Mark Valladares

19 August 2025 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Tue 19th August 2025 - 10:30 pm
  • Davey: commit British typhoon jets to strengthen Zelensky’s hand
  • Poorly thought out reforms only risk leaving parts of the country significantly worse off
  • Scottish Government must listen to Scot Lib Dem plans for cancer screening
  • Scotland’s LED road signs break down 1,419 times

Davey: commit British typhoon jets to strengthen Zelensky’s hand

Following the conclusion of yesterday’s talks between Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said:

Trump’s plan to hand Ukrainian territory to Putin would not bring peace. It would be the greatest reward for aggression in living memory, and only lead to more Russian aggression in Ukraine and across Eastern Europe.

Ahead of Zelensky’s trilateral with Putin, the UK and European leaders need to step up. For Starmer that means making a commitment to providing British typhoons to the Ukrainian air force, seizing the frozen Russian assets and showing Putin that we will continue to back Ukraine.

Poorly thought out reforms only risk leaving parts of the country significantly worse off

Responding to County Councils warning that Government proposals will place an unfair burden on rural taxpayers, Liberal Democrat Housing, Communities and Local Government Spokesperson Vikki Slade MP said:

Councils across the country are already teetering on the edge after years of Conservatives’ neglect of local funding and services – from bus services cuts in rural areas to the rising costs of social care. These ill thought out reforms only risk leaving parts of the country significantly worse off.

To truly help local authorities, the Government should urgently look at supporting councils who receive the least grant funding and those that face additional pressure on services in rural and coastal areas, to help them with spiralling costs.

Scottish Government must listen to Scot Lib Dem plans for cancer screening

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today urged the Scottish Government to adopt his party’s plans for a national lung cancer screening programme, as new figures showed that a rise in the number of deaths from cancer in Scotland.

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Centre Think Tank

Rebuilding the centre ground

By Centre Think Tank | Tue 19th August 2025 - 12:03 pm

We are Centre Think Tank, a non-profit foundation and the UK’s leading centrist, cross-party think tank.

Our model of centrism looks primarily to the Nordic countries, which have successfully combined high-quality public services with strong economies. We support pragmatic, evidence-based policies that encourage moderate, balanced, and constructive changes to improve and reform existing systems. We are also one of the most transparent UK think tanks, releasing all of our funding sources and expenditure.

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Caron Lindsay

“A price we cannot allow Ukraine to pay” – Ed Davey calls out the BS from last night’s White House talks

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 19th August 2025 - 8:23 am

Not going to lie, I don’t often punch the air and squeal during Ed Davey interviews, but he has just been fabulous on BBC Breakfast.

I watched the scenes from the White House last night with a growing sense of anxiety that Trump’s appeasement of Putin was being presented as a good thing and a positive step forward. While it was great to see Zelensky go mob-handed with his European supporters, this did not hide the unfairness and injustice in what was being asked of him and his country: that he should give up vast swathes of territory to an aggressor who had helped himself to it, committing atrocities along the way.

I wanted someone to call out the BS. And along comes Ed on BBC Breakfast and says almost exactly my thoughts.

He said that the idea of Ukraine giving up so much land was “À price we cannot allow Ukraine to pay,” adding “If you appease an aggressor we know from history that this ends in a bad way.”

On the proposed trilateral meeting with Trump and Zelensky, he said:

“it should worry us. They are essentially asking Zelensky to sit down with a war criminal who has invaded Ukraine and continues to kill innocent Ukrainians.”

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Mark Valladares

18 August 2025 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Mon 18th August 2025 - 11:00 pm

To quote Granny Weatherwax, I aten’t dead, merely returned from some family time. And so, to pick up where I left off…

  • Uber ambulance: 2.7 million did not take an ambulance to A&E last year – up 340,000 on 2019
  • Jardine welcomes children’s evacuation

Uber ambulance: 2.7 million did not take an ambulance to A&E last year – up 340,000 on 2019

There were at least 2.7 million attendances at A&E where someone did not use an ambulance to get there, with over a quarter-of-a-million in need of very urgent medical attention opting not to use one, Liberal Democrat Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) have revealed.

It has led to the party saying that there is an “Uber ambulance crisis” and that the Government should create a new £50 million-a-year emergency fund to allow ambulance trusts to reverse closures of community ambulance stations, as well as launching a campaign to retain, recruit and train paramedics and other ambulance staff.

The FOIs found that the number of A&E attendances from not arriving in an ambulance had risen by 14% since 2019, from 2.36 million to 2.7 million. Only 30 of the 144 NHS Trusts responded with full data so these figures are likely to be far higher in reality.

The data also revealed the severity of injury of those attending, which is broken down into five codes. Code 1 is those in need of immediate medical attention including those in need of immediate resuscitation. There were 10,600 Code 1 incidents last year, up by 1,600 on 2023’s figure of 9,000. Code 2 represents those in need of very urgent medical attention. Across 2024 there were 256,000 attendances of this type with a massive spike of 55% on 2019’s figure of 165,000.

The Trust that saw the largest rise in non-ambulance A&E attendances was Sandwell and West Birmingham, where there was a 320% rise since 2019 with the figures jumping from 3,900 to 16,500 last year. Mid and South Essex has the highest number of attendances through not arriving in an ambulance with 322,000 last year, up on 2019’s figure of 263,000.

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Do not trade Hong Kongers’ safety for political expediency

By Christopher | Mon 18th August 2025 - 11:55 am

The Labour government is proposing a controversial amendment to the UK’s extradition law concerning Hong Kong. This development, in my view, poses a significant threat to human rights and democratic values for those who have sought sanctuary here.

To truly grasp the gravity of what is being proposed, allow me to briefly explain how the UK has historically categorised territories for extradition. We had three main classifications:

* Territory 1: This category encompassed European Union (EU) countries. The UK implicitly trusted these nations to uphold similar judicial standards and human rights, meaning extradition requests typically bypassed significant UK judicial scrutiny.

* Territory 2: This included non-EU countries that had signed European human rights conventions, and notably, former British Commonwealth territories, which previously included Hong Kong. In these cases, the UK government and its courts retained greater power to review extradition applications, particularly concerning human rights considerations.

* Case-by-case Category: This third and most scrutinised category applied to countries like North Korea and mainland China, which were not deemed to meet Western judicial standards or provide adequate human rights safeguards. Extradition to these nations was handled on an individual basis, undergoing rigorous scrutiny by UK courts.

The pivotal moment came in 2020. Following Beijing’s draconian imposition of the National Security Law on Hong Kong, the UK, alongside other allied nations such as Canada, Australia, and the United States, made a principled decision: it collectively suspended its extradition agreement with Hong Kong. This suspension effectively removed Hong Kong from “Territory 2”. As a result, the current status quo means that the UK rejects all extradition requests from Hong Kong, regardless of the alleged crime. This represents the greatest possible protection for Hong Kongers residing in the UK, safeguarding them from potential politically motivated cross-border suppression.

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George Cunningham

UK/Europe Must Now Learn To Say “No”: Starmer must address the nation

By George Cunningham | Mon 18th August 2025 - 10:38 am

The time has come for the liberal world to say “no” to President Trump.

Europe’s leaders are heading for Washington today to support President Zelensky and Ukraine’s sovereign integrity in the face of Trump’s impatience that he cannot bring about a peace that will pave the way for him securing a big business deal with Putin – and his much coveted Nobel Peace Prize. 

Until now, at every turn, UK and European leaders have (sometimes embarrassingly) been acting, as if Trump and his acolytes can be both flattered and persuaded to act rationally according to our liberal worldview. However, Trump is acting rationally according to his own worldview, not ours. And he views Russia under Putin as having the potential to be his foremost business partner in the world. For Trump, Ukraine is just a nuisance that is getting in his way.

No credence can be given to Trump enacting further “economically severe, yes … very severe” sanctions against Russia as this would weaken what MAGA can eventually gain from Russia economically.

Trump was convinced by Putin at their summit in Alaska that we should dispense with a ceasefire in Ukraine and go directly to a peace agreement. It no doubt appeals to him because he thinks he can get a speedier solution that way. Yet it pushes the war to continue without respite while peace negotiations take place, with the danger it may lead to the collapse of Ukrainian morale on the frontline, achieving the very territorial concessions Putin is trying to gain. 

Putin knows very well that a major Ukrainian concession such as ceding the whole of Donbas will cause great discontent in Ukraine and further destabilise the current Ukrainian government. A peace agreement will lead to elections in Ukraine. Trump wants Zelensky out while Russia will try to push its supporters into power, using the same influence tactics that have been successful in former Soviet Union republics such as Georgia and are being used in Moldova. Putin may not need to fight any more to gain all of Ukraine later.

We do not yet know the details of the “game-changing” security guarantees announced by Trump’s business partner Witkoff to end the war in Ukraine.  They are suspect because they have already been so readily accepted by Putin, not least because Trump has reiterated that he will block Ukraine entering NATO. Recent history has shown written guarantees are worthless in Ukraine’s case, whether they are enshrined in legislation or not. 

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James Gant

The Liberal Democrats must become the party of civil liberties

By James Gant | Mon 18th August 2025 - 8:55 am

Last week, some 474 people were arrested at a London protest for expressing support for the newly-proscribed Palestine Action; per the Terrorism Act 2000, this can carry a sentence of up to fourteen years in jail. Footage circulating online makes for galling viewing: among those arrested on suspicion of terror offences were retired nurses, a blind gentleman in a wheelchair, and former Guantanamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg.

What is happening? How did we get here? And most importantly, what is to be done?

The erosion of protest rights

The erosion of the right to protest has not come overnight. The previous Conservative government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Act gave police sweeping new powers to impose conditions on protests. Any disruption that causes “serious annoyance” is liable to be shut down; it introduced the statutory offence of public nuisance; and the sentence for blocking a highway was increased from a fine to 6 months in prison. This trajectory accelerated with the Public Order Act 2023, which introduced new offences such as “locking on”, and even criminalised being merely equipped to “lock on”. It also handed police the power to stop-and-search anyone at a protest without the need for suspicion of wrongdoing, criminalised ‘interference with key national infrastructure’ (any A or B road) and introduced the Serious Disruption Prevention Order, a civil order that prevents repeat offenders from exercising their right to protest altogether.

A glimmer of hope came in the form of a legal challenge to Suella Braverman’s attempt to unilaterally change the definition of what constitutes ‘serious disruption’. The High Court found this unlawful. But far from reversing course, the current government elected to take up Braverman’s case, though it ultimately lost in the Court of Appeal. It has pressed forward with the Crime and Policing Bill, which criminalises concealing ones’ identity at a protest, and creates an offence to climb on a specified war memorial or monument of national significance. And now, with the proscription of Palestine Action, it has deployed a national security tool directly against a non-violent protest movement.

What can be done?

It is time for the Liberal Democrats to reclaim the mantle of ‘the party of civil liberties’. Across the political spectrum, “tough on crime” rhetoric is in abundant supply. We will never win the race to the bottom on authoritarian posturing. Instead, we should offer a clear alternative rooted in the defence of this country’s proudest-held principles: individual freedoms, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Five things in particular should be pursued.

The first and most urgent reform is to campaign for repealing the sections of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 surveyed above. We should also campaign to remove overzealous clauses of the Crime and Policing Bill (currently in Committee).

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 17th August 2025 - 8:30 am

Where are the Democrats?

The question has been repeatedly asked as Donald Trump has flooded the political landscape with Executive Orders. Well, the answer became apparent this week: they are alive and well and living in California.

Gavin Newsom, the Governor of the Great Bear State, has donned the mantle of leader of the anti-Trump brigade.

To do that he has adopted many of the same techniques of Trump himself. Michelle Obama once said: “When they hit low we hit high.” That has not worked, says Newsom. He is hitting lower and lower and lower.

Trump has called on the acolyte Republican state of Texas to gerrymander their congressional districts to give him five more seats in the House of Representatives. Newsom has threatened to gerrymander California to counter the Texas Republicans unless the redistricting plans in Texas and elsewhere are dropped.

The California governor has taken to social media to troll Donald Trump. He uses the same shoutie capital letters and boastful, self-congratulatory rhetoric as the president. He explains: “We need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done…. We have to meet fire with fire and wake up to the assault on institutions, knowledge and history.”

Trump is fighting back. When Newsom called a press conference to announce his redistricting plans, Trump sent armed ICE agents to stand in the crowd.

A US Grand Jury is involved now.

With three separate criminal referrals, the Department of Justice has launched a full-scale investigation into claims that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and CIA Director John Brennan, orchestrated an intelligence assessment that claims the Russians meddled in and backed Trump in the 2016 elections.

It is true that Obama ordered the CIA to investigate claims that Trump was backed by the Russians. They found no proof of collusion but they did report that Russia tried to influence the elections in Trump’s favour. This assessment was published shortly before Trump took office and Trump claimed that it undermined his first four year administration.

The first referral came from Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence. She claimed to have unearthed a congressional report that claimed the Russians did not support Trump and that Democrats orchestrated a false assessment. Gabbard says that this means the initial report was nothing short of “treason.”  Gabbard failed to mention that the report was written by Trump-supporting Republicans congressmen.

Referral number two was from CIA Director John Ratcliffe who stumbled across classified documents that said the report was “rushed” at the behest of Obama and others. Ratcliffe again says this proves “treason.” Ratcliffe failed to say that the report says it would have reached the same conclusion no matter how much time it took to investigate.

Finally, FBI Director Kash Patel said he uncovered a “treasonous” email from Hillary Clinton calling for a false assessment of Russian involvement. The email was old news and had already been dismissed as “fake” news.

The irony is that Obama cannot be prosecuted no matter what a Trump-convened Grand Jury decides. Thanks to the Trump-controlled Supreme Court, a sitting president cannot be held accountable in law for any act committed while president.

When it comes to law and order…

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Russia and Ukraine – the history

By Tom Arms | Sat 16th August 2025 - 8:30 am

“Ukraine is not a real country,” claims Vladimir Putin. “It is,” he has repeatedly stated, “an artificial creation” that is historically and culturally part of Russia.

If you go back far enough—the 9th century—he has a point. Kyiv was the cradle of what became the Russian Orthodox Church which for centuries defined Russian nationalism.

But since the mid-13th century, borders, allegiances and political alignments have been constantly shifting.

It started with the Mongol invasion which led to the heirs of Genghis Khan ruling the Principality of Moscow until the 15th century. Most of Ukraine became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which lasted until a Cossack rebellion in 1648.

The 1648 rebellion established the Cossack Hetmanate which lasted a little over a century and is viewed as the foundational state by Ukrainians. The Hetmanate rejected the feudal system of Poland and the authoritarianism of Russia. The leadership was not hereditary, but was elected by a warrior class on the basis of merit.

Initially the Hetmanate’s main enemy was Poland. It was the era of religious wars and the Cossacks were Orthodox Christians. So they turned to their co-religionists in Moscow for protection. Big mistake. Russia gradually increased their control over Ukraine and in 1764 Catherine the Great simply abolished the Hetmanate and imposed direct imperial rule.

From that point on Ukraine’s history was a story of Russian domination with the occasional burst of independence. The biggest came with the collapse of the Tsar in 1917. The problem, however, was that the Ukrainians themselves were divided. The Bolsheviks quickly crushed the half dozen independent Ukrainian states that sprang up.

Ukraine then became a nominally independent country within the Soviet Union. In reality it was part and parcel part of the USSR and it suffered more than any other part of the Soviet Union under Soviet rule. Two million-plus Ukrainians were arrested and deported to either Siberia or Kazakhstan. Up to 7 million died in the Holodomyr famine of 1932-33 caused by Stalin’s forced collectivisation. The Ukrainian language, culture and customs were suppressed and an estimated one million ethnic Russians were moved into Ukraine in an attempt to dilute the Ukrainian identity.

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The Voice

Palestine Action arrests: Lib Dems call on terrorism tsar to review law

By The Voice | Fri 15th August 2025 - 8:43 pm

Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesperson Lisa Smart has written to the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism legislation Jonathan Hall KC to ask him to review the legislation that led to the arrest of more than 500 people for expressing support for proscribed organisation Palestine Action.

To cover all her bases, she has also written to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to ask her to order an independent investigation by Jonathan Hall.

She said:

Acts of terrorism, antisemitic hate and violence, and violent disorder should all be punished to the fullest extent of the law and are totally unacceptable. It is right that the police already have the powers to make clear to organisations and individuals that we, as a society, will not stand for it and the consequences will be serious.

In the case of arresting hundreds of peaceful protesters not engaging in these actions, in a country that prides itself on democratic debate, these measures appear disproportionate. The Conservatives clamped down on the right to protest peacefully and this Labour government now risks doing the same.

We must protect the pillars of our democracy and where there is a chance they have been put at risk, we must look again. That is why I am urging the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation to take up this review and if it is found the Government’s actions are indeed chilling freedom of speech then they must change course and address this in legislation.

Here is her letter to Jonathan Hall in full:

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Liam Yip

ALDC’s By-Election Report 14 August 2025

By Liam Yip | Fri 15th August 2025 - 5:11 pm

In Cardiff, a close-fought election between the Greens and Labour emerged, with the Green Party ultimately being victorious. Thank you to Irfan Latif and the local team for flying the Liberal Democrat flag.

Cardiff Council, Grangetown
Green Party: 818 (24.0%, +5.5)
Labour: 774 (22.7%, -24.8)
Plaid Cymru: 639 (18.7%, +0.2)
Reform UK: 495 (14.5%, new)
Propel: 327 (9.6%, +0.1)
Independent: 156 (4.6%, -2.1)
Conservative: 139 …

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Will Lawson

Reclaiming the Liberal record on social justice

By Will Lawson | Fri 15th August 2025 - 8:55 am

David Lloyd George – the great Liberal Chancellor and Prime Minister of the early 20th Century – is often credited as the ‘founder of the welfare state’. This is entirely fair: he and the Liberal Reformers created the state pension, a scheme for national insurance against sickness and unemployment, and new legal protections for workers. Meanwhile, his controversial People’s Budget established the foundational principle that the wealthiest must fund public services, beginning a constitutional showdown which saw the House of Commons triumph over the conservative House of Lords. 

However, the prevalent view that Lloyd George was simply a ‘first-step’ on the inexorable path to Attlee’s post-war government undermines the profound, independent significance of his liberal reforms. This was not just Labour-lite: the Liberal Reformers had a distinct philosophy, and their policies presented a real alternative both to socialist nationalisation and conservative inaction.

Liberal Democrats should reclaim the record of past Liberal governments on social justice – and challenge the narrative which paints Labour as the sole progenitor of public services.

A People’s Budget

Introducing his ‘People’s Budget’ to the House of Commons, Lloyd George addressed the House:

There are hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in this country now enduring hardships for which the sternest judge would not hold them responsible …

Is it fair, is it just, is it humane, is it honourable, is it safe to subject such a multitude of our poor fellow countrymen and countrywomen to continued endurance of these miseries?…

This is a War Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness.

In so committing himself to the cause of social justice, Lloyd George reinvented liberalism for a 20th Century politics, characterised by escalating dissatisfaction with rampant, abject poverty. Cloaking himself in the rhetoric of redistribution, the Chancellor grasps the bellicose mood of the age and marshals it not against some European foe, but against the ‘5 giants’ later identified by William Beveridge: want, squalor, ignorance, idleness, and disease. 

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Caron Lindsay

Ed Davey: “perilous” Alaska summit could see two of “most unreliable Presidents imaginable” carve up Ukraine

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 14th August 2025 - 10:30 pm

I expect most of us will be holding our breath as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska tomorrow. Heavens above, Trump doesn’t even know his own territory, saying on Monday that he was “going to Russia”, so the thought that he could carve up anyone else’s is really scary.

Ed Davey has  described the summit as a “perilous moment.”

This is a perilous moment for Europe as two of the most unreliable Presidents imaginable seem to think they can carve up Ukraine amongst themselves without any word from the Ukrainian people.

Even at this late hour I hope Trump reverses his position and invites Zelensky to Alaska.

Whatever happens the UK must stand with our European allies and continue to make sure that democratic Ukraine is in charge of its own destiny.

He also remembers the 20,000 children abducted by Russia during the war on Ukraine:

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Caron Lindsay

It’s Jennie vs Toffee in Westminster Dog of the Year

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 14th August 2025 - 9:44 am

My favourite Westminster event of the year happens in September when the Dogs Trust and Kennel Club run their Dog of the Year competition.

Steve announced Jennie’s candidacy on Twitter:

This year there are two Lib Dem entrants, Steve Darling’s gorgeous guide dog Jennie and Will Forser’s beautiful and spirited dachshund Toffee.

I’m delighted to share that my guide dog Jennie is taking part in Westminster Dog of the Year 2025, held on Thursday 11 September at Victoria Tower Gardens. Organised by the Dogs Trust and The Kennel Club, this brilliant event celebrates the special bond between MPs and their canine companions. Jennie has quickly become a cherished presence in Parliament and beyond — and now we’re hoping she can be crowned Top Dog with a little help from Torbay! We’re calling on our community to support us in the Sir David Amess Pawblic Vote, honouring a passionate advocate for dog welfare. Jennie’s calm, caring nature and her role as my guide dog have made her a symbol of accessibility and compassion in politics.

On the event page, Will makes his pitch for Toffee:

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Palestine Action – a lawyer writes

By Neil Hickman | Wed 13th August 2025 - 2:30 pm

Chambers’ Dictionary defines terrorism as “an organized system of violence and intimidation, especially for political ends, and the state of fear and submission caused by this”. The Terrorism Act 2000 has a rather wider definition. Section 1 includes action designed to influence the government, and includes serious damage to property.

That means that Yvette Cooper was almost certainly within her powers in asking Parliament to proscribe Palestine Action; but the actions of that group are not within the everyday understanding of the concept of terrorism. When I learned of the events at Brize Norton, my reaction was not “I am terrified” but “Whatever was the RAF playing at, that a group of peaceniks could hop over the perimeter fence, walk up to several million pounds’ worth of warplane, and trash it?”

And while proscribing the organisation was probably lawful, it doesn’t seem to have been remotely sensible. Proscription has led to some entirely predictable over-reach, exemplified by Jon Farley’s arrest for holding up a copy of a Private Eye cartoon, and Roger Cauthery being refused admission to the Royal Albert Hall for wearing a small lapel pin bearing the Palestinian flag. And it has also led to an entirely predictable embarrassment for the Metropolitan Police as hundreds of eminently respectable people very publicly hold up placards proclaiming “I OPPOSE GENOCIDE…” The dilemma is that either you arrest all these people and look ridiculous, or you don’t and acknowledge that the law is a meaningless nonsense.

The Terrorism Act 2000 was another in a long line of badly thought out pieces of legislation seeking to address terrorist threats. The first of them, of course, was the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974, the first achievement of which was the framing of the Guildford Four. The 2000 Act hasn’t caused too much difficulty up to now because it has generally been applied with good sense. What appears to have been an angry reaction to what was admittedly a serious and reprehensible piece of criminality did not involve good sense.

Interviewing Jonathan Porritt on Newsnight, Victoria Derbyshire rather sententiously suggested that you can’t pick and choose what laws to obey. It’s understandable that history, and the BBC, appears to have forgotten the post-war saga of identity cards. These were introduced as an emergency measure at the outbreak of World War 2. The post-war Labour Government “omitted” to repeal the relevant legislation, and the practice grew up of the Police routinely demanding the production of identity cards whenever they stopped someone. One Harry Willcock, an unrepentant Liberal member of the Awkward Squad, was stopped for speeding and refused “on principle” to produce his identity card. On his appeal from the inevitable conviction before the Magistrates, Lord Goddard, no wet liberal (and indeed, in my book, possibly one of the worst Chief Justices of all time) said:

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Samuel Jackson

AI Chatbots should not play a role in our parliamentary democracy

By Samuel Jackson | Wed 13th August 2025 - 11:55 am

Last week, Mark Sewards, Leeds South West and Morley’s freshman MP, announced that he had created an AI chatbot version of himself, complete with a facsimile of his voice and an uncanny avatar. While Sewards has become the first MP to take such a step, this is not the first time that Neural Voice, the tech company behind the chatbot, has dabbled in politics; in 2024, they fielded an AI version of their chairman Steve Endacott as an Independent candidate in the Brighton Pavillion.

The West Yorkshire Labour MP said that his chatbot will “help strengthen the connection between an MP’s office and the constituents we serve” by allowing people to ask for help with local issues or policy queries and providing access to that support “24/7, 365 days a year”. However, this will likely have the opposite effect.

Prof Victoria Honeyman, a British politics lecturer at the University of Leeds, gave a nuanced verdict on Sewards’ chatbot. She said that if used to “answer simple messages, then most people would be relatively comfortable as we have in lots of different areas of our lives nowadays”, thus granting Sewards more time to focus on complicated casework. However, she conceded that it “might cause more upset” and “ people’s confidence in their MP” if mistakes are made when contending with more complicated, potentially emotionally challenging cases.

With Sewards admitting that his new chatbot is a “prototype”, he acknowledges that adjustments may be needed. It would be unfortunate if such adjustments were necessary as a result of of serious mistakes made by the AI that will negatively affect inquiring constituents. For a real-life example of AI failing under such circumstances, last year a bereaved Air Canada passenger (flying to attend his grandmother’s funeral) was misdirected by the chatbot to purchase a full price ticket rather than a bereavement discount ticket; having been told by the chatbot that he would be reimbursed the difference, Air Canada refused it. While this was an embarrassment for a private company, a community’s champion at Westminster making such mistakes would be a dereliction of duty. 

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Simon McGrath

Pupil Premium: A Liberal Democrat success that needs a 2025 reboot

By Simon McGrath | Wed 13th August 2025 - 8:55 am

When the Liberal Democrats entered the Coalition Government in 2010 the introduction of a Pupil Premium was a key  part of  our agreement with the Conservatives.

It was a simple idea – give schools extra funding for each disadvantaged child they teach, and require that money to be spent in ways that improve those pupils’  life chances. It was a direct investment in fairness – helping to close the stubborn attainment gap between children from low-income families and their peers.

But a new report from the Centre for Social Justice  shows that while  £27 bn has been spent on the Pupil Premium it is not achieving as much as we would like – or was expected.   

The gap in attainment at the end of primary school remains at 21 percentage points – barely changed in eight years. At GCSE level, the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is now wider than at any point in the past decade. Only 45.6% of disadvantaged pupils secure a pass in both English and maths, compared to 73.7% of all others.

Even more worrying, six in ten schools saw worse results for disadvantaged pupils in 2023/24 than before the pandemic – while many improved outcomes for their better-off pupils. The Covid years hit vulnerable children hardest, but the recovery has not been even.

The Liberal Democrat vision behind the Pupil Premium was never just about more money. It was about targeted investment, accountability, and evidence-based spending. Yet the CSJ’s research shows that the system has drifted away from that vision. Schools often use the funds to plug general budget holes, and there is no consistent national tracking of how the money is spent or whether it works.

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David Morrison

Should Palestine Action be a Proscribed Organisation?

By David Morrison | Tue 12th August 2025 - 3:14 pm

Over 500 people were arrested in London last weekend for allegedly showing support for Palestine Action, an organisation proscribed under terrorist legislation. About half of those arrested are reported to be over 65 years of age and many of the arrests were for carrying signs, with words such as “Stop the Genocide – Support Palestine Action”.

Palestine Action was banned as it was responsible for causing costly criminal damage to military aircraft. The Home Secretary has sought to defend the ban by saying Palestine Action is “not a non-violent organisation” and that further information will come out which will justify the ban.

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Natalie Andrusyschyn

A blip in Trump and Putin’s relationship

By Natalie Andrusyschyn | Tue 12th August 2025 - 10:13 am

For decades Trump has been singing Putin’s praises, calling the 2014 annexation of Crimea “so smart” and his 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine “genius”. Since the beginning of his second term in office, he has been very friendly towards Putin. However, the last few days have seen Trump be less accommodating to the Kremlin. Trump reduced Putin’s ceasefire deadline, threatened sanctions, and positioned US nuclear submarines closer to Russia. Trump is clearly growing impatient with Putin’s unwillingness to end the war. Do Trump’s recent actions signal a meaningful change in the dynamic between Trump and Putin or are Trump’s threats empty and unlikely to have an impact on his cosy relationship with Putin?

Looking to the start of Trump’s second presidency, we have seen him, time and time again make concession after concession to Russia whilst rolling back US support for Ukraine. Trump refused to reproach Putin for invading Ukraine, voted alongside Russia, Belarus and North Korea against a UN resolution condemning the Russian invasion, and his administration has held ‘peace’ talks with Putin without Zelenskyy. He has further acted in the Kremlin’s interests by stepping back from NATO, and undermining western consensus on the war.

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Jack Meredith

The importance of acknowledging mental health, three year on

By Jack Meredith | Mon 11th August 2025 - 11:55 am

“In November 2020, I had a breakdown.”

 This was how my op-ed, “The importance of acknowledging mental health,” began. I discussed my mental breakdown and how I couldn’t face the world, and wished that the ground would swallow me up so I wouldn’t have to face another day.

It’s been three years since the piece, and now is a good time to reflect on what’s happened since.

My Sertraline intake has increased and stabilised at 100mg a day. I experimented, with my doctor’s consent, to find the dosage …

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 10th August 2025 - 8:30 am

Tariff Time

At the stroke of midnight on Wednesday American tariffs took effect in 90 countries. The tariffs were the highest in a century.

They start at 15 percent and rise to 35 percent for Canada and 50 percent for Brazil and India. Brazil is the victim of Trump’s anger over the decision to prosecute his friend Jair Bolsonaro for attempting to overthrow the government. India has been hit with a 25 percent punitive secondary tariff for importing Russian oil.

The Trump Administration is still talking to Mexico and China. Currently the tariff on Chinese goods is 30 percent. Deals have been struck with the UK, EU, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam.

