++Second government defeat – Lords vote for parliamentary veto on final Brexit deal

The BBC reports:

The government has suffered a second Brexit defeat in the House of Lords as peers backed, by 366 votes to 268, calls for a “meaningful” parliamentary vote on the final terms of withdrawal.
Backing the move, former deputy PM Lord Heseltine said Parliament must be the “custodian of national sovereignty”.

Posted in News and Parliament | Tagged and | 53 Comments
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Meet Paul Tyler’s (almost) unused cooker…


Paul (Lord) Tyler shows the nation the oven he has only used once (to warm up a pizza that “was a bit flabby”).

The second episode of “Meet the Lords” aired last night and is available here on BBC iPlayer for the next 29 days. I mentioned, in my review of last week’s opening show, that our own dear Paul (Lord) Tyler was popping up in the programme. Well, this week I am delighted to say that the great Cornish Liberal is featured at some length. The film crew visit him in his little flat and follow him on his daily journey to the Lords.

Posted in Parliament | Tagged and | 1 Comment

Liblink: Greg Mulholland MP on business rates for pubs and restaurants

Greg Mulholland writes in Politics Home on how pubs up and down the country are being unfairly hit by business rate revaluation.

Pubs are, of course, businesses and need to pay their share of tax. Yet when research for the British Beer and Pub Association shows that pubs are paying 2.8% of the entire business rate bill, whilst only generating 0.5% of business turnover, the plain unfairness of the current system towards pubs is laid bare. The revaluation will further this disadvantage, with pubs and restaurants receiving a 15% and 23% increase in rateable value respectively, being the only sector

Posted in LibLink | 2 Comments

Dead parrot squawking

Ed Lucas in the Times has noticed the Liberal Democrat fightback. The whole piece is behind a register-for-two-articles-a-week-wall, but here is a flavour.

Yet look again. The parrot is far from dead. It is squawking back to life, thanks to the Brexit vote, Labour’s meltdown and sellers’ remorse after the general election. Membership has rocketed, to more than 82,000, the highest in 20 years. The party is now out-fundraising Labour. As well as the parliamentary by-election victory in Richmond Park, Lib Dems have been scoring a stunning run of local successes, snatching council seats in such seemingly unpromising places as

Posted in LibLink | 8 Comments

LibLink: David Laws – UK reaches socially acceptable limits of austerity

David Laws has written an article in the Financial Times, but you have to be a subscriber to read it.  We will give you a flavour of the piece here so you can decide whether to subscribe (the trial version is £1 for 4 weeks).

In May 2010, as the chief secretary in the UK’s coalition government, I warned that the choices available to us in Britain’s biggest postwar spending squeeze lay between the unpalatable and the disastrous, and that we were moving from an age of plenty to an age of austerity.

It has not been a bad prediction, by political standards.

At that time, public sector austerity was both necessary and deliverable. Necessary, because our budget deficit was an eye-watering £163bn, in excess of 10 per cent of gross domestic product. Deliverable, because the UK had only just ended an unprecedented expansion of public spending under the Blair and Brown governments.

Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 23 Comments
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The future of the English Party

The English Party has set out its governance review, with the aim of making it accessible to members and easy to engage with, whilst providing least distraction from current campaigning and the fighting of elections and by-elections. We recognise the importance of ensuring the party in England is relevant and accountable to members, has clarity of purpose and operation and is effective and efficient and have worked hard to embrace these ideals in the range of proposals being put to members.

The options for the future of the party in England have been complied by a review group set up in autumn 2016 by the English Council Executive and comprising representatives from all eleven regions. The members of the English Review Group, as we are known, come to the process with a range of professional and party experience, including both long-standing and relatively new members. Within the group, we have differing opinions regarding the future shape of the English Party but have all have worked together to come up with a range of proposals for consultation.

The proposals outline four options for how the future party in England might look and function, they include:

Posted in News | Tagged | 15 Comments

Well – did they consult or not?

