Baroness Liz Barker

Liz Barker on being awarded Peer of the Year by Pink News

By Baroness Liz Barker | Mon 26th October 2015 - 4:11 pm

Liz Barker gets award from Tim FarronLast week Pink News bestowed on me the honour of Peer of the Year. I am really chuffed to be nominated along with colleagues Brian Paddick and Paul Scriven because Pink News upholds high standards of journalism and is itself a brilliant campaigner for LGBT equality.   I am delighted to have won because this is recognition for all the effort that Liberal Democrats have made for equality from parish councils to the European Parliament.  No political party has worked longer and stronger for LGBT rights than the Liberal Democrats.

The award was a shot in the arm for battles which lie ahead. Others, including the SNP, will claim to have greater diversity of representation. The Tories and Labour are using equalities as a key weapon in their strategy to annihilate us. Just look at the constituencies of the MPs on the Women and Equalities Select Committee – Lewes, Eastleigh, Portsmouth South, Bath, Birmingham Yardley and Hampstead and Kilburn – so the message for 2020 is clear. Between now and then, should there be an event in your constituency featuring any community group included in the Equality Act, the Tories will be out in force.

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Lord Roger Roberts

Roger Roberts on breaking bones

By Lord Roger Roberts | Mon 26th October 2015 - 2:59 pm

Last week Roger Roberts spoke in the Lords debate on the Universal Declaration on Human Rights: Article 18. This is his speech:

I remember that when I was a child, we used to say in school, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names will never hurt me”.

The truth of course is that names can hurt and can lead to abusive and destructive actions. We should take great care what we say in our speeches—not only the content but the tone of our voices. I suggest that even Home Secretaries, sometimes, could think about what they are saying and the effect it …

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Rebecca Plenderleith

I am not my gender

By Rebecca Plenderleith | Mon 26th October 2015 - 1:43 pm

 

I’ve written about this on the Lib Dem Voice before so I apologise if I’m repeating myself but once again we’re discussing the idea that we need to get more women into politics as parliamentarians. Once again I’ll repeat myself in saying that this is not something I disagree with. But to have Willie Rennie say “I know many in the party instinctively do not favour positive action but I need to be frank with you. Nothing else has worked.” is actually incredibly concerning for me.

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Robin Bennett

Home Rule ‘defined’ at Scottish Autumn conference

By Robin Bennett | Mon 26th October 2015 - 12:32 pm

Scottish Parliament 23 May 06 061Just imagine. You are canvassing for the Holyrood election in May 2016 and are mindful of what Willie Rennie said in his speech at the 2015 Scottish Autumn Conference.

We are the party for you…  if you support independence but are disappointed by the SNP in Government.

Some voters are probably beyond redemption, such as the man who told me on the doorstep before the Westminster election that he had vote Liberal/Lib Dem for 40 years but had now joined the SNP.   In such cases, you may mutter “we are fed up talking about the Constitution” and move on.

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Caroline Pidgeon

House of Lords has a chance to stand up for democracy

By Caroline Pidgeon | Mon 26th October 2015 - 10:49 am

 

Today’s vote in the House of Lords on tax credits has rightly attracted much media attention, but tomorrow a further vote on the subject of electoral registration also deserves serious attention.

In an act of immense arrogance the Government is planning to ignore the clear advice of the independent Electoral Commission and remove hundreds of thousands of people from the electoral register by the end of the year, a full year earlier than originally set out in the current legislation.  Young people and people living in private rented accommodation will be disproportionately affected by the Government’s proposals.

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David Allen

An Ideology for the Liberal Democrats?

By David Allen | Mon 26th October 2015 - 9:24 am

agenda2020aThe new Agenda 2020 consultation on Liberal Democrat Philosophy appears on a special page of the Libdems website which provides the consultation paper and a box for members to submit comments. However, these would then seem to disappear without trace, so that only the privileged will see what anyone else has said. Not a very liberal start. LDV provides a better forum for open discussion, so – here’s my shot.

The consultation paper says:

All political philosophies are based on a view of human nature. … We believe in the essential goodness and improvability of humankind.

Deep breath. Well, OK, I do believe that humans are capable of doing good as well as evil, and that much of the time they don’t really do either. But – surely this is far too unworldly, too trusting, too out-of-touch with life’s harsher realities?

