Paul Walter

President Trump’s mode of entrance for his first visit to China?

By Paul Walter | Sat 3rd December 2016 - 3:54 pm

As a snub, the Chinese once forced President Obama to leave Air Force One via “the ass of the plane“, upon arrival in China

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Posted in Humour | Tagged and | 9 Comments
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Natalie Chindipha

January Training for Trainers – book your place now!

By Natalie Chindipha | Sat 3rd December 2016 - 11:55 am

The Diversity Team is delighted to announce that it will be organising a two-day Training for Trainers Course, from Saturday 7 – Sunday 8 January 2017 in London at Lib Dem HQ.  The course is designed to accredit new trainers who can deliver training courses on behalf of the party.

This course is part of our ongoing effort to increase the amount of diversity training (ethnic minority, gender balance and unconscious bias) available within the party, therefore priority will be given to those we who can demonstrate a commitment to diversity training.

The course will cover a range of essential skills including:

  • How to develop your presentation skills
  • How to deliver effective presentations
  • How to design engaging training material
  • How to give and receive feedback
  • Understanding how different people learn and absorb new information
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Jon Taylor

1250 days to save the NHS: A new approach

By Jon Taylor | Sat 3rd December 2016 - 9:55 am

First a little about myself. I am 53 years old and have worked in health care for over 22 years. I have voted Liberal, latterly Liberal Democrat, for nearly 40 years now. I, like others, have been frustrated by the ongoing swing politics that has affected the United Kingdom since the last war. Whilst like many others I am saddened by the outcome of the referendum I know as a party we are committed to be outward looking and pro-European. This will mean maintaining and fostering close links our European neighbours. However we need to plan now as to how we can win the next General Election in 2020, and in doing so protect to NHS as a public service.

The voting public must be made aware what is at stake and we must put forward a radical but costed vision for the health service. In 1997 New Labour came to power and pumped money into the NHS whilst establishing targets for waiting times. This was a sensible approach, but in recent years this has evolved into ever-increasing ‘fines’ for failing to meet those targets. Therefore, despite the Conservative government’s much lauded promise ‘to increase funding’ for the NHS, the reality is that year on year hospital trusts fall ever further into debt, leading to cuts in staff & frontline services in real terms. This is neither a responsible or sustainable approach to meeting the needs of the public or the NHS.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 22 Comments
Mark Valladares

ALDE Congress preview: day 3 – it’s make your mind up time…

By Mark Valladares | Sat 3rd December 2016 - 7:48 am

The final day of Congress is when the decisions get taken – electing Bureau members, determining policy, agreeing statute changes. Everything builds up to a frenzy of voting, as delegates are asked to vote for or against as many as twenty-five resolutions in one rather manic one hour session.

This is only possible because the big arguments take place in working group sessions on day 2, where compromises are reached and recommendations made to the plenary session the next day. For Liberal Democrats, this is a source of some wonderment, especially for those who have been to too many Federal Conferences. …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged | 2 Comments
Mary Reid

What a campaign!

By Mary Reid | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 5:38 pm

sarah-olney-2

The Richmond Park campaign was the biggest the party has ever done. Phew!

In writing this post I don’t want to give away too many campaigning strategies, although the media have been pretty quick to spot our ways of working. They know that we are good at ‘deploying’ volunteers, but they don’t really understand how we do it. How, they wonder, do we manage to recruit 1000 people in one weekend, from all over the country? How do we get them to travel and stay at their own expense and then embark on some punishing walking, talking and delivering in the cold and dark for hours on end?

However, I know that many of our readers do understand what that is all about. We all care passionately about our values and the vision we have for our society, and we enjoy putting them into action in the company of like-minded people, who quickly become our friends.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 28 Comments
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Kirsten Johnson

The Green Agenda: Lib Dems in Business dinner

By Kirsten Johnson | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 3:45 pm

The environment was our theme at the Liberal Democrats in Business dinner in Oxford last night (after a session of polling-day phone banking for Sarah Olney!).

We were pleased to welcome as speakers Baroness Kate Parminter, Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader in the Lords and Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Dr Imad Ahmed of the Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University.

Dr Ahmed spoke of recent research into nano-particles in air pollution and how they affect our brains. The study, and how air pollution is a possible cause of Alzheimer’s, has been reported here in the UK and around the world.

Just in the news today is reporting of a move by major cities to ban diesel vehicles. This is due to their production of particulate matter (PM) and nitrous oxide (NOx). Dr Ahmed, in his talk, showed pictures of the effect of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) on the brain.

