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An invitation to new members of the Liberal Democrats from ALDC #libdemfightback

By ALDC | Fri 15th May 2015 - 10:55 am

Firstly, welcome to the Liberal Democrats! We’re really pleased you’ve taken the first step and joined the party fighting for a fairer, open and more liberal society.

Many people when they take their first steps in politics, give some thought as to how they would like to be more actively involved. Joining ALDC is a great way to get started in your local area, and also to begin to make connections with other members in different parts of the country.

For every new member serious about getting active in their local area, campaigning in their community and going on to winning local elections, ALDC membership is a must.

Who we are

ALDC was originally founded, as the Association of Liberal Councillors, in the late 1960s. Our goal, then and now, is to give local Liberal Democrat members the tools and support they need to reach out and campaign effectively within their communities.

Despite the name, we are not just an organisation for councillors! We support Liberal Democrats in every local role. Whether you are interested in becoming a local campaigner, an election candidate, or a councillor, ALDC is here to help.

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Posted in Lib Dem organisations and Op-eds | Tagged aldc #libdemfightback | Leave a comment

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Another thank you email from Paddy

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 15th May 2015 - 9:55 am

I got another nice email from Paddy Ashdown yesterday, which I thought I’d share with you despite its horrendous apostrophe fail. I was vaguely annoyed with this assertion, though:

I believe that you, the campaigners, candidates and staff of our party could not have done more, or done it better than you did.

Our staff and on the ground campaigners are fabulous. They all worked with absolute commitment. But no campaign ever gets it all right. We do need to look at the effectiveness of what we did. You have to do this even if you win! Are your campaign methods getting a little tired? Blue letters, for example, may have had their day. I remember the wow factor that they had when we first used them but that was getting on for two decades ago. What’s the next Wow Factor?

I have a lot of time for Paddy and I actually sent him a note thanking him earlier this week because I think he deserved it. When Nick appointed him as Chair of the General Election Committee in 2012, I was thrilled. He set about making sure that each of our held seats was as prepared as it possibly could be to fight the General Election. He set them targets and some of them complained noisily. However, he made sure that they had the capacity and the infrastructure to hold our vote up.

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Posted in News | 21 Comments

Opinion: Counter-extremism laws will be anything but

By Adam Warner | Fri 15th May 2015 - 8:55 am

View image | gettyimages.com

Less than a week into the new government and we are already beginning to see the signs of a Conservative party moving sharply to the right now that the Lib Dem shackles are off.

Announcing proposals for counter-extremism legislation yesterday, Home Secretary Theresa May said that she would implement ‘banning orders for groups’ who are ‘actively trying to promote hatred ‘ and ‘undermine British values’. Prime Minister David Cameron added that we have been a ‘passively tolerant society for too long’.

A similar piece of legislation was proposed 3 times during the coalition but was rejected every time. Lib Dem MP Tom Brake today said that they were blocked because they were ‘ill thought through, illiberal and will not tackle the problem they are supposed to’.

For starters, the proposal is flawed in principle. It is undoubtedly the case that these proposals undermine the key British value of freedom of speech. Whilst the Lib Dems hugely disagree with the views of radical fundamentalists like Anjem Choudhry, we will always defend their right to say it. That is a fundamental principle of democracy. If you partially stop freedom of speech, as these proposals do, you set a very dangerous precedent which can border on censorship and risks allowing a government to silence any voice of which it does not approve.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged civil liberties, counter-terrorism and freedom of speech | 11 Comments

Opinion: Help, I’ve got lots of new members. What do I do? #libdemfightback

By Mark Pack | Thu 14th May 2015 - 9:13 pm

It’s a nice problem to have. It’s an unexpected problem to have. But it’s still a problem: quite what should local parties do with all the new members flooding in since polling day, the vast majority of whom are new to political parties.

Party HQ itself is getting much right that it hasn’t with previous bursts of new members: prompt member surveys, new member packs, welcome calls and getting people signed up to direct debit (much easier to renew) are all things done a bit in the past but now happening much more systematically.

