This week, Greenpeace UK have collected almost 600,000 signatures for their petition to the government to act now on Climate Change.
The text of the petition gives a succinct list of initiatives which the government should be embarking on now to minimise the climate emergency:
Amazing to welcome @LibDems leader @EdwardJDavey to Alperton today to launch my campaign to be the next councillor for this area. It’s time to end Labour neglect in Brent. Alperton needs a councillor who will work hard for our community and deliver for residents. #Anton4Alperton pic.twitter.com/mZfumqxlsW
— Cllr Anton Georgiou 🔶 (@anton_georgiou) January 4, 2020
Tories’ new counter-terror plans undermine civil liberties
Responding to the Government’s announcement of new counter-terror legislation, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Christine Jardine said:
If you could stop terrorism by passing illiberal new laws, the Conservatives would have ended it ages ago.
It’s less than a year since the Conservatives passed their last piece of unnecessary, reactionary legislation in the name of combatting
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Apologies for the delay, press release fans! Unfortunately, the Parish Council I chair ran late, so I wasn’t able to get these up last night…
Young people deserve a clear, unambiguous commitment to Erasmus
Responding to reports the Government is extending an exchange scheme …
This month sees the 50th anniversary of the first publication of Oxhey Opinion, the regular Liberal Democrat newsletter published in the ward I represent on Watford Borough Council.
In January 1970, Tony Poole the Liberal candidate for Oxhey, wrote the first edition and printed it himself on a Roneo machine, in two colour orange and black. This was an era when Liberals were increasingly developing ‘community politics’ techniques, including what we now call Focus-style newsletters.
Yet Tony’s reasons for launching the newsletter arose from local circumstances. Oxhey has its own distinct identity and he felt that a newsletter that went beyond simply issuing election addresses once a year would go down well in the local community.
The strategy was vindicated when the following year when the Liberals won the ward, in the process gaining their first ever seat on Watford Borough Council. By 1973 the Liberals held all three seats in Oxhey and six out of 36 on Watford Counci. The future looked bright. Unfortunately, the national party’s difficulties in the mid to late 1970s had their effect in Watford and by 1976 there were no more Liberals on the council.
It not until the 1990s that the Liberal Democrats were able to regain all the seats in Oxhey, but in the intervening time Oxhey Opinion continued to be published (sometimes intermittently), meaning that there was a strong legacy to build on when I became the candidate and by extension editor in 1990.
We have now won every local election in the ward since 1991. Both of Watford’s Liberal Democrat elected mayors, Dorothy Thornhill and Peter Taylor were first elected as Oxhey councillors. And although Tony Poole was not among the Liberal councillors in the 1970s, he served as ward councillor for 14 years from 1998 and was an excellent chairman of the council.
Looking back at the very first edition, one realises how many issues are with us always: the featured issues of local development, streetlighting, traffic management and amenities in Oxhey Park are just the sort of thing we have covered in recent editions.
Following the 2019 general election, we are now second in 91 seats, of which 80 are held by the Conservatives and just 9 by Labour (the other 2 are held by the SNP). Of the 10 seats where we are closest (less than 3000 votes behind), 8 are currently held by The Conservatives.
You can model some interesting seat projections based on various swing scenarios. As shown by Electoral Calculus:
In other words, when we take votes off Labour then The Conservatives win, Labour lose and we barely move. When we take votes off The Conservatives then they lose, we win and Labour also win.
From Labour’s point of view, the story is similar:
I downed tools and stopped almost all my usual work as a videographer for five weeks this winter. Here are some of my observations from the frontline…
I’ll say this first so that anyone with a short attention span understands the root cause of all our problems. It really is very simple and everything else I mention after this one cataclysmic issue, is a significant order of magnitude less important.
The reason this country is utterly broken is First Past the Post.
Sadly you can’t change it until you take power and you will only take power if the system works for you, in which case you are unlikely to change it when you get into power!
That’s the ‘exciting’ bit out of the way, the two other bits that I want to focus on here are Messaging and All Women Short Lists.
This comes from a post by Party President and Co-leader Mark Pack, on the party’s website, explaining some output from Saturday’s Federal Board meeting:
Election Review
The (Federal) Board has commissioned a review into both the General election and the European elections.
This review will be run independently of those who ran the elections, with a panel of experts who have a broad range of skills from knowing about grassroots election campaigns through to understanding what the very best decision-making processes in organisations look like.
In September 2018, excitement in the party was high. One almost needed a brown paper bag handy to breathe into, should things get overly hyperventilatory.
The gist of the excitement was:
We have to be more relevant! There are rich people going round with large truck loads of cash, looking for somewhere to dump it.
We’ve got to be in on the conversations to set up a new centre party, otherwise we will be sidelined and irrelevant.
Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal has received a setback in the Lords after three amendments to the bill were passed.
