William Powell

Lady Shirley Hooson: An obituary

By William Powell | Fri 11th May 2018 - 11:55 am

Credit: Powys County Times

Montgomeryshire and the Welsh Liberal tradition will not see her like again

‘The end of an era’ is without doubt an over-used phrase when assessing much loved and respected figures who have died, but when Jane Dodds and I took our places in the China Street Welsh Presbyterian Chapel last Saturday, 5th May to celebrate the life of Shirley Hoosen (nee Hamer), that is precisely what we were witnessing.

Lady Shirley Hooson was the widow of the late Liberal MP for Montgomeryshire, Lord Emlyn Hooson, who served the county for 17 years between 1962 and 1979.

She dedicated most of her adult life to the service of her native Llanidloes, serving as a member of the Llanidloes Town Council for more than four decades, from 1974 to 2017, including a term as mayor. She stood down from the council just a few weeks after her 90th birthday, becoming an Honorary Alderman of the town, in recognition of her long and loyal service in June 2017.

Lady Shirley was also a longstanding member of Montgomeryshire District Council for Llanidloes from its inception in 1973 until its absorption into the Powys Unitary Authority in 1996, serving as Vice Chair of the Council. The demise of Montgomeryshire District Council was a matter of bitter regret to her, only surpassed by the threat of abolishing the historic parliamentary seat of Montgomeryshire, currently being promoted by the Boundary Commission.

Glyn Davies, Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire since 2010, was amongst those to pay tribute to Lady Hooson:

Lady Hooson and her great late husband, Emlyn, were wonderful people who gave much of their lives to Llanidloes and Montgomeryshire…She was a key support to him throughout his hugely successful political career. Over the last three years, after she had lost the ability to speak, I valued meeting her more than ever. We simply did not need words to communicate. Llanidloes and Montgomeryshire has lost one of its greatest ever champions.

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Caron Lindsay

A mistake from the Coalition years that we must never repeat

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 11th May 2018 - 10:25 am

I still think that we did the right thing to go into Government. We did a lot of good on mental health, the environment and education and we stopped the Tories from doing a whole load of nasty stuff that they proceeded to do the minute we were out the door.

However, we made some howlers of mistakes. It would be very strange if we didn’t. Some of them were completely avoidable. And one in particular, I can’t just let pass.

Recently, Polly Mackenzie, then a Special Adviser to Nick Clegg, was celebrating the Lib Dem plastic bag tax.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Iranian ripples

By Tom Arms | Fri 11th May 2018 - 8:55 am

Donald Trump has dropped a massive boulder in the world’s diplomatic pond. Its ripples will be felt in every corner of the globe and in some cases the ripples could quickly grow  to tsunami proportions.

Let’s start with the epicentre– the Middle East. The region is already peppered with smouldering short fuses: The Arab-Israeli conflict; Syrian civil war; Yemeni civil war; Turks v. Kurd; Qataris v Saudis and Emirates; Saudis v. Iran; The Russian presence; threatened American withdrawal; Hezbollah… .

The Iran Nuclear Accord (aka Joint Consultative Plan of Action) was one of the region’s few diplomatic success stories—albeit a limited one.

Since President Trump announced American withdrawal from the Accord, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini has announced that his country will resume work on building a nuclear weapon.

In return, Israel has bombed an Iranian base outside Damascus; announced the preparation of bomb shelters; called up reservists for air defence, intelligence and home front command units and deployed missile defence batteries in Northern Israel.

Iran’s Army Chief of Staff, Major General Mohamed Bagheri, warned: “If the enemy casts a covetous eye on our interests or conducts even a slight act of aggression, the Islamic Republic will give an appropriate response at an appropriate time.”

Back in Washington they are celebrating. Not the problems in the Middle East, but the release of three American citizens from North Korean prison.  President Trump hailed the release as a diplomatic triumph for his administration and the best of auguries for his forthcoming summit with Pyongyang’s Kim Jong-un.

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Caron Lindsay

Fancy being in charge of the party’s finances?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 10th May 2018 - 5:17 pm

Peter Dunphy, the Chair of the Party’s Federal Finance and Resources Committee, is stepping down after four and a half years in the role.

He’s been an incredibly wise pair of hands, steering the party through some pretty torrid times. The change from being a party of Government with nearly sixty MPs to a party with just eight required careful handling. We’ll miss him in the role. On stepping down, he said:

In case some of you don’t already know I will be standing down as Chair of FFRC and therefore Registered Party Treasurer on 1st July.

I originally notified Party Officers including

…

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Caron Lindsay

Tim Farron withdraws from event after seeing promotional material which attacks the “gay lobby” and talks about problems with Islam and immigration

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 10th May 2018 - 3:45 pm

Tim Farron has withdrawn from an event he was speaking at on Saturday after someone posted promotional material for it on Twitter.

The blurb for the “Men Standing Alone” event to be held in Manchester says as follows:

The leadership from those in authority in the denominations who should be the guardians of biblical truth has been muted to say the least and even in Bible teaching churches many appear to be wavering under the onslaught of the gay lobby. Add to this scenario the increasing problems associated with immigration, and Islam in particular and indeed many other things which push Christians further and further to the margins, there is for many a feeling of despair and even fear about standing up and speaking out.

In a tweet, Tim said that he had only just been made aware of this aspect of the event:

Tim has form for not doing due diligence on stuff. In 2012, he apologised for signing a letter to the Advertising Standards Association criticising them for banning ads which talked about the healing power of prayer. He wrote an article for this site at this time explaining his position.

I completely understand why some of you are concerned. It’s not a well-worded letter – the reference to the ASA providing indisputable evidence is silly, and the implication that people should seek faith healing at the expense of medical intervention is something that I just don’t believe in. For what it’s worth, I also think that the Fabrice Muamba reference is crass. So on all those fronts, I should just say sorry and not bother defending myself. I shouldn’t have signed that letter as it was written, so I apologise for putting some of you in quite a difficult position.

It is to be hoped that in the future he will be very carefully scrutinising such invitations. Thankfully Twitter has saved him from turning up at an event which is so obviously in conflict with liberal values. That would have been personally embarrassing from him and damaging for the party.

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Paul Hindley

A 21st-Century Liberal Approach to Education

By Paul Hindley | Thu 10th May 2018 - 2:39 pm

Education has always been of special importance for liberals and Liberal Democrats throughout the ages. It has been one of the best vehicles for enabling individuals to obtain their full potential, develop their talents and make the most of the opportunities that they are presented with. It is with this in mind that Helen Flynn and John Howson’s chapter is so warmly received in the latest publication from the Social Liberal Forum, ‘Four Go In Search of Big Ideas’.

Flynn and Howson rightly place great emphasis on the need to improve early years education. They call for a highly funded early years sector that is equipped with the staff necessary to develop the learning of schoolchildren and identify any potential barriers that they may face in future learning. These teachers would need to be well educated and properly trained. The authors identify that educational inequalities emerge even before children start their formal education at the age of five. The socio-economic inequalities faced by children from the poorest backgrounds need to be tackled with extra funding from the very beginning.

Flynn and Howson propose a professional College of Teaching that would be a watchdog for professional standards in education in a similar way that the British Medical Association is in regard to the NHS. This is very much needed if the public is to continue to have faith in the professionalism and high standards of the UK’s education sector. In a similar vein, Flynn and Howson also suggest having Chief Education Officer in government who would help to guarantee best practice and develop evidence-based policy.

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Kirsten Johnson

The Learning Disabilities Mortality Review Annual Report

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 10th May 2018 - 12:22 pm

The Learning Disabilities Mortality Review Annual Report was published recently by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership. In it are harrowing statistics of people with learning disabilities dying far too young.

The report highlights the extraordinarily high incidences of preventable death. The Connor Sparrowhawk case has brought this to public attention recently: a young man with learning difficulties left in a bath unattended, he drowned whilst having an epileptic fit.

Between July 2016 and November 2017, 1311 deaths were put forward for review, often by a Learning Disability Nurse. Of those, 27% …

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Chris Lee

Radical Ideas for the Future

By Chris Lee | Thu 10th May 2018 - 10:17 am

At the moment, virtually all of our policies – save for our stance on the EU – amount to tinkering at the edges of a flawed, if not broken, political system. This is a result of the fact that there is generally a fair amount of consensus within mainstream politics on a number of key issues.

