The Voice

Rennie: We need to keep access to EU markets easy for business

By The Voice | Sat 4th June 2016 - 9:26 am

Willie Rennie argues today that we need to make sure that we keep access to EU markets easy for business. We don’t want to be putting borders up, creating more red tape, which could cause problems and cut jobs. He says:

At the heart of the argument for remaining in Europe is a single market, making trade easier, and allowing businesses based on innovation and excellence to thrive is going to underpin our future success.

That was the argument that won the independence referendum and is just as powerful now.

Three million jobs in Britain depend on Europe. We need to make Europe easy for business.

As part of Europe we are part of an economic market worth trillions. There are 500 million customers.

It means that a Scottish company that is good and efficient at its job can expand across the continent.

Easy access to 500 million customers is worth millions of jobs in Britain.

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The Voice

Vince Cable: European single market represents a British vision of an open Europe

By The Voice | Fri 3rd June 2016 - 5:30 pm

Britain has attracted the world’s top companies to invest here, creating jobs, on the basis of access to the European single market. That’s what Vince Cable told an audience in Bristol earlier this week. Far from being an invention of straight-banana obsessed bureaucrats, the EU represents a British vision of an open Europe, he added. Here is his speech in full.

It is great to be here in Bristol celebrating the best in British manufacturing with the leaders of our top manufacturing companies.

Manufacturing still provides half of our exports, three quarters of scientific innovation and two and a half million relatively

…

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Paul Walter

Clinton finds her voice: “This isn’t reality television – this is actual reality.”

By Paul Walter | Fri 3rd June 2016 - 3:55 pm

Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry, but America’s entire arsenal.

Hillary Clinton has found her voice with a major speech on foreign policy in San Diego. The speech is substantive, going through key issues one by one and quoting Donald Trump’s “ideas”, of which she says, powerfully:

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Antony Hook

Justin Trudeau Speech to Liberal Federal Party Convention

By Antony Hook | Fri 3rd June 2016 - 2:45 pm

Our Canadian sister party, whose recent success has interested and inspired many of us, held its Federal Party Convention (which takes places every two years) in Winnipeg last weekend.

Here is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bi-lingual speech (French parts have been over-dubbed into English).

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Norman Lamb MP

Norman Lamb MP writes…Disastrous A & E figures emphasise need for independent commission on NHS future

By Norman Lamb MP | Fri 3rd June 2016 - 1:15 pm

Every day seems to bring new crushing evidence of the immense strain facing the NHS and social care. Missed key targets have become the norm rather than the exception; A&E is bearing the brunt of cuts to preventive and community services; and few were surprised when NHS trusts recently revealed a record deficit of £2.45 billion.

After hearing anecdotal accounts of ambulances queueing up outside A&E departments due to a lack of available beds in my own county of Norfolk, I decided to investigate the true scale of the problem across the whole country by submitting Freedom of Information requests to each Ambulance Trust in England.

What I discovered was far more shocking than I had feared. More than 10,000 patients were stuck in an ambulance for more than two hours waiting to be handed over to hospital staff last year – a staggering four-fold increase over just three years. The number of people having to endure waits of more than an hour before being admitted has almost trebled in the same period.

In total, almost 400,000 hours were wasted in the last year alone due to handover delays of more than 15 minutes, the national target for getting patients out of the ambulance and into the care of A&E staff. That’s equivalent to 16,554 days of patients waiting in limbo while ambulance crews and vehicles are unnecessarily tied up, unable to respond to new emergency calls.

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Judith Jolly

Baroness Judith Jolly writes…Why we need a UK register of arms brokers

By Judith Jolly | Fri 3rd June 2016 - 11:59 am

I never expected to come anywhere near the top of the ballot for private members bills. My record for the Lib Dem raffle over thirty odd years is less than five or six wins. And I came third! That means I have second reading next Friday (10th June).

My bill calls for arms brokers to be registered and a fit and proper test applied to would be brokers. At present there are few restrictions so you or I could set up as a broker. In the US they are regulated.

Save the Children and Amnesty International are supporting us. Save the Children said:

Our Yemen work in Parliament has mainly focused on humanitarian access and the credible reports of breaches of international and human rights law. Whilst we recognise the positive impact that the Government’s humanitarian response and interventions have made, we remain concerned that the Government’s current support for Saudi Arabia-led military action is undermining the protection of civilians and is inconsistent with its support to the humanitarian response. We believe more robust action is needed to ensure that existing standards and norms are upheld by all parties to the conflict, in line with Government commitments under the new National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review, and to ensure full compliance by the UK with legal obligations under national and international law relating to the sale of arms.

Amnesty International added:

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Denis Mollison

A postal vote for the EU

By Denis Mollison | Fri 3rd June 2016 - 10:55 am

It came this morning and I’ve sent it straight in.

The arguments about trivial matters such as whether we’ll be 2% better or worse off for a few years are dismaying in their triviality. Even the major medium term issues – such as defeating neoliberal economics, fighting for fair trade rather than free trade – are not the ones to focus on.

The urgent major issues are climate change, biodiversity, population growth. If we can’t deal with these there is no hope for social prosperity or justice – for defeating Beveridge’s five giants: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease.

The idea that we can tackle these major issues by `taking back control of our country’ is laughable. We need to share our sovereignty with the rest of humanity.

The unique selling point of the EU is that it extends democracy beyond national borders. Of course its democracy is not perfect, but for what is pretty much a first in democratic international cooperation it’s pretty good. It’s better than what we have in the UK in many respects, with our disproportional adversarial system and unelected House of Lords.

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George Kendall

The left should follow John McDonnell and stop being anti-austerity

By George Kendall | Fri 3rd June 2016 - 9:55 am

When we use the word ‘austerity’, what do people hear?

Do they hear a reasoned argument for why Tory cuts are ideological and unnecessary? That cutting slower will prevent the economy stalling, will allow a faster recovery, and will reduce the deficit faster.

I fear not.

More likely, they hear someone who wants to get us into a never-ending spiral of debt.

Have you heard the quote: “If you’re putting the rent on the credit card month after month, things need to change”.

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Caron Lindsay

Remembering Andrew Reeves five years on

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 3rd June 2016 - 8:34 am

Andrew ReevesThe first week of June has become full of sad memories in recent years.

Yesterday we remembered our wise and funny former leader Charles Kennedy who died a year ago. Five years ago today, I woke to a phone call telling me that our much loved Director of Campaigns in Scotland, Andrew Reeves, had died.

I had known Andrew for years, first meeting him on Cix which was the first Lib Dem online community. I was so thrilled when he moved to Scotland in 2008. He arrived in Edinburgh on a Friday lunchtime. By Saturday morning, even though he didn’t start until the next week, he was leafletting with us in Cowdenbeath.

He was one of these people who could get you to do more than you ever thought you could do, to climb higher than you ever thought – and he’d make that climb such fun.

On the day he died, I remember little except being furious with the sun for shining so strongly. I wrote this which summed up my memories of him:

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The Voice

Liberal Democrats GAIN Dorset county council seat from the Conservatives

By The Voice | Fri 3rd June 2016 - 7:22 am

Good news from Sherborne in Dorset, where Liberal Democrat Matt Hall has gained a county council seat from the Conservatives.

Last week, some bloke from up north went to help his campaign:

The margin of victory was slim enough to show how critical it is to have a good polling day operation:

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The Voice

WATCH: Alex Cole-Hamilton on the EU’s key role in securing peace and freedom

By The Voice | Thu 2nd June 2016 - 3:45 pm

This is not the first time we’re going to show this in the run-up to the EU Referendum, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Alex Cole-Hamilton sums up why he is such a passionate pro-European:

It would do the Remain campaign no harm at all to have this on continuous loop for the next few weeks.

Here is the text in full.

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Martin Thomas

Lord (Martin) Thomas writes…Celebrating the opportunities of migration

By Martin Thomas | Thu 2nd June 2016 - 2:17 pm

Two years after the First World War, my father decided to emigrate to the United States to join his brother in Virginia. He was 18 years of age, barely out of Rhyl Grammar School and all the jobs in the locality had been reserved for demobbed soldiers.

So off he went from Meliden to join his brother who was already settled and working in Virginia. He sailed out of Liverpool on the SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria and landed at the immigrant reception centre on Ellis Island, New York. I have the record of his entry.

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Caron Lindsay

Charles Kennedy: Lib Dems must be the voice of rational pro-Europeanism

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 2nd June 2016 - 12:26 pm

Here is a flavour of what Charles Kennedy would have brought to this European referendum. Bold, passionate, principled stuff from the 2013 Glasgow conference.

He talked about his worry about opposing the Iraq War, that it could seriously damage the party – but it was the right thing to do and he was glad that we had done it.

What that episode proved to me was that you can take a distinct position which isn’t necessarily popular with everyone but marks you out and people can recognise your sincerity and honesty and make a case that none of the others are prepared to make.

If the voice of rational pro=Europeanism is going to be heard thee is only one place it can come from and it should be us and it will be us.

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Team #Intogether

How you can help make 11 June the biggest action day of the referendum #INtogether

By Team #Intogether | Thu 2nd June 2016 - 11:00 am

image001Team #INtogether wants to say a massive thank you to every single one of our activists who has hit the streets and made May a fantastic month of campaigning.

Over the course of the month, including our two action days on May 14th and May 28th, we held well over 350 street stalls, with thousands of Liberal Democrats out making the case for a strong Britain at the heart of Europe.

While the other parties have also been out campaigning, the Liberal Democrats have been out in force and we have clearly been the most visible of the parties on the streets. It couldn’t be clearer that when it comes to grassroots campaigning on Europe, it is we Lib Dems who can make the greatest contribution.

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Caron Lindsay

A year ago today….

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 2nd June 2016 - 9:35 am

A year ago today, we woke up to the awful news that Charles Kennedy had died suddenly at the age of just 55.

That sense of shock and loss still feels very real.

Last night at his parish church in Caol, where his funeral was held, a stained glass window was unveiled in his memory. The artist who designed it, Pinkie Maclure, shared pictures of it on her Twitter account.

She told the Scotsman more about the design:

I thought it was a lovely idea and it was a great honour to be asked to make it.

“I was told to include the eagle and Ben Nevis, but they left the rest up to me.

I asked a bit more about his family and discovered his father used to play the fiddle in the church so I decided it would be nice to include some music as well as a fiddle.”

The window was made from handblown glass which was made to order in Germany.

It also includes Mr Kennedy’s name, the dates of his birth and death, his initials and bulrushes and violets which are symbols of humility.

It was devastating to lose someone who had been part of our lives for decades.

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Antony Hook

EURef: Get your posters up

By Antony Hook | Thu 2nd June 2016 - 8:16 am

correx board21 days today until the most important vote in our lifetimes.  The referendum will have consequences for decades and they will be for Europe, for Britain, for our local communities and for our great party.

We know that seeing posters for a cause makes people more likely to vote for the cause.

If you have not already done so, now is the time to put a poster up.

Weatherproof correx boards (for a stake at the end of the garden or on a balcony) can be ordered here for just £2.

Paper posters …

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Joshua Dixon

Why I’m voting remain: I want to live in a Britain that stands tall and proud in the world

By Joshua Dixon | Wed 1st June 2016 - 6:55 pm

Tomorrow I’ll be sending off my postal vote. A vote that will possibly be the most important of my lifetime.
Unsurprisingly (to those of you who know me) I’m voting for Britain to remain a member of the European Union. I’m doing so because I believe passionately in the project and what it represents.

However, I want to explain why this referendum is about so much more than whether Britain is simply a member of the EU or not. In my view it is just as much about the sort of country we see Britain as and what it’s place in the world will be.

The two routes we can choose between represent two very different images of the sort of Britain we will be:

Will it be a Britain that is the compassionate, diverse nation that welcomes the innovators and thinkers of tomorrow from across the continent? Or will it be a Britain that turns its back on its neighbours in favour of a false sense of security symbolised through the artificial barriers we have imposed on ourself?

Will it be a Britain that stands tall on the international stage as a leader in the fight to tackle the greatest threat to humanity known as climate change? Or will we be a Britain that thinks we should give legitimacy to the views of the climate deniers pushing so desperately for a leave vote?