The issue of refugee children will not go away – both in reality and in terms of a decency-check on the current Government, including the Home Secretary in particular.

The Government is adamant that the decision to close the ‘Dubs’ scheme, which many believed would allow the country to accept a further 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees, was because local government did not have the capacity for more than around 400. The evidence for this is that the Home Office asked councils and this is what councils told it. Simples.

The problem with this is twofold.

First of all, why did the Home Office …

Posted in News | Tagged and | 2 Comments

LibLink: Catherine Bearder on World Wildlife Day

 

I’m afraid we didn’t mark World Wildlife Day on LDV last Friday. Fortunately our MEP Catherine Bearder did in an engaging post covering the top wildlife wins and losses in the past year.

She writes:

2016 was a historic year in the global fight against wildlife crime. From the ivory bans to the new CITES protection for over 500 species – there is a lot we can be proud of.

But we would be kidding ourselves if we think the work here is done. Wildlife trafficking is still a top four global criminal activity and the money streams gained from it are often used to fund other illegal operations like arms trafficking and even terrorism.

Wildlife by its nature is unsupervised and therefore vulnerable to the criminal gangs who exploit it for massive profit.

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Rock or Island? Disputes in the South China Sea

Whilst researching this subject, I couldn’t help thinking that here were the ingredients ripe for the design of a board game.  It could be something of a cross between “Diplomacy” and “Vendée Globe”?

Each player representing a country of choice could set its mission and collaborate with other players to achieve their desired outcomes.  Chance cards might include whether, say, an international tribunal has decided in their favour.  And tokens could be earned along the way to enable them to reclaim rocks and reefs, build air strips or even patrol the islands with clone submarines?

We are, of course, not speaking of a game but of what is happening in reality, and the countries involved in a potential war game include South East Asian countries (such as Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei) and also greater powers such as China (Taiwan) and the US.  At stake are the rights to valuable resources such as oil and gas, fishing rights and the protection of vital sea routes.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 17 Comments

From UKIP to Social Democrat in the LibDems

This piece is long overdue, as I joined the Liberals Democrats back in October 2016. Since then, I have been elected Secretary of Runnymede & Spelthorne Liberal Democrats. I am also deeply involved with the newly formed (or regenerated) Royal Holloway LibDem Society.

So how does one defect from UKIP to the LibDems? I shall be frank.

I started involvement with UKIP in 2010, at the age of thirteen. This was when the party was an anti-EU pressure group. It felt outrageous and fantastically rebellious to participate in an idea that could undermine the entire establishment. When I saw the three main parties, I saw spin, snobbery and fakery. I did dream that one day something big would take down the political elite, who to me had a contempt for ordinary people and democracy.  Today, I still believe this contempt exists strongly, but now we have a situation where they are forced to listen a little bit more.

My involvement in UKIP allowed me to channel my indignation. Also, being the only young person in the room, on many occasions, allowed me to develop a range of political and communication skills that may have taken much longer to attain in another party.

However, I came to realise that the party was seriously limited: organisationally and intellectually.  There is no plan, for anything. It’s all improvisation. And if there is  someone with a plan, he/she will probably leave or get kicked out, because the party’s vested interested in keeping the party like a pressure group is too strong. It felt like what Party HQ really needed was a textbook explanation of the roles and functions of a political party on every wall, before anything serious could begin.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 53 Comments

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #471

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 471st 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 (26 February – 4 March , 2017), 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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LDV’s Sunday Best: our 7 most-read articles this week

7 bestMany thanks to the 13,700  visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here’s our 7 most-read posts…

Lib Dems GAIN a council seat and have a strong hold in Redcar (17 comments) by Caron Lindsay

£1 million donation to Lib Dems helps party oppose Brexit (18 comments) by Caron Lindsay

Wow! A Liberal Democrat on Question Time tonight (11 comments) by Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems react to Government defeat over #righttostay (60 comments) by Caron Lindsay

