At this moment fifty years ago, disaster hit a mining village in Gwent, Wales, as the BBC remembers:
It took just five minutes for the coal tip above Aberfan to slide down the mountain and engulf a farm, several houses and a school.
Pupils at Pantglas Junior School were just beginning their first lessons of the day when the rushing landslide of mud and debris flooded into their classrooms.
Well, that was a great result at Witney. Congratulations to Liz Leffman who was an astonishingly brilliant candidate.
This was the biggest swing from the Conservatives to the Lib Dems since the Winchester by-election in 1997.
We moved from 4th to 2nd. In 2015 the Guardian described the 25,155 Tory majority at Witney as “ultra safe”. Liz and team reduced that majority to just 5,702 with a very high turnout for a by-election – 47%.
The huge swing to the Liberal Democrats of 19.3% per cent would wipe out Theresa May’s majority and hand 26 seats from the Conservatives to Tim Farron’s party. The swing rivals many that were seen in famous by-election wins under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy.
Tim Farron, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, said:
St Mary's (E. Riding of Yorks.):
LD: 40.0% (+28.7)
CON: 25.3% (-3.2)
LAB: 18.4% (+0.6)
BEV: 9.7% (-1.2)
IND: 3.8% (+3.8)
UKIP: 2.7% (-10.3)— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) October 20, 2016
Clarence (St Albans) result:
LDEM: 56.9% (+6.0)
CON: 24.1% (+2.9)
LAB: 12.0% (-5.2)
GRN: 6.1% (-3.7)
UKIP: 1.0% (+1.0)— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) October 20, 2016
Lib Dem hold. Many congratulations to Councillor Ellie Hudspith!
Con 17,313
Lib Dem Liz 11,611 😃
Labour 5,765
UKIP 1354
Green 1363
CON: 45.1% (-15.1)
LDEM: 30.2% (+23.5)
LAB: 15.0% (-2.2)
GRN: 3.5% (-1.5)
UKIP: 3.5% (-5.6)
Turnout 47%
19.3% swing from the Tories to the Lib Dems.
The Greens and UKIP lost their deposits.
The Tory majority was slashed from 25,155 of “ultra safe” for the Tories to 5,702!
Lib Dems rise from 4th to 2nd.
Via Neil Fawcett’s Live Facebook broadcast, Liz Leffman said:
This is a really great result. Thank you to everyone who helped in any way. This is a beginning for us – we can still go on and do even better.
You can read the 2015 result here.
Liz got just over 30% of the vote.
Con 17,313
Lib Dem Liz 11,611 😃
Labour 5,765
UKIP 1354
Green 1363
The Witney Gazette is carrying live updates from the Witney by-election count here. Turnout is said to be low and a Tory majority is expected. Estimates of the Lib Dem vote are currently around the 25% mark, which would be a fantastic achievement given we started as 50/1 outsiders, fourth with 6.8% of the vote.
This great success has been the result of wonderful teamwork led by a superb candidate, Liz Leffman. Just today we had 400 activists in the constituency, 300 people making calls from home, 10,000 doors knocked on and 13,500 phone calls made.
Many congratulations to Leigh Frost and team on winning a seat on Bodmin Town Council in St Leonard’s ward. The by-election was caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor, and was hotly, but unsuccessfully, contested by the Labour party.
Bodmin TC, St Leonard ward: LD (Leigh Frost): 362 Labour 162. Cause: Con resignation #winningthere #LibDemFightback
— Nik Alatortsev 🔶🇪🇺 (@ldnik) October 20, 2016
Baroness Shas Sheehan is no stranger to the refugee camps in northern France, and especially those in Calais. She has been making visits there for a year now, collecting and taking much needed supplies for those stranded there, and finding out for herself exactly what the facts are, what the problems are, and what needs to be done to remedy them.