In the government’s first parliamentary defeat since the general election, peers voted for EU citizens to have the right to be given official documentation if they lawfully reside in the UK after Brexit.
They backed a cross-party amendment to the withdrawal agreement bill allowing for physical proof of status.
What is tickbox? When I published a book with that title it was strange how obscure this was for some people – and how others knew immediately what I was talking about.
Here, for the sake of argument, are some dfefinitions:
tickbox (noun) The phenomenon where organisations are able to dodge the letter of what is demanded from them by a simple tick (as in A tickbox exercise).
To tickbox (verb) Ticking a box rather than taking personal or human responsibility.
Tickbox (noun) A system for taking automated decisions of the kind that used to be taken by bureaucrats, managers, officials or …
Tim leads Bury Council’s four Lib Dem councillors. There are 29 Labour, 16 Conservative and two Independent councillors. So Tim’s election is a sign of the respect in which councillors of other parties hold him.
Bury Times reports:
HOLYROOD ward councillor Tim Pickstone has been named as the next Mayor of Bury.
The Liberal Democrats are about to fill nearly 50 important posts, responsible for everything from oversight of our campaigns through to improving our record on diversity and making sure our finances are in good shape.
Please do both think about going for one of these posts yourself, and also who else you might want to encourage to put their name forward.
We need the best team possible – which means people with brilliant skills, time to do the job properly and a much greater diversity than we often manage with such exercises.
If anyone would like to know more about what a particular post involves, I’m very happy for you to put them in touch with me and I can either directly help or put them in touch with someone with experience of the post.
More details of the posts are over on the party website.
In it, he talked tough about the UK post-Brexit trading scenario. Hopefully, this is pre-negotiation chatter, but what he said was alarming nonetheless:
There will not be alignment, we will not be a ruletaker, we will not be in the single market and we will not be in the customs union — and we will do this by the end of the year.
He said there would be no Treasury support for the big manufacturing sectors to adjust to the new trade rules. Rather peevishly he added that they had had since 2016 to prepare for the new scenario. Of course, they have not known what the Sam Hill they were needing to prepare for during those three years.
Draconian changes to immigration rules are utterly unworkable
Responding to reports the Conservative Government could remove a temporary extension of the current immigration rules until 2023 and impose new restrictions on low-skilled migrants moving to the UK after Brexit, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Christine Jardine said:
Decisions like this make it loud and clear that this Conservative Government has no intention off ending the hostile environment. It’s a national embarrassment.
For business and our economy, such draconian changes to immigration rules is utterly unworkable. To think the Home Office could implement the changes in the time given is a joke.
The Liberal Democrats
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Note from the Editorial Team: This touching personal tribute to Bob Maclennan was published over the weekend on “A Scottish Liberal” – the blog of Andrew Page. We liked it so much that we asked Andrew if we could reproduce it here, and he kindly agreed.
Today I discovered that my friend, one time mentor and godfather to my daughter Xanthe has passed away at the age of 83.
Robert Maclennan, Lord Maclennan of Rogart (but always “Bob” to me) was the son of a gynaecologist (Sir Hector Maclennan) and a forward-thinking …
The Labour Party leadership election is underway, with Keir Starmer the current front runner. This particular election is the first where candidates require not just nominations from their fellow MPs but also constituency parties, trade union and other affiliated bodies. The nomination process has already demonstrated that Stalinist political practice is alive and well in the ‘people’s party’ with the UK’s largest union, Unison, backing Starmer without any consultation with its membership. Transport union TSSA have proudly announced that they will give their members a say but only offer a choice between two candidates, Sir Keir and Rebecca Long Bailey. …
Lib Dems launch campaign to scrap cash machine fees
The Brecon & Radnorshire Liberal Democrats have launched a campaign calling on the UK Government to provide the funding necessary to scrap transaction fees at local cash machines. With the number of bank branches across Powys dwindling, a growing number of residents are forced to reply upon Post Offices and local cash machines to access their money.
Last year Jane Dodds, then MP for Brecon & Radnorshire, led …
Today, for the first time since this debacle began all the way back in 2016 we find ourselves with an odd sense of certainty.
For better or (definitely) for worse, at the end of January the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will be leaving the European Union under a majority Conservative and unionist Government, headed by Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (yes this is his actual full name to those who aren’t aware).
This may not be the certainty we ever wanted but there is an odd sense of relief in it; sort of like that feeling when you …
The Liberty and Justice Celebration, Des Moines, Iowa, USA, November 1st, 2019.At this point, I realise I’m at one of the most unique political events I’ve ever attended. Part fundraising gala and part political rally, but with production values that more closely resemble a pro wrestling event. It is in fact the Liberty and Justice Celebration, the final and most important multi-candidate ‘cattle call’ in the year-long campaign preceding the Iowa Democratic caucuses.
Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus website has an excellent Infographic on Voter migration 2017 – 2019. Using human figures (voters) to represent one percentage point of the voters, he not only shows where 2017 voters and non-voters went in 2019, he also graphically shows 2016 EU referendum preferences.
His conclusion on the LibDems is interesting:
There have been more touching tributes to Bob Maclennan via Twitter overnight, from across the political spectrum:
Very sad news indeed. Bob was a kind, generous, principled man who made bold moves to drive change in our broken politics. We will miss him dearly, and our thoughts are with his family. https://t.co/OcyBmEN8O2
— Jo Swinson (@joswinson) January 18, 2020
This afternoon, the party announced the timetable for the election of a new leader of the party. This was agreed at the first meeting of the Federal Board chaired by our new President and current co-leader of the party, Mark Pack.
Nominations will open on May 11th, which is the Monday after the elections on May 7th. Nominations will close on May 28th with ballots opening on June 18th and closing on July 15th, after which the new leader will be announced.
I’m not privy to the Federal Board discussions but it does not take a mind-reader to, at least, pick out some of the themes behind this decision.
Our party President and Co-leader, Mark Pack has just commented on the leadership election timetable on his blog:
The Board discussed in some detail different possible options for the timetable, and we carefully considered the pros and cons of, for example, having a leadership election that took place sooner. Considerations such as wanting to get our review of last year’s elections done first and also avoiding distracting key activists from the May elections were weighed against the benefits of having a new leader sooner.
The close of nominations date will also
…
The Liberal Democrats have today led tributes following the death of Lord Robert Maclennan.
Lord Robert Maclennan of Rogart, known as Bob Maclennan, was the last leader of the Social Democrat Party before it merged with the Liberal Party. He then became joint interim leader of the new party.
Bob Maclennan was a Member of Parliament from 1966 to 2001. Upon stepping down as MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, Bob Maclennan was elevated to the House of Lords.
Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey said:
It
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An LDV reader, John Probert (who has the rare distinction of being a remaining former councillor on Middlesex County Council) has made a suggestion along these lines.
After January 31st we will still be members of the Council of Europe, who celebrate Europe Day on May 5th (EU members celebrate it on May 9th).
Such a celebration would publicise the fact that we remain members of the Council of Europe, which was first suggested under such a name by Churchill in a wartime broadcast on 21st March 1943.
Its Statute says:
The aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress.
The Liberal Democrats have today agreed the timetable to elect the next leader of the Liberal Democrats.
At a meeting today of the party’s Federal Board in London, the party agreed to open nominations for candidates on the 11th of May and close them on the 28th of May.
The ballot will then open on the 18th of June and close on the 15th of July, after which the party will announce the next leader.
In the meantime, Ed Davey MP and Party President Mark Pack will continue as joint acting leaders of the Liberal Democrats.
Speaking after the meeting, Liberal Democrat Party …
On Nick Clegg’s recommendation the architect of our disastrous 2015 election campaign was appointed as chief of strategy for the remain campaign. The result was entirely predictable.
The party then spent four years in the wilderness. A steady, but uninspiring, leadership from Vince and hard work from our local government activists saw the party slowly improve its position.
In the 2019 Euro Elections the Remainers put their faith in the Lib Dems, only to be let down again at the General Election. This time a combination of a terrible campaign, inexperienced and badly advised leadership, fear of Corbyn and First Past the Post ensured that faith in the Lib Dems was once again misplaced. Not all our fault, but with a good campaign and steady leadership we should have made 50 seats, and the picture today would have been different.
As is traditional, Liberal Democrat Voice is covering the maiden speeches of our new MPs as they happen. In Thursday’s Health and Social Care debate, Munira Wilson, MP for Twickenham, made her first Commons speech:
It is a pleasure—and slightly daunting—to follow so many powerful and emotive maiden speeches. I thought that the hon. Members for Luton North (Sarah Owen), for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) and for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) made particularly moving speeches. It is an honour to give my maiden speech, and I am especially proud that my five-year-old daughter is in the Gallery to witness this moment. With a record number of female and BAME MPs elected in this Parliament, I hope that I and others will be an inspiration to girls like her and other young women as we strive towards a more diverse Parliament that truly reflects British society.
As the new Member of Parliament for Twickenham, I follow in the illustrious footsteps—or should I say dancing shoes—of the right hon. Sir Vincent Cable. After all, he did get a 10 from Len on “Strictly”! Vince earned the respect of Members of all parties in this House, not just for his economic prowess, but for his dry sense of humour. Who can forget his infamous “from Stalin to Mr Bean” put-down of Prime Minister Gordon Brown?
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Which is the most unworkable policy?
A blue plaque for Traffic's Jim Capaldi in Marlow
From copperworks to distillery
Two very important parts of our Comments Policy
There are two very important parts of it, under the section “Be who you say you are”: