Caron Lindsay

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #538

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 6th January 2019 - 9:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 538th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (30 December 2018 – 5 January , 2019), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

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Caron Lindsay

Theresa May’s abuse of power is the real threat to an already strained democracy

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 6th January 2019 - 12:15 pm

How dare Theresa May suggest that rejecting her deal is damaging to democracy? How on earth did we get to a place where a Prime Minister  of a minority government pushes the country to the brink, forcing false choice between two unpalatable options that most people don’t want. Two massive polls, of 25000 and 20000 people respectively, for the People’s Vote campaign and Channel 4 suggest that people want to remain in the EU.

Proceeding with Brexit without reference to the people, surely, is much more damaging to democracy. Andrew Marr could have challenged her forcefully on this to her face this morning but yet again he gave her pretty much a free pass.

She needs to be challenged as to why she is pouring billions into no deal preparations, some of them farcical,  for an outcome nobody wants, when she could go back to the people and ask them to mark her homework. It would be cheaper and would put some legitimacy back into the process. It seems she is scared of an outcome which will split her party.

She has every reason to lead on this. She is safe from challenge from her party. She has already said she’s not going to fight the next election. Does she really want her legacy to be driving the country off a cliff? Let’s be clear, her deal damages the economy, makes us all poorer and creates uncertainty. Although she didn’t actually say that she would proceed with no deal when asked to several times by Marr. MPs need to make sure that that option is taken off the table in the coming weeks.

May cannot be allowed to argue that she is defending democracy when all the evidence suggests that both her deal and no deal are unwanted by the majority of people. She needs to be ridiculed for saying that, often and publicly.

Anything less than People’s Vote is an abuse of power by a minority government. That point needs to be driven home by journalists, commentators and MPs. We can’t stand by and just let May get away with this.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s look at some things which are much riskier for democracy than, you know, asking people their opinion on the biggest issue in living memory.

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Caron Lindsay

Biggest poll since EU Referendum says Labour will be punished if it enables Brexit

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 6th January 2019 - 10:42 am

Labour would crash to a worse defeat than it suffered under Michael Foot if the party enables Brexit, according to a huge new poll. YouGov surveyed a huge sample of 25000 people and the results show that the party risks losing millions of supporters in two scenarios under which it either votes through some form of compromise deal or fails to order MPs to oppose Brexit.

These findings are consistent with the Channel 4 poll in November which showed that a majority of its 20,000 sample backed Remain.

The fieldwork was done over the Christmas holidays and was completed on Friday, so this is about as fresh as you can get.

It is amazing that current voting intention shows only 34% support for Labour, the main opposition party, at a time when the government is driving us over a no deal cliff that could see shortages of food and medicine.

The poll suggests that Labour’s vote would crash to 26 per cent – and 16 points behind the Conservatives if its MPs vote with the Tories to bring about Brexit. That would bring about Labour’s worst result since the 1930s. Maybe that’s the real reason that Corbyn has gone cool on a motion of no confidence.

The YouGov poll shows a majority for Remain under any scenario in a new referendum on the deal vs remain and no deal. 

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The Voice

“A more inclusive party which empowers the voice of people who are both BAME and LGBT”

By The Voice | Sun 6th January 2019 - 8:56 am

Today’s video from the Lib Dem Campaign for Racial Equality shows secretary Nadiya Phoenix talk about the need for the party to look at the needs of people who are both LGBT and BAME.

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: How Lib Dems are fighting airport injustice

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 5th January 2019 - 9:57 am

Did you know that a disproportionate number of those stopped and checked at airports were BAME people?

Did you know that if, as a result of those checks, they and their families missed their flight, there was no compensation?

Thanks to the Lib Dem Campaign for Racial Equality, this issue is now being given the attention it deserves.

Watch Dr Mohsin Khan outline the problem and explain what LDCRE has done to try and sort things out.

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Tom Morrison

Transparency after Brexit?

By Tom Morrison | Fri 4th January 2019 - 2:57 pm

 “This agreement is a further step towards more openness and better cooperation, facilitating fairer and more effective taxation throughout the EU.” 

With those words, Pierre Moscovici, the commissioner responsible for financial affairs and taxation declared Europe as a ‘hallmark’ of financial transparency and openness. 

Last March, the member states of the EU reached an agreement to create a more transparent environment for tax advisers, accountants and other financial workers and services. Amongst a context that saw leaks from the Panama papers, this agreement set a standard in how financial corruption and tax avoidance would be tackled, shining a light on those that attempted to subvert their financial responsibilities. The process would be up and running in 2020, with information being exchanged between member states from October that year.

It is imperative that the United Kingdom does not renege on this responsibility, regardless of what happens post-March 2019. 

Corporation tax is a necessary evil. Whilst the drive for economic growth and profit has seen companies flourish, innovate and create jobs – those same companies are built on the foundations laid by our society. 

Our schools train the workers of the future, our infrastructure allows for the smooth movement and running of day-today business activities, and our emergency services protect property and keeps workforces in good health. All of these things cost money and taxation is a fair way to pay for these ‘hidden’ expenses. 

To avoid paying what is right is nothing short of theft. The EU’s transparency directive was a logical way of ensuring that there would be no hiding place for individuals or organisations not paying their fair share.

Therefore, the Liberal Democrats need to ensure that there are plans in place to ensure that these directives are not lost, regardless of what happens with Brexit.

Let’s put this in perspective: The UK has the largest number of offshore entities in Europe with around 18,000. The second largest is Luxembourg with nearly 11,000. With the UK economy predicted to fall next year – imagine the financial support available if some of these organisations paid what was fair?

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Judy Abel

It’s time for politicians who campaigned for Brexit to admit they were wrong

By Judy Abel | Fri 4th January 2019 - 1:30 pm

In most walks of life when people make mistakes, they generally have to admit to them, but not in politics it seems. If a press release goes out with the wrong data, a correction is quickly issued; corrections to factual errors are regularly printed in newspapers. But we’ve had no apologies from anyone about the current Brexit shambles.

Well, it’s high time the politicians who led us down the garden path on Brexit owned up to their mistakes. Their claims were false, their facts were wrong and many of their predictions were wildly inaccurate. People are weary of the ‘£350m a week for the NHS on the side of the bus’ example, but it encapsulates all the naïve, jingoistic and unresearched claims made by the Brexiteers. Liam Brexit said that achieving the Brexit deal would be “the easiest thing in human history.” Oh really?

Little concessions to the truth are coming out here and there: for example, last week Michael Gove admitted the ‘grim, inescapable’ reality facing farmers under a no-deal Brexit. But with the Department of Health ordering fridges to stockpile medicines at great expense, and the Department of Transport signing a contract with Seaborne (a sea freight company with no ships) to take goods in and out of ports other than Dover to relieve lorry congestion, it is clear that any so-called ‘Brexit dividend’ is fast disappearing.

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Michael Meadowcroft

Obituary: Peter Boizot MBE (1929-2018)

By Michael Meadowcroft | Fri 4th January 2019 - 11:55 am
Peter Boizot had four great passions: pizza, jazz, Peterborough and Liberalism! With all four he was liberal in his support, both with finance and in enthusiasm. He had great entrepreneurial acumen so that his delightfully naive belief that what he was enthusiastic about would also create paying customers often proved to be the case, making him a very rich man. He was not at all embarrassed by being rich as he simply regarded wealth as a means of supporting his passions and financing new ideas.
 
His innate liberalism also showed in ways that others would regard as eccentric. When businesses started up in other parts of the country or abroad copying the Pizza Express style and menu, rather than suing them he regarded it as a tribute to his success and as an encouragement for their customers also to patronise his restaurants. Having introduced a string quartet in Pizza Express on one evening a week, his accountant produced figures to show that the extra cost meant they were losing money, Peter ignored the evidence on the grounds that music and food went well together and that it would encourage repeat visits. Also, rather than give cash to beggars encountered on his way through Soho to his restaurant, he would offer them employment.
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Caron Lindsay

MP slams Government for failure to improve health services for trans people

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 4th January 2019 - 10:25 am

Maria Miller, the Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, has slammed the Government for failing to improve health services for transgender people. And there’s a particular Liberal Democrat dimension to this as senior Liberal Democrats actually helped to collect the evidence on this in the first place.

Ms Miller said yesterday that basic healthcare taken for granted by the general public is “out of reach” for trans people.

From The Independent:

The committee is due to publish a new report on the care of LGBT+ people in the coming weeks but Ms Miller has already warned services are “going backwards quickly” – with trans people among the worst affected.

“Many trans people simply don’t have access to the basic healthcare that the rest of us take for granted – things like cervical smears are often things that trans men are not able to access,” Ms Miller told the Press Association.Theresa May did commit to reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to remove intrusive red tape for those legally changing gender, and launched a £1m LGBT+ health and social care fund in November.

However, Ms Miller said the focus on legal reforms has “eclipsed” efforts to improve trans people’s experiences.

“As a result there has been a debate focusing in on things that really are not as important as making sure that trans people have access to public services, and the debate has been focused in on issues that are much less important to trans people’s lives,” she said.


And that Liberal Democrat dimension? Well, almost three years ago, Ms Miller’s Committee published a report  on transgender equality. A fair bit of the evidence for the health section of that report was gathered thanks to our Sarah Brown and Zoe O’Connell, who asked for it using #transdocfail on Twitter. Zoe wrote about it on her blog in 2013:

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Wanted: Brave British politician

By Tom Arms | Fri 4th January 2019 - 8:55 am

Wanted: Brave British politician

Experience: Must be a dyed-in-the-wool Brexiteer, preferably a senior member of Theresa May’s cabinet.

Duties: The person chosen for this demanding and vital role must be willing and able to swallow their pride, admit their error and put the interests of their country before self and party. They must be able to withstand abuse from former colleagues and friends;  even death threats from the public.

They must tell the British public in clear, concise and indisputable language that they were wrong. They must make it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that leaving the European Union was a misguided dream that is turning into a nightmare.  They must say that the Brexit negotiated by Theresa May will reduce the former greatest empire in world history to the status of European colony. Furthermore, that the only alternative being discussed by the British government—a No Deal Brexit—would seriously weaken Britain’s economic and political position in the world as well as threatening the livelihood and standard of living of every inhabitant of the British Isles.

The person eventually chosen for this position must be highly persuasive.  They must be able to convince voters who previously believed them that Britain would be better off outside the European Union that in fact—after more than two years of negotiations—it is painfully obvious that they would have been wiser to vote Remain in 2016.

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Mark Argent

Looking beyond Brexit

By Mark Argent | Thu 3rd January 2019 - 5:45 pm

The sense of things going horribly wrong is likely to get much worse as 2019 gets under way and #BrexitShambles becomes #BrexitFarce.

In the probable chaos of the coming months the country needs us to articulate our hope for the future.

Putting some flesh on those bones, in no particular order:

  • Improve Benefits. Universal Credit could have been a good idea, but under-funding has hit it hard and people are suffering. Improving the funding is a good place to start. We also need to go further. It is a scandal to have people needing to use food banks or losing the roof over their head because of the way the system works. I’ve spoken with people struggling to live on benefits, who voted Leave in the desperate hope that things would improve.
  • Wealth inequality. Back in the autumn, Vince Cable put forward a raft of tax reforms to make the system fairer, especially around inheritance and investment income and pensions. Univeral Basic Income has been on the edge of discussions for a long time. It is time to take it seriously — it can’t be done overnight, but it is time to start the conversation as a way to pick up where we are, and fears around the way in which technology is reshaping the world.
  • Brexit has pushed climate change from the top of the agenda. People have every reason to be worried. That means is that it is high time to turn that worry into action — around renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, zero carbon housing, improved public transport, and more.
  • The Blair government had some good ideas on devolution, with elected regional assemblies and pulling government offices and development to the same boundaries. The imbalances around devolution to Wales, Northern Ireland and particularly to Scotland would look very different if there was meaningful devolution in England.
  • It’s time to talk openly about federalism. Too often it’s a dirty word in British (or at least, English) politics. It’s time to dispatch the myth that it is about centralising power and put the case for doing centrally only what needs to be done there and pushing decisions as close as possible to the people they affect. That applies as much to devolving power from Westminster as it does devolving it from Brussels.
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Caron Lindsay

