Allan Tweddle

How to cope with populists

By Allan Tweddle | Thu 30th January 2025 - 2:33 pm

I’ve recently been reading ‘Meditations for Mortals’ by Oliver Burkeman (which I highly recommend). In the book, Burkeman recounts the story of Erik Hagerman who, following Trump’s 2016 victory, gave up all news and current affairs, right down to listening to white noise on headphones in his local coffee shop to avoid overhearing anything unpleasant. Apparently he was slated in the press and on social media – though if they were hoping to get him to change his ways then I think they’d rather missed the point.

I had my very own Hagerman moment last week when, despite being an avid podcast listener, I deleted dozens of episodes from my feed because I couldn’t face listening to endless rehashes of Trump’s inauguration and all the accompanying psychodrama.

The truth is it’s been coming on for a while. Over recent months I’ve found myself deleting episodes that mention Nigel Farage in the title. Elon Musk ditto, and even Kemi Badenoch gets my finger hovering over the delete key.

Of course I know that what Trump, and those around him, actually do will affect us all. The same goes for the Conservatives and Reform. But it all comes down to the theory of circles of influence versus circles of concern. If I let them, Trump et al will simply swamp my circle of concern. And, despite how important I think I am, nothing they do falls within my circle of influence. I can’t do anything about them. Filling my time consuming endless footage and commentary of their latest antics does nothing but increase my blood pressure.

Worse, it stops me from focussing on all those things that do fall within my circle of influence. It turns me from an active doer into a passive, and very depressed, consumer. Which, of course, is exactly what they want. This is what populist politicians do – and the good ones are really good at it. Trump, Farage, and those like them are experts at grabbing attention, and they will do it in any way they can. They want to fill our screens and our airwaves. They want us shocked, and on the back foot. They want us reacting, because if we are constantly reacting then there’s no time left for the proactive job of coming up with new ideas, doing real work, and generally making our little corners of the world better for those around us.

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Mike Ross

Can you help us win in Hull and East Yorkshire?

By Mike Ross | Thu 30th January 2025 - 12:05 pm

The Liberal Democrats are on the up. We are back as the third-largest party in Britain with a record number of MPs. We have gained councillors at every set of local elections since 2018. We have won, quite literally, from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, winning the trust, support and votes of people right across the country – but we have never won a metro mayoralty.

Metro mayors have a wide range of responsibilities, from improving the local economy, to infrastructure and strategic transport. It is vital we have liberal voices at this level of government. So far, every metro mayor elected has either been for either the Conservative or Labour Party.

This year, I need your help to change that.

This May sees the very first Hull and East Yorkshire mayoral election, which will create a metro mayor responsible for all of Hull and East Yorkshire. With your help, we can make sure that mayor is a Liberal Democrat mayor.

The Conservatives are in disarray. They have no councillors in Hull and took a battering at the last election to the East Riding council.

Across Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire, the Liberal Democrats have the highest number of councillors and the highest combined vote share using the most recent local election results. We run Hull City Council and are the largest opposition group on East Riding Council. We stand as the only credible challengers to Labour in the region, with the Conservatives in disarray and the Greens lacking any local power base.

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Jack Wilkin

Holocaust Denialism in the UK: A Growing Assault on Truth 

By Jack Wilkin | Wed 29th January 2025 - 1:55 pm

In recent years, the United Kingdom has seen a troubling increase in Holocaust denialism, fuelled by disinformation, a lack of historical education, and the actions of influential public figures. The surge in ignorance about the Holocaust and a disturbing normalisation of anti-semitic rhetoric point to a deepening cultural and societal issue which is actively proliferating on social media. 

A Worrying Decline Knowledge and the Rise of Hatred

A recent study highlights the gaps in Holocaust knowledge among Britons. Over half (52%) of respondents were unaware that six million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust, while 22% grossly underestimated the number, believing it to be less than two million. 

In addition, three out of four people admitted to not knowing about the Kindertransport – a major effort that saved thousands of Jewish children by relocating them to the UK during World War II.  A similar study revealed that a third of young adults in the UK were unable to name Auschwitz or the other Nazi camps, signalling an erosion of collective memory and the long-term impacts of underfunded Holocaust education programs.

The resurgence of antisemitism compounds the issue of Holocaust denialism. The Jewish community in Britain has felt a growing sense of vulnerability and isolation. Nearly half of British Jews have contemplated leaving the UK in the past two years due to increasing antisemitic incidents, ranging from physical attacks to online hate speech. Public figures and watchdogs, such as Sir Peter Bazalgette, have warned that this trend is set to worsen over the next 20 years unless there is a meaningful change in education, legislation, and societal attitudes. 

Role of Social Media

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Ken Westmoreland

Seanad Éireann: Lessons from Ireland on Lords reform

By Ken Westmoreland | Wed 29th January 2025 - 11:55 am

This week sees elections to Seanad Éireann, the Irish Senate, following elections to Dáil Éireann, the more powerful lower house of the Oireachtas or parliament. Unlike other elected upper houses, and indeed its predecessor, the Seanad in the Irish Free State, it is elected completely in tandem with the lower house, and in its entirety, so when the Dáil is dissolved, so too is the Seanad. 

Senators are a mix of indirectly elected and nominated members, 43 chosen by TDs (Teachtaí Dála or Dáil Deputies), local councillors and outgoing Senators, to represent five vocational panels, Administrative, Agricultural, Cultural and Educational, Industrial and Commercial, and Labour, having been nominated by organisations registered for that purpose, while 6 are elected from university constituencies, graduates of the National University of Ireland and Dublin University (Trinity College Dublin) electing 3 each and 11 nominated by the Taoiseach, or prime minister. 