Brexit – it’s time to stop looking for someone to blame and take action (45 comments) by Andrew Davidson

Why I was furious to get an email from Liz Leffman (41 comments) by Caron Lindsay

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Donald Trump is a dangerous and complete joke – but the joke is on the American people

I give you this series of early morning tweets from the President of the United States of America, as collated by Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 19 Comments

History doesn’t always have to be written by the victors

On 5th March 1770 outside the customs house on King’s Street, Boston, Private Hugh White was talking to some off-duty comrades when a passing Bostonian made a crack about the British soldier’s commanding officer – prompting Pvt White to clock the civilian across the side of the head. The off-duty soldiers made themselves scarce, leaving the private to deal with the fast-growing ring of angry Bostonians that soon surrounded him. White backed up against the custom house door – gun raised out of fear of what might happen next. The growing crowd heckled him, daring him to shoot.

Up the street, Captain Preston, commander of the custom house garrison, watched events unfold. The Captain was hoping that the situation would resolve itself naturally but soon the church bells started tolling and more men, many armed with clubs, started showing up and Preston knew it was high-time that he went to get his man. He led a corporal and six privates through the crowd, now numbering 300-400 strong, towards Private White but rather than just pulling the soldier out from the situation he ordered his men to form a semi-circle around him while facing the crowd, guns unfortunately loaded.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 6 Comments

This is our time now: a time for assertiveness and for anger

This country deserves better than to be ruled as it is by an Alice–in-Wonderland government, feebly countered by a Humpty-Dumpty official opposition.

I am angry that, as a result, in my neighbouring Copeland constituency our Liberal Democrat candidate Rebecca Hanson was sidelined by the clash of these tottering Titans. Of course she did well to double our share of the vote and beat the hollow UKIP, but not nearly as well as such an excellent standard-bearer deserved.

Instead the representative of this uncaring, and ultimately incompetent government of ours went to Westminster.

The Liberal Democrat campaign in Copeland was focused. ‘Who is fighting hard Brexit?’ demanded one leaflet, which explained how the Liberal Democrats are the only party fighting to protect jobs, jeopardised by the Conservative plan to leave the Single Market. Rebecca’s support for the further investment in the local nuclear industry was there, with back-up details.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 77 Comments

Lib Dems take part in national Day of Action opposing Brexit and supporting #righttostay

Today, across the country, Lib Dems have been taking part in a national day of action, collecting signatures for our petition calling on the Government to give EU nationals the right to stay in the UK and spreading the word about our opposition to the Government’s position on Brexit and our call for people to be given the final say on the Brexit deal. This is way too important for all our futures to leave to the Brexit Government.

I hope that EU nationals take some comfort from the fact that there is so much public support for them to be given the right to continue to live in the country where they have settled.

There were over 100 events in total. Here are some of the pictures of the bright street stalls all over the country:

Posted in News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments

++++Breaking: Jackie Pearcey will fight Manchester Gorton by-election for the Lib Dems

News from the land of Twitter:

Jackie is a fabulous candidate. She has 20 years’ experience as a Gorton councillor. She’s brilliant. I first met her in a queue at the Torquay conference in 1993 and I just love her plain-speaking manner and sense of humour. There couldn’t be a better person to fly the Lib Dem flag. She’s in the centre of the photo in between Mamchester mayoral candidate Jane Brophy and the one-man opposition to Labour Cllr John Leech. That man gives Labour in Manchester a million times more trouble than Corbyn’s Labour gives to Theresa May’s Brexit Government. 

Posted in News | Tagged , and | 23 Comments

Two months to go: What will you be doing on polling day?

It’s just two months to go until every seat in Scotland and Wales and the English County Councils are up for election. Also being elected are the metro mayors. Jane Brophy in Manchester, Stephen Williams in West of England, Rod Cantrill in Cambridge, Beverley Nielsen in West Midlands, Chris Foote-Wood in Teeside, Carl Cashman in Liverpool are all flying the Liberal Democrat flag.