So far this year, tariffs are estimated to have contributed $152 billion to the US Treasury. Trump has said this is only the start. He is threatening more and higher tariffs on pharmaceuticals and computer equipment and chips.

So far, the impact on the US economy has been nominal. But this is because American businesses stockpiled foreign goods before the tariffs took effect and consumers have been paying pre-tariff prices.

This will soon start to change, although the latest rise will not work its way through the pipeline until early October. However, businesses have been warning the administration that they cannot keep prices down much longer, and in fact, they are signs of inflation for items such as appliances, clothing and furnishings. The full impact will be ready in time for Christmas.

The Yale Budget Lab reckons that once all the tariffs have worked their way through the pipeline, the cost to the average American household will be $2,500 and half a percentage point will be shaved off the US economic growth figure.

Gaza

Netanyahu this week said he wants a permanent military occupation of Gaza. The US supports this. A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth millions. Click here to see a video of what Netanyahu will be occupying.

Trump to Moscow?

Trump is set to fly to Moscow. The exact date is unknown, but can be as early as the coming week.

After talks with Vladimir Putin, the US president will fly to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky. Putin has refused a trilateral Ukraine-Russia-US summit.

The announcement of Trump’s travel plans came after a three-hour Kremlin meeting on Wednesday between Putin and Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff. No firm details have emerged from that meeting but Russian sources say that Putin “has conveyed certain signals.”

The most likely signals he could have sent would have been concessions on his territorial demands. In a June memorandum, the Russian leader clear set out his demands for peace: Russian sovereignty over the Ukraine regions of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kerson as well as the demilitarisation of Ukraine, Ukrainian neutrality, no formal military involvement and new elections.

From the Ukrainian point of view this would mean total surrender and a return to the status of Russian puppet state.

According to Russian sources, the key to Putin’s demands is control of Ukraine. How he achieves that goal is open to negotiation. It could be through NATO guarantees, territorial control or combination of the two. The latter seems the most likely.

El Salvador

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Richard Dickson

One Hundred Days’ of ‘Change’ in Warwickshire 

By Richard Dickson | Sat 9th August 2025 - 11:51 am

Today it is 100 days since voters across Warwickshire voted – at least according to Cllr George Finch and the local Reform UK leadership – for change. 

If voters thought this change would involve a better way of governing the county, after years of Conservative complacency and mess, they’ve been badly let down. 

In the 100 days since 1st May the 14 Liberal Democrat County Councillors (previously there were just 5) have been hard at work for residents and with local partner organisations on a range of important issues.

This is despite an ongoing policy vacuum from the Council’s Reform UK leadership. 

Liberal Democrats in Warwickshire have been promoting active travel schemes and use of public transport, buses and trains so that residents, workers and visitors can get about in Warwickshire more easily, more affordably and more sustainably. They have also supported proposals for the Council to commit to a “Close to Home” principle, that works to ensure that children in care are placed as near as possible to their family, school, and community.

Liberal Democrat Councillors have – in vain – sought policy answers from the Council’s Reform UK leadership to questions about progress with the battery giga factory site at Coventry airport and the long-delayed and massively over-budget £57 million A46 Stoneleigh Junction ‘Bridge to Nowhere’.  

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Ex Pat – The Vote

By Tom Arms | Sat 9th August 2025 - 8:30 am

The right to vote is at the very heart of every democratic government. Running alongside that is the right to make that vote count; to provide at least the hope that people can change their political representation through the ballot box.

Without that hope the voters will lose faith in their political system and – ultimately—the government loses credibility and democratic values and the country as a whole faces serious decline.

Gerrymandering is a political tool that denies representation to certain sections of the electorate. It has been a part of the American political scene almost since the country’s foundation. It is practiced by both political parties. Neither of those facts make it anything less than what it is—political corruption.

Politicians have been devising methods of manipulating the vote almost since the votes were cast. The Romans devised a system whereby votes were weighted in accordance with the voter’s wealth. In the nominally republican city states of Renaissance Italy, citizens seeking public office were pre-vetted by the wealthy oligarchs before the people voted on them.

Then, of course, there were the pocket—or “rotten”—boroughs of Britain where centuries-old constituency boundaries meant that a handful of voters could elect one MP while a bustling city of tens of thousands went unrepresented.

The drawing of constituency—or electoral—boundaries was at the heart of Britain’s rotten boroughs. And the way in which those boundaries are drawn which became the biggest political bone of contention. Up until 1885 they continued to be organised in such a way to give more MPs to rural areas.

After the 1885 Redistribution of Seats Act, urban areas were given more seats but political parties were given a bigger say in boundary redistribution. The two biggest parties—the Liberals and Conservatives—ensured their hold on power by splitting up working class areas to dilute support for the nascent Labour Party. They gerrymandered.

It was not until 1948-50 that Britain established an independent boundary commission that took constituency boundaries out of party political control. Gradually over the post-war years, other countries followed suit. In 2025, the United States is the only major outlier, standing alongside countries such as Zimbabwe.

The United States is a federal system and each state determines the electoral boundaries for every elected office from congressman to dog catcher. In a handful of states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan and Washington—an independent electoral commission draws the lines. New York also has a nominally independent commission, but the state legislature has reserved the right to override its decisions. In all the other 44 states the electoral boundaries are drawn by politicians in the state legislatures. In the US, drawing electoral boundaries is called “redistricting.”

The result has been truly astonishing efforts at gerrymandering. In Louisiana, for instance, a third of the population is African-American but only one of the state’s six congressmen is Black.

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Jack Meredith

Labour, Marxism and the Lib Dems: my journey through Britain’s left-wing

By Jack Meredith | Fri 8th August 2025 - 6:25 pm

My initial experience with politics was the first time I was able to vote, back in the 2015 General Election. I had just turned 18 and had grown up in a Labour-supporting household. So, instinctively, I voted for Ed Miliband.