The vocational panel system was devised by Éamon De Valera, the architect of the 1937 Constitution, and inspired by Catholic teaching.  On paper, it sounds quite attractive as a model for a reformed House of Lords (or Senate) in the UK, drawing upon various sources of professional expertise, but in practice, election to the Seanad has often been used as a consolation prize for those who have lost a seat in the Dáil, before trying to get back into it, or those unable to get elected to it first time around,  making the Seanad more of an ante chamber than an upper chamber. 

On a side note, the party De Valera founded, Fianna Fáil, is now the sister party of the Liberal Democrats in Liberal International, despite the former historically having been socially more conservative, though De Valera got on well enough with Lloyd George, the pair able to compare their respective Celtic languages; in Irish, ‘seanad’ means ‘senate’ in the sense of ‘second chamber’, but in Welsh, ‘senedd’ means ‘parliament’, preserving the original general Latin meaning of ‘senatus’.    

Across the border, the Senate in the old Northern Ireland Parliament was elected by its House of Commons, with many members holding hereditary peerages or later acquiring them, but was even weaker than its counterpart at Leinster House, and all devolved legislatures at Stormont have been unicameral since. As for the House of Commons there, while it was initially elected by the single transferable vote, Unionists later scrapped this, gerrymandering constituencies, and only abolishing  the Queen’s University Belfast constituency and property vote in 1969, 19 years after Westminster.

Talking of university constituencies, this Seanad election is significant as it will be the last one in which Senators will be elected from them; at the next election, there will be a new six-member Higher Education constituency, for which any Irish citizen with a tertiary education qualification will be eligible to vote or stand, if not less elitist, then at least less of an anachronism. 

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Nick da Costa

FCC report following agenda selection meeting

By Nick da Costa | Wed 29th January 2025 - 9:55 am

The Federal Conference Committee met on Saturday to run through a number of items leading up to Spring Conference in Harrogate, which is being held from 21 to 23 March 2025. This will be our first return to Harrogate in almost 16 years. 

We had a large number of items submitted to Conference, in addition to report backs to the Committee from our Constitutional & Standing Orders Working Group.

We are delighted that so many people have already registered for Conference and we encourage any members who have not yet signed up to Conference to do so via: LINK

We aim to publish the agenda in the next couple of weeks.

The upcoming deadlines are: 

Amendments and Emergency motions drafting advice deadline – 13:00 on 24 February 2025

Amendments and Emergency motions deadline – 13:00 on 10 March 2025

We received a large number of motions from across the party, and are extremely grateful for the time and effort that members make in formulating policy motions and ideas for debate at Conference. We really wish that we could select so many more that ended up on the final list, but as always time at conference is at a premium and a large number of motions, although selected in the first round, did not make it through the second round or third rounds when we then started to look at reducing timings. 

As regularly mentioned, time is tight at conference, and especially this Spring Conference. There are a number of items that the Federal Conference Committee has very little control over, which we are forced to take at Conference. This signficantly reduces the time available at Conference for Policy Motions. For example, the FCC has to take Constitutional Amendments and Standing Order Amendments if they are ‘in order’ and thus have little leeway on rejecting these in order to allow more time for policy debates. Furthermore, we have a number of items (including one constitutional amendment) which the Committee felt needed a reasonable time to debate at Conference, and thus this also reduces the time available. 

Furthermore, I would also like to mention the drafting advice service that the Federal Conference Committee offers. This service is provided by the Committee to offer drafting and language advice on motions submitted to conference and cannot always cover advice on policy matters; I would, in these instances, recommend reaching out to members of the Federal Policy Committee, spokespeople, and party AOs, who may have people within the their groups with specific policy expertise and would be able to assist with formulating policy. If you also want to find out more about how to write policy, the FCC will be undertaking a training session at Conference on how to write a good policy motion, and this information will be published in the Conference Agenda and Directory. 

From the motions submitted, we selected: five policy motions and four constitutional amendments. The committee went through various rounds of selection, and it is always a very challenging decision to select which motions should or should not be added to the agenda. I would like to thank the staff who attended the full-day meeting and also the members of the committee for their contributions and hard work.

I have included the list of motions submitted, including the names of the motions and if selected/not selected and the brief reasons for non-selection, please note that some of the names of motions may vary between now and the publishing of the agenda. 

We are looking forward seeing you at Conference, and if you have not yet had a chance to register, please do so via https://www.libdems.org.uk/conference

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Alex Cole-Hamilton

Alex Cole-Hamilton writes: Our decision on the Scottish Budget

By Alex Cole-Hamilton | Wed 29th January 2025 - 7:30 am

Sometimes you have to sit down and talk if you want to get things done.

By any metric the SNP are failing the people of Scotland. An early election had already been ruled out (Labour are abstaining). It’s why all along we’ve been trying to shape the Scottish Budget to unpick some of the damage the SNP have done over the last 18 years.

The result? Our priorities will now be backed by hundreds of millions of pounds of government investment. Thanks to the Scottish Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Budget now includes:

  • Further investment in drugs and neonatal services totalling £2.6m, with a special focus on creating new services to help babies who are born addicted to drugs. As a youth worker, I saw first-hand how substance addiction blighted the lives of newborns and mothers, so I know just how transformational this investment will be.
  • £3.5m so that colleges can deliver the skills our economy and public services need, with new programmes focused on care and offshore wind to create a pipeline of skilled workers.
  • Allocating in the budget £700k worth of support for the young people with complex and additional needs attending Corseford College in Renfrewshire, and at least the same amount again the next year.
  • £5m for hospices.
  • Ahead of the Infrastructure Investment Plan, we’ve persuaded the Scottish Government to look much more closely at replacing the Gilbert Bain Hospital in Lerwick, Kilmaron Special School in Cupar and Newburgh Railway Station in Fife.