All parties agree that we need to build more housing, that we need more funding of schools, the NHS and the police, and that we need to protect the environment. The major policy debates at the moment concern immigration, nationalisation of public infrastructure, the EU, education and public sector borrowing – most of which are couched in simple binary yes/no terms, depending on whether you support Labour or the Tories.

Rather than trying to join in the political consensus or meet Labour and the Tories halfway (e.g. see our current policy on housing), I genuinely believe that we have an opportunity to pursue an alternative set of policies that will mark us out as distinct.

Along with electoral reform and being pro-European, six policy ideas from various places within the liberal political tradition, come to mind:

1. A national housebuilding company

A national construction company set up to build houses, with the government taking a majority stake and offering financial guarantees. Instead of just pledging a high-sounding number of homes to be built each year and leaving it to the private sector, a government-backed company would have the opportunity to take responsibility for recruiting and training construction workers (with a focus on British workers), building homes and maintaining homes – with profits going back to the Treasury.

Combined with relaxing the rules preventing local authorities from borrowing to fund social housing, a national housebuilding company would be an exciting yet pragmatic way of building homes while balancing the risk and reward of construction projects.

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Kirsten Johnson

Children’s mental health – the Government is not getting it right

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 10th May 2018 - 8:00 am

I’m following up my post from February on children’s mental health and the Government’s Green Paper on the issue.  Yesterday, the Education Committee and Health & Social Care Committee issued a joint statement saying that

The Government’s proposed Green Paper on Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health lacks ambition and will provide no help to the majority of those children who desperately need it.

Having three teenage girls, this rams home. The girls tell me of the myriad of mental health issues going on around them – peers self-harming; experiencing psychosis; anorexia; depression; anxiety; the list goes on. This is their world, it is our world, and we are failing our young people.

The Government is rolling out Trailblazer pilot schemes, but it is too little and not being done quickly enough. Hundreds of thousands of children are missing out on the help they need now. I recently spoke with someone who works in CAMHS and she lamented the lack of provision locally for the girls she was working with. Staff know the pressures, parents are living with the pressures, young people are suffering needlessly.

The need for more resource in schools to support young people was highlighted, with the report saying existing CAMHS staff could not do any more than they are already doing. People are stretched to capacity.

Participants in the workshops highlighted exam pressure as being a major cause of mental ill-health. The report suggests the Government needs to commission a study on the effect of our exam-based system on mental health.

Young people excluded from school are far more prone to mental ill-health, but the Green Paper does not address this issue. How can we better meet the needs of these young people?

A major worry for many parents is the transition from children’s to adult mental health services. It is not happening. Young people are falling through the gaps and not receiving the services they need as they enter adulthood. Currently, young people transition at 18, but the report suggests that 25 would be a more appropriate age. What is scary is that seemingly a third of young people drop out of mental health care when they turn 18 and don’t make the transfer to adult services.

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Better for Business, Better for Britain

By Collingwood | Wed 9th May 2018 - 9:00 pm

According to this ONS report, net investment in the UK is much weaker in comparison to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations. When we look at non-government expenditure on net investment, the UK is ranked as the lowest of any OECD nation.

Obviously, this is bad news. We keep hearing about the productivity puzzle and how we can solve it. If we can solve this issue of low investment, we can make some progress in achieving the productivity growth that the OBR forecast at the Spring Statement 2018.

Solving the productivity crisis will lead to higher wages and a growing economy. Both of these will help answer other questions such as how can we get more people onto the housing ladder?

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Tahir Maher

Playing Games While Telling

By Tahir Maher | Wed 9th May 2018 - 2:00 pm

I find telling at a polling station quite fun. The fun is trying to determine how residents are going to vote or how they have voted. In Wokingham, we targeted two Borough wards (which we won): both were gains. We are developing two other wards in Earley for next year. My ward is one of the development wards.

There are two polling stations in my ward, and on polling day I spent most of the day knocking people up, but I also spent some time at the polling stations. The polling station in the west of the ward was inside a library (the status of the library was a matter of some concern during the elections). When residents came in to vote I tried to guess who they would vote for:

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Tahir Maher

The Tories are failing vulnerable children

By Tahir Maher | Wed 9th May 2018 - 1:00 pm

Children entering the care system every day is at a record high of 90 young people a day. The increase has been put down to such factors as substance misuse, inadequate housing, poverty and problems in the household. To March 2017 children that were being looked after in England and Wales was over 72,000.

