Tim Farron MP

Tim Farron MP writes…If we allow fear to win, then really we have lost

By Tim Farron MP | Mon 16th November 2015 - 12:40 pm

 

In the aftermath of the atrocities on Friday, my thoughts remain with the families of those killed and injured. As the world watches on in collective horror and mourning, the families and friends of those who are lost will be dealing with their own private grief, and among the discussions of international response and foreign policy consequences we must not forget that each of the 129 who have died is a personal tragedy as well as a global one.

As events unfolded over the weekend the political stage was crowded, in most cases with people simply responding to events, but also with those desperately using it to justify their own positions or forward their own agendas.

It is critical that political leaders here in the UK fight the temptation to do the same, and instead work together to understand the facts before attempting to state with confidence what should or shouldn’t be done, at home and abroad, in response to the attacks.

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Shirley Williams tells George Osborne that he has 10 days to save the NHS

By Mary Reid | Mon 16th November 2015 - 12:17 pm

 

Writing in the Guardian, Shirley Williams picks up the baton passed on by Nigel Crisp, the former chief executive of the NHS, who four years ago wrote about his experiences in his book 24 Hours to Save the NHS.

Shirley explains that many of the financial woes in the NHS have been inherited from past schemes:

For example, the number of funded places for young men and women training in this country as nurses was cut by 12% – 2,500 places – in 2012. The consequent shortage of newly qualified nurses has been filled by people recruited by employment agencies. The cost of agency staff is one of the main reasons for overspending by NHS trusts. In 2014/15, agency staff cost the NHS £1,770m, a year-on-year increase of 29%.

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Charles Lawley

Boris’ Israel visit proves he is unsuitable to represent us on the world stage

By Charles Lawley | Mon 16th November 2015 - 11:04 am

 

Many can be forgiven for finding Boris Johnson’s manner affable and quite comical. However, his conduct during his visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories this week has been no laughing matter. A frontrunner to be our next Prime Minister has clumsily bounced around the region making an offensive remark here and reciting anti-Palestinian propaganda there.

The Mayor of London said:

I cannot think of anything more foolish than to say that you want to have any kind of divestment or sanctions or boycott against a country that, when all is said and done is the only democracy in the region. is the only place that has, in my view, a pluralist, open society…

…The supporters of this so-called boycott are really just a bunch of corduroy-jacketed academics from lefty, not that there’s anything wrong with wearing a corduroy jacket I hasten to say, but they are by and large lefty academics who have no real standing in the matter and I think are highly unlikely to be influential on Britain. And this is a very, very small minority in our country who are calling for this.

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Adam Coe

I became a Lib Dem member this weekend – Why?

By Adam Coe | Mon 16th November 2015 - 9:23 am

 

Social media is awash with similar responses to this weekend’s tragedy:

“At an awful, heartbreaking time like this, while we pray for Paris, it is important that we ”

Fair enough. Shock focuses the mind, and compassion demands action.

Unfortunately, we live in times where liberalism is no longer so mainstream.

What we may have shrugged off before as mild, parochial xenophobia, is turning nasty. Mr Cameron will accept less Syrian refugees in five years than Germany accepted in a week. Those of us who sympathise with all victims of IS, find this totally unacceptable.

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Mary Reid

Chris Maines elected as London Chair

By Mary Reid | Mon 16th November 2015 - 8:43 am

Chris MainesCongratulations to Chris Maines who was elected as Chair of London Region on Saturday!

He succeeds Mike Tuffrey, who had come to the end of his term of office and was not eligible for re-election.

Chris has been a councillor for a total of 28 years, and has served as Leader of Bromley Council and Leader of the Opposition in Lewisham.  He has run for Parliament, and has been closely involved with party conferences as Chief Steward and currently on the Federal Conference Committee.