    • This is all on top of what Scottish Liberal Democrats secured in the first rounds of talks:

    • The reinstatement of a winter fuel payment for pensioners.>
    • Extra funding for social care.
    • Additional funding for local healthcare to make it easier to see a GP or NHS dentist.
    • Funding for new specialist support across the country for Long Covid, ME, Chronic Fatigue and other similar conditions.
    • The right for family carers to earn more without having support withdrawn.
    • Progress on business rates relief for the hospitality sector.>
    • Funding to build more affordable homes.
    • Ringfenced agriculture funding.
    • More money for local council services.
    • Enhanced support for local authorities operating ferry services.
    • More money for additional support needs to help pupils and their teachers.
    • Replacements for the Edinburgh Eye Pavilion and the Belford Hospital in Fort William.

    It’s a long list that will improve the lot of our constituents, and of people right across Scotland, which is why we will be backing this year’s Scottish Budget.

    We cannot underestimate the importance of getting things done, especially in the current climate. Right now, public services are on their knees, the direct casualties of the SNP’s mismanagement. You can see it in the people ringing their GP surgeries hundreds of times a day to get an appointment, the care homes struggling to find staff and Scottish education slipping down the international rankings. Many businesses are struggling to make ends meet and affordable housebuilding has collapsed.

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    Caron Lindsay

    Lib Dem MSPs to vote for SNP Budget

    By Caron Lindsay | Tue 28th January 2025 - 7:56 pm

    Alex Cole-Hamilton announced today that Lib Dem MSPs would support the SNP’s budget next week.  This does not in any way mean that we’ve suddenly become fans of the SNP Government but it does mean that we’ve managed to get some measures put in the budget to repair the damage they have done to Scottish public services rather than wait for their likely defeat in the elections in 2026.

    Since Labour announced in early January that they would abstain on the Budget, any chance of bringing the Government down and forcing an election disappeared. They got absolutely nothing for getting the SNP out of trouble. We, however, by that point had already got money for things like Winter Fuel Payments next year, Long Covid clinics, social care, replacements for the Belford Hospital in Fort William and the Edinburgh Eye Pavilion. In January, our negotiators did even better securing investment in colleges for training in skills to benefit the renewable energy sector, funding for hospices, and funding for specialist treatment for babies born addicted to drugs.

    Alex Cole-Hamilton explained:

    The final list of what we have achieved is pretty impressive and remarkably similar to the kind of things we’ve been banging on about for years.

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    Daniel Stylianou

    They’ll like us when we win

    By Daniel Stylianou | Tue 28th January 2025 - 12:42 pm

    Quite often, when I talk to Liberal Democrats about politics “across the sea”, the ideal is that of The West Wing. A Democratic President, able to fight his way past the red tape of a gargantuan bureaucracy and, often by sheer force of will – and the assistance of hard-working staffers – push through a legislative agenda that is both liberal and optimistic.

    Any fan of the show will know Toby Ziegler, the acerbic but quietly optimistic communications director. There is a scene in Night Five (season 3, episode 3) when Toby defends a speech drafted to be confrontational with the Arab world. Frequently, in the midst of a tirade, he shouts: “They’ll like us when we win!” (you can watch the scene here).

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    Richard Kemp

    We can no longer be complacent about being on Twitter

    By Richard Kemp | Mon 27th January 2025 - 11:52 am

    Behind the scenes I am beginning to challenge politicians and public sector organisations in the Liverpool City Region area to begin to move their social media messaging accounts to BlueSky and other social streams.

    Let us suspend our rational minds and move into a hypothesis. This is that I stand in my front room and make the speech of my life. The arm movements, the jokes, the pathos, and facts are spot on. I then wonder who is listening to me and check the stats. Next to no-one! A few people would have seen me through the window and might have caught the odd word but the impact that I would have made would be nominal.

    Yet when I asked the Council about social media usage, I got roughly the same sort of statistics from them. I know that hardly anyone is reading our BlueSky account and responding to it. That position will never change until we are proactive in promoting better alternatives. I am not asking the Council or anyone to leave Twitter, but I am asking that we promote the alternatives to a point where those streams will organically take off as Twitter did 15 years ago.

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    The Voice

    Ed Davey’s statement on Holocaust Memorial Day

    By The Voice | Mon 27th January 2025 - 7:30 am

    Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey’s statement on Holocaust Memorial Day:

    80 years ago, seven thousand people were finally liberated from Auschwitz. Free at last, after years of unimaginable misery. In the years before, 1.1 million people had been murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz alone – mostly Jews.

    As we commemorate 80 years since Britain and her allies defeated the Nazis and ended the Holocaust, we must never forget those appalling atrocities. We must never forget how six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis; how so much inhumanity was inflicted on humans by humans.

    We must remember, so that we try harder

    …

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    Mark Valladares

    25-26 January 2025 – the weekend’s press releases

    By Mark Valladares | Sun 26th January 2025 - 10:30 pm
    • NHS: “bonfire” of targets shows shocking lack of ambition for patients
    • Over 500 infrastructure incidents at delayed hospitals last year which now are “hanging by a thread”
    • Councils paying £24,000 more a year per pensioner in nursing costs as Lib Dems call on govt to reverse “foolish” NICs hike
    • Reeves on Kuenssberg: Chancellor’s approach to growth “does not survive contact with reality”
    • Badenoch on Kuenssberg: “Bungling Badenoch” still has no idea how angry people are at the damage the Conservatives did
    • Scottish Conservative leader urged to explain whether he believes triple lock should be means tested
    • Almost 1 in 5 senior mental health roles missing a permanent appointee

    NHS: “bonfire” of targets shows shocking lack of ambition for patients

    Responding to a report in the Times that the government is set to scrap half of NHS targets, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

    Patients have put up with a health service that has been run into the ground and caused unnecessary suffering for millions.

    The new government cannot claim to have broken with years of Conservative neglect simply by moving the goalposts in this way.

    That is not delivering for patients, instead it is a sly attempt to give themselves an undeserved pat on the back.

    From delays to reforms of social care, new hospitals being kicked into the longgrass and now this reported bonfire of NHS targets, this new government is showing a staggering lack of ambition for patients.

