottish representatives on the Federal Council, but all the other committee places are fully contested so we can expected lengthy ballot papers.

The ballots, which for most of us will be online, will be sent out on 25th October.

The makeup of each body is subject to diversity rules which you can read at the bottom of this page.

Note that this post is announcement only. We have turned off comments to avoid references to individual candidates.

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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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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 29 Comments
Mary Reid

How will the Coronation affect local elections?

By Mary Reid | Wed 12th October 2022 - 10:12 am

It has been announced that the Coronation of King Charles III will take place on Saturday 6th May 2023 (although that news on the BBC was quickly eclipsed by the information that he will be appearing in The Repair Shop).

So how will that affect the local elections due to take place on Thursday 4th May? These will include elections to a number of metropolitan, unitary, district and parish Councils that elect by thirds, together with many where the whole council will be elected, plus some directly elected Mayors.

There are several factors to take into account:

  1. Many Councils now do the count on Friday during the day, instead of overnight, and some carry on into the Saturday, especially where there are elections at several levels. Parish Councils are normally counted on Saturday.
  2. We would expect a day to be announced as a Bank Holiday in lieu of the Saturday. Could that be on the Friday?
  3. The week will be full of news on all media of the preparations for the Coronation which could deplete turnout.
  4. Is it possible that the coverage in the run-up to the event, with a lot of patriotic fervour, may sway voters?
  5. If the results are bad for the Conservatives – which would not be surprising! – this news will be conveniently buried.

Your thoughts, please.

Note that this is a post about the impact of a major national event on local elections – it is not about the monarchy itself. 

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Posted in News | 8 Comments
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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Posted in Events and Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 1 Comment
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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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
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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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 22 Comments
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