The link between our health and the air we breathe was also made by Kate Parminter. Baroness Parminter spoke to us on environmental policy and what we should be doing now.

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The Voice

WATCH: Nick Clegg: Voters don’t like being told by Brexiteers that they have no right to a say

By The Voice | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 2:13 pm

Classy stuff from Nick Clegg on the BBC News Channel. It was put to him that we couldn’t extrapolate a wider Liberal Democrat resurgence from the Richmond Park result. That’s perfectly right, he said, and then came out with a whole stream of stats showing how well we are doing in local government by-elections and everywhere where people get a chance to hear what we have to say.

He also said that Brexiteers are rubbing voters up the wrong way by dismissing their concerns and right to be heard. Watch the interview here.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 17 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Richmond Park: what happens next for Sarah Olney and her team?

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 12:23 pm

10 years ago, I was part of the team in the last by-electon we gained, when Willie Rennie spectacularly won Dunfermline and West Fife in then Chancellor Gordon Brown’s backyard. At that time it was a political earthquake. It was also a huge victory at a time of crisis for our party. Only weeks before, Charles Kennedy had resigned as leader. During the by-election campaign there seemed to be a tabloid scandal about our leadership candidates around every half hour. We still came through and elected Willie as our 63rd MP.

A decade on, we only have a 7th of that number and the Richmond Park by-election win comes at a time when our party has stared down extinction. It confirms what we have come to realise over the past few months – that the old adage that where we have a presence, and are willing to put the effort in, we can have some spectacular results. That should also impress anyone who might be thinking about backing us financially. That backing in turn gives us the capacity to expand our operations, creating a virtuous cycle. We have to make sure that we seize this moment.

Sarah Olney enters the Commons as part of a band of 9 and as the only woman. The 8 men will need to make extra effort to make sure that they welcome her and listen to her.  One of the things we found really useful was the advice and support from colleagues and I’m sure that they will have lots of helpful advice for her and her team.  Susan Kramer as the previous MP for the constituency will no doubt be a marvellous help too.

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Mark Valladares

ALDE Party Congress preview : Day 2 – an energised delegation hits the dance floor…

By Mark Valladares | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 10:55 am

Another snowy dawn in Warsaw, made rather brighter by news from home, and whilst some of our delegation are paying the price for staying up to wait for the result from Richmond Park, there’s a definite spring in our step.

And so, what do we have to look forward to today?

It’s all about policy, with working groups looking at a range of resolutions, as well as the proposed reforms to the Party statutes (think constitutional amendments on steroids). Our delegation will be active participants, discussing Brexit, aspects of European democracy, economics, environmental issues and civil liberties.

In terms of the big, set-piece stuff, Congress is formally launched with speeches from the likes of Cecilia Malmström and Margrethe Vestager, two of the Liberal Commissioners, Guy Verhofstadt.

There is also a plenary debate on “Brexit and the Politics of Fear”, which includes our Willie Rennie, which may be slightly different in tone after last night’s success.

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Caron Lindsay

Richmond Park is an important milestone – but it’s only the start

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 9:58 am

Well, we’re winning parliamentary by-elections again. Who’d have thought it possible on that awful night almost 19 months ago?

Liberal Democrats everywhere are grinning this morning. We’ve seen the brilliant local government results over the past few months. We saw the amazing Liz Leffman surge forward in the Tory heartland of Witney in October. Now, we have actually won another MP.

We shouldn’t under-estimate how massive a task winning Richmond Park was. It’s only been 37 days since Zac resigned. We had just over 5 weeks to change the agenda from Heathrow to Brexit and win the argument. A combination of clever literature, a fantastic candidate and an army of activists prepared to drop everything did it. Way back in the 90s when we were winning by-elections all the time, we had at least 3 times as long to make our case.

We also shouldn’t under-estimate how important it was that we won this. It was a seat we used to hold with a whacking great Remain vote. If we hadn’t, even if we had had a Witney type surge, people would have doubted our ability to change the political weather.

Sarah Olney’s victory has shown that we have still got what it takes to win the big moments. That is incredibly important for the outside world to see. Theresa May will be hoping that her MPs in similar seats to Richmond, where there is Liberal Democrat history, don’t cause any further by-elections.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems win Richmond Park: Reaction led by Tim Farron and Sal Brinton

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 8:00 am

Here’s some of the reaction to Sarah Olney’s incredible victory in Richmond Park.