    Over 500 infrastructure incidents at delayed hospitals last year which now are “hanging by a thread”

    • At hospitals in the New Hospital Programme which have seen their construction dates pushed back there were 506 infrastructure incidents – causing 32 days of clinical time to be lost
    • These sites also saw close to 100 floods last year – a quarter of all floods on the NHS England estate despite accounting for less than 1% of the buildings
    • Delayed hospitals have already had to shut all toilets on the estate following sewage leaks and burst water pipes mean patients warned off going to A&E
    • The Liberal Democrats said that the figures revealed that the delayed hospitals are “hanging on by a thread” and called on the Health Secretary to publish a full impact assessment into the risks to patient safety

    There were more than 500 infrastructure and estate incidents last year at hospitals where construction as part of the New Hospital Programme will be delayed, research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.

    They resulted in significant impact for patients with 759 hours of clinical time lost as a result of these incidents, the equivalent of 32 days.

    241 of these infrastructure and estate incidents were judged to be caused by or related to critical infrastructure risk at these sites, equating to almost half. These issues can include crumbling roofs at risk of collapse, water leaks, broken-down lifts or ventilation and heating systems not working properly.

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    Nick Baird

    The challenge for liberals everywhere – what if Trump’s policies actually work?

    By Nick Baird | Sun 26th January 2025 - 1:00 pm

    A provocative title? Of course there is much to offend us in President Trump’s pronouncements, along with the character and antics of his various nominations to Government posts. But if we previously assumed that much of what he said was bluster, we now have to face the reality that he means what he says, and consider what the outcomes might be. In particular, what if he succeeds?

    This is not a simple question. To start with – what does “success” look like? We often condense that into simple numbers – GDP growth, inflation, stock market indices and unemployment figures. It is certainly possible that by these simplistic measures, and in the short term, Trump might succeed and grow the US economy without runaway inflation. With the world’s reserve currency and largest economy under his control, he has options not available to the UK and most other countries, and if he can bully OPEC into increasing oil & gas production alongside increases in US domestic production, falling energy costs might offset the inflationary effects of import tariffs, along with his programme of deregulation and gutting of Government Agencies tasked with policing and enforcing what regulations remain.

    I know what you’re thinking (because you’re reading LDV) – what about the cost? What about climate change and damage to the environment? What about all the lives destroyed when settled yet illegal migrants get rounded up and deported? What about inequality and minorities? What about healthcare and reproductive rights?

    And you are absolutely correct, but what will the headlines be? Particularly when the full impact of some of his policies may not be felt until after he leaves office.

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    Tom Arms

    Tom Arms’ World Review

    By Tom Arms | Sun 26th January 2025 - 10:07 am

    United States

    A stroke of the pen is not enough to end America’s birth right citizenship laws. Donald Trump has so many more political and legal mountains to climb before his presidential decree can take effect.

    First there is the law. Already 24 Democratic states have launched lawsuits opposing Trump’s sudden end to birth right citizenship.

    They are on firm ground. The Fourteenth Amendment of the US constitution says: “All persons born…in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

    Trump claims that birth right citizenship has never challenged in the courts. That is wrong. In the …

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    Tom Arms

    Observations of an Expat: And So It Begins

    By Tom Arms | Sat 25th January 2025 - 8:58 am

    At the end of the first week of Trump 2.0 the world is left shell-shocked trying to find a way through an artillery barrage of presidential decrees.

    He promised the decrees. He promised action. He didn’t lie. Not enough people believed him.

    In less than a week Trump has—among other things—announced that he is going to end the right of citizenship for those born in the United States; closed America’s southern border and dispatched the army to help  guard it.

    Because Trump clashed with Anthony Fauci—the man who coordinated America’s response to covid—he has ordered that the websites for the National Institute for Health, Centre for Disease Control and Federal Drug Administration to stop issuing health advisories.

    Department of Justice lawyers who worked on his prosecution plus the DoJ’s International Division and Criminal Division, are to be sacked and replaced with MAGA loyalists

    Federal employees have been told that they will suffer “adverse consequences” if they refuse to turn in colleagues who “defy orders to purge” their departments of diversity, equity and inclusion measures and personnel.

    The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act were signature achievements of the Biden Administration and universally welcomed by the American business community. But they were Biden’s. Trump has scrapped them at the cost of tens of billions of dollars.

    Tariffs have yet to be imposed. They are slated to be slapped on Canada and Mexico—at the 25 percent level—from 1 February. On Thursday Trump told the Davos Economic Forum that unless foreign companies moved their businesses to America they would suffer “trillions of dollars in tariffs.”

    But perhaps the most disturbing of Trump’s decrees was the 1,500 pardons for the January 6 Capitol Hill riots. Not even his own vice president—JD Vance—thought he would go that far.

    The Fraternal Order of Police—America’s largest police union, asked: “What happened to Republican Law and Order? This completely undermines the rule of law and is a stain on Trump’s legacy.”

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    Mark Valladares

    24 January 2025 – today’s press releases

    By Mark Valladares | Fri 24th January 2025 - 11:20 pm
    • US trade tariffs: Trump doesn’t listen to “please”
    • A&E deaths: “Sickening” new analysis reveals deadly consequences of broken NHS as Lib Dems call for inquiry
    • Wendy Chamberlain MP’s Bill bids to remove charity lottery fundraising cap

    US trade tariffs: Trump doesn’t listen to “please”

    Responding to the the Business Secretary’s comments about Trump trade tariffs this morning, Daisy Cooper MP, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson, said:

    Government ministers going cap in hand to Trump, pleading with him not to tax our goods, simply won’t work.

    Trump doesn’t listen to “please”. He’s an unpredictable trading partner who’s shown he’ll slap massive tariffs on the UK at the drop of a hat.

    Instead, we’ve got to negotiate with him from a position of strength – from within a new and bespoke customs partnership with the EU, that will unleash the potential of many British businesses to drive up trade with our biggest and closest trading partner.

    A&E deaths: “Sickening” new analysis reveals deadly consequences of broken NHS as Lib Dems call for inquiry

    Responding to new analysis of ONS data which suggests that more than 50,000 people died last year after long A&E waits, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

    This new analysis is sickening. It lays bare the deadly consequences of a health service that has been run into the ground with patients and their loved ones often paying the ultimate price.

    The Conservative Party should never be forgiven for what it did to our NHS and the tragedy their neglect has left it in its wake, but it is simply not good enough for this new government to sit on its hands any longer.

    We need to see immediate action to get to the bottom of these deadly delays.

    The government must urgently launch a CQC inquiry into the chaos in our A&Es and ensure patients never have to suffer through something like this ever again.

    Wendy Chamberlain MP’s Bill bids to remove charity lottery fundraising cap

    Wendy Chamberlain, MP for North East Fife, will have the second reading of her Bill to remove the outdated caps on charity lottery fundraising on Friday .

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    Matthew Ma

    ALDC By-Election Report, 23rd January

    By Matthew Ma | Fri 24th January 2025 - 6:57 pm

    This week saw five principal council by-elections for six seats across the UK. Labour and Lib Dems loss a net of one seat this week, with the former gaining one but losing two to SNP and an independent, and the latter placing a close third in the only double vacancy of the week. SNP also lost their only defence in the same ward but gained a seat from Labour in other parts of Scotland.

    For the good news, the Lib Dems defended the seat in Liverpool City Council handsomely over the second place Labour candidate. In the Much Woolton & Hunts Cross ward, Cllr Josie Mullen the team worked hard to maintain over half of the vote share in the area, thank you to Josie and team for running a great campaign and holding the seat!

    Liverpool City Council, Much Woolton & Hunts Cross
    Liberal Democrat (Josie Mullen): 1011 (51.1%, -2.4%)
    Labour: 537 (27.1%, -4.2%)
    Reform: 218 (11.0%, new)
    Green Party: 170 (8.6%, -2.0%)
    Conservative: 42 (2.1%, -2.3%)

    Featuring a list of 13 candidates, the other Lib Dem defence this week is also a SNP defence in Edinburgh Council, following unfortunate circumstances leading to our by-election winner stepping down. In the Conlinton/Fairmilehead ward, the Tories came in first while the Lib Dems and Labour battled it out until stage 12. Well done and thank you to Peter Nicholson and the team for putting in the effort for a well-fought campaign, this was certainly an uphill battle if there ever was one.

    Edinburgh Council, Colinton/Fairmilehead (based on first preference votes, Conservative elected at stage 8, Labour elected at stage 13)
    Conservative: 2027 (32.6%, +12.9%)
    Labour: 1146 (18.4%, -1.1%)
    Liberal Democrat (Peter Nicholson): 1009 (16.2%, -20.0%)
    SNP: 840 (13.5%, +2.7%)
    Green Party: 426 (6.8%, +1.5%)
    Reform: 345 (5.5%, +1.9%)
    Independent: 256 (4.1%, +1.8%)
    Scottish Family Party: 65 (1.0%, +0.4%)
    Independent: 38 (0.6%, -0.2%)
    Independent: 30 (0.5%, +0.2%)
    Independent: 23 (0.4%, -0.3%)
    Independent: 12 (0.2%, new)
    Independent: 5 (0.1%, new)

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    Mary Reid

    Take care!

    By Mary Reid | Fri 24th January 2025 - 9:20 am

    Wishing all our contributors and readers a safe day, especially those in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

    Storm Éowyn will undoubtedly leave a mess to be cleared up by local Councils. If you can, do tell us how your Council is coping.

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    Mark Valladares

    23 January 2025 – today’s press releases

    By Mark Valladares | Thu 23rd January 2025 - 10:45 pm
    • Government ruling out customs scheme with EU is an “act of economic negligence”
    • NHS stats: government must convene COBRA amid surge in norovirus cases
    • Lib Dems reveal private company overseeing hundreds of sewage dumps
    • Scot Lib Dems push for prison suicide and fatal accident inquiry reform
    • Cole-Hamilton comments on scrapping of doomed social care centralisation

    Government ruling out customs scheme with EU is an “act of economic negligence”

    Responding to the Government appearing to rule out the EU’s proposal of the UK joining a European customs area this morning, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

    It is alarming that the Government is happy to negotiate with China but won’t even look at a better trading arrangement with our closest neighbours in Europe. This is an act of economic negligence.

    If the Government thinks it will get growth back in the economy by borrowing Boris Johnson’s playbook on European negotiations it is going to end up being sorely disappointed.

    It is time for a proper UK-EU customs arrangement so we can strengthen our negotiations with Donald Trump, cut the red tape on our businesses and grow the economy.

    NHS stats: government must convene COBRA amid surge in norovirus cases

    Responding to the latest NHS stats showing norovirus levels in hospitals to be 80% higher than last year with bed occupancy standing at 96%, well above the 85% that is considered safe, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

    The situation for patients and our NHS could not be more stark. People are dying on trolleys in corridors and staff are at breaking point. It cannot be overstated just how grim things are in A&Es across the country.

    This is one of the most brutal winters on record following years of shameful Conservative neglect and the current government is now at risk of losing control of this crisis. Any more delay in action has the potential to be deadly for patients.

    COBRA must be convened immediately with an emergency plan brought forward to protect patients from this ongoing disaster.

    It is time for the government to step up and grip this crisis in a way that they have so far failed to do.

    Lib Dems reveal private company overseeing hundreds of sewage dumps

    Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today revealed that more than 500 sewage overspills took place at sites managed by private firms in just twelve months, including more than 100 at the Edinburgh Waste Water treatment work at Seafield, run by Veolia.