With so many cuts to Children Services, the services are at a breaking point. Funding pressures leading to gaps in services are putting children and families at risk. Figures show that three-quarters of English councils exceeded their budgets, by over £600 million for children’s services last year. Now, increasingly, vulnerable children are being moved away from their hometowns. 

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Tahir Maher

Student Contract with Their Universities

By Tahir Maher | Wed 9th May 2018 - 12:30 pm

For at least some of the courses all but three English higher education institutions will charge tuition fees of £9,250. The average tuition fee at English higher education institutions will increase to £9,110 in 2017-18, up from £8,905 the year before (source: The World university ranking).

A leaked government document in 2016 revealed that our universities were not providing good quality teaching despite the increased fees. The leaked report goes on to say that even the Russel Group universities cannot justify the £9,000 fees for courses. A further disclosure suggests that the target of doubling the number of young people going to university will not be achieved. Open Democracy UK has calculated that the actual cost to teach an undergraduate for a year is about £4,500.

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Caron Lindsay

More defeats for the Government on the Brexit deal – but does it matter?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 9th May 2018 - 10:25 am

Am I the only one not to be too excited about the Lords riding a coach and horses through the EU Withdrawal Bill?

Before I explain why, let’s look at how the Lords have improved this Bill. When I say improve, it is all relative. There are some things you really can’t polish.

The Government defeats have come thick and fast, with Lib Dem lords leading the way.

1 and 2 on 18th April: An amendment in favour of staying in the Customs Union and  another limiting Minister’s powers to water down our rights

3- 5 on 23rd April when they took out the bit that removed the references to the Charter of Fundmental rights and the bites that gave ministers and preserved the rights of citizens to use the principles of EU law to challenge the government

6-7 on 25th April when Lords restricted the so-called Henry VIII powers which gave Ministers the right to do what they pleased without much in the way of referral to Parliament.

8-10 on 30th April  passed two amendments which gave Parliament a meaningful vote on the Brexit deal, allowing Parliament to decide what happens if it rejects the deal. Peers also passed Lord Dubs’ amendment on reuniting refugee families

11 -14 Last night their Lordships decided to keep us in the single market, give greater scrutiny of Brexit proposals to Parliamentary Committees, give Parliament powers against ministers using statutory instruments and remove the date of exit from the EU from the Bill.

So the Bill is now something that Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox have nightmares about. It’s less horrendous than it was, and it would be even more so if the Liberal Democrat amendment calling for a People’s Vote on the Brexit deal had been passed.

But if the Bill comes through the Commons in this form, I’ll be looking to borrow a hat from Paddy Ashdown.

Once the Lords is finished with it, MPs get to vote on whether they accept the Lords amendments or not. The Government may offer concessions which MPs accept, or they may simply strip the amendments out. This is where the natural majority in the Commons for staying in the customs union and the single market could show itself, or it might bide its time, waiting for the Brexit deal vote.

I won’t be holding my breath for MPs to write staying in the single market and customs union into the Bill. However, if I’m wrong, then the Government will either implode in a toxic cloud of frothing brexiteer bile or MPs will be back the next day and the PM will make it an issue of confidence just like John Major did over Maastrict. Actually both of these things could happen. It would be dramatic, that’s for sure. Although a vote of no confidence wouldn’t necessarily mean a general election with the provisions of the Fixed Term Parliament Act, the political environment would be very excitable, the markets would go nuts and rebel Tories might well end up backing down. Alternatively, the Tories could just go into screaming meltdown. If it wasn’t the future of our country at stake, it could be pretty thrilling to watch.

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Martin Roche

Liberal Democrats should oppose making over 65s pay NHI contributions

By Martin Roche | Wed 9th May 2018 - 8:55 am

Yesterday’s media was heavy with the recommendations of the Resolution Foundation’s “Intergenerational Commission”. The Commission, which was set up and chaired by former Tory minister, Lord Willetts, is “backed” by the CBI, TUC and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It’s an important contribution to the debate on many big problems our society faces. At first site, much of it seems sensible to and worthy of deeper reading. But there’s one policy I believe Liberal Democrats should oppose.

The Commission proposes that people of pension age who are still working should continue to pay National Insurance contributions. It argues that the measure would raise around £2 billion a year.