Now is a good time to work out what you can do on polling day to help your local campaign team plan their effort. Polling day is incredibly important. Elections can be lost on the day if we …

Posted in News | 3 Comments

Why I was furious to get an email from Liz Leffman

Before I even start this, let me just say that Liz Leffman, the Chair of the English Party and our wonderful candidate in the Witney by-election is one of my favourite Liberal Democrats and that none of this is her fault.

She is one of the most constructive and practical people I have come across in the party and I’m delighted that she is leading the English Party on its journey to reform.

However, I got an email from her the other day, sent out by party HQ, that made me furious. Here’s what it said:

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 50 Comments

Analysis of Northern Ireland Election results #AE17

So all the votes have been counted, the transfers shuffled and now we have up to three weeks of negotiations to see if the Northern Ireland Assembly can come together in some shape. But what was the story of the count yesterday in Northern Ireland’s second election in 10 months?

This election saw a reduction of seats in Stormont from 108 to 90, or each seat returning just 5 MLAs. The turnout was up 10% on last May at 64.8% so every party was able to claim that more people voted for them but it was how that extra 10% of voters turned out that is the real story.

The two big gainers in the vote share were Sinn Féin up 3.9% and only 1200 votes behind the DUP in the popular vote and Alliance who were up 2.1%. The SDLP and UUP had negligible shifts in vote share -0.1% and +0.3% respectively, and the DUP dropped 1.1%. But this election became a story of transfers. From the moment that the UUP leader Mike Nesbitt said he would give his second preference to the SDLP things were shaping up.

Posted in News | Tagged and | 11 Comments

The Lib Dems are the party the country needs

I’ve been following politics for about 15 years and I joined the Liberal Democrats in January. When I was first interested in politics,  I was pretty right-wing. I was mired in stereotypes about race, sexuality, gender, and the unemployed. I was an avid reader of the Daily Mail and would hang on every word written by Richard Littlejohn. Then Michael Foot died. Now I’m too young to remember Michael Foot, but I’m sure older readers will remember him as being very divisive. Well Littlejohn just couldn’t help but call him a “useful idiot” just 3 days after he died and after that I was out. I slowly embraced liberalism and left right-wing dogma behind.

After a journey that started in US politics and included a lot of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” I developed left leaning views, open to reason but annoyed at the way people where being scapegoated for the mistakes of the powerful instead of being helped. But I became too cynical about politicians and started towards the far left. There I realised they were full of dogma too, were too anti-capitalist and fond of false equivalences about Republicans and Democrats, as well as being disrespectful of reasonable points of view. On top of that I realised that as much as the right-wing has been duped by The Sun and the Daily Mail, they were being taken in by Russia Today and Press TV.

Posted in News | 10 Comments

Great result for Alliance as majority of Northern Ireland votes against Brexit

The Northern Ireland election results are now  in and they show some very encouraging trends for those of us with a liberal outlook. Our sister party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, won 8 seats and got its highest vote share in 28 years. Although their number of seats stays the same at 8, in an Assembly that is 18 seats smaller, that is a major achievement. It also increased its first preference vote share by over 2%.

Voters also sent a message that they were opposed to Brexit with the biggest losers being the unionist parties, who lost 16 of the 18 seats. The DUP famously gave more than £400,000 to the Leave campaign. The impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland, particularly on the border with the Irish Republic, would be devastating as Nick Clegg wrote recently.

On her Facebook page, Alliance leader Naomi Long summed up a good night for the party:

Posted in News | Tagged , and | 25 Comments

The Independent View: What’s the crack?

As more countries and jurisdictions are relaxing their laws around cannabis, many questions have arisen. Will legalisation affect potency? Could some types of cannabis actually reduce psychosis? What are the choices in cannabis legislation, is it just prohibition or legalisation? And if cannabis is legalised, will everyone start using it? These are just a few of the questions answered by myself and two other researchers from King’s College London in the fourth episode of a new podcast; What’s the Crack.