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    Posted in News, Press releases and Scotland | Tagged , , , , , , , and | 5 Comments
    Mary Reid

    LibLink: Ed Davey on Elon Musk and his malign powers

    By Mary Reid | Thu 23rd January 2025 - 8:42 pm

    Ed Davey has written an article for The Guardian under the headline “Elon Musk has shown his hand. If politicians like me won’t curb his malign powers, who will?”

    He writes:

    Much of the coverage of Musk centres on his bizarre actions and declarations, and the controversies that have followed. It’s easy to tune it all out as the dronings of a bore. But he’s so much worse than that. He’s already one of the most powerful people on the planet. He’s the world’s wealthiest man, with a fortune of more than $400bn. And despite turning millions of people away from Twitter with his damaging changes to the platform (not least trying to rebrand it as X), he still controls what hundreds of millions of people around the globe see on their feeds.

    …

    As a liberal, I am instinctively deeply alarmed by the concentration of so much power in the hands of one individual. Even if I liked Musk, I’d say it was dangerous. I see it as the fundamental purpose of liberals – whether capital L members of the Liberal Democrats, or like-minded people beyond our party and around the world – to hold the powerful to account and put real power in the hands of ordinary people.

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    Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
    Lord William Wallace

    How do we defend free speech from absolutists and others?

    By Lord William Wallace | Thu 23rd January 2025 - 12:40 pm

    Elon Musk has declared himself an absolutist on free speech.  It’s a declaration which defines the enemy as ‘the woke virus’, which is condemned as shutting off criticism of minority opinions and groups and shouting down those who express views outside their permitted consensus.  It’s also a demonstration of how far the concept of ‘free speech’ has been weaponised by the right and twisted in in its meaning.   If we want to defend free speech from those who twist the principle to fit their prejudices, we need to be clear about it meaning and its limits.

    Liz Truss has just told the Voice of America that ‘The left-wing media of Britain including the BBC, including organizations like the Times and the Guardian and the Financial Times, do not like free speech, free market policies, and they don’t like the status quo in this country being challenged and I will take them on.’  Mark Zuckerberg has declared that his fact-checking teams were ‘politically biassed’, and moved a reduced team from California to Texas, to encourage them to check ‘facts’ in a more Trump-friendly way. Free speech is being redefined as part of the ‘anti-woke’ culture war – to insist on the right to express uncomfortably reactionary opinions, and to bend facts to suit different types of right-wing narratives.

    Free speech is central to democracy and to liberal values.  But the right to free speech is not the right to say anything to anyone, regardless of evidence, context or consequences.   Laws against libel and slander protect reputations – though often misused to protect the rich and powerful against criticism. SLAPPS (strategic litigation against public participation) have allowed media magnates and offshore oligarchs to stifle hostile comments.  Misinformation, or worse deliberate disinformation, is on the line between legal but antisocial and illegal because of its harmful consequences in promoting disorder.  Holocaust denial is banned in some countries; medical disinformation can be prosecuted in others. Language that stirs up disorder or promotes criminal or terrorist acts is, rightly, prosecuted.

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    Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 15 Comments
    Chris Perry

    Pension Funds and Economic Growth

    By Chris Perry | Thu 23rd January 2025 - 9:40 am

    Rachel Reeves’ proposed merger of Local Government Pension Schemes and consolidation with defined contribution pension schemes to create a mega-fund to unlock investment and boost growth is high risk and needs safeguards and guarantees. This is not Government or taxpayers’ money but belongs to the members of each particular pension scheme and is in effect their retirement savings. When Gordon Brown altered the tax position of pension funds he sent many into deficit which brought about the demise of defined benefit final salary schemes – with even the Local Government Schemes moving from “final salary” to “average salary”. The index linking used to be to earnings, then RPI and more recently changed to CPI – even for pensions in payment.

    These changes are not being made by the Chancellor to improve pensions but to use pension funds to boost investment in search of growth. Economic growth is the Government’s priority. But what are the risks and knock on effect of this proposal for pensioners? One cannot fix whole systems problems with component level solutions.

    There is a wealth of empirical evidence into the social determinates of health which has demonstrated the correlation between income and demand upon the NHS. 3/5ths of the expenditure of the NHS is on older people. Therefore, to constantly reduce or risk the income of older people, who got no benefit from the two  pre-election reductions in National Insurance but do pay more income tax due to the freezing of the tax free personal allowance, recently lost their free TV licence and now their winter fuel allowance will increase the pressures on the NHS at the very time Government is committed to reducing waiting times.

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    Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 19 Comments
    Mark Valladares

    22 January 2025 – today’s press releases

    By Mark Valladares | Wed 22nd January 2025 - 11:30 pm
    • Borrowing figures: Another sign the Chancellor’s Budget has not worked
    • OBR Report: Farm tax will penalise farmers for practically no benefit
    • Cole-Hamilton: SNP must scrap social care power grab now
    • OBR Report: Farm tax will penalise Welsh farmers for practically no benefit
    • OBR Report: Farm tax will penalise farmers and crofters for little benefit to Exchequer
    • Cross-border healthcare difficulties letting patients down

    Borrowing figures: Another sign the Chancellor’s Budget has not worked

    Responding to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing UK borrowing has hit its highest December level for four years, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson, Daisy Cooper MP said:

    This is yet another sign that the Chancellor’s Budget has not worked. It’s now putting people’s mortgages at risk and will make it even harder for the Chancellor to meet her borrowing rules.

    The answer to this is to turbo-charge growth by scrapping the jobs tax, and raising the necessary revenue for our NHS from the big banks and tech companies instead.

    After the Conservative Party’s disastrous legacy of economic vandalism, the Chancellor needs to go for growth through fairer tax measures that can unleash growth through small businesses, not undermine it.

    OBR Report: Farm tax will penalise farmers for practically no benefit

    Commenting on the latest OBR report on the impact of agricultural and business property relief, Liberal Democrat Environment and Rural Affairs spokesperson Tim Farron MP said:

    This report confirms that the Government’s misguided family farm tax is mired in problems and will penalise British farmers for practically no benefit.