My instinct tells me that the majority of those still working full-time beyond retirement age are doing so out of necessity; mainly the poor and the self-employed. They need the money.

The Willetts’ plan will make the self-employed poorer at a time of life when they find it harder and harder to win business, particularly if physical labour is involved. The less money coming into an already financially weak household the more likely mental and physical illness and other social problems.

I oppose the Willetts plan because I think it wrong, unfair and will cause more harm than good. I think too that Liberal Democrats should oppose it because we should be champions of the self-employed.

We believe in the power of enterprise, business and trade to create wealth, foster stability and harness science and technology to build a better world. We believe that individuals should have the freedom to be self-sufficient and run and manage their lives how they wish, free as much as possible from the dead hand of the state. We believe small businesses are fundamental to our national economic success.

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Tahir Maher

Lords defeat a victory for common-sense

By Tahir Maher | Wed 9th May 2018 - 7:30 am

The Government have received their eleventh defeat in the House of Lords during the Report stage of the EU Withdrawal Bill. The vote on an amendment to ensure our future interaction with EU law and agencies was passed by a cross-bench majority of 298 to 227

Commenting on the victory, Liberal Democrat Leader in the House of Lords, Lord Newby said:
This vote was a victory for common-sense. Of course if the UK wishes to remain in specific agencies, such as Euratom, it should be able to. This allows us to replicate EU law and means that we can continue our role in

…

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The Voice

Layla Moran: Country in need of long term care plan

By The Voice | Wed 9th May 2018 - 6:00 am

Today a Commons report highlights how much the adult social care sector is underfunded.

Layla Moran said that this had to change:

Care workers work tirelessly but instead of getting the support they need they face low pay, falling morale and a high turnover of staff.

The country is in desperate need for a long-term plan to fund the increasing demand for care. That is why the Liberal Democrats propose putting a penny on income tax to raise the transformational investment needed to support care workers and protect the future of care services.

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Caron Lindsay

Sad news: Colin Rosenstiel has died

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 8th May 2018 - 11:21 pm

Many of his old friends and colleagues knew this was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when it actually happens:

I’ve known Colin for almost half my life. He was a stalwart of the original Lib Dem online community, Cix, back in the day – and in fact he was in there as recently as Saturday. I first met him in real life at the Littleborough and Saddleworth by-election in 1995 where he delivered millions of leaflets.

He really was a proper, old school awkward liberal and he showed that off particularly well in the immigration consultation session in Southport in March, which was the last time I saw him. He was an incorrigible transport geek, so it was fitting that his last speech from the conference floor was on the emergency debate on trains.

He was a Councillor in Cambridge for 33 years. His wife Joye represented the same ward for 28 years.

He and I profoundly disagreed about a few things, most notably all women shortlists, but that didn’t stop us having our arguments and then going to the pub, virtual or otherwise,  and talking about something else. Over the years, I learned a lot from him about liberalism, about the importance of local government, about the history of the party. I always felt I never really needed to understand the intricacies of the Single Transferable Vote because there was always Colin. Heaven knows how this party would have conducted its elections without him. He was doing the job right from the start in 1988 and has a full record of all of them here.

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The Voice

Tom Brake: Trump “reckless and short-sighted” on Iran nuclear deal

By The Voice | Tue 8th May 2018 - 7:26 pm

Even Boris Johnson can see the sense in sticking with the Iran nuclear deal.

Unfortunately, his tv diplomacy over the weekend seems to have come to nought as Trump has decided to withdraw the US from it. This news is not going to come as the biggest surprise we’ve ever had but it still makes the world just a bit more unstable.

Tom Brake called the decision short-sighted and reckless, and looks to the EU for leadership, saying:

Trump’s decision to scrap US participation in the Iran nuclear deal is reckless and short-sighted. The deal is far from perfect, but

…

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Joe Otten

A massive shoutout for Thursday’s winners N-Z

By Joe Otten | Tue 8th May 2018 - 12:20 pm

Part 1 here. The dust has settled from last Thursday, and Liberal Democrats have posted 75 net gains on the day. But a mere number hardly does justice to all the teams behind each result. So here are some shoutouts. In alphabetical order. Well done everyone, brilliant work.

Apologies for any errors – this is coming from local council websites, some of which are easier to use than others. If it isn’t clear which seats are gains are I’ve just given a total, but please shoutout in the comments if you know.