We created the podcast with an aim to improve public awareness of the complexity and reality of addiction, policies, stigma surrounding drug use and drugs scandals in the newspapers by exploring the evidence base. We are all passionate about the drugs and addiction research field and every episode draws upon our collective knowledge and experience, addressing the health, criminal justice, social and individual side to a story. The podcast links the academic world to the public, bridging the gap and filling in the blanks with research evidence that the media have left out. Previous episodes have covered Dry January, Fabric nightclub in London, drug consumption rooms and now it tackles cannabis legalisation.

This episode introduces different policy options of cannabis legislation, providing alternatives to the usual dichotomous choice of prohibition (possession and supply is illegal) or legalisation (cannabis is freely and widely sold). Alternative legislation is discussed; decriminalisation (it is only illegal to supply) and regulation (a government monopoly). In addition, various factors in the legalisation debate are considered, such as psychosis and THC (active chemical that make users feel “stoned”)/CBD (cannabinoid with various potential medical applications) levels and the impact of legalisation on these. Cannabis is made up of the chemicals THC and CBD and emerging evidence suggests that cannabis high in CBD may mean that people experience fewer psychosis-like symptoms when using the drug. Arguably an incentive for controlling the THC/CBD ratios.

Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged , and | 3 Comments

Living on borrowed time

Many of you will have read Kate Atkinson’s novel, Life After Life. If you haven’t, I recommend it. On one level, it is a story of alternative realities, but its real theme is war. In chapter after chapter, the central character, Ursula, meets a different untimely end. Each time, this is followed by a chapter in which, in an alternative reality, the tragedy is averted, and Ursula lives longer, on borrowed time. Perhaps we are all Ursula, in one of her more fortunate realities. I’m sure I am.

I was born in the early hours of the 9th September, 1962. I had picked an inauspicious moment. Within a few hours of my arrival at Epsom District Hospital, a consignment of Soviet ballistic missiles had arrived in Cuba. This led, when I was a month old, to a confrontation between the USA and the USSR, which came close to leading to nuclear war.

On this occasion, disaster was averted. But my friends and I grew up with deadly Soviet weapons aimed permanently at us. Meanwhile, our government had equally deadly weapons aimed permanently at Russian children.

On 26th September 1983, a couple of weeks after my twenty-first birthday, the world again came close to nuclear war. This time, by a complete accident. The Soviet satellite early warning system appeared to detect five missiles from the United States heading towards the Soviet Union. The officer in charge at the time, Stanislav Petrov, would have been expected to report this to his superiors. Had he done so, a retaliatory strike might have been ordered, almost certainly leading to full scale nuclear war. But Petrov chose to “wait and see”. And it turned out the system had malfunctioned. Petrov may have saved millions of lives.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 63 Comments

Friday fun: Tom Brake and Sarah Olney in Twitter video controversy

I don’t think Tom Brake, Sarah Olney or Simone van Beek, the staffer from LDHQ who directed the video, actually meant to amuse Twitter in quite the way that they did with this campaign video for Fairtrade Fortnight.

The message was good, although it may not have had quite the chemistry of the old Gold Blend ads of the 1990s.

For those readers who are too young to remember them, this was a series of twelve ads over six years advertising Gold Blend coffee. The romantic tension between stars Anthony Head and Sharon Maugham built up over time and everyone was on tenterhooks waiting for the final instalment. It made the fuss over Christmas department store ads we see today seem very small.

As a long-time boycotter of Nestle products, I had the pleasure of watching them knowing that I would never give the company a single penny in return for the entertainment.

Anyway, back to Sarah and Tom and the reaction on Twitter. This comparison seemed a little strange:

Posted in News | Tagged | 5 Comments

Observations of an ex pat: Guns, butter and bridges

Donald Trump’s economic policy can best be described as guns, butter and bridges.