Liz Jarvis explains why she joined Lib Dems from Labour

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 3rd January 2019 - 4:19 pm

I’ve been talking to Liz Jarvis, who joined the Lib Dems from Labour in the Summer a bit on Twitter. Remarkably, out of 700,000 people, we found each other to have a brief conversation at the People’s Vote march in October. She’s written for the Independent Voices website about why she joined us.

She was pretty involved in the Labour Party as a student and voted Labour throughout her adult life. When the Liberal Democrats went into coalition with the Tories, any positive feelings she had towards our party evaporated and she continued to vote Labour. But along came Jeremy Corbyn:

I might have remained “soft” Labour but for the perfect storm of Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit. The latter is quite simply anathema to me, not just because I’m the granddaughter of immigrants, but because I believe so strongly in freedom of movement, and that the evidence backs up the overwhelming truth that we are better off in the EU than we can possibly be out of it.

The Momentum-propelled adulation of Jeremy Corbyn left me cold. I was also increasingly uneasy about the accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, and for the first time in my voting life I started to feel politically homeless.

Last summer I explained how I was feeling to a friend who had joined the Lib Dems, and he asked me why I was still supporting Labour. After a heated debate, the conclusion was tribalism. I had been clinging on to my political heritage and the promise of what might have been, had Blair not led Britain to war in Iraq, had Corbyn not become leader, had David Miliband stuck around or Ed not eaten that bacon sandwich.

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Why be a Liberal Democrat and an ‘Orange Booker’?

By A Liberal Reform Board Member | Thu 3rd January 2019 - 10:00 am

A recent post in the ‘Why be a Liberal Democrat?’ Christmas competition on LDV had me nodding along in agreement for the first few paragraphs (yes, Labour are hopeless, and despite this our party is in a perilous position), but the nodding stopped at the abrupt veer into advocating for getting rid of ‘Orange Bookers’ in the party.

As a board member of Liberal Reform, which (fairly enough) is regarded as the pressure group for Orange Book fans, I’ve never really understood why some party members are so bothered by us. Though Liberal Reform members tend to be quite supportive of building more homes to lower living costs (and therefore sceptical of anti-development activism), see international trade as something to be encouraged, and take a dim view of attempting to regulate lifestyles (e.g. clamping down on vaping), these views are hardly anathema to liberalism. Nor do they constitute an excessively libertarian take on the role of government. You’ll find our board members advocating for restoring legal aid funding, as well as more ‘traditional’ Liberal Reform topics like taking a more permissive approach to drug policy and using competition to lower prices.

While the author of the post was happy to say he ‘respected’ Orange Bookers, the lurid claim that the book’s contributing authors (Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Susan Kramer, and Ed Davey among others) pursued market-friendly ideas to advance their own careers was an unfortunate slight on many of our current and former parliamentarians. I have no doubt that the Coalition damaged our electoral popularity, but can’t see how the electoral math in 2010 allowed for anything other than entering government with the Conservatives, with many of the policy compromises that came with this.

What matters now is how we position ourselves going forward. Wholesale disowning of our only time in government since WW2 is unlikely to bear fruit, so that leaves promoting what we got right (e.g. the pupil premium, lifting the lowest paid out of tax, and reducing carbon emissions), and crafting new policies on matters like legal aid access and immigration policy where we gave the Tories far too much say over.