North Hertfordshire +3

6 wins with 3 net gains.

Oxford +1

5 wins with 1 net gain.

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Joe Otten

A massive shoutout for Thursday’s winners A-M

By Joe Otten | Tue 8th May 2018 - 10:06 am

The dust has settled from last Thursday, and Liberal Democrats have posted 75 net gains on the day. But a mere number hardly does justice to all the teams behind each result. So here are some shoutouts. In alphabetical order. Well done everyone, brilliant work.

Apologies for any errors – this is coming from local council websites, some of which are easier to use than others. If it isn’t clear which seats are gains are I’ve just given a total, but please shoutout in the comments if you know.

Barnsley +1

The marvellous Hannah Kitching becomes the first Liberal Democrat on Barnsley council for a decade. To win from a standing start to win with a majority of 778 is remarkable. I confess to helping. Hannah also polled a creditable 10.6% in the south yorkshire mayoral election on the same day, beating my 10.05% in the Police Commissioner election of 2016.

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Jane Reed

Embracing Diversity

By Jane Reed | Mon 7th May 2018 - 3:52 pm

In September 2017 I wrote an article for Libdemvoice called Time to Stand and Stare. The basic message of my piece was that it is important to take time for quiet contemplation to ensure the action we do then take is well considered and hopefully therefore more effective.

This approach is well summed up by this quote from the Quaker John Wilhelm Rowntree (1868 – 1905);

In the noisy rush of modern life we need periods of quiet when the soul may feed in peace on that which shall nourish it for action

It was Wilhelm’s inspiration that was behind the founding …

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Chris Bowers

Richmond shows progressive alliances do work

By Chris Bowers | Mon 7th May 2018 - 12:42 pm

Buried amid the dramatic and highly welcome headline of the Liberal Democrat landslide on Richmond-upon-Thames Council was a rather overlooked factor –that, when progressive alliances are done properly and sensitively, they can work and be a great asset to the party.

In 2014 the Conservatives won thirty-nine of Richmond’’s fifty-four councillors. This time we won thirty-nine but, while we picked up the other fifteen councillors four years ago, this time the Tories only got eleven, with the other four going to the Greens. And those four Greens are in part a Liberal Democrat …

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John Marriott

So, where do the Liberal Democrats go from here?

By John Marriott | Mon 7th May 2018 - 8:34 am

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

These famous words, spoken by former Liberal, Winston Churchill, in 1942 after the second victorious Battle of El Alamein, could very well sum up where the Liberal Democrats find themselves after what many would see as a very satisfactory comeback after a few difficult years. But, as they say, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. There is no guarantee that even moderate success at local elections will translate into success in a General Election. Despite the accusation …

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 7 May 2018 – the future’s bright?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 7th May 2018 - 8:00 am

I don’t know about you, but it was nice this week to wake up to a set of election results that didn’t make you think, “Oh no, not again…”. And so, thank you to all of you, whether you won or lost, for doing so much to lift the spirits of Liberal Democrats up and down the country.

Here in the Creetings, we’ve got rogue peacocks, and you’d be amazed just how noisy they can be. Luckily, if all else fails, one of my fellow Parish councillors is a pretty good shot…

And so …

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Joyce Onstad

Post-election reflections on building a Lib Dem core vote

By Joyce Onstad | Sun 6th May 2018 - 10:29 am

This year I decided to carry out an experiment. I had the feeling that our strategy of Targeting had swung too far one way and was over-allocating resources, adding to the haemorrhaging of our Core Vote and leading our supporters, ex supporters and electorate at large to view the LibDems as increasingly becoming irrelevant.  

So I decided to do some work in the non-Target ward in Ealing that I had been allocated without using any human or material party resources. I also did not work with the other “paper candidates” in the Ward as I did not want to detract from their efforts in helping in the Target wards.