I hadn’t understood what politics was all about, but I’ve a distinct memory of watching Gordon Brown on TV and thinking “he seems a nice man”. Looking back, my mum played a large part in my fondness. She was panicking, following the 2008 financial crash, over whether we could continue mortgage payments (she had recently become redundant, leaving my dad as the sole wage earner). The payment freeze Brown implemented prevented us from losing our home. I recall the Tory attacks, introducing the idea of austerity, and my mum describing them as “completely heartless”. She would be right.

Fast forward to 2015, and that wave of admiration I had for Brown carried over to Miliband. I had no idea what he stood for, but I knew he was Labour, like Brown, and that made him right in my eyes. The rest of the country didn’t feel the same, as Cameron’s Conservatives decisively defeated him.

Then came Corbyn, a man I knew nothing about before his leadership. I remembered watching his victory on TV, asking my mum, “Who’s that old man?” She didn’t know either, saying, “he must be some fringe backbencher.” Again, I voted for Labour, but this time from a “well, they’re not the Tories” sentiment. Still left-wing, I never quite felt at home under Corbyn, as I found him to be further left than I was comfortable with. Nonetheless, I gave him a chance.

His performance in the 2017 General Election filled me with hope that we might see a left-wing government after years of Tory misrule. By the end of 2019, however, any hope that Labour or the left at large would return to government had ended.

A few months later, COVID hit. With all the free time I now had, I decided to explore political theory beyond the Labour-Tory binary. I began with autobiographies; my first, and to this day, my favourite, was Denis Healey’s “Time Of My Life”.

It was around this time that I also discovered TikTok and, more importantly, the far-left political community on the platform. I had heard of communism before, but had never really paid much attention to it. Yet here I was, watching video after video of engaging creators breaking down political theory into digestible thirty-second snippets.

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Joe Harris

Does the party care about its councillors?

By Joe Harris | Fri 8th August 2025 - 3:47 pm

I and 46 Council Leaders and Deputy Leaders have just written (see text of letter below) to Federal Conference Committee Char, Nick Da Costa and Party President, Mark Pack to raise our concerns about the lack of a main speaking slot for a local government representative at this year’s Federal Conference.

Local government is the only part of the party currently in power and we felt it was essential to speak up on behalf of the more than 3,200 Liberal Democrat councillors across the UK who are delivering for their communities every single day.

Between us, our councils are responsible for more than £17 billion of public spending. From social care to housing, from climate action to local transport we are leading and implementing Liberal Democrat values where they matter most: in people’s day-to-day lives.

We now have 76 Liberal Democrat council leaders across the UK; that’s more than the number of Liberal Democrat MPs. And yet, this year’s conference agenda does not include a prominent platform slot for any of them. That is deeply disappointing.

We’re proud of our 72 MPs and rightly so. But we cannot forget that when the party was reduced to just 8 MPs in 2015, it was local councillors who kept the Liberal Democrats alive. We delivered services, campaigned hard and we’re the foundation of rebuilding our party from the ground up.

The fact that 35 of our current MPs have a background in local government is no coincidence.

Local government also played a vital role in last year’s General Election. Not just on the doorstep, but financially through the tithing scheme (something which seems to be optional for our Members of Parliament!). Our councillors raised over £3 million to support local and national campaigns. That funding made a real difference, and the party’s financial position would be far weaker without it.

We’ve seen the responses on social media including Nick Da Costa’s comments about some local government presence in the auditorium. While we appreciate that the brilliant Millie Earl will open conference alongside Vikki Slade MP and that there will be a session on taking on Reform involving a council leader, these moments do not carry the weight or visibility of a proper keynote speech.

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Liam Yip

ALDC by-election report, 7th August

By Liam Yip | Fri 8th August 2025 - 2:06 pm

In Llanelli, Reform UK were able to secure a decisive victory against Labour, who were attempting to defend the seat. Thank you to Justin Griffiths and the local team for flying the Liberal Democrat flag.

Carmarthenshire, Llangennech
Reform UK: 694 (43.1%, new)
Plaid Cymru: 489 (30.4%, -7.2)
Labour: 380 (23.6%, -38.8)
Liberal Democrats (Justin Griffiths): 26 (1.6%, new)
Conservative: 14 (0.9%, new)
Gwlad: 6 (0.4%, new)

Reform UK GAIN from Labour

Turnout: 39.37%

In County Durham, Reform UK were able to secure a convincing victory against Labour and two independents, marking the first time that Reform UK have successfully defended a seat. Thank you to Chukwuka Okuchukwu and the local team for flying the Liberal Democrat flag.

Durham CC, Easington & Shotton
Reform UK: 1,208 (46.7%, -3.5)
Labour: 523 (20.2%, +0.8)
Independent: 520 (20.1%, -1.6)
Independent: 179 (6.9%, new)
Green: 60 (2.3%, new)
Conservative: 47 (1.8%, -2.6)
Liberal Democrats (Chukwuka Okuchukwu): 27 (1.0%, -3.2)
Independent: 23 (0.9%, new)

Reform UK HOLD

Turnout: 21.7%

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Alastair Bowman

Free markets work; free trade only benefits tyrants

By Alastair Bowman | Fri 8th August 2025 - 12:08 pm

Free markets liberated us from the overweening power of church and aristocracy and created a rights culture.  Emile Durkheim established back in 1893 the constitutional, commercial and civil law required to govern the society of strangers that capitalism creates.  Free markets empower people with a choice of where to buy, work and live, and vendors compete with lower prices right down the supply chain.  Free trade operates above our heads, regulating governments and giving capital the right to own, operate and profit, in markets that may be scarred by monopoly, corruption, slavery and child labour.  Free markets are democratising; free trade can entrench power, concentrate wealth, limit the scope of civil society, and undermine prospects for economic and political development.  With free trade, we are exporting the economics of capitalism while keeping the rights culture for ourselves.

When an African landowner chooses to export, the farm worker still has a job but the product of the local land, water and labour is shipped out of the country for the benefit of someone else.  With less food grown for local consumption, everyone faces higher prices.  In recompense, the landowner receives more profit.

Unless there is a labour shortage, there is no reason to expect higher profits to fund higher wages.  More likely, any hard currency is placed in foreign bank accounts, or spent on imported luxuries, or imported machinery to replace the labourers altogether.  Worst of all, the money could be used to buy guns.  Then people lose twice over from free trade, seeing the product of the local land, water and labour exported and the tools of their repression bought with the proceeds.