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Kirsten Johnson

Paddy’s Dangerous Idea No. 2

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 3rd January 2019 - 8:14 am

Following on from my post last week on Paddy’s Dangerous Idea No. 1, I am delving into his second proposal. Paddy argued:

We have long understood that property owning rights are one of the foundation stones of democracy. Yet each of us gives away our most intimate of property free and daily to the most powerful corporations, who make millions and millions from it. I am talking of course, about our personal data.

Why do we Lib Dems not assert the citizens right to own their own data and to have control over how it is used? Why about proposing a law – perhaps a European one – which says to Messrs Amazon, Google, Starbucks etc, that they can use our personal data for their commercial purposes, but only with our permission and if they give us a share of the profits. Can you think of anything which would more alter the relationship between these masters of the commercial universe and the customers whose information they exploit for such enormous profit? Can you think of anything which would more empower the citizen in the market place? Isn’t that what we Lib Dems are supposed to be about? So?

I really like this idea. Ownership of our own data gives us not only control over who does what with our data but means we can expect to be paid if others use our data, especially if they make money from it. It might seem radical, but it makes a lot of sense.

The arguments over whether we own our bodies and separated bodily material have been extensively debated. If we do own our bodies, shouldn’t our data also be owned by us – isn’t our data inherently who we are?

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Merlene Emerson

We Demand Better for Race Equality

By Merlene Emerson | Wed 2nd January 2019 - 3:46 pm

Last week, the Resolution Foundation found that UK black and ethnic minorities (BAME) lost an estimated £3.2bn a year in pay gap and called for equivalent gender pay gap reporting for BAME workers. There was another report from the Centre for Justice Innovation on how community sentencing has decreased due to the loss of trust between the judges and magistrates and the probation service since the latter was privatised.

It seems like there is report each week of evidence of race discrimination or breakdown of trust between the UK establishment and the ethnic minority communities. …

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David Warren

Coalition blues

By David Warren | Wed 2nd January 2019 - 10:35 am

Back in 2010 after a General Election that left our party with the balance of power in a hung parliament the Liberal Democrats went into coalition with the Conservatives.

Every section of the party overwhelmingly supported this move and after decades out in the cold Liberals were finally back in government.

The circumstances weren’t ideal given the dire economic situation, and for a party that faced the Tories as the main opposition in many areas, it was sure to be difficult electorally over the coming five years.

That said options were limited, Labour were the clear losers, and the parliamentary arithmetic made a deal with them impossible.

A coalition or confidence and supply arrangement with David Cameron’s Conservatives were the only realistic choices.

Liberal Democrats joined the cabinet, became ministers, and an agreement was concluded on legislative priorities.

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Tahir Maher

CCTV – What of Liberty

By Tahir Maher | Wed 2nd January 2019 - 7:30 am

The UK has approximately 1 per cent of the world population and well over 10 per cent of the world’s CCTV cameras. London alone has around 422,000 CCTV cameras, and it is estimated that on an average day an individual, in London, will be captured on a camera at least 30 times. Third in line with the most CCTV cameras is Chicago, with at least 17,000. However, according to a recent report in the Chinese state media, People’s Daily, the city of Beijing now has a CCTV network that covers ‘every corner’ of the city. The total number of cameras is around 470,000. Without any obvious trace of irony, the system’s official name is ‘Sky Net’.

In George Orwell’s novel, 1984 one of the things that the protagonist Winston Smith hated was the surveillance by cameras and how the Thought Police could remotely talk to you. Someone mentioned to me that as he was coming out of Reading Station, about a year ago, someone dropped an empty packet of crisp on the floor, only to be told via a speaker to pick up the litter he discarded that had been spotted by CCTV.

We now learn that Christmas shoppers have had their faces scanned in central London as part of a police trial. The Metropolitan Police says it invited people to take part in testing the technology rather than scanning people covertly. Privacy campaigner Big Brother Watch has described the use of such technology as “authoritarian, dangerous and lawless”.  In a statement, the group said that “monitoring innocent people in public is a breach of fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of speech and assembly”. Investigations by them also revealed that the system at the moment is not fully functioning as it identified a large number of innocent people as potential suspects.

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Caron Lindsay

Happy New Year, everybody!

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 1st January 2019 - 12:00 am

Happy New Year, everyone! Enjoy the Sydney fireworks which I’m posting because my friend Tom is out there at the moment and he sent me a photo of himself a while ago with the bridge in the background.

Eat, drink and have general fun in whichever way you like today because tomorrow (or Wednesday in Scotland since we have a much-needed extra bank holiday) we get on with stopping this Brexit nonsense.

Let’s hope that we can still say that we are citizens of the European Union at the end of this year.

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Caron Lindsay

Highlights of 2018

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 31st December 2018 - 8:15 pm

As you are inclined to do on Hogmanay, I was looking back at the year. 2018 was far from a great year but there were some fantastic moments. Here, in no particular order, are six of mine.

Gabriel in the Commons

 

One of my favourite moments was seeing young Gabriel Hames in the chamber of the House of Commons. Earlier, his mum, Jo Swinson, had taken part in the debate on proxy voting. A few weeks’ earlier, Tory Chairman Brandon Lewis reneged on a pairing arrangement with her on a key Brexit vote that the Government won by a handful of votes.

Jo’s speech was very candid about the realities of working with a young baby:

She also spoke about some of the appalling comments she got on Twitter after that, including the criticism that she had gone to the Trump demo for 45 minutes but couldn’t manage to vote in Parliament, something which would have meant hanging around for 5 hours.

Jo talked about the intricacies of establishing breastfeeding and how you need to concentrate on it during the early days. Her voice cracked with emotion as she talked about the difficulties she had establishing breastfeeding with her first son. I actually cried too as I remembered what it was like to be syringing expressed milk into my baby, 19 years on. She got there, though, with all the support that she needed.

She was also open about the realities of expressing milk several times a day. I think it’s fantastic that she posted a picture of her breast pump on Instagram the other day.

She talked about the need to have proper breastfeeding and expressing facilities for all nursing babies who work on the Parliamentary estate, recognising it was easier for her as she had her own office and control over her diary.

The People’s Vote March

It doesn’t get much better than being amongst 700,000 like minds on a beautiful hot Autumn day. As someone said at the time, marches like this are rarely on the wrong side of history.

It was an amazing atmosphere. Not far off three quarters of a million people peacefully and with great humour, coming together to make their point.

And there’s young Gabriel again.

Radical Kindness

Another highlight was the fringe meeting we held at Conference, trying to inject some kindness and warmth into a horrible atmosphere which developed in the media surrounding  rights of transgender people.

Barely a week goes by without some ill-informed attack on trans people or the charities supporting them. However, in an hour in Brighton, Emma Ritch from the Scottish feminist organisation Engender and James Morton from the Scottish Transgender Alliance talked about how the atmosphere was so much better in Scotland and how feminist and LGBT organisations worked together in an inclusive way. The meeting loved the concept of “radical kindness” which underpinned their dialogue. You can read all about the meeting here. 

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Caron Lindsay

2018 – a year of missed opportunity for the country and the Liberal Democrats

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 31st December 2018 - 6:30 pm

This year was the year when hugely dramatic things should have happened. Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition should have gone. A referendum on the reality of Brexit, with an option to remain, should have been scheduled for early in the New Year and we should be celebrating a new feeling of hope and optimism as our politics changes for the better and starts delivering for the people who are really struggling and who have been let down by successive governments for decades.

Instead this was the year that media and the internet got very excited about Impending Drama, but that drama rarely delivered. Theresa May was supposed to be deposed in every season but she survived the post Chequers and post deal resignations. The greatest irony of the year has to be Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab resigning in protest at a deal he helped to negotiate.