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Caron Lindsay

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #439

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 15th November 2015 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 439th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (8 -,14 November  2015), together with a hand-picked quintet, 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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Caron Lindsay

Towards a family friendly House of Commons

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 15th November 2015 - 6:21 pm

There was a Commons debate this week on making the Houses of Parliament more family-friendly. We’ve already covered the breastfeeding angle but it’s worth looking at some of the other issues raised.

Jo Swinson, in an article for the New Statesman, talked about what she thought was necessary to make Parliament more accessible for parents.

Lots of positive suggestions were put forward in the debate, including better scheduling of Parliamentary recesses to coincide with school holidays, more predictability of debates and votes, a drop-in crèche facility to complement the nursery, introducing maternity cover for MPs and compassionate carers’ leave for staff facing family emergencies. Rightly, the debate included family responsibilities beyond parenting, whether for elderly relatives or for partners who become ill. Professor Sarah Childs, the respected expert on gender and politics from Bristol University, is currently preparing recommendations for reform of Parliament to make it more accessible to people from under-represented groups, so it was a timely discussion.

She talked about the history-making change that had made a real difference to her and her husband when their son was born:

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The Voice

LDV’s Sunday Best: our 7 most-read articles this week

By The Voice | Sun 15th November 2015 - 3:30 pm

7 ver 4 fullMany thanks to the 11,400  visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here’s our 7 most-read posts…

Chris Rennard elected to the Federal Executive by Lib Dem peers (105 comments) by The Voice

Alistair Carmichael case rumbles on (38 comments) by The Voice

HS2: Who cares about an old pear tree standing in its way (71 comments) by John Whitehouse

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The Voice

++Special conference is triggered – all members will be able to attend

By The Voice | Sun 15th November 2015 - 2:00 pm

 

On Thursday, LDV reported that Chris Rennard was elected to represent the party’s House of Lords group on the Federal Executive.

Since then, a petition has been submitted to the party by the group ‘Rock the Boat – Lib Dems against Sexual Harrassment’. The petition calls for a Special Party Conference to debate a Constitutional amendment to remove the seat on Federal Executive reserved for a nominee from the Lords group. The petition has been declared valid as it includes over 200 signatures of members from at least 20 different local parties.

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Caron Lindsay

What Twitter tells us about Welsh Liberal Democrat Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 15th November 2015 - 12:45 pm

The Welsh Liberal Democrats met in Swansea for their Autumn Conference yesterday. Here are some of the highlights from Twitter.

Like the Scottish Kickstart which also took place yesterday, the event opened with a minute’s silence for the victims of the Paris atrocities.

Sal Brinton also mentioned the events in Paris in her speech:

Was some awkward squad rebellion going on?

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NewsHound

LibLink: Vince Cable: Britain’s economic recovery is precarious and an economic storm is coming

By NewsHound | Sun 15th November 2015 - 11:13 am

Vince Cable has form for predicting economic disaster, so you take notice when he says that there could be another one on the horizon, even if he qualifies it with an anecdote from his professional life:

I use the word “could”. I am always mindful of the day 20 years ago when I was greeted in my role as chief economist at Shell with a plaque, in Arabic, which translated meant “Those who claim to be able to forecast the future are lying even if, by chance, they are later proved right”. The reputation of economic forecasting as a science, which makes astrology looks respectable, reflects the same scepticism. And that scepticism was greatly reinforced by a total failure of standard economic models based on efficient financial markets to anticipate the last disaster.

Writing in the Independent, he outlines the factors which could indicate that all is not well: the high level of debt, the asset bubbles which have been created particularly in housing and the international economy, particularly any shock waves from a Chinese slowdown.

One side-effect of keeping economies growing through cheap money and credit creation through quantitative easing has been the generation of asset bubbles, especially in property markets. Britain demonstrates the problem in an extreme way, magnifying underlying imbalances between housing demand and supply. Double-digit housing inflation is not merely creating appalling social problems and division between classes and generations but grossly distorting investment from productive activities to property holding. The Bank of England has tools of macro-prudential management to curb this inflation but the extreme timidity in using them reveals the high level of dependence on this precarious and dangerous form of growth.