    It is deeply concerning that older farmers will be hit hardest from this tax, with the rug pulled from under them before they can change their plans. And with tax revenue expected to be highly uncertain and unstable for two decades, the Chancellor’s excuses simply don’t stack up.

    Farmers are absolutely vital for Britain, putting food on our tables and protecting the British countryside. And they are already battling botched trade deals, declining incomes and high energy prices. The Government must do the right thing and scrap the family farm tax before it’s too late.

    Cole-Hamilton: SNP must scrap social care power grab now

    Speaking ahead of the ministerial statement on the future of the National Care Service, proposals which would centralise social care services and wrench away control from local communities, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

    Continue reading »
    Posted in News, Press releases, Scotland and Wales | Tagged , , , , , , , , and | 8 Comments
    Mark Valladares

    21 January 2025 – yesterday’s press releases

    By Mark Valladares | Wed 22nd January 2025 - 10:20 pm
    • Unemployment: Reeves must scrap jobs tax
    • Southport Inquiry: Must get us answers to avoid future failures
    • WASPI: More than 300,000 women in Scotland “betrayed” by Labour decision
    • Welsh unemployment rise: Labour must scrap their Jobs Tax
    • Cole-Hamilton: SNP have left A&E in state of perma-crisis
    • McArthur: Community orders should be credible solutions to prison overcrowding

    Unemployment: Reeves must scrap jobs tax

    Responding to the latest figures showing unemployment at 4.4%, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

    These latest figures are concerning. The government’s misguided jobs tax is already scaring off small businesses from hiring new people and being able to better serve our communities.

    The Chancellor talks about growth but her Budget measures are acting as an anchor against just that.

    After years of the Conservative Party’s economic vandalism we cannot see this new government repeat their mistakes. That is why Rachel Reeves needs to scrap her jobs tax to get our economy growing again.

    Southport Inquiry: Must get us answers to avoid future failures

    Commenting after Starmer’s press conference following the government’s announcement of an inquiry into the Southport murders, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

    The Liberal Democrats welcome this inquiry, which must not shy away from asking tough questions about what went wrong.

    This was an utterly horrific tragedy. My thoughts go out to the bereaved families, who lost three young daughters to such brutal violence. We need to ensure that such a senseless attack cannot happen again.

    We must learn from these events, and the inquiry must urgently get us the answers we need to avoid future failures.

    WASPI: More than 300,000 women in Scotland “betrayed” by Labour decision

    Speaking ahead of a Scottish Parliament debate on compensation for WASPI women, Beatrice Wishart MSP has said her party will “fight for WASPI women” as data from the House of Commons library estimated that an estimated 331,780 women in Scotland could be affected.

    Continue reading »
    Posted in News, Press releases, Scotland and Wales | Tagged , , , , , , , , , and | 11 Comments
    The Voice

    Five Lib Dems quiz Starmer on social care, Trump, defence, eating disorders and colleges

    By The Voice | Wed 22nd January 2025 - 8:42 pm

    Social care, trade deals with Trump’s America, St Helier Hospital, the Strategic Defence Reivew, eating disorders and were the subjects brought to Keir Starmer by Lib Dems Ed Davey, Luke Taylor, Mike Martin, Wera Hobhouse and Alison Bennett at PMQs today.

    Here’s Ed’s exchange with the Prime Minister:

    The text is below:

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    Posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | Leave a comment
    Mark Pack

    Mark Pack’s January report to members

    By Mark Pack | Wed 22nd January 2025 - 10:55 am

    Farage and Musk are the past, not the future

    Seeing someone called a “snivelling cretin” may reinforce all your worst fears about social media. But when it was Elon Musk saying this of Ed Davey, it counts as a badge of honour.

    It also illustrates a bigger, and more important, point than ‘look how thin skinned and short of things to say a billionaire is when anyone stands up to him’.

    It is about how little to say about our future the likes of Nigel Farage and Elon Musk have beyond nostalgia for an imagined version of our past. For all Elon Musk’s facade as a visionary man of the future, much of his vision is a shrunken, twisted piece of fake nostalgia: a world where the super-rich get to run things, democracy is an optional extra, international borders are high and only his favoured few select demographic categories are worthy people.

    Their joint desire to turn the clock backwards is in contrast to our positive liberal vision for a better future. Just because someone is not like me is not a reason to dislike them. Just because someone has different views of religion than me is not a reason to fear them. And just because someone lives in a different country from me is not a reason to treat them as an enemy.

    The likes of Farage and Musk excel at grabbing the headlines, but the quiet reality of 2024 was a year in which in Britain us Liberal Democrats took more political power. We won more council seats than the Conservatives and Reform combined in May – and then we had our best general election result in a century, gaining far more seats than Reform, in July.

    General Election Review

    An important part of building on those successes is our General Election Review, which was headed up by Tim Farron.

    Thank you to Tim and the whole team for turning around the review promptly, so that we can get stuck into implementing its lessons as soon as practical in this Parliamentary cycle.

    As with the post-2019 review, this one has been shared with all party members because, even though this review is a happier one, it is important once again that members can hold to account those in power at all levels of the party on delivering the review’s recommendations. As Tim explained in the email to members, there are some further recommendations on membership to follow.

    The review is asking Federal Conference Committee (FCC) for time to present their findings to our Federal Spring Conference in Harrogate. Alongside that, the Federal Board has agreed to draw up an implementation plan for the recommendations, and you will get more news on that through these monthly reports.

    Party Awards

    Our Spring Federal Conference in Harrogate is now coming up fast. Which also means it is time to nominate wonderful colleagues for our next round of Party Awards too.

    You can read about which awards are up this time, and how to make nominations, here.

    Registrations for conference, both in person and online, are also open. I hope to see many of you there.