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Paul Walter

Jo Swinson speaks out against gender quotas on boards

By Paul Walter | Sun 25th October 2015 - 6:45 pm

From PoliticsHome:

Senior leaders from business and government have gone head-to-head over whether mandatory quotas are needed to get more women to the top of organisations.

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Paul Walter

“Missing the Lib Dems”

By Paul Walter | Sun 25th October 2015 - 5:40 pm

inewspaper24th oct2015From the letters page of the i newspaper yesterday:

After the election, one commentator remarked that history would treat the Liberal Democrats better than the electorate did.

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The Voice

In full: Tim Farron’s speech to Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference

By The Voice | Sun 25th October 2015 - 1:15 pm

Here is Tim Farron’s speech to Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference in full. The official version obviously doesn’t include his “stuff the convention” departure on tax credits or the bit where he got Aird and Loch Ness by-election winner Jean Davis’s name wrong. He called her June and quickly corrected himself, reminding us that he knows how it feels after the Sun got his name wrong this week.

Enjoy:

Thank you, it’s a massive pleasure to be here – not least because it only took me half the time to get here as it did to get to federal conference in Bournemouth!

But federal conference was the biggest ever, with three times as many members as last year attending for the first time. 500 of them were new members – so thing is, they turned up to everything, even the Federal Executive report. When I was President you were lucky if six people turned up – poor Sal had to cope with a room full of engaged people, keen to ask searching questions. And the constitutional geeks had to cope with the concept of actually having some company for this event!

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Caron Lindsay

Six highlights of Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 25th October 2015 - 11:45 am

I have to be honest. I was none too chuffed at the prospect of dragging myself out of bed at 6:15 yesterday morning and heading to Dunfermline for Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference. Dunfermline is half an hour from where I live, but I’m currently on holiday in the blissful Black Isle. This view from our holiday cottage will perhaps help you to understand my reluctance to leave:

Roebuck at sunset

That was sunset on our first night last Saturday.

Ultimately, though, I ended up very glad that I’d gone. Here are the things I wouldn’t have wanted to miss:

New Members

At one point in his his speech, Willie Rennie asked all the new members to stand up. They made up about a third of the audience and spoke in many debates. One, Wendy Chamberlain, introduced Willie and explained why she had joined the party:

Every new member I spoke to had a great time at Conference. One told me “Now I know I’m in the right place.” That theme of feeling at home was repeated by many others.

It was also fantastic to see people who had returned to the Lib Dem family, such as George Boyd from East Lothian.

Tim Farron

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NewsHound

LibLink: Ed Davey: The Tories are trying to kill off our renewable energy boom

By NewsHound | Sun 25th October 2015 - 10:25 am

Former Lib Dem Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey has condemned the way that the Conservatives governing alone are trashing all he did to create a boom in clean, planet-saving renewable energy:

My experience as energy and climate change secretary – in the months I spent battling George Osborne over the budget for investment in low carbon, and in the daily attrition with Eric Pickles over onshore wind – was that many Conservatives simply regard their commitment to climate change action as something they had to say to get into power. With some honourable exceptions, most Conservatives I worked with seemed to view Lib Dem green energy policies as part of the political price they paid for the coalition.

Happily, the Conservatives cannot undo much of what the coalition achieved: from the trebling of the UK’s renewable power capacity to the 27 contracts I signed in March for more renewable power plants to be built over the next few years, the Lib Dems’ green legacy stands. I have heard that the chancellor has asked if he can get out of the contracts I signed. But he can’t. So I’m looking forward to Conservative ministers opening onshore and offshore wind farms that I commissioned.

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Caron Lindsay

“Stuff the convention”, says Farron, “Lib Dems will block “cruel, heartless, mean-spirited and misjudged” tax credit cuts”

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 25th October 2015 - 8:47 am

Tim Farron told Scottish Liberal Democrat conference yesterday that Liberal Democrats would try to kill of the Tory tax credit cuts with a “fatal motion.” It’s the only one of the many resolutions opposing the measure that would actually stop it.

What’s interesting is that it’s clear that you can give the man a script, but you can’t make him stick to it. He actually said much more than was in the official version below. He added in a bit that said, directly, “Stuff the convention”, referring to the Salisbury Convention under which the Lords don’t defeat Government plans that were in their manifesto. Well, this wasn’t, Tim said, and Cameron explicitly denied he had plans to do it, so it was perfectly legitimate to take this action. Here’s the official version:

It’s the same with Dave, you can make a good speech pitching for the centre ground, but if your next act is to attack the hardest working, poorest people in Britain by slashing tax credits while giving away tax cuts to millionaires; you are in no ones centre ground, you are punishing people who are doing their best to get by. So I say “judge David Cameron not by what he says but what he does”.