As we know little notice has been taken of the forceful and informed pressure put on by her and the many voluntary organisations, and other individuals and groups that are doing sterling work out there. The issues have been constantly raised in the House of Lords by Shas and her colleagues, Lord Roger Roberts and Baroness Sally Hamwee in particular. Receiving only bland assurances, they have kept on pressing the case.
As the war in Syria enters its 7th year, one wonders how this nation, so broken by almost a decade of internecine and global proxy warfare, might ever hope to emerge from the resultant chaos and destruction and become a functional society again. It is a process likely to take decades, if it is even achievable at all.
At some point, once some form of settlement is reached, the issue of justice and reconciliation among the various, warring groups must be addressed. As part of a multi-lateral, internationalist response to the atrocities committed by various actors, it is worth considering the role of international criminal justice.
Excellent news of a Lib Dem victory reaches the Voice:
Liberal Democrat peer, John Sharkey, whose Private Member’s Bill was instrumental in securing a pardon for Alan Turing, has today reached an agreement with the Government which will grant a posthumous pardon to thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted under long abolished sexual offence laws. Those similarly convicted but still alive will also receive pardons if they have successfully applied for a disregard or in future successfully apply for a disregard under the Protection of Freedoms Act.
The Government will add their name to the Liberal Democrat amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill that when passed will finally grant this pardon to thousands of people.
Quite a story in the Independent:
The Liberal Democrats came fourth last year with just 7 per cent of the vote, but could now leapfrog Labour and Ukip into second place. Normally there are no prizes for political runners-up, but if the Lib Dem candidate Liz Leffman comes a strong second it would give some credence to the “Lib Dem fightback” messages that activists send to each other to keep their spirits up after their crushing defeat in 2015.
It seems that they have noticed the effectiveness of Liz Leffman’s energetic campaign which has firmly established her as the main challenger to the Tories in Witney. Labour are nowhere in the seat – their vote is doing the snow off a dyke thing.
What the Conservatives want more than anything is for people to vote Labour or Green. You can tell this from the almost identically misleading stories in the Express and the Telegraph. They give prominent position to a poll putting the Tories 17 points ahead of Labour – but it’s the national monthly ICM poll which has no bearing on what’s happening on the ground in Witney. You have to wonder why they were bothering, given that they expect the by-election to be such an easy Conservative hold.
Back in July, I told a panel on social security at the Social Liberal Forum conference that in the wake of Brexit, a benefits freeze for four years, which was never a good idea, was entirely inappropriate and we should be opposing it loudly.
Analysis from the Institute of Fiscal Studies confirms that Brexit is going to hit those on benefits and low incomes particularly hard:
Normally many of those on the lowest incomes would be at least partially protected from the impact of higher prices by the rules that govern the annual uprating of benefits and tax credits. By default, benefit and tax credit rates are (with some exceptions, most notably the state pension) increased each April in line with the annual CPI inflation rate of the previous September – higher prices lead to higher benefit rates (albeit with a lag). However, in the July 2015 Budget the Government announced that, as part of its attempt to cut annual social security spending by £12 billion, most working-age benefit and tax credit rates would be frozen in cash terms until March 2020. This policy represented a significant takeaway from a large number of working age households. But it also represented a shifting of risk from the Government to benefit recipients. Previously, higher inflation was a risk to the public finances, increasing cash spending on benefits. Now the risk is borne by low-income households: unless policy changes higher inflation will reduce their real incomes.
I am glad to see that our shadow Chancellor, Susan Kramer, has now said that the Government must reverse its unfair benefits freeze plans:
Many of us have expressed the opinion that 2016 can just do one. The deaths early in the year of national treasures, the heroes we’d grown up with, like David Bowie and Alan Rickman shocked us. In Scotland, that sense of loss has intensified and come closer to home as we learned of the passing on Monday of one of our most popular and stalwart members, Helen Watt.