Free trade makes our imports cheaper but at the cost of our long-term security.  Moreover, it gives despots a competitive advantage because people without rights are cheaper to employ and easier to exploit.  Putting high tariffs on countries that restrict or abuse basic rights would help rich and poor democracies by cutting unfair competition.

Struggling democracies would be the first to benefit, but the captive populations could be the real winners.  Longer term, tariffs on tyrants would incentivise democracy and human rights instead of entrenching despotic wealth and power.  Near term, captive populations benefit from any switch to domestic demand needed to stem unemployment, which despots fear as destabilising and unprofitable.  If selling to the free is much harder, they will have to sell to the un-free, making them better off, consuming their own output with less profit for their abusers.  We, in turn, should use our considerable purchasing power to support democracy and human rights, instead of buying imports on the cheap by exploiting people who lack basic freedoms.

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Prem Raghvani

It’s Sunday, 4 July 2027, three years since Labour’s historic landslide victory.

By Prem Raghvani | Fri 8th August 2025 - 9:40 am

Want to check how many seats they won before half the backbench got booted for defending something dangerous like, I don’t know, free school meals? Let’s pull up the Wikipedia article.

Oh, hang on… we’ll need to verify our ID first.

Can’t have children accidentally learning about something subversive like austerity. Not after Wikipedia was designated a “Category 1” site under the Online Safety Act.

They fought it, of course – took the government to court back in 2025. But after a year of legal ping-pong and mounting fees, they gave in.

Now you just need a passport, facial scan, your National Insurance number, and town of birth to access an article about the 2024 General Election. All in the name of protecting the children.

Anyway, silly me, I just remembered it’s Sunday. Time to visit my parents, as I do every week.

I figured I’d take the newly renationalised railway. It’s more environmentally friendly, and the pride of the country. Trains were invented here, after all. Thank you, George Stephenson. Silly me.

Oh wait. Half of Northern’s timetable has been scrapped again today for “essential maintenance”, including the train I had a ticket for.

The one that did show up just sort of gave up outside Rochdale. You can’t really blame it, it’s over 30 years old. No apology, just a poor railway worker left to deal with the backlash, quietly pointing us to the Delay Repay website.

Which I tried to use. After all, I paid £275 for my super-duper-extra-amazing off-peak train ticket that got me… precisely nowhere.

But naturally, the Delay Repay, and the complaints form is now behind an age verification wall too.

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Will Lawson

The Liberal Democrats need a more radical platform

By Will Lawson | Thu 7th August 2025 - 11:55 am

Last Summer, the mood at party conference was jubilant. Record election success brought us 72 Members of Parliament and offered us a vast opportunity to shape national debate and grow our party further. 

Yet, in the year since the election, it is the rise of Reform UK which has dominated the political agenda – despite us outnumbering them in Parliament by a factor of 14. Meanwhile, our vote share has sat stagnant at the same level since 2019, even whilst the combined Tory-Labour vote share has declined from 75% to 55%. As dissatisfaction with the status quo escalates, our electoral platform has clearly lacked a sufficiently bold vision to represent a serious political alternative.

To grow our party further, our policy platform needs to achieve three objectives. First, it must speak to the whole electorate, focussing on national priorities rather than those of voters in a small number of seats. Second, our party should embrace the radicalism needed to earn us the attention of the media and match the scale of public dissatisfaction with the status quo. Third, we must remain true to our distinct identity: blending human freedom with social justice, internationalism with localism, liberalism with social democracy.

A new platform

In his 2019 campaign for the Tory leadership, Rory Stewart declared that “the centre ground must not be simply the midpoint of the stick, whose only merit is being as far away as possible from each extreme”. Instead, the centre can succeed by “harnessing the tension of two opposing forces”: mixing policies from both sides of the political spectrum. This is the path the Liberal Democrats must adopt, embracing a new radicalism which transcends the established political divide.

Take the issue of rising child poverty – the most morally unacceptable consequence of inequality – where Labour’s conspicuous inaction over the two-child benefit cap has left a political opening. Our party has committed to repealing the two-child limit, but why not go further to outflank Labour on the left? There are 14 million children in the UK: we could consolidate existing child benefits into a single, universal, far higher benefit of £100 per week – for an additional £40bn. That is roughly 10% of our current welfare spend and could be funded, for example, by reducing the number of VAT exemptions to the OECD average. This policy is not only socially just but economically liberal, since removing VAT exemptions promotes economic efficiency, whilst universal cash benefits are fairly non-distortionary and avoid ‘perverse incentives’.

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Zagham Farhan

Labour’s grubby authoritarianism is on full display

By Zagham Farhan | Thu 7th August 2025 - 8:55 am

Welcome to Britain, where you already have to scan your face to access much of the internet, facial recognition is rolled out on our streets, and soon your digital ID will be essential to access literally any public service. This great nation, once the flag-bearer of liberal ideals and rights, is sleepwalking into a digital dictatorship. 

One of the features of the Coalition Government that I am proudest of is that we repealed New Labour’s ID card legislation. Now, with fancy new branding and a cover that it is to help tackle problems with illegal migration, Labour appears to be back to its roots, and planning to roll out digital ID in this Parliament. 

This appears to be inspired by a paper from the Starmer loyalist think tank Labour Together. I took the time to read this paper, and its contents are even more terrifying than the headlines suggest. In sum, the proposal is to introduce ‘BritCard’, dubbed as a ‘mandatory national digital identity’. The paper proposes to integrate essentially all of our interactions with the state into one digital location, including healthcare and driving licenses. Even more terrifying is that it explicitly endorses such a card being stored in a private sector system like Apple Wallets. 

Even if I were to park the principled objection for a second, the Government will mess this up. I’ve worked in the NHS for years, and I can’t believe that our diabolical computer systems have not yet collapsed entirely. Look at Government’s myriad failures – from track and trace to the Afghan data leak – and I don’t think anyone could tell me with honest certainty that they don’t think this system will be hacked, will leak or will simply stop working at some point. 

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