Yet that isn’t a substitute for local embrace of new members and the record of local parties – as my mystery shopper showed – has been rather variable. So here are my five top tips:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #libdemfightback, local party organisation and membership | 15 Comments

Opinion: On being beaten

By Ed Fordham | Thu 14th May 2015 - 7:35 pm

View image | gettyimages.com

After hours of counting on the morning on Friday 7^th May 2010 it was announced for the world to see that Glenda Jackson was re-elected elected as the Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Kilburn. Hidden beneath this was my own result where I lost by 842. A close result, except that I was in third place – in 2010 the best placed third placed loser in Britain I’m told.

In most of the accounts of the 2010 General Election H&K as it was dubbed, is listed as the seat the LD’s hoped to win – Nick Clegg had launch his campaign there. I was cited as a close friend (one paper even said I was his best man – I wasn’t!).

Indeed I remember at the count when the Conservative candidate went back to his team – he said “She’s won”. One of his campaign asked hastily – “and Fordham?” – “he’s third came the reply” – “Yes” they cheered.

But for me as I walked home and for the days afterwards it was more than losing. I’m a Liberal Democrat – I’m used to losing counts. But losing as a candidate it is highly personal.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged future strategy and general election 2015 | 14 Comments

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Opinion: It was one week ago today but it feels like longer

By Chris Fauske | Thu 14th May 2015 - 6:29 pm

View image | gettyimages.com

We have been here before.

My last full time commitments with the party were the back-to-back by-elections of 1982 that saw us make significant gains on the Tories and beat one Anthony ‘Tony’ Blair into third place with a message of change and a better alternative, followed by the sting of an all-too-foreseeable but nonetheless devastating loss on a point of principal.

I don’t recall much about the Beaconsfield by-election. But I do recall that in Mitcham and Morden I arrived exhausted from the previous campaign. We set up shop in what had been, I think, a grocer’s on one of the busier streets of Merton. Volunteers came from across the country to help save the seat of the one MP who had resigned when he left the Labour Party to join the SDP. Frankly, we never stood a chance, but that campaign helped solidify the very foundation upon which the Liberal Democrats were built – that principles matter.

I stayed in the campaign office during the count. I was too tired and too depressed to see the point of watching Angela Rumbold start her parliamentary career. When he returned to our office, Bruce Douglas-Mann thanked everyone. And then, off script, he told us that while ‘you can regret making a promise, you can never regret keeping one.’

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Posted in News | 4 Comments

Opinion: Constitutional agnosticism – reuniting Scotland’s liberal voice

By Graeme Cowie | Thu 14th May 2015 - 5:27 pm

View image | gettyimages.com

The Scottish Liberal Democrats adopted a targeted strategy in its 11 held seats at the General Election. We faced a drop in the popular vote by more than half compared to 2010 and a Scottish Nationalist insurgency. The approach taken was to appeal to a Unionist tactical vote in those areas, hoping that the fear of SNP victories across the board would draw-in Labour and Tory voters in places like East Dunbartonshire, Gordon and West Aberdeenshire.

I want to acknowledge from the outset, that this was a less ineffective strategy for the Scottish Lib Dems than it proved for Scottish Labour. Though losing all mainland seats, the margins by which we were defeated were relatively close. Mike Crockart, for example, was much closer to holding his seat than most Glasgow Labour MPs. There is not zero merit in this approach.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured | 55 Comments

Opinion: On voting reform, the Lib Dems must seek an ally in UKIP

By David Gray | Thu 14th May 2015 - 4:27 pm

Voting reform has been a key Lib Dem issue for many years now. It’s not necessarily primary concern of the average voter, but the way in which we choose who governs us is one of the most important aspects of democracy and cannot be dismissed.