In Scotland, almost 250,000 hard working families will lose an average of £1,000 a year that’s more than 300,000 children who are being made to bear the brunt of the Chancellor’s blind ideological obsession.

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The Voice

Tim Farron and Sally Hamwee speak out against £20 a week cuts to asylum seekers’ support

By The Voice | Sat 24th October 2015 - 2:42 pm
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Caron Lindsay

In full: Willie Rennie’s speech to Scottish Lib Dem Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 24th October 2015 - 1:45 pm

IMG_6340-0.jpg
Here is Willie Rennie’s speech to Scottish Lib Dem Conference in full, delivered 15 minutes late after the conference was evacuated when the fire alarm went off.

I have been a member of the Liberal Democrats for twenty eight years.  
I have stood up, spoken up and campaigned for this party all over the country. 

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William Hobhouse

Steel, nuclear and graphene – a new industrial strategy?

By William Hobhouse | Sat 24th October 2015 - 12:28 pm

It seems a long time since Vince Cable was leading the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. During his tenure, one of his greatest achievements was the Industrial Strategy. In automotive, aerospace, nuclear and renewables, long term partnerships and structures had been set up to ensure that UK manufacturing stayed at the cutting edge of R&D and that we grew the skills and capacity to manufacture the next generation of products.

The visit of the Chinese President Xi Jinping to the UK has clarified the new government thinking. Taking three industrial issues in turn:

Steel: everyone knows that steel prices go up and down and competitive advantage changes with exchange rates and oversupply. At a time when the automotive industry in the UK is flourishing, the closure of steel mills demonstrates that government sees no link between a UK steel industry and UK automotive. We can, the argument goes, quite happily import steel at the cheapest price at the time and retain our long term success in automotive. The counter argument is that we will not retain our leadership in the industry if the next generation of cars uses steel technology developed in Germany or China – because other things being equal it would be better to assemble the car closer to the supply chain.

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Paul Walter

Suffragette – a moment for shame

By Paul Walter | Sat 24th October 2015 - 10:16 am

The film “Suffragette” is now on general release. It is very much worth watching.

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Tony Greaves

Lord Tony Greaves writes…Crisis on the streets of Lancashire

By Tony Greaves | Sat 24th October 2015 - 8:56 am

When the new lot all arrive we’ll have 112 Liberal Democrat peers and we need to use them. For some of us that means local as well as national stuff since some of us are still actively campaigning in our local areas! So when changes to the police funding formula were announced that mean one of the best forces in the country risks being “annihilated”, in the word of the commissioner, it was time to put down a topical question in the Lords.

The Lancashire police force is “outstanding”. That’s the conclusion of the review of police force efficiency by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. It’s one of the most cost effective police forces in the country at only 49p per head, it’s made savings of £74m since 2010, yet it will be hammered by further cuts up to £161m. Police officers will drop from 3,611 in 2010 to 1,699 in 2020 and the PCSOs (community support officers) will disappear. Chief Constable Steve Finnigan says these cuts would severely limit the capabilities of Lancashire Constabulary which by 2020 will only be able to provide an emergency- service, responding to 999 calls and a few priorities.

The potential impacts include closing all enquiry desks and the loss of specialist support units, mounted officers, dog units and road policing units, and dramatic cuts to departments that deal with serious and complex crime. In addition the county-wide network of neighbourhood policing teams – community beat officers and community support officers – will be swept away.

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Stephen Tall

LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League: how it stands after Week 9

By Stephen Tall | Sat 24th October 2015 - 7:45 am

Congratulations to Paul Revell, whose ‘Sock Monsters’ (536 points) have re-gained the lead in the LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League after Week 9, just ahead of Christopher Buck’s ‘Moves Like Agger’ (530) and Edward Douglas’s ‘Use Your Ed’ (520).

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Caron Lindsay

Who’s this Tim Fallon guy?

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 23rd October 2015 - 4:10 pm

Just in case you missed it…


Tim cheekily replied: “It’s my pen name.”

The article itself was about the Government’s policy of criminalising parents who take their children out of school for a holiday during term time. Tim has spoken out against this several times recently. He said earlier this week:

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The Voice

A lesson for Tim Farron from Justin Trudeau?