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Caron Lindsay

Last chance to submit your thoughts to the Governance Review – deadline is noon tomorrow

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 15th November 2015 - 9:47 am

The deadline for submissions to the party’s Governance Review is noon tomorrow. If you have strong opinions on how the party is run, you need to get them in by then. The Federal Executive will be discussing them at an away day on 5th December and proposals will then be drawn up for consultation at Spring Conference and regional and state conferences. Here’s what I wrote in September about why it’s important to contribute:

I often think that if any executive body wanted to do some real power grabs, it would circulate them in a document entitled “Governance review” in the hope that nobody would actually read them and work out what they meant.

Actually, you don’t get away with that in this party where we have been known to have quite a bit of an obsession with constitutional geekery and process. I often feel that we get too tied up in the wording of tiny parts of the constitution and not enough in its practical application and the culture we need to foster to make the party work well. In a party that values openness, transparency and accessibility for government, we don’t have nearly enough of them in the way we run our party.

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Caron Lindsay

Who runs the World?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 14th November 2015 - 11:58 am

I had an absolutely brilliant day on Thursday at the first ever national Scottish Conference organised by the Women 50/50 Campaign and Engender entitled Who runs the World.

Women from all over the country gathered in Edinburgh’s MacDonald Hotel to discuss politics, the media, getting involved in councils and public appointments and ensuring that all areas of our public and political life had at least 50% women running them. There was a keynote speech from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon who said that the Women 50/50 campaign was one of the most significant campaigns in Scotland today.

I’m going to write in more detail about some of the sessions later but here are some of the highlights.

How sexism stops women fulfilling their ambitions

There were two panel sessions during the day. The first, in the morning, discussed participation in and portrayal of women in the media. One of the journalists on the panel, Gina Davidson, told us how she had wanted to the crime reporting job on the paper she was working for. She was turned down for that and given health. Conservative MSP Mary Scanlon had come into Parliament desperate to get on the Audit Committee. Her request was denied by the leadership and she ended up with health, a subject that she knew nothing about. Having said that, she has developed quite an affinity with it – she intends to spend her retirement volunteering for a mental health project. Even so, women are often directed into areas traditionally seen as theirs.

Working across parties

It’s great when women from all parties get together. We find out that we share a lot of the same frustrations and come across the same behaviours across politics. There was some talk on whether there should be a formal Women’s Caucus at Holyrood, something that the MSPs there thought could be useful. There are already examples of cross party working. Labour leader Kezia Dugdale talked about having a quiet word with then Employment Minister Angela Constance (also on the panel) after she’d noticed that all the photos on the construction page of Skills Development Scotland showed men wearing hard hats. Angela went and got it changed.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg: My family are up in arms over ham but I’m raging over sugar

By NewsHound | Sat 14th November 2015 - 10:25 am

Nick Clegg’s been on a bit of a journey on his views about sugar consumption. In an article for the Evening Standard last week, he outlined the dangers of consuming too much hidden sugar and said that he now favoured strong action to reduce our sugar consumption:

Now, finally, we are beginning to have a proper debate about what we can and should do about it. A recent report by Public Health England proposed a number of measures, as has the ever- compelling Jamie Oliver.

Reducing two-for-one deals, clamping down on advertising targeted at children, reining in the marketing of high-sugar food and drinks, reducing sugar content and portion sizes, and introducing a tax on sugary drinks and food have all been called for.

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Caron Lindsay

Solidarity with Paris

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 14th November 2015 - 9:26 am

French flag

For the second time in ten months, we have been shocked by events in Paris.

People doing what we are all lucky enough to be able to do on a Friday night – head out for a meal, to a football match, to a gig – meet death and violence.