Helen was convener of the Scottish Party’s Conference Committee between 2003 and 2007. She also chaired and held most of the offices of Scottish Women Liberal Democrats. She stood for Parliament, both Holyrood and Westminster, many times. A member in East Dunbartonshire, she was a critical part of Jo Swinson’s campaign team from the very beginning and helped to elect the area’s councillors.
I served as an office bearer with her and always admired and learned from her practicality and common sense as I have neither.
Helen’s capacity for work was incredible. As well as full-on Liberal Democrat commitments, her retirement was taken up with other voluntary organisations such as Meals on Wheels. Everything she did was accomplished with energy, warmth and humour. The thought of not hearing that infectious laugh again makes me very sad. The last thing she would want, though, is sadness. Her instructions for her memorial events included positivity and red wine. I have shared many a bottle with her over the years, often well into the early hours. I have fond memories of one first thing Sunday Conference debate that she was chairing and I was aiding where we were a little ashen-faced and sleep-deprived but we got through it unscathed.
Commenting on the news that MPs will not get a vote on Heathrow expansion until next year, Liberal Democrat Transport Spokesperson Jenny Randerson said:
This afternoon, we’ll find out who will be leading the Parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit as MPs vote for the chairs of the new select committee on Brexit.
It’s a race between Labour’s Hilary Benn, who campaigned for Remain, and Brexiteer Kate Hoey who does not think that membership of the single market is an achievable outcome.
From the Herald:
Labour’s Hilary Benn, the former shadow foreign secretary, is tipped to become chairman of the committee, which will have 21 members, including 10 Tories and MPs from six opposition parties; the average committee normally has 11 members.
But Ms Hoey, who represents Vauxhall in London, has also thrown her hat in the ring and, among those nominating her, is the former SNP leader. The onetime sports minister has said she wants Britain to have the fullest possible access to the single market but argues that taking back full control of immigration is incompatible with membership.
It is quite bizarre that Alex Salmond has chosen to nominate Kate Hoey given that the SNP has (rightly) been very vocal about the importance of continuing membership of the single market for the whole UK and for Scotland in particular. Why on earth would be support someone who doesn’t support that outcome?
Lib Dem Peer Jeremy Purvis had this to say on the matter:
On the surface of it, you couldn’t be blamed for feeling pretty grim about the results of the recent local elections which took place on 2 October in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In both semi-autonomous regions, the biggest winners were the large, ethno-nationalist parties who managed to maintain and entrench their positions as the major political force in their region. Perhaps most symbolically of all, the city of Srebrenica, where the infamous genocide of over 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks by the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska took place in 1995, has elected its first Serb mayor since the end of that conflict, triggering alarm amongst the Bosniak population and a resurgence in public expressions of Serbian nationalism.
Bosnians were voting for mayors and municipal councils in Bosnia’s two semi-autonomous regions – the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation. These regions have their own governments, presidents and parliaments, although they remained linked by shared federal institutions. The regions were empowered to largely run themselves after the end of the Bosnian War to maintain relative peace between the two largest ethnic groups in Bosnia.
In Republika Srpska, the Serbian nationalist party, the Independent Social Democrat’s Party (SNSD), successfully shored up their support through a nationalistic – and since declared illegal – referendum campaign for keeping the date of January 9th as the national day of the Republika, which took place just days before the election. The SNSD’s pro-Serb rhetoric has only strengthened, with incumbent President Milorad Dodik campaigning on a promise of Republika Srpska’s secession from Bosnia. The results show that such nationalistic rhetoric still holds a lot of power, with the SNSD winning 11 more mayoral posts and 30% more municipalities since the 2012 local elections.
News that the trickle of children admitted from the Calais jungle has started to become more of a steady flow is, of course, welcome.
But there are still hundreds there and no real sign that there will be a convey of coaches to bring them to the UK, where they can be reunited with their families, as they are entitled.
I wrote before on LDV, and spoke at Conference, about these children being caught in a web of bureaucracy. The Home Office does now, it appears, take this more seriously but the danger that the demolition of the camp might take place before they make their way across the Channel remains all too real.