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems seek to amend revenge porn law to give anonymity to victims

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 1st June 2016 - 5:29 pm

One of the real successes of the coalition years was an initiative by Liberal Democrats to make revenge porn a criminal offence. It’s just over two years since I first wrote about it and the harm it can do to people. At that point, there was little the police could do:

It’s time for the law to catch up with this most modern form of abuse. It takes seconds for a controlling man to inflict a lifetime of hell on a woman. That can’t be right.

Just 5 months later, the law was changed, thanks in no small part to the bravery of women like Hannah Thompson who were willing to go public.

However, we still have a society where the female victims of such crime are blamed much more than the male perpetrators. And it is almost always that way round. So, the Liberal Democrats have taken the next step and tabled amendments giving victims the right to anonymity and to seek compensation.

From the Guardian:

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Antony Hook

EURef: Excellent guide to referendum issues by Mike Biden

By Antony Hook | Wed 1st June 2016 - 2:50 pm

The European Movement has published this guide to issues in the referendum.  It contains a wealth of useful information when speaking to people about Europe.

It has been compiled by Lib Dem campaigner Mike Biden from Winchester, who has done a fantastic piece of work for us all.

Some of the facts in it ,include:

  • For every £1 the EU spends, the UK economy has grown by £10
  • The EU’s plans for growth will add 7% to the UK economy
  • Only 1% of government expenditure goes to the EU.  If you earn £30,000 pa, your contribution is just £51
  • Prices of

…

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Lord William Wallace

Lord William Wallace writes… How you can make sure we win this referendum

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 1st June 2016 - 12:45 pm

The betting odds on the outcome of the EU Referendum are comforting. And the polls so far are not too bad. But once you are out of London, and on the doorstep, it doesn’t feel good. The messages that feed back, picked up from social media and the subtle messages that the Leave campaign are putting out, show how many people have picked up their portrayal of the EU as draining both our sovereignty and our budget. Their latest political broadcast played heavily on the idea that the NHS will get worse if we stay in, and will benefit from extra funds and fewer patients if we leave.

Not all Liberal Democrat party members feel passionate about Europe. For many, local issues and local campaigning is more important – and more directly relevant to those whose votes we are seeking. The ALDC has fixed a full-day conference the weekend before the Referendum to discuss local campaigning, which will I imagine include a session on how to combat the appeal of UKIP at the local level. But local and international issues do not exist in separate compartments: concerns about immigration and diversity, competition for housing, schools and jobs (and hospital admissions), bridge the two. UKIP, and some local Tories, play skilfully on fears of change and mistrust of incomers, to our disadvantage.

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NewsHound

Guardian obituary of Jonathan Webber

By NewsHound | Wed 1st June 2016 - 11:20 am

In February, former West Midlands Lib Dem chair and President’s Award winner Jonathan Webber sadly died. His partner Kathryn Ball wrote an obituary for us, with tributes from Nick Clegg, Paddy Ashdown and Tim Farron. Tim said:

His advice and counsel to successive leaders, his energy and his optimism, helped sustain the party in the most challenging of circumstances.

Kathryn has now written a very interesting article on Jonathan’s life for the Guardian. Here’s an excerpt:

After studying drama and setting up a small business as a bookseller, Jonathan worked as a bus conductor in Exeter. There he met a Greek student, Kleio – and later hitchhiked 1,500 miles to Athens to be with her. He spent the next 18 years in Greece, becoming fluent in Greek and working as a literary agent publishing Greek versions of bestselling Penguin novels.

After moving to Thessaloniki, he was asked to run the UK government division of the British Hellenic Chamber of Commerce to help stimulate business links throughout the Balkans – and he also started the Thessaloniki Cricket Club.

Jonathan returned to the UK in 1995. He joined the Department of Trade and Industry, helping to promote British exports and advising on trade with Greece and the Balkans, before joining the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, where I met him, and where he became director of international trade in 2005.