This was the result of my limited effort in my Ward Ealing Broadway:

Ealing Broadway Ward
Vote 2014 Vote 2018 Share 2014 Share 2018 Change Pct Change
Dorothy Brooks/Joyce Onstad 524 789 4.72% 6.24% 265 50.57%
Patrick Salaun 442 627 3.99% 4.96% 185 41.86%
Mark Sanders/Toran Shaw 391 572 3.53% 4.52% 181 46.29%
Total LibDem 1357 1988 12.24% 15.72% 631 46.50%
Total Vote 11090 12644
Electorate 10390 10641
Turnout 38.49% 41.30%

And here is the result in Ealing Common Target Ward where much of the Ealing resources were concentrated:

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Caron Lindsay

Former Lib Dem MEP Bill Newton-Dunn is one of our Richmond councillor gains

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 6th May 2018 - 9:12 am

Amongst our many gains in Richmond in the early hours of Friday morning was a very familiar face, pointed out by Michael Mullaney on Twitter:

And here’s the proof:

I was delighted when Bill joined the Liberal Democrats – which always seemed a better fit for his boldly pro European ideals …

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Katharine Pindar

Lib Dems can heal divides with useful answers to people’s problems

By Katharine Pindar | Sat 5th May 2018 - 12:30 pm

Between the two big parties, the Liberal Democrats are significant now, uniquely placed to be able to work for the health and healing of our divided and unhappy nation, having proved our capacity in the local government elections.

In these elections, Labour and the Conservatives reached stalemate again, neither being able to see how these results could foretell sufficient success in the next General Election. Their divisions are deep and their failings clearer than ever, the one tainted by the Windrush scandal, the other by voters’ lack of confidence that they could tackle anti-semitism amongst their members.

The divisions in the country are just as lamentable. Whether it is town versus country in the voting, old versus young, Leavers versus Remainers, British people are head to head in pointless confrontation, 

It is our job to show how the country can come together again. For what everybody wants is for our country to be successful. For our people to thrive, our jobs and businesses to flourish, and our country to continue to occupy a proud place in the world.

Nobody wants our economy to grow at a lesser rate than in the leading countries of the G7, for industry and services to face uncertainty and obstruction, for our place in great international co-operative ventures to be at risk, or for our people to see their standard of living in decline. 

Yet Government is stuck, unable to decide on how a customs arrangement to keep trade flowing freely between Britain and the EU can be made without preventing new deals with the rest of the world and threatening the open Irish border. Opposition is equally stuck in wanting the deal that only remaining in the EU can provide while refusing to oppose Brexit. Both fear the Brexiters as well as each other.

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Posted in News | 41 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Local Elections 2018: Enjoy the success and build on it

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 5th May 2018 - 10:29 am

Here are some pictures of happy, successful Liberal Democrats from all over the country. Enjoy – and then then get out there and build on the good results.

Whether you think of the 2018 as our best local elections showing in 15 years or the second biggest rise in councillor numbers for this set of elections in our history, there are lots of exuberantly joyful moments to savour:

We made 6 gains in Haringey!

Happy hugs in Liverpool

And a happy dance in South Cambridgeshire

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Posted in News | Tagged | 16 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Finally, a little bit of sunshine

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 4th May 2018 - 10:21 pm

Before I say anything else, I just want to send a virtual hug to all those valiant Lib Dem campaigners who put their heart and soul into their wards and didn’t win.   Unlike many others in recent years, though, you can see a glimmer of hope for the future. I hope you can see that you’ll get it next  time. There will be many who like Claire who lost by 2 and Elspeth who lost by 90 ish for whom there is a way in.

Even in my wildest moments of optimism, I didn’t envisage us gaining quite as many seats as we have today.  The results prove that people are ready, not just to talk to us again, but to head down the polling station and vote for us again. Everyone’s talking about us doing well. As I pointed out last night, anything over 43 gains would be our second best result in our entire existence as a party for this particular set of elections. We actually got 75. Now that doesn’t rebuild the 440 we’ve lost since 2010, but it gives us a foothold.

Look at what we’ve done. I’d heard good things about South Cambridgeshire and was pleased when they absolutely smashed it. One of my people of the day is Bridget Smith, the new Council Leader, who has exactly the right attitude for that sort of thing:

There were amazing results in Kingston and Richmond and Three Rivers too. We held off the Tories in Sutton – that caused me a few palpitations about 3am, I’ll tell you. John Leech has a partner to back him up in Manchester. Gains in Hull, Oxfordshire, holding on to South Lakeland, getting back Three Rivers, Peter Taylor winning the Watford mayoralty. Holding on to Eastleigh and Cheltenham.

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Posted in News and Op-eds | Tagged | 12 Comments
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