Demolition was supposed to happen on Monday 17 October. The fact that it has been deferred is good news but there is still a real chance that it might happen as early as next week. Experience tells us that should that happen many children will simply disappear – and thus be even more at the mercy of people traffickers.
Tim Farron speaks for all Liberals when he says:
It is outrageous to hear the Home Secretary now claiming to be acting urgently to ensure the safety of these children.
Where was this urgency for the last year that they have been stuck in Calais, and why does it only extend to a small number of the hundreds of these unaccompanied kids?
He also speaks for some Conservatives too.
We are in dangerous times.
Theresa May rails against wealth and privilege, but she will only make the most minimal and tokenistic reforms to ensure very slight improvements in economic equality.
In the meantime, she will weaponize the economic anger and resentment she is stoking up; these negative popular sentiments, in turn, will interact with other prejudices, frustrations and resentments, in a kind of multiplier effect.
Over at Prospect Magazine there is a thoughtful review from Miranda Green of Politics: Between the Extremes by Nick Clegg, alongside The Death of Liberal Democracy? by David Boyle and Joe Zammit-Lucia.
The result, in this book , is a mix of avowed optimism—that a liberal worldview can and must survive—with a hugely gloomy analysis of British political culture. Politics: Between the Extremes is part memoir of the Coalition years, part meditation on the rebellious spirit of the post-crash period (to call it an age seems premature). Its balance can be uneasy, but Clegg’s book is a necessary contribution to a pressing current debate: how much and for what reason are liberal values, in the broad sense, at bay? And can any moderate politician find a way to turn the tide of resentment against the political system and its practitioners?
Theresa May might have said this
I will deliver Brexit. I will be faithful to the mandate given to us by the British people. I will heed their anxieties about immigration and I will act so that we have more control about who comes in and out of our country. But, friends, I must tell you candidly that I will not act in a way which will jeopardise the open, dynamic economy upon which our great trading economy relies.
And that means I will also fight to retain our membership of Europe’s single market, the world’s largest borderless marketplace created by
…
Now that I have your attention let me explain what I mean. In 1982 I was part of an “elite squad” of Liberals and Social Democrats who campaigned in the Queens Park by-election. It was not the most fertile of territory and despite having an excellent candidate (one Graham Watson, sorry Sir Graham) we finished, I think, a “good fourth”.
For me it was the first taste of what was to become a minor obsession, namely campaigning in parliamentary by-elections. Since then I have seen the good, the bad and the indifferent. A “good by-election” is like nothing else. If Theresa May had realised how stimulating and addictive by-election campaigning can be for Liberal Democrats then she would have found a way to bring it within the Psychoactive Substances Act.
Last Thursday and Friday I joined our excellent candidate, Liz Leffman and her awesome team in Witney.
Let me tell you – Witney is a GOOD by-election.
In fact, it is good and getting better and heading for being excellent.
What can make the difference between good and excellent? You can.
Bluntly the party needs you to get to Witney tomorrow and on Wednesday and again on Thursday. You can have your life back again on Friday.
Nick Clegg has given a speech at the National Liberal Club today to launch his third report in the Brexit Challenge series. In this one he looks at the impact of hard Brexit on food prices. Here is his speech in full:
Nearly 4 months on from the vote to leave the European Union, we are finally starting to understand the early consequences of Brexit.
In the last week we have seen the government on the back foot, pressed by Conservative MPs to give parliament a say ahead of the triggering of article 50.
We have seen Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, issue the hardest statement yet against giving the UK a sweetheart deal.
And we saw the strongest ripples yet in the currency markets and in business. According to the Financial Times the pound’s effective exchange rate, weighted to reflect the UK’s trade flows, fell to a 168-year low last Tuesday – weaker than the lowest point in the recent financial crisis, weaker than when Britain was ejected from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, weaker even than when we left the Gold Standard in the 1930s.