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Paul Walter

The government’s BBC white paper presents reasonably sensible proposals

By Paul Walter | Wed 1st June 2016 - 9:49 am

The government’s white paper on the BBC (“A BBC for the future: a broadcaster of distinction”) is available to read here. For a white paper, it is attractively presented. It puts forward a range of thoughtful and carefully calibrated proposals for the future.

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ALDC

ALDC Campaigner awards: Nominations now open

By ALDC | Wed 1st June 2016 - 8:53 am

ALDC Master Logo (for screen)Each year, ALDC recognises the outstanding work of local Focus teams through our Campaigner Awards and nominations are now open.
The Campaigner Awards are presented at the ALDC AGM at Federal Conference. Winners in each category and our Overall Winner will receive cash prizes and a signed and framed certificate for their office!

This year, after shortlisting, we will also be opening the vote to you! We want members of the party to have a say in this year’s winners and will be opening the vote to the public.

This year, our categories are:

Best By-election Campaign

Bedford win ALDC campaigner awardBest Fightback

Best Innovation

Best Literature Campaign

Best Squeeze Campaign

Best Community Campaign

Overall Campaigner Awards Winner

For more details about each category go here.

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Jonathan Fryer

‘Strategic patience’ in Tbilisi

By Jonathan Fryer | Tue 31st May 2016 - 4:08 pm

For the first time ever, Liberal International has held its Executive Committee in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, at the invitation of the Republican Party of Georgia. Regional and global security were at the top of the agenda, with a strong presentation by Georgia’s Defence Minister, Tinatin ‘Tina’ Khidasheli on the challenges facing former Soviet republics now finding themselves on the periphery of an expansionist Russia.

To drive the point home, we participants were all bussed out of the city to the ‘occupation line’, which marks the current limit of Russian encroachment into Georgian territory just south of South Ossetia (which the Russians have already effectively annexed, as they did with Ukraine’s Crimea). Just days before, the Russians had rolled a giant barbed wire fence further into Georgian territory, leaving some Georgian farmers cut off from their land and families divided. Tens of thousands of Georgians have already fled South Ossetia and have been resettled or temporarily rehoused.

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Alex Minin

We cannot have a foreign policy without a conscience

By Alex Minin | Tue 31st May 2016 - 2:55 pm

 

President Lukashenko of Belarus has enjoyed twenty-two years in power, achieved through a specific method of counting of votes, and has often been referred to as the last dictator in Europe.

Following his annual state-of-the-union address 2015, President Lukashenko has said that Jews in Belarus should be taken “under control”. All this occurred in the presence of foreign ambassadors, including the Ambassador of Britain, but excluding the US ambassador, because the Belarusian dictator expelled the US ambassador from the country many years ago.

The reaction of the Conservative government on this Belarusian leader’s statement was not long in coming. At the beginning of 2016 the Foreign & Commonwealth Office called for the lifting of EU sanctions against the Belarusian dictator, with “full compliance” of the 2010 Conservative statement on the basic values of foreign policy:

We cannot have a foreign policy without a conscience. Human rights are not the only issue that informs the making of foreign policy, but they are indivisible from it, not least because the consequences of foreign policy failure are human.

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James Baillie

We need to talk to Yanis

By James Baillie | Tue 31st May 2016 - 1:55 pm

 

We’re fighting hard to stay in the EU in this campaign, and we’ve got a good fighting chance of winning it. But it’s important to remember that this has been the campaign that never should have happened. What we’re fighting against isn’t just the lacklustre waffling of a Tory-led Vote Leave campaign that’s largely been hijacked by a fluffy-headed careerist Etonian. That would have been no problem. The real enemy is a drip-feed of decades of anti-EU propaganda and domestic politicians deflecting blame to Brussels – which is in turn made possible by the catastrophic scale of voter disengagement with European politics.

And that’s at the heart of why we should take the leftist reformers of Another Europe is Possible seriously.

The EU needs reform. This oughtn’t be a controversial statement to make; it’s self-evident that in most European elections voters have been wholly disengaged from the issues upon which they were electing their MEPs, and that’s not largely the fault of the voters. It doesn’t help that the appointed commission wields a great deal of authority with little direct accountability, and the tendency of national politicians to use European elections as mid-term referenda on national governments compounds the problem.