The Liberal Democrats have had some electoral success with decent local election results and a net gain of 18 seats, more than any other party in by-elections. We’ve seen modest increases in our national polling and our leader is often the least unpopular. We would have hoped that as everyone came round to our way of thinking on Brexit, we might have reaped more of a dividend, but there hasn’t really been a national election to test that yet.

We should be doing better, though. We have diverted too much time and energy into developing a supporters’ scheme that we haven’t been able to capitalise on the thing that will get us the supporters and members in the first place – a strong message. We’ve done some good stuff on that with the new Demand Better strapline but we need to take it further. Our campaigns staff have excelled themselves with the Exit from Brexit campaign, too, but our overall story needs a lot more heart and soul in it. Paddy is so much in my thoughts at the moment, and I’m reminded of his very direct “Join us if you want to put an end to poverty and inequality” pitch. That is what we need.

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Lord William Wallace

Tribalism and party splits

By Lord William Wallace | Mon 31st December 2018 - 2:32 pm

Extraordinary circumstances force us to address hard questions. And the situation in British politics at the beginning of 2019 is the most extraordinary I can recall since I joined the Liberal Party 59 years ago. Both major parties are bitterly divided, with some long-term members talking almost openly of leaving for some other group. Neither of their leaders commands popular respect. Normal government has almost ground to a standstill, with ministers and officials overwhelmed by the uncertainties of Brexit. Either or both Labour and the Tories may find MPs, Councillors and activists splitting away.

Which raises, for …

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James Cox

Offer amnesty to end hostile environment

By James Cox | Mon 31st December 2018 - 12:04 pm

The Conservatives finally published their immigration white paper before the Christmas break, setting out their vision of how immigration policy would work after Brexit. 

The Lib Dem response was robust and clear, setting out redlines on scrapping the net migration target, limiting immigration detention and lifting the working ban on asylum seekers to name a few. But our approach to the estimated one million population of illegal migrations living and working in the UK seemed to be lacking a strong, decent and Liberal solution.

Windrush, after Brexit, was the biggest story of

…
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ALDC

ALDC’s New Year resolution – a year of MORE

By ALDC | Mon 31st December 2018 - 10:05 am

At ALDC we’re determined that 2019 is a Year of More:

  • More Liberal Democrat campaigning
  • More Liberal Democrat candidates
  • More Liberal Democrat councillors
  • More Liberal Democrat-run councils

We can only do that with your help. Here are six ideas for your new year’s resolutions:

1. Stand yourself, or recruit a candidate – In 2015 (when the same seats were up) we only stood a Lib Dem candidate in about 40% of vacancies. If we’re going to increase the number of Lib Dems on ballot papers, we need more of our members to stand. There’s help, support and advice in place to guide you through the process on our website.

2. Go and help – If you’re in a target ward for 2019 you’re no doubt already working hard. If you don’t live in a target ward, or don’t have elections in 2019, help a team that does. Go in person, help on the phone, donate your skills or make a donation. We can put you in touch with people who can benefit from your help.

3. Join ALDC  – If you’re serious about winning in May 2019, then our candidates, agents and our core campaign team members all need to join ALDC. They’ll get access to our advice, resources and training to help you win. ALDC members who successfully recommend someone to join us receive a £50 print voucher to spend on campaign materials! 

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Mark Valladares

Vince Cable’s New Year Message

By Mark Valladares | Mon 31st December 2018 - 8:23 am

Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable will use his New Year’s message to highlight the urgency to win a people’s vote on Brexit with people having the right to choose to remain in the European Union, something the Liberal Democrats have argued for since the summer of 2016.

He also highlights the need to address issues that the government has neglected due to the focus on Brexit including properly funding health and care services, increasing resource for schools and police services, tackling homelessness and the lack of affordable housing, and harnessing the power and opportunities of new technology.