At the moment the United States ratio between its public debt and what it earns as a country every year is 104.7 percent.  That means the government owes 4.7 percent more than the country earns.

If America was a business– or a private household—the bank manager would be strongly advising Uncle Sam to earn more money and/or cut expenses or file for bankruptcy.

Now, Donald Trump wants to increase defence spending by ten percent, maintain welfare spending, spend trillions on improving American infrastructure and cut taxes.

Cash to pay for this will come from increased revenues from a stimulated economy, revised trade and defence deals with other countries, cuts in environmental programmes, the diplomatic corps and foreign aid.

Can he do it? Well let’s take a quick look.

Improve Infrastructure– America has plenty of roads, bridges, railways, ports and airports. It just needs to maintain what it has—but that will cost plenty. The American Society of Civil Engineers reckons that $3.6 trillion needs to be spent by 2020 just to maintain existing infrastructure.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 2 Comments

Romancing the Silk Roads

As someone fascinated by the Central Asian countries, I was delighted when the All Party Parliamentary Group for China (APPCG) organised a talk this week by Peter Frankopan, author of “The Silk Roads – A New History of the World”.

“The Silk Roads are rising again”, said Richard Graham MP, Chair of APPCG at the end of a fulsome introduction of the Oxford University historian.  Yet, there are not many other Parliamentarians, let alone the British public, who are in tune with the zeitgeist.

Frankopan was keen to put into historical context the dramatic changes that we are witnessing today with a shift in the world order. The declining influence of western colonial powers,  the UK’s vote for BREXIT and the election of Trump, were contrasted against a China growing in confidence and pursuing the “One Belt One Road” initiative, the lynchpin for Xi JinPing’s foreign and economic policies.  

Posted in News | Tagged | 5 Comments

Lib Dems GAIN a council seat and have a strong hold in Redcar

It’s that time on Thursday night again and I can tell you that we have gained a council seat – this time, on Wells City Council, from the Independent. Congratulations to Rob Ayres and his team.

Posted in News | Tagged | 30 Comments

Wow – a Liberal Democrat on Question Time tonight

Good news. We have a Lib Dem on Question Time tonight.

It may actually be worth watching.

Although there is a downside.

Posted in News | Tagged and | 12 Comments

Lib Dem Job Watch: Cambridge Special

As part of our occasional meander round the Liberal Democrat job ads, we have learned that Cambridge Lib Dems are looking for some staff between now and the May elections.

Across Cambridgeshire activists are campaigning hard to make Rod Cantrill the first elected mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and to take control of Cambridgeshire County Council.

Utilising both traditional and sophisticated online campaigning techniques in order to reach a huge geographical area, and with members of the winning Richmond by-election team at the helm, this is a great chance to come learn from the best.

Will you join the team? Can you forward this message to someone who might fit the bill?
There are three exciting roles available to the right candidates, with the potential for free accommodation in Cambridge for the duration of the campaign.

You can work part-time or full-time, so flexibility in job-sharing is an advantage.  Please indicate what you are interested in and how you might combine them.

Office Assistant

Campaign Assistant

Digital Campaigns Assistant

Applications to Elizabeth Parkin (Chair of Cambridge Liberal Democrats) by midnight on Monday 6th March.

Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
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Recent Comments

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    The traditional workplace social contract—where an employee offered loyalty and hard work in exchange for lifetime job security, predictable wage growth, stea...
  • John Kelly
    @jana "At the very least the Liberal Democrats should demanding trade sanctions against Israel but, I’m afraid, the Party seems afraid to take a principled ...
  • Miranda Pinch
    Joe, you have excelled in misinterpretation. Israel has alienated almost the whole world. It started badly in 1948 and has continued that route since. My moth...
  • Peter Chambers
    > several people having been offered full time jobs that paid more than minimum wage but then refusing the position on the basis they believed they would be ...
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    The quoted comparison between welfare income vs work is deceptive, because it assumes that anyone taking a job loses access to *ALL* welfare payments, which oft...