I just felt heartbroken watching events unfold last night, thinking of all those people, of the emergency services coming to their aid, of President Hollande, whose shocked face spoke for us all, for those waiting for news of their loved ones.

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Caron Lindsay

Go to help Jane Brophy in Oldham West and Royton or Paddy will be coming after you….

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 13th November 2015 - 5:49 pm

Last week I wrote about the three reasons you should go to Oldham for your own good. I said:

If you’re looking for ways to invigorate your campaigning locally, a busy by-election is the place to be. The most up to date campaigning tricks and techniques will be there for you to see. Also you might learn about things as simple as ways to organise your delivery rounds or canvassing. If you’re in the office doing clerical work, learn from how it’s managed. You can pick up tips on all aspects of running an election that you can develop and use back home.

You would hope that it would be shining Lib Dem examples of brilliance that you would learn from but the other parties can teach you stuff too. There was one Scottish by-election where a former Lib Dem parliamentarian was seen shinning up a lamppost at dead of night to nab an SNP poster which, he declared, was brilliant in its simplicity and effectiveness. Well, he may not have put it quite like that, but you get the drift.

If you are the only Lib Dem in your village, used to leafletting with only your dog for company, it can be really invigorating to be part of a big group going and covering loads of ground really quickly.

There now appears to be a fourth reason – self preservation. Paddy will be after you if you don’t.

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The Voice

A new dawn in Myanmar: cause for great celebration

By The Voice | Fri 13th November 2015 - 4:35 pm

The Guardian reports:

Aung San Suu Kyi has won Myanmar’s landmark election and claimed a staggering majority in parliament, ending half a century of dominance by the military and providing the symbol of a decades-old democracy movement with a mandate to rule.

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The Voice

Farron: The Northern Powerhouse is a sham

By The Voice | Fri 13th November 2015 - 3:13 pm

Tim Farron has been in Yorkshire twice this week. He spoke at Yorkshire and the Humber (note, the name of the region is right this time) Liberal Democrat conference on Saturday and he was back for the Annual Dinner in Greg Mulholland’s seat on Wednesday.

While he was there, he spoke to the Yorkshire Post and was not impressed by the Conservative’s model of devolution:

One of the reasons the northern powerhouse is a sham and a failure is because this Government are now so obsessed with making sure that we reduce the size of the state that we are therefore not investing in the rail services that we need, in the housing that we need, the green energy we need, the broadband we need.

“Whilst the Labour Party is completely wrong-footed, completely in denial that the deficit needs to be reduced, cleared and to balance the books, George Osborne is mistaking the need to make sure you balance the books on your day to day expenditure with having to at the same time not invest in capital expenditure.

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News Meerkat

Lembit on being able to afford a pint

By News Meerkat | Fri 13th November 2015 - 12:00 pm

We read the Daily Express, so you don’t have to you.

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Caron Lindsay

So why shouldn’t MPs breastfeed in the House of Commons?

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 13th November 2015 - 10:55 am

There was a very sensible debate on the family friendliness or otherwise of the House of Commons earlier this week. The press seems to have latched on (sorry) to the issue of whether women MPs should be allowed to breastfeed their babies in the Commons chamber itself, although the debate was much more wide ranging – and we’ll have more about those other aspects later.

The debate was brought by Jess Phillips ,the MP for Birmingham Yardley who recently took such a battering on Twitter for daring to suggest that Parliament might have more important priorities than have a special debate for International Men’s Day. The irony of her being the only woman on the Committee that decides Commons business was not lost on many people.