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Caron Lindsay

The Tories, not the EU, are responsible for VAT on domestic fuel

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 31st May 2016 - 12:52 pm

So, the latest salvo from the Leave camp is an assertion that the EU is stopping us from cutting VAT on domestic fuel.

There is one man amongst the ranks of the Brexiters who knows all about VAT on domestic fuel. That’s right. Step forward former Chancellor Norman Lamont. It was he who decided to put VAT on domestic fuel at the rate of 8% from April 1 1994. The EU didn’t force him to do this. He was doing it to cut public spending, something Tories have a bit of an obsession with. Not only that, but he would have been quite happy to raise it to 17.5% the year after.

Here’s a story from the Independent at the time where Mr Lamont is doing his usual Je ne regrette rien line.

Fellow now Brexiteer Michael Portillo, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, added his twopence worth:

And in an atmosphere of growing confusion, a damaging Commons row broke out last night after Michael Portillo, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, suggested that poorer people would not suffer too much because of the ‘swings and roundabouts’of the Income Support system.

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David Allen

Buy the Brexit Pig – in a poke!

By David Allen | Tue 31st May 2016 - 10:43 am

 

It’s the chance of a lifetime!  Roll up, in your millions!  Come and buy our beautiful Brexit Pig – in a poke!

When Brexit wins, June 24th will be a Golden Dawn*!  Our Prime Minister, Whoever that might be, will soon show Angela Merkel who’s boss!

  • What’s that you say? We’re going to let Cameron stay on?  But that will be disastrous, he’ll drag his feet, it’ll all go pear-shaped!  Surely we need to tell the nation that it’ll be Our Man?
  • What’s that you say? That there’d be chaos, Boris slugging it out with Gove, the Opposition parties threatening to bring down the government?  It’s a nightmare!  What can we tell the public?  I know!  Let’s tell them nothing!  Let’s dodge the question, say nothing at all about who will lead us out of Europe, and hope they don’t notice the problem.  Keep that pig firmly in its poke!

Anyway, our Prime Minister Whoever will know exactly how to deal with Europe.  It certainly won’t be like Norway!

  • What’s that you say? That Cameron is bound to go for the Norway approach, which comes closest to no-change?  Keep quiet about that.  We haven’t told the public who Prime Minister Whoever will be, remember!  Keep that pig firmly in its poke!
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Mary Reid

Inequality Street

By Mary Reid | Tue 31st May 2016 - 8:43 am

inequality street 4Six years ago my ideas about inequality in society were given a jolt by the publication of a book with the intriguing title ‘The Spirit Level: Why equality is better for everyone‘, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. The authors – both academics – drew on research from many sources to show that societies in which there are huge variations in income are bad for everyone, rich or poor, and that more equal societies benefit all their members.

We might expect inequality to have an impact on factors such as life expectancy and educational performance, but the authors observed its effects in some surprising areas of life, from obesity (‘wider income gaps = wider waists’) to teenage births. And in each case the effect was seen right across the income spectrum. The sobering truth is that, amongst the developed nations, the UK is one of the more unequal countries.

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Chris Key

Let’s make the UK a better place for those with mental health challenges

By Chris Key | Mon 30th May 2016 - 5:00 pm

 

Imagine being in a situation where you have had months of no sleep, you have lost over 15 kilos in weight when you were already under weight and you cannot do anything but ruminate over problems. You go to your GP, he gives you some shiny pills then tells you to book an appointment in a few weeks, and offers you no therapy or treatment. A few weeks later your mental health deteriorates to a point where you consider self-harm.

That was my story and I am lucky because I am here to tell it. I paid privately for treatment as the only other option was being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, which could have had devastating consequences for my financial and employment prospects. Luckily this episode is well behind me and my life has moved on to a much better place.

Sadly many cannot because they do not have the financial means, or support of family or friends to get through it. Around 4400 people end their own lives in England each year – that’s one death every two hours – and at least 10 times that number attempt suicide.

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Recent Comments

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    Excellent and a good speaker. Highly admired in Richmond and would certainly get my vote...
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    Good luck Sarah. I wish you every success in your campaign....
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