The latest election has provided us with a stark display of why a more proportional system is vital for Britain’s future. Those determined to protect that status quo will point to the referendum in 2011 and claim that the British public has already rejected reform, but this is nonsense. AV may be fairer than FPTP, but it was ultimately a fudge, and no more proportional than the current system. We’ve never been allowed a vote on whether we want PR.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged electoral reform and ukip | 43 Comments

Catherine Bearder MEP writes…The fight for Britain’s future starts now

By Catherine Bearder | Thu 14th May 2015 - 2:50 pm

As the dust settles from the elections and we lament the loss of so many talented and dedicated Liberal Democrat MPs and councillors, there will inevitably be discussions over what went wrong and how it could have been avoided. As a party we have a lot of hard thinking to do about how best we rebuild. But there is no time for a protracted period of introspection. The country stands at a crossroads: one way leading to a strong and united Britain at the heart of the EU, the other to a little England isolated from its neighbours at home and abroad. The voice of the Liberal Democrats and liberalism is needed now more than ever.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged eu and eu referendum | 4 Comments

Sal Brinton writes…The phoenix is rising, and that is down to you

By Sal Brinton | Thu 14th May 2015 - 1:28 pm

It’s just under one week since the polls closed, and we have now recruited over 11,000 new members and it’s growing all the time. There is an extraordinary public endorsement of a liberal voice – a Liberal Democrat voice – in the UK today, and this is so exciting.

I want to thank everyone who has contacted me by email, text, Facebook, Twitter and phone. Please forgive me for being slow in replying personally, but I am receiving hundreds every day. I am extremely busy with everything that the President has to do, the Leadership election, and as you can imagine there are other responsibilities emerging and I have very limited resources. The best email to reach me is [email protected].

The Federal Executive (FE) met on Saturday, and I wanted to let you know more detail of what was decided.

Firstly, we agreed that we wanted the Leadership contest to conclude before the summer recess, so that the new Leader would have time to set up his office and be ready for his first conference as Leader. We also agreed to extend the period between nominations opening (which they do today) and close of nominations, to encourage everyone including candidates and their teams to get lapsed members to re-join. The Returning Officer has now agreed this can happen. We also asked the Returning Officer to set out the list of official hustings as soon as possible, so that members would have access to hustings. The agreed list means that virtually all members will have a hustings within 75 miles, or in the very rural areas (e.g. some parts of Scotland and Wales) within 100 miles. There may also be other hustings including online and virtual meetings.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #libdemfightback and federal executive | 12 Comments

Tim Farron MP writes… Why I’m standing for leader..to be the vigorous liberal voice Britain needs

By Tim Farron MP | Thu 14th May 2015 - 11:58 am

As I’ve written in The Independent, last week’s election results still leave me feeling numb. The Liberal Democrats are not a political machine but a human family, made up of dear friends and colleagues, striving together in a common cause. Which is why the loss of so many excellent MPs, councillors and staff is not just a political catastrophe but also a personal heartbreak.

Liberalism and liberal values are under threat from a triumphalist Tory party in hock to its right wing and from the forces of nationalism and isolationism. No one can rely on a Labour ‘opposition’ who have never got it on civil liberties, immigration, Iraq or a new politics. Liberal Democrats need to pick ourselves up and lead the fight.

This will be a tough challenge, but liberals have done it before. We came back from near oblivion in the 1950s and ‘60s to challenge the Tory–Labour stranglehold on power, building on our local roots, fighting alongside local campaigners to make life better in a myriad of little ways for individuals and their communities. As an activist and councillor and MP I’ve been part of that endeavour all my political life.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged leadership election 2015, liberal democrat leadership and tim farron | 100 Comments

Opinion: “Values” and Party

By Gordon Lishman | Thu 14th May 2015 - 10:46 am

There has been a lot written about the importance of “values”. I’m not convinced.

Talk about values reinforces the idea that one can pick and mix principles and ideas – just as with policies, one can put together a package which suits your pocket or your likes and then decide which party at any one time best meets your need to vote. Or, indeed, you can just campaign on one or two which happen to strike you as most important.

This view encourages the idea that party is an outdated concept and often inconvenient if there happen to be some bits of your party’s policies which you don’t like – which there always will be in an open and democratic community. In this world of values, party affiliations are worn loosely and are often transient. I want to proclaim the importance of both party and philosophy.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured and liberal democrat values | 19 Comments

New LDV members’ survey now live: your views on

By Ryan Cullen | Thu 14th May 2015 - 10:01 am

The new LDV members’ survey is now live. So if you are one of the 1,900+ registered members of the Liberal Democrat Voice forum, and any paid-up party member is welcome to join, then you now have the opportunity to make your views known.