At any debate on these issues, you get the odd Tory turning up whose only purpose seems to be to make themselves look ridiculous and to basically troll the proceedings. On this occasion it was Sir Simon Burns, the MP for Chelmsford. Early in the proceedings he suggested that the House of Commons did not have an overwhelming majority of white men when asked by fellow Conservative Maria Miller:

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NewsHound

Paddy Ashdown on snoopers’ charter: Politicians in a democracy must guard our freedoms

By NewsHound | Fri 13th November 2015 - 10:25 am

Paddy Ashdown took part in a Guardian Live event the other night, talking to Andrew Rawnsley in Bristol. The subject of the new Investigatory Powers Bill, son of Snoopers’ Charter, came up. Paddy knows about this kind of stuff. He said:

We charge the intelligence services with keeping us safe, so of course they want the maximum amount of power. But the job of a politician in a democracy is to be jealous about giving away those freedoms, and to do so only when it’s necessary. You have to make judgments as to how much infringement of the liberty of

…

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Stephen Tall

Liberal jottings: Stephen Tall’s weekly notebook

By Stephen Tall | Fri 13th November 2015 - 8:43 am

Status Quo’s winning record

Painful though it might be for liberals to admit the fact, Britain is a fundamentally conservative country. Opposition is more often expressed with a tut or a sceptically-arched eyebrow than a revolution. And then things generally revert to how they were before. Which is why, though I’m more careful these days about predicting what will happen next in British politics, I remain sure ‘remain’ will win the EU referendum.

A few years ago, after our AV knock-back, I looked back at the history of referendums in this country (starting with the first ever UK plebiscite, the 1973 Northern Ireland sovereignty referendum). Doing so, I formulated what I’m going to call Tall’s Law in the hope it catches on (though Tall’s Rule of Thumb would be more accurate): “the public will vote for the status quo when asked in a referendum except when the change proposed in a referendum is backed by a coalition of most/all the major parties”. Come the EU referendum, we will see the Conservatives and Labour (to one degree or another) as well as the Lib Dems united in favour of Britain’s continuing EU membership. Sure, take nothing for granted — but a defeat for ‘remain’ would be an unprecedented occurrence. And precedent is a very British custom, for better and worse.

Burnham down

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Newspuppy

Nick Clegg’s new book announced

By Newspuppy | Thu 12th November 2015 - 9:25 pm

If you were wondering what former Special Adviser Phil Reilly had been up to lately, he reveals all today on his blog,

Blimey O’Reilly

He’s been helping Nick Clegg write a book about the febrile nature of today’s politics. It’ll be published next year:

For the last few months I have had the privilege of helping Nick Clegg to prepare his upcoming book (hence the sporadic nature of these blogs), which has been formally announced by the publisher today. Politics: The Art of the Possible in an Age of Unreason will be published next year on The Bodley Head, an arm of Penguin Random House.

Nick has been clear from the start that he didn’t want to write a long-winded political memoir or a salacious kiss and tell. This is a serious book that uses his experience at the top and bottom of British politics, and his time in government in particular, to grapple with a big question: why has politics become so volatile and unpredictable? From Cleggmania and Corbynmania to the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the unlikely has become the commonplace. From the SNP and UKIP at home to Syriza and Podemos abroad, populism and the politics of identity is on the rise. In Politics, Nick explores why that is and what the future holds, especially for those who believe in the politics of evidence, reason and compromise.

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Peter Ramrayka

London Region elections: Peter Ramrayka’s pitch for Chair

By Peter Ramrayka | Thu 12th November 2015 - 8:15 pm

Peter Ramrayka for London Regional Chair for Continuity and Expertise – Grounded and Rounded

1. The ASKS of the Region
As we start the fight back The priorities of the Region must include: Looking at different ways to maximize campaigning; identifying fundraising streams to support our activities; working on maximizing the involvement of new members and in the process developing a distinctive London voice; supporting local parties and energetically working on diversity in all forms so that we truly reflect London’s demographics. A significant additional feature for the Regional Executive is to have a balance between old and new members- the former providing continuity and “institutional knowledge”, especially for the more prominent positions and the latter infusing the group with new ideas and challenges. The Chair’s position should be someone who has recent and direct experience of the key challenges of the Region, the ability to hit the ground running mindful of the imminence of the GLA elections, the ability to work well with and support the candidates on the GLA list, in particular the top three and some of the traditional chair’s skill of leadership, time commitment, communications and judgment.