Tim Farron said that the Liberal Democrats are the standard bearers for those who oppose the dangerous path towards Brexit being pursued by the Government.

The message is clear: The Liberal Democrats are back and we are carrying the torch for all of those who want a real opposition to this Conservative Brexit Government.

We are the only party fighting to keep Britain open, tolerant and united, and the only party that has said, loudly and proudly, that we want Britain to remain a member of the Single Market and that we want the people to be given the final say over the Brexit deal. That message has been resoundingly backed by the people of Richmond Park.

This was a remarkable, come-from-nowhere upset that will terrify the Conservatives. A year and a half ago, their man won by nearly 40% and had a majority of more than 20,000. In one fell swoop we have wiped that out completely.

If this was a General Election, this swing would mean the Conservatives would lose dozens of seats to the Liberal Democrats – and their majority with it. No one believes the Labour Party will win any seats off the Tories – and the SNP could only possibly take one off them. But there are dozens in our reach. So, as this by-election has demonstrated, the only way to prevent a Conservative majority at the next election is to vote Liberal Democrat.

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The Voice

In full: Sarah Olney’s victory speech: No to politics of division. We will defend the Britain we love

By The Voice | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 5:55 am

Just in case you missed it earlier, we won! Sarah Olney defeated Zac Goldsmith by 1872 votes.

We can’t call her Sarah Olney MP yet. She only officially acquires that title when she takes the oath in the Commons on Monday.

Her speech at the count tonight was gracious, determined and passionate. Here it is in full:

Let me start by thanking the other candidates for a hard-fought campaign – and to Zac Goldsmith in particular, I wish you well and assure you that I will continue your fight against the expansion of Heathrow.

I also would like to thank the returning officer, the staff that have worked so hard today and yesterday and of course the police. I want to thank my amazing campaign team led by James Lillis and the thousands of volunteers who have taken time to support me over the course of the campaign. I want to thank my family and friends for the wonderful support they’ve given me – particularly my husband Ben and our children. I want to thank our leader Tim Farron, and all the other party members who could not have been more supportive. And I’d like to thank the Greens, More United, the Women’s Equality Party and all the other people beyond the Lib Dems who have supported me in this campaign.

A year and a half ago, I wasn’t involved in politics. I wasn’t a member of a political party. I’d never been involved in a political campaign. I’d never thought about being a politician. But I knew I was a Liberal – I believed in openness, tolerance, compassion, working with our neighbours at home and around the world – and when I saw what happened at the General Election and I felt I had to get involved.

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Caron Lindsay

++++++++Breaking: Richmond Park Result: We’ve done it! Well done Sarah Olney, our Newbie MP

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 2:05 am

We have done it! We had just 37 days to persuade the voters of Richmond Park. To overturn a 23,000 majority in such a short time is incredible.

Initially, the two numbers that matter.

Zac Goldsmith 18,638

Sarah Olney 20,510

Monster Raving Loony Party 184

One Love Party 67

Christian People’s Alliance 164

Independent 173

Christian Woolmar (Labour) 1515

Liberal Democrat majority 1872 on a turnout of 53.6%. It’s a swing of 21.6%.

And the percentage changes via Britain Elects:

Sarah Olney is on Sky News now, saying that we didn’t know until the last minute how it was going to go. People wanted her to win, she says, because of Brexit. They were alarmed about the direction the Conservative Brexit government was going in.

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 29 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Richmond Park by-election: Liberal Democrats have very big smiles

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 12:45 am

“The mood music,” says the BBC’s Chris Mason, “is that the Liberal Democrats are running Zac Goldsmith very close.” He says that the Liberal Democrats have the biggest smiles.

The Guardian live blog has some piles of votes looking very close. They report that Labour and Betfair are saying we have won. Mind you, Labour are not always the best judges of such things, though, so that comes with a big health warning. We had to convince them that they had won in Glenrothes in 2008. Our box counts had the result within half a percentage point. They thought the SNP had won when it was clear to us that they hadn’t.

Let’s put some context into this.