By The Voice | Fri 23rd October 2015 - 2:40 pm

Liberals around the world are cheered by the Canadian Liberals’ emphatic victory this week. There are many serious lessons we can learn from Justin Trudeau’s party, both in terms of grassroots organisation and messaging. Not for the Liberals any talk of “we’re not them and we’re not them so vote for us”. For months there was a clear message of #realchange. The Canadian Liberals are a bit like Liberal royalty. They can be pretty establishment, but they managed to show that they wanted to reform politics and Canadian society in a way that resonated with people.

This video from May this year shows how Trudeau was happy to step out of the normal space allotted to politicians. He took his kids to Comic Con in Ottawa, wearing a Superman t-shirt and talking about his lifelong enjoyment of the Superman series. It was fun, authentic and natural.




I guess it kind of helped that he didn’t look terribly unlike the movie version.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg: The Tory assault on housing associations is another betrayal

By NewsHound | Fri 23rd October 2015 - 1:10 pm

Nick Clegg has a new regular Evening Standard column and in the latest edition, he talks about housing.

After a look at the history and importance of housing associations, Nick writes about how he and Danny Alexander secured assurances that housing associations would receive support to continue building more houses for rent. These assurances have now been trashed now the Tories have a majority:

Five years ago I dissuaded the Conservatives in Coalition from fiddling with social rents to cut the housing benefit bill because it would have had a disastrous effect on the ability of housing associations to raise the money

…

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Paul Walter

Tim’s new chief of staff and a hangover after a late spring evening drinking with friends

By Paul Walter | Fri 23rd October 2015 - 11:40 am

It’s not what you think.

Tim Farron recently introduced his new Chief of Staff, Ben Williams, on these pages:

Ben was the standout candidate and brings a wealth of experience at all levels of the party from council campaigner to Head of Liberal Democrat Whips’ Office and latterly a Special Adviser. Everyone who has worked with him knows his skills and how brilliantly he works under pressure. There were many points over our years in government when I saw Ben, at first hand, make sure the government kept delivering liberal policies under tremendous pressures. He is exactly what our party needs – someone who can help me to help our party grow and thrive.

Ben Williams also has, according to self-publishing website Lulu.com, “always harboured a secret passion for writing.”

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Toby MacDonnell

Agenda 2020 Essay #2 What it means to be a Liberal Democrat today

By Toby MacDonnell | Fri 23rd October 2015 - 9:37 am

Editor’s Note: The party is currently running an essay competition for members of the Liberal Democrats, to submit 1000 words on the theme “What it means to be a Liberal Democrat today.” The deadline for contributions is 2nd November. If you would like us to publish your submission, send it to [email protected]. 

To be a Liberal Democrat today is to be tilting at windmills. After decades of being the wasted vote, we broke into coalition government. Then we collapsed. But the need for Liberal Democrats is more pertinent than ever.

Ignorance: The Cycle of News

Whichever paper I am reading, the same themes return again and again: that public trust has collapsed, that few people believe that politics has the power to deliver change, and that our society is divided between the nihilistic, the apathetic, and the outraged. With every case of child abuse, each random murder, every scandal of public expenditure, the news asks ‘What are the politicians doing about it?’ The government replies, and the opposition scoffs. The news cycle begins again.

The news wields Occam ’s razor as a maiming instrument. Issues of dynamic complexity are boiled down to yes-or-no answers. Questions are posed to politicians which no-one could answer, and when the politician stumbles it is held up as a triumph of journalism or a failure of political leadership. If the politician replies with nuance, he has avoided a straight question.

Our media landscape is dominated by duality: by left and right, us and them, yes and no, right and wrong, government and opposition, Conservatives and Labour. The pace of television news has accelerated and amplified the basic conflict our constitution is predicated on: the two party, first past the post system. This is carried over to the online world where debates between nuanced and considered comment pieces are hijacked by the us-and-them narrative in the comment section.

The glut of news belies our ignorance of government.

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Stephen Tall

Liberal jottings: Stephen Tall’s weekly notebook

By Stephen Tall | Fri 23rd October 2015 - 7:30 am

Heidi Hi

The maiden speech of Heidi Allen MP, Tory successor to Andrew Lansley in South Cambridgeshire, received acclaim this week for its outspoken attack on her party’s plans to slash tax credits for 13 million households.