Perhaps most significantly, the markets seem to have woken up to the looming danger of Hard Brexit, and investors are using their money to punish the government for every perceived misstep, while rewarding decisions that raise the chances of a better deal.
The markets are a powerful new player in this story. They are becoming increasing sensitive to relatively small policy changes. Hence the pound rallied sharply last week as soon as the Prime Minister announced there would after all be a debate ahead of the negotiations, but slipped back again when David Davis put in another Commons performance devoid of any meaningful content.
Here’s another encouraging story from Liz Leffman’s campaign in Witney.
Absolutely amazing to have Dillie Keane in today to help out with my campaign! pic.twitter.com/Ojwb9FayJh
— Liz Leffman (@lizleffman) October 14, 2016
“Ridiculous” you no doubt think, this is another of the Liberal elite trying to spread scare stories.
Well, if that is what you think then take a look at the Government Petitions website today. A Conservative Councillor has launched a petition calling on the Government to amend the Treason Felony Act to make supporting UK membership of the EU a crime.
The petition states:
Amend the Treason Felony Act to make supporting UK membership of the EU a crime.
The Treason Felony Act be amended to include the following offences:
‘To imagine, devise, promote, work, or encourage others, to support UK becoming a member of the European Union;
– To conspire with foreign powers to make the UK, or part of the UK, become a member of the EU.’It is becoming clear that many politicians and others are unwilling to accept the democratic decision of the British people to leave the EU. Brexit must not be put at risk in the years and decades ahead. For this reason we the undersigned request that the Treason Felony Act be amended as set out in this petition.
(These provisions to become law the day the United Kingdom leaves the EU).
We don’t see many posts on Lib Dem Voice about Northern Ireland – maybe because we don’t have many Liberal Democrat members there. So this is an invitation to discuss the increasingly worrying impact of Brexit – and the threat of Brexit – on the economy and security of that beautiful, but little known, part of the UK where 56% voted to stay in the EU.
Martin McGuiness has been telling the media that Northern Ireland should be pressing for a special status within the EU. In The Guardian article today:
“As things sit at the moment we are going to suffer big time,” McGuinness said. “Theresa May says ‘Brexit means Brexit’, but so far as we are concerned Brexit means disaster for the people of Ireland.”
He said he was encouraged that the Democratic Unionists, with whom his party shares power in Belfast, also agreed that Ireland needed to be treated as a special case by Brussels because of the importance of the potential problems – borders, trade, peace and security – presented by Brexit.
And he added that many unionists were as unhappy as republicans at the outcome of the referendum and the risk posed by the restoration of immigration and customs borders, as well as loss of easy access to EU markets.
There’s a scene in the film “Game Change” with our Woody at his best. “Game change” is the film that looks at Sarah Palin’s selection and campaign as Vice Presidential nominee in the US 2008 Presidential election.
The scene in question is after Barack Obama’s election is confirmed, and as John McCain is planning his concession speech. Sarah Palin, played by Julianne Moore, is determined to also make her own speech at the same occasion, praising John McCain.
I know that many of you will rightly be focused on the positive by-election campaign that we are currently running in Witney so you might have missed that internal elections to our Party’s Committees are now underway. Nominations opened last Wednesday. This is the biggest exercise in internal party democracy which the Party has undertaken in decades, following the implementation of One Member One Vote. For the first time, every member is allowed to vote for committee members and any member who receives the required nominations can stand for election.
There are four committees up for election: the Federal Board, the Federal Conference Committee, the Federal Policy Committee and the Federal International Relations Committee. In addition, a number of spaces are available for members to represent the party within our Delegation to the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE). The position of Party President is also up for election this year.
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The AI world and some fallacies about it
Yet another government makes a mess of local government reform
The Joy of Six 1574
Front Street looking great
Mary Reid 
Adrian Moss 
John Kelly 
David Raw 
Jonathan Brown 