Last year, we were absolutely stuffed in that seat, not to put too fine a point on it. We had an excellent candidate in Robin Meltzer, but this was on of the seats where the Conservatives’ scare tactics about Ed Miliband and the SNP took hold. Our support bombed from 42% to 19.3%, while Zac took 58.2%. The Labour vote unsqueezed itself. Their 12.3% was their best result since 1997.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems in by-election victory (not THAT one…yet) as Lib Dem Voice contributors elected

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 12:23 am

Those hours between close of poll and the declaration of a hard-fought parliamentary by-election results are particularly tense. The only people who won’t be feeling overcome with butterflies are those at the count because they will be too busy. They will have some indication of the result once all the votes have been verified, but if, as expected, it’s really close, they will have their eyes peeled during the counting stage to make sure every single Liberal Democrat vote goes on our pile and not on someone else’s.

However, we have some good news to start our night of by-election coverage.

The first result is close to home for LDV. Our own Paul Walter has been elected to the Parish Council in Greenham in Berkshire. He and his colleague Lindsey Middlemiss bring the number of Liberal Democrat councillors gained in Newbury and West Berkshire this year to seven.

Here’s the result in full:

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Posted in News | Tagged | 5 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Tim Farron says thank you to Richmond Park campaigners

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 2nd December 2016 - 12:06 am

Tim Farron emailed party members tonight to thank them for their work in Richmond Park. He said he was proud of the campaign that we ran and hoped we would get the result that we deserved.

This is what he said:

The polls have just closed in Richmond Park and counting is about to begin.

Win or lose, I know that we’re going to get a tremendous result. But right now I want to tell you how proud I am of the campaign we just fought.

I’m so proud of our candidate, Sarah Olney, who wasn’t even a member of our party 18 months ago. She has put in an amazing effort against a tough opponent in Zac Goldsmith.

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Mark Valladares

ALDE Bureau elections: the runners and riders

By Mark Valladares | Thu 1st December 2016 - 6:41 pm

alde-congress-2016Yes, it’s election time again, as the ALDE Party elects different positions in alternate years, the Presidency and some Vice-Presidents in odd-numbered years, the Treasurer and a few more Vice-Presidents in even-numbered years.

This year, there is no British interest, with Ros Scott having been safely elected as a Vice-President last year. As for the Treasurer, it looks as though there will be a intra-Slovene handover, with outgoing Treasurer, Roman Jakič, expected to be replaced by the sole candidate, Gašper Koprivsek from SMC (Modern Centre Party).

There are five candidates for three Vice-Presidential slots;

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Mark Valladares

ALDE Party Congress preview – day 1: a gentle warm-up before the drama commences

By Mark Valladares | Thu 1st December 2016 - 10:26 am

alde-congress-2016Welcome to Warsaw, where the cranes are busy bringing new skyscrapers to the city’s skyscape (don’t try to say that quickly…), and a thousand liberals from across Europe are meeting over the next three days.

To some extent, the event is dominated by Brexit – our sister parties are keen to adopt a common position on a European negotiating position, whilst simultaneously showing their support for pro-European forces in the United Kingdom (that would appear, given the Labour Party’s dithering on the subject, to be us). The welcome so far appears to be …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged and | 1 Comment
The Voice

WATCH: Bob Geldof: “The Lib Dems are the only party ballsy enough……”

By The Voice | Wed 30th November 2016 - 4:41 pm

Listen to Bob Geldof explain why he wants the people of Richmond Park to vote for Sarah Olney tomorrow. Choice quotes include:

“You can’t have the settled will of the people of Richmond to stay in Europe betrayed by the poster boy of the Brexiteers.”

He appealed to pro EU voters to back Sarah Olney to beat Zac.

Bob Geldof is as I write this outside a station in the constituency campaigning with Sarah Olney.

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David Thorpe

What if productivity statistics are not truly telling the tale?

By David Thorpe | Wed 30th November 2016 - 4:06 pm

In the Autumn Statement, Philip Hammond spoke at length about the productivity crisis in the UK, and how he intends to address it.

And doubtless, the creation of higher skilled jobs, of better broadband, of better trains, will all make it easier for UK workers to do more, benefitting the workers and the economy alike.

But what if the productivity statistics are wrong?

Although they hardly belong to the same generation as me, I have three friends or acquaintances who have yet to reach retirement age, but have pension provisions sufficiently large that they are not seeking employment, nor do they claim unemployment benefit.

The government has such folk as a zero in the productivity number, they don’t appear in the unemployment data, nor in the wage data.

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Posted in Op-eds | 7 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Maria Munir chosen as Girls’ Champion for BBC’s 100 Women

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 30th November 2016 - 2:40 pm

Lib Dem member Maria Munir, from Watford, won widespread global respect and admiration when they came out as non binary to President Obama at a town hall meeting in April this year. Let’s remind ourselves of that moment:

They spoke to the BBC here about their experience:

I just felt this moment of euphoria that finally I would be able to raise and highlight the issue that non-binary transgender people face.