    Congratulations to…

    North Devon Liberal Democrats were the top recruiting local party in England in December, topping the charts for the second month running. All but one of the new members were recruited locally by them – giving the party’s local bank balance a handy boost too as local parties receive larger membership payments for locally recruited (or renewed) members.

    Congratulations too to the top local recruiters in Scotland – Dumfriesshire and Highlands local parties, tied with each other – and in Wales – Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan.

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    Posted in News and Op-eds | Tagged and | 13 Comments
    Geoff Reid

    Consign Trump’s “God” to the dustbin of nonsensical religiosity

    By Geoff Reid | Wed 22nd January 2025 - 8:44 am
    In 1963 an Observer headline “Our image of God must go” rocked organised Christianity in these islands, primarily because the call came from John Robinson, the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich. He was addressing the problem of “anthropomorphism”, making God into a person, a quasi-human who sat above the clouds, waiting to catch us out like a grumpy and arbitrary tyrant. Many people spoke about God as a being who could simply turn on or off hurricanes, earthquakes or serious illnesses. Robinson’s take on God seemed eminently refreshing to many of us studying theology at the time. A couple of decades later, many liberal/radical Christian thinkers would come to see John Robinson as relatively conservative, particularly with regard to the authorship of books in the New Testament.
    In the sixties, at the cutting edge of exploratory approaches to Christian faith was “Christian/Marxist dialogue”, which was the backdrop to my spending three weeks behind the Iron Curtain with a group of youngish people training for ministry in the churches. Fifty-five years later that all seems like a world away, not just because of the implosion of Soviet style Marxism, but also because we live in a time when engagement with secular issues going hand in hand with the development of interfaith relationships informs the agenda of the mainstream Christian denominations.
    So what do we make of Donald Trump’s claim to have God on his side and that he was saved by the said God to make America great again? I am not going to say that Trump’s image of God must go. I’m not sure that he has any notion of image or religious symbolism. It is tempting to think of a traditional God being humbled in the presence of the Donald but let’s put that to one side!
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    Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
    Chris Whiting

    It’s time for the Liberal Democrats to embrace limitarianism

    By Chris Whiting | Tue 21st January 2025 - 1:48 pm

    Ed Davey recently summed up the essence of liberalism: empowering those without power and holding the powerful to account. These words are not just a rallying cry—they are a blueprint for action. If the Liberal Democrats truly want to live up to this mission, we must embrace limitarianism as a core economic policy, and we must do it now.

    Limitarianism is the idea that there should be an upper limit to personal wealth. Beyond a certain threshold, the accumulation of wealth ceases to serve individual well-being and begins to entrench inequality, distort democracy, and hoard resources that could benefit society as a whole. Elon Musk, the member of the US government who just performed a Nazi salute at the inauguration of the world’s most powerful politician, and incidentally, the richest man alive, earns the national median wage every single minute of every single day.

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    Posted in Op-eds | 41 Comments
    John Marriott

    Time to go low if we want democracy to survive

    By John Marriott | Tue 21st January 2025 - 11:48 am

    Embed from Getty Images

    “When they go low, we go high” Michelle Obama told the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Well, a fat lot of good that did the Democrats back then and in 2024 as well. The problem that the responsible left is facing in nearly every country where a democratic system purports to exist is a failure to recognise unfortunately that it’s bread and butter issues that a lot of people, many with a short memory, care about more and are frankly satisfied with the modern equivalent of what Roman poet, Juvenal, cynically termed “bread and circuses”. The ‘Glory of Rome’ favoured just a chosen few; just as would the ‘Greatness’ of America.

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    Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 23 Comments
    Mark Valladares

    20 January 2025 – today’s press releases

    By Mark Valladares | Mon 20th January 2025 - 10:30 pm
    • 40 new hospitals: Shoddy attempt to bury bad news on day of Trump’s inauguration
    • Farm incomes in Wales fall by 34% – Liberal Democrats call for Government reset
    • Trump inauguration shows importance of close ties with Europe

    40 new hospitals: Shoddy attempt to bury bad news on day of Trump’s inauguration

    Responding to the Health Secretary’s announcement that there will be significant delays to the completion of the New Hospital Programme, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

    This is a double betrayal. The Conservatives shamelessly made promises they never intended to keep to countless communities served by crumbling hospitals.

    Now this government uses the day of Trump’s inauguration in a shoddy attempt to bury bad news, showing an outrageous disregard for patients.

    Instead of ducking scrutiny, the Health Secretary needs to publish the full impact assessment of these delays.

    Patients have a right to know just how at risk they are, and how many more delays they will have to suffer as a result of the government’s decision.

    Farm incomes in Wales fall by 34% – Liberal Democrats call for Government reset

    The Welsh Liberal Democrats have called on Labour to reset their relationship with farming and the countryside following the release of statistics showing farming incomes in Wales have fallen by 34% for the period April 2023 to March 2024.

    David Chadwick MP, the Liberal Democrats Wales spokesperson in Westminster has said that recent policy failures by both the Welsh Labour Government in Cardiff Bay and the UK Government are damaging agriculture and the wider rural economy in Wales and risk making the situation even worse.

    Continue reading »
    Posted in News, Press releases, Scotland and Wales | Tagged , , , , , and | Leave a comment
    The Voice

    The starting gun is fired in Runcorn & Helsby

    By The Voice | Mon 20th January 2025 - 5:45 pm

    News reaches us that Article 19.7 of the Federal Constitution has been triggered by the likelihood of a by-election in Runcorn & Helsby given that the sitting MP, Mike Amesbury is to be sentenced on 24 February having pleaded guilty to common assault on Thursday.

    If you’re an approved Parliamentary candidate, and you’re interested, time is very short, as applications must be received by 6 p.m. tomorrow evening (21 January).

    For more details, all relevant information can be found on the Cheshire West and Chester Local Party website.

    Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Tagged | 5 Comments
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