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NewsHound

Tim Farron on Swim Deep, Wild Beasts and Everything Everything

By NewsHound | Thu 22nd October 2015 - 3:56 pm

Everything Everything @ LatitudeRemember that awkward moment with Ming and the Arctic Monkeys? This is not a problem we’re going to have with Tim Farron. In fact, he’s more likely to introduce us to bands we’ve never heard of. When he took his dog Jasper fell running the other night, he was listening to Everything Everything.


NME have picked up on an interview he did with The Big Issue North in which he talked about his musical tastes:

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Caron Lindsay

Liz Barker wins Pink News “Peer of the Year” award

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 22nd October 2015 - 2:30 pm

Congratulations to Pink News on their 10th anniversary. Last night they presented their annual awards. It was fantastic to see Liz Barker’s achievements being recognised as she won Peer of the Year. Here she is being presented with her award by Tim Farron:

Liz Barker gets award from Tim Farron

Let’s just remind you of some of her recent best bits campaigning for LGBT+ equality.

There was that amazing speech during the passing of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill:

Many years ago I had the great good fortune to meet someone. She and I

…

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Luke Akal

A liberal postcard from South Africa…

By Luke Akal | Thu 22nd October 2015 - 12:57 pm

ALN-GA-300x161Dear Liberal Friends,

It is a great privilege to introduce myself to you all as the new Coordinator for the Africa Liberal Network (ALN). The ALN is the largest network of political parties in Africa and has been strongly supported by the Liberal Democrats, through the work of the International Office, since its inception in 2001.

I have recently taken up the position and the Secretariat remains based here at the Federal Head Office of the Democratic Alliance in Cape Town, South Africa.

I am originally from Nelspruit (Mpumalanga), South Africa, but grew up and lived majority of my life in Cape Town. I began my interest in politics as an activist and volunteer. This passion was then pursued during my undergraduate studies at the University of Stellenbosch and the University of South Africa, where I graduated with a degree in Politics and Communication Science.

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The Voice

Willie Rennie to highlight gender balance in his Conference speech

By The Voice | Thu 22nd October 2015 - 11:58 am

We know that Willie Rennie is determined to improve the appalling gender balance record of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. He has to persuade a party which has historically rejected any proposals for positive action in candidate selection to adopt proposals to be drawn up by a working group made up of himself, Jo Swinson, Sophie Bridger, Sheila Ritchie and Fred Mackintosh. The ultimate aim is for half of Scotland’s Liberal Democrat parliamentarians to be women within 6 years.

The proposals will be debated at the Scottish Party’s Spring Conference just a few weeks before next year’s Holyrood elections. You can’t accuse Willie of not being willing to take a risk. He will be talking about it in Saturday’s speech to Autumn Conference too:

I want our party to change.

All our MPs in the United Kingdom are men. And four out of our five MSPs are men too.

I know many in the party instinctively do not favour positive action but I need to be frank with you.  Nothing else has worked.

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Tristan Gray

Drug reform should be our new flagship policy

By Tristan Gray | Thu 22nd October 2015 - 10:38 am

In my past two articles I argued for a more muscular liberalism that was more strident in championing liberal causes and for occupying the liberal ground whilst still appealing to a broader audience than ourselves.

In the interests of achieving this aim we need to pick our fights and causes carefully. We need a new flagship policy, one which wipes away the memory of tuition fees and sets us apart from our opponents. We must lead the charge on an issue and make it our own in a way we never quite managed in the public perception of equal marriage and green energy in coalition.

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Jonathan Fryer

We must take Oldham seriously

By Jonathan Fryer | Thu 22nd October 2015 - 8:00 am

The Obelisk on Alderman's HillBy-elections caused by the death of the incumbent are always an occasion for sadness, so our first reaction to the passing of Michael Meacher, Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton, must be a sincere expression of sympathy to his family and friends. However, politics is politics, as Michael would have said himself, and therefore we have to face the fact that there will be a by-election before too long. Even if we should not campaign until after the funeral, that does not mean we should avoid thinking about the challenge ahead.

During the Coalition government the Liberal Democrat powers that be took what I believed to be a misguided decision to virtually ignore northern parliamentary by-elections, with predictably disastrous results. In a couple of cases there was, however, a tremendous surge towards UKIP, almost causing shock Labour defeats. We lost our deposits spectacularly, despite the hard efforts of by-election candidates and mainly local party support. The impression given to the wider public, however, was that in the North of England the LibDems are rubbish, even irrelevant. We must not allow that to happen again.

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Recent Comments

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