You can view …

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Mark Valladares

21-30 December 2018 – press release catch-up

By Mark Valladares | Sun 30th December 2018 - 10:30 pm

You’d been wondering where I’d gotten to, hadn’t you? Well, following some consideration of how this regular feature works, I’ve decided to change it a bit. From now on, I’ll publish on Monday to Thursday inclusive, and on Sunday evening. My thinking is that politics goes a bit quiet when Parliament isn’t sitting, and one can develop a false expectation as to the flow of press releases from that.

And now, a catch up of press releases you’ve probably missed…

  • Lib Dem call to scrap Vagrancy Act gets Labour backing
  • Cable: Corbyn offers no real alternative
  • Govt must take no deal off the table

…

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The Voice

WATCH: Lib Dem Campaign for Racial Equality Chair Roderick Lynch review 2018 and set out plans for next year

By The Voice | Sun 30th December 2018 - 11:00 am

The new Lib Dem Campaign for Racial Equality has hit the ground running these past few months.

In this video, their chair, Roderick Lynch, outlines all they have achieved from Conference motions to Black History Month and looks forward to the issues they will be campaigning on in 2019.

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Caron Lindsay

How dare we treat our friends and neighbours like this?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 30th December 2018 - 8:55 am

If you go to the shop and buy an iron, say, you expect it to work and for any manufacturer’s claims or guarantees to stand. You are entering into a contract that can’t be mucked around with. I should emphasise at this point that I would never buy an iron. The quality of my life improved immeasurably when I gave up ironing. But that’s beside the point.

You wouldn’t stand for the manufacturer contacting you a few weeks’ later telling you that you had to pay another £20 for the iron, or reducing the guarantee period.

Yet this is exactly what our government is doing to many people in this country.

Every time I see that Home Office tweet telling the 3 million EU citizens in this country that they will have to apply for settled status, I get angrier.

I am furious that my friends, my next door neighbours, the surgeons who saved my husband’s life two years ago, the nurses who looked after him and comforted him through a terrifying experience, my colleague and so many of my friends’ spouses or children are being put through this.

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Caron Lindsay

Why is everyone going to Peterborough?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 29th December 2018 - 10:55 am

There’s a lot of Lib Dems heading for Peterborough at the moment.

Mark Pack went there yesterday and I’ll overlook that he described himself as the Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice in his video about his trip. I’m not precious. Really.

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Caron Lindsay

Harborough Lib Dem Zuffar Haq and Dorchester’s Molly Rennie get MBE in New Years Honours

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 29th December 2018 - 8:42 am

Leicestershire Liberal Democrat candidate and health campaigner Zuffar Haq has been awarded an MBE in this year’s New Year’s Honours.

From Leicestershire Live:

“Another recipient of the MBE was Zuffar Haq, who was awarded for public and political service

Zuffar, of Oadby, is well-known as a campaigner who helped save the children’s heart unit at Glenfield Hospital. He has also stood for election for the Liberal Democrats in Parliamentary elections and runs a medical aid charity.

He said: “I am honoured, and humbled, to receive this award.

“Born and brought up in

…
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NewsHound

LibLink: Olly Grender Paddy Ashdown leaves behind a legacy of profound decency and kindness

By NewsHound | Fri 28th December 2018 - 1:00 pm

Olly Grender, who for so long was one of Paddy Ashdown’s closest colleagues, has written a lovely tribute to him in the New Statesman.

She highlights how he was willing to say things that weren’t popular but showed his commitment to liberal and humanitarian values:

“As Liberal Democrat leader (from 1988-1999) he “banged on about Bosnia” every week in parliament, to the groans of most MPs, but he was vindicated: a humanitarian atrocity was happening on Europe’s doorstep. He fought for the Hong Kong Chinese to obtain British citizenship, a deeply unpopular position

…
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    I agree with much of what Richard Cripps says - and I've been a member for 54 years. If I wasn't already a member I'm not sure that what the party has become w...
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    Thanks for this. Kindness - to people, businesses, whole communities, our environment and to nature, to our past, present and future - requires us also to be br...
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