If anyone has the power to change things for people like myself across the world, it is President Obama.”

Maria said their family history made the situation even more poignant.

“I started to feel the tears well up. My parents are immigrants. My granddad did manual labour in Pakistan. My dad worked as a manual labourer in Saudi Arabia before coming here to start a business with literally nothing.
“For me, aged 20, to be sat in front of the President of the United States, leader of the free world, to be able to pitch to him social action…

Maria has now been named as one of eight Girls’ Champion as part of the BBC’s 100 Women series. They will be able to use their voice to highlight issues that affect girls and non binary and transgender people.

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Mark Valladares

ALDE Party Council preview – rewriting the rules, but not in triplicate…

By Mark Valladares | Wed 30th November 2016 - 1:10 pm

Yes, it’s that time once again, when liberals gather from across Europe to renew old acquaintances, make policy and debate the burning issues of the day. Hang on, wrong introduction, that’s the one I meant to write for the Congress taking place alongside it.

It is fair to say that the Council meeting isn’t as exciting, focussing as it does on rule changes and membership applications.

First, the rule changes. There have been some concerns expressed that the way that individual parties are represented in the ALDE Party is not as fair as it might be. Accordingly, a small group of crack diplomats has been assigned the task of coming up with a new system. Needless to say, it combines a complexity that makes it hard to explain with a lack of salience to our readers that makes trying to do so fairly futile. I’ll give you a summary though…

The new system rewards successful parties and national influence, whilst rebalancing the membership dues system to ease the burden on small parties from small countries, something that, as a member of the Financial Advisory Committee, I had attempted to do a few years ago. Obviously, I support that. Whether or not the new allocations of Council and Congress delegates achieves the stated aim is another matter.

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Caron Lindsay

No wiggle room for UKIP-backed Zac Goldsmith

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 30th November 2016 - 11:38 am

We don’t often run UKIP press releases on here, but in this case it is justified to prove a point. Apparently Zac Goldsmith doesn’t much like being described as UKIP-backed.

Just a reminder of the UKIP statement just after Goldsmith resigned.

UKIP Chairman Paul Oakden said “On Tuesday 25th October Zac Goldsmith MP announced that he was resigning

…

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Caron Lindsay

How Brexit will harm our NHS and social care

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 30th November 2016 - 10:15 am

So, I’m drifting back to LDV slowly and gradually. My husband is now recovering from his heart surgery at home. It’s still quite incredible to think that only 10 weeks ago, he was enjoying his best health in years. All that changed with what we thought was Flu but turned out to be an infection in his heart which damaged one of his heart valves – a pretty complex one, too. My gratitude to the surgical team who sorted this out is unrivalled.

I have been more scared during this time than I have ever been in my life. That late-night phone call from Intensive Care when they said they needed to take him back into theatre was the point that I thought I really was going to crumble. The election of Donald Trump, terrifying as it is, 24 hours later was far from the most stressful thing I had to face that week.

The frenetic running about to and from the hospital and the intrinsic terror of the situation have now been replaced with a much less stressful but still very busy routine of drugging people, feeding people, cleaning, washing and other elements of domesticity which are a bit of a learning curve for me. My slovenly ways have been replaced by scrubbing everything in sight with anti-bacterial potions.

I tell Bob that I am basing my nursing style on Kathy Bates in Misery. He wasn’t really meant to agree that I was doing that well, but never mind.  Yesterday was a bit of a milestone when he had his first wee walk outside in 9 weeks.

I’m clearly going to be pre-occupied with looking after him for a while yet. The likelihood is that I’m still going to be a bit slow to get back to people  and not really engaged full time in the site until the New Year, so please continue to be patient with me.

My thanks go to the team who have had to do well more than they ever signed up for over the last nine weeks. Without them, there would have been no LDV at all. They have been absolutely brilliant.

I’ve observed much about our NHS and the stresses at its frontline. Bob had the most excellent care in hospital, but it was very clear to us how hard everyone was working and how there was so little give in the system. It’s a theme I will return to. For today, though, I want to think about the effects of Brexit on the NHS. The Leave Campaign’s jolly assertion that leaving the EU would mean £350 million a week extra for the NHS was consigned to history almost before the votes had been counted.