How do I fit into those asks? – Meeting the Person Spec

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Paul Walter

There’s more than one reason why defence chiefs shouldn’t criticise politicians

By Paul Walter | Thu 12th November 2015 - 5:55 pm
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The Voice

Former chair of Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats is ejected from the party

By The Voice | Thu 12th November 2015 - 3:00 pm

The Independent reports:

Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera, former chair of the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD), was told his membership had been terminated with immediate effect last week, after an internal disciplinary panel upheld allegations of harassment and intimidation against him.

However, senior figures in the EMLD, which champions diversity in the party, have reacted with outrage, refusing to accept the decision, and plan to write to the party’s president and its leader, Tim Farron, demanding Mr Uduwerage-Perera be reinstated.

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How the Liberal Democrats can become the official opposition by 2035

By Ian Thomas | Thu 12th November 2015 - 1:26 pm

The Agenda 2020 essays that I have read through on Lib Dem Voice have really been superb and it’s great to see ideas about our principles and philosophy articulated in such a concise way. If we are going to rebuild our party and move forward to become stronger than we have been in a century then we need to have open, frank, even explosive, debates on what we must do to become one of leading political parties in the country again. Armed with the drive and enthusiasm of old and new members alike we can really do something amazing, hence my bold – but not unrealistic – title, using the goals below.

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Stuart Bonar

The EU already gives us more than anti-Europeans are promising

By Stuart Bonar | Thu 12th November 2015 - 11:00 am

Inside the EU we have better access to the European marketplace than we could ever have outside. And the clout of such a massive bloc means we strike better trade deals now than we ever could on our own.

For years anti-Europeans have churned out stories about Brussels banning schoolchildren from eating yoghurt and the Queen from appearing on our passports. More recently they latched onto immigration, with Brexiteers offering up conflicting numbers of how many millions of foreigners are on their way.

With the referendum approaching however the time has come for them to stop complaining and start explaining. What assurances can they give, for instance, to people in Swindon who earn a living building cars for Honda? How secure are their jobs going to be if trade barriers go back up?

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Tony Greaves

Obituary: Dennis Wrigley

By Tony Greaves | Thu 12th November 2015 - 9:55 am

Dennis Wrigley, who died earlier this week, was an inspirational pioneer in the rejuvenation of the Young Liberals and the Liberal Party in the Manchester region and the North West during the 1950s and 1960s.

Dennis came to national prominence in the High Peak by-election in 1961, in the year before Orpington. A combination of the rising national Liberal vote, a lot of outside help including Manchester students and YLs, and Dennis’s personal charisma and campaigning energy produced a Liberal vote of 30.5%, narrowly third but up by more than 10% from the General election in 1959. He contested the seat at the following three General Elections, polling well but never as well as at the by-election.

In 1964 the Labour candidate was the subsequent Liberal Democrat peer and Lords Chief Whip John Roper. The story that both of them told is (from Dennis) “Of course I was able to preach in every chapel in the constituency” with the riposte from John “Yes but I drank in every pub!” Unfortunately neither won that year.

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The Voice

Chris Rennard elected to Federal Executive by Lib Dem peers

By The Voice | Thu 12th November 2015 - 8:46 am

There has as yet been no official confirmation, but it is being widely reported that the Lib Dem group in the House of Lords has elected Chris Rennard as its representative on the party’s Federal Executive.

First, here is a reminder from the party website (where you can see the other current members) of the FE’s role:

The Federal Executive (FE) is the governing body of the Federal Party. It is responsible for directing, co-ordinating, and implementing the work of the Federal Party.

The FE is Chaired by the Party President, and has representatives of the members (15 members elected by Conference), the state parties, MPs, Peers, MEPs, and councillors.

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