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Tony Lloyd

But we are the party of freedom

By Tony Lloyd | Wed 30th November 2016 - 8:55 am

Martin Roche wrote an eloquent piece, with a follow up,  calling for Liberal Democrats to brand themselves:

The Party of Freedom

Though generally well received some thought the branding conflicted with other values; fairness, equality, and community. Many thought the slogan linked us to the excesses of market ideologues and libertarians.

Are fairness and equality such rivals of freedom? Is someone’s freedom not limited if they lack decent housing or other basic needs? Is their freedom not limited if they cannot access information or lack the education needed to make use of it? Is someone’s freedom not limited if they suffer from discrimination or if they are sufficiently impoverished that they are excluded participating in society?

Of course that person’s freedom is limited. Others do not understand that. We do. That is why we are The Party of Freedom.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 35 Comments
Scott Craig

A great compromise is needed to reunite the United Kingdom

By Scott Craig | Tue 29th November 2016 - 1:58 pm

When the American constitutional convention assembled in Philidelphia in 1787 to revise the articles of confederation and create the present US Constitution, it had to find a way of balancing the interests of large states with those of smaller ones.

The problem was that some states wanted the number of congressional representatives to be proportional to the population of a state, while others wanted the number of representatives to be the same for all states. Naturally, each state preferred the plan which would give them a larger say in how the government was run.

After much debate, the impasse was solved by …

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Posted in Op-eds | 35 Comments
Joe Otten

Reaction to Fidel Castro’s legacy

By Joe Otten | Tue 29th November 2016 - 12:01 pm

The death of Cuban revolutionary, dictator and hard left cause celebre, Fidel Castro has reopened a debate on his legacy.

Tim Farron released the following statement

There is no doubt that Fidel Castro was a vastly significant 20th century leader, but even as we respectfully acknowledge this on his passing, we must not overlook the appalling human rights abuses including brutal summary executions for which he was responsible

As expected Jeremy Corbyn was among the more fulsome in praise, to objections from progressives:

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Ed Fordham

What do these by-elections mean for your own constituency?

By Ed Fordham | Tue 29th November 2016 - 8:57 am

And so it looms – polling day is always tough, for the teams, the candidates and to be fair for the media and journalists who try and understand the event, pick out the story and filter through the spin and analysis. But Richmond Park will vote on Thursday 1st December and your input will decide whether Sarah Olney I elected.

Witney was rightly proclaimed as a surge forwards for the Liberal Democrats and a tribute to the astoundingly impressive Liz Leffman. As I write this Sarah Olney and her team are being tested in the final week for what …

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Mary Reid

This week in Richmond Park – all to fight for

By Mary Reid | Mon 28th November 2016 - 2:21 pm

This was the headline in the print version of the Observer yesterday, although it came out rather differently online.

richmond-park-by-election-22

It states:

The Liberal Democrats are to target pro-EU Labour supporters and “soft Tories” who backed remain, in a final canvassing blitz ahead of Thursday’s Richmond byelection, amid growing confidence in their camp that they are within striking distance of winning the seat.

Party documents obtained by the Observer, laying out their strategy for the final days, suggest undecided Labour voters will be key, and failure to persuade enough of them to vote tactically may prevent the Lib Dems pulling off one of the biggest byelection upsets of recent years.

… The Lib Dems’ own internal polling now puts Goldsmith on 46.7%, the Lib Dems on 43.3% and Labour on 9.5%.

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Posted in Campaign Corner and News | Tagged and | 20 Comments
David Gray

The post-truth era is here – what does it mean?

By David Gray | Mon 28th November 2016 - 12:32 pm

 

We’ve been hearing a lot recently about the ‘post-truth‘ era and what that means for the world. Generally, this is framed as meaning that the truth doesn’t matter any more; that it is becoming easier, and perhaps fully acceptable, for politicians to lie and get away with it. But I have started to wonder: what if it’s worse than that? What if the post-truth era means that people now deny the very existence of truth?

The roots of this lie in resentment towards politics as a whole. People have always dismissed politicians as ‘all a bunch of liars/crooks’, but it’s arguably become more commonplace to do so since the global recession hit. The natural progression from this is that you get to a point where the truth doesn’t matter. You start to draw a false equivalency between all politicians, painting them all as equally bad as each other, when in reality there are many good politicians as well as shades of grey within the bad ones. The US Presidential election is the obvious example here.

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Posted in Op-eds | 22 Comments
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