Questions we’re asking this month include:

pre-election predictions;
post-election analysis;
what you though of the Coalition;
Nick Clegg standing down;
who should replace him as leader;
what our losing MPs should do next;

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Posted in LDV Members poll | 11 Comments

Opinion: Mental health support is for everyone – we all have brains to look after #MHAW15

By Bobby Dean | Thu 14th May 2015 - 9:02 am

I’m not having a life crisis. I’ve never suffered from depression or any other clinically recognised mental health condition. I’ve taken ownership of things that have happened to me in the past, the way they have affected my behaviour and made changes. Yet I still regularly visit a counsellor – why is that?

Is it because I wear a top-knot, work for a charity and hang out in bars in East London? Just another hipster tosser who cares too much about his own existence?

Well, maybe. But I don’t feel that way.

My backstory isn’t the point here, so I’ll only touch upon it briefly. As a kid in a working class setting, my young parents struggled to bring me and my brothers up and the stresses that came with it destroyed my relationship with them. I ended up kicked out at the age of 15, moved in with my grandparents and spent the best part of the next ten years shutting them out of my life.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged mental health awareness week | 5 Comments

Liberal Reform: The leadership campaign is too important for factional infighting

By NewsHound | Thu 14th May 2015 - 8:47 am

Liberal Reform issued this statement following Tim Farron’s announcement that he will contest the party leadership election:

From the Board of Liberal Reform:

“The party now has two excellent candidates to choose from for leader, both with many strengths. We believe that whichever candidate is elected will need to lead a united party into battle against the Government and to expose the fake progressives of Labour and the SNP.

In this spirit, therefore, we do not believe it is appropriate for Liberal Reform to endorse a candidate in this contest and would urge other groups to take the same view. The need for unity in our task of rebuilding makes this leadership election too important for it to descend into factional infighting.

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Posted in News | Tagged liberal reform | 70 Comments

#New Members’ Day: Why I joined the Liberal Democrats #7

By Anna Ovsyanikova | Wed 13th May 2015 - 8:55 pm

Originally from Russia (actually born in the last years of theSoviet Union), since moving to the UK I for long time didn’t join any political party. The concept of joining a party in my mind wasn’t a voluntary thing, as it was compulsory in my parents’ day in the USSR and there was only one party one could join. However while finding out more and more about different parties in the UK the shock of actually being able to choose who to join brought me to realising what it is I care most about.

I care about democracy, again a word that doesn’t apply to Russia even in the present day. I care about equal opportunities for everyone, Human Rights and liberal values. The choice was obvious.

I deeply regret that when I first joined the Liberal Democrat I didn’t do much else – I went to one conference, that’s about it. I think it was more like a gesture, sort of saying “I cannot vote for you (because after 9 years and 8 months that I’m living in the UK I still can’t vote) but I join the party to show that if I had the right to vote, I would vote for you.”

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #newmembersday #libdemfightback | 5 Comments

#NewMembersDay Why I joined the Liberal Democrats #6

By Mike Hewitson | Wed 13th May 2015 - 7:55 pm

Like many of my generation I have always been liberal, but it wasn’t until I first heard Nick Clegg talk about liberal values, that I began to suspect that I was a Liberal Democrat. Although I have always been interested and indirectly involved in politics I could never commit myself to any party. Through my professional career, I almost (accidentally) became a Conservative, co-authoring a policy paper for the oldest conservative think-tank, attending party conferences, but never feeling at home or at ease with the polarity of a party that houses rabid eurosceptics, social conservatives, libertarians and economic free-marketeers. The 2015 General Election has done nothing but confirm that I am, in fact a Liberal Democrat to the core, and damn the consequences.

Since polling day I have read and heard commentary questioning the point of the Lib Dems, mainly from Conservatives, cynically attempting to lock up their electoral majority for 2020. When I look at the alternatives I couldn’t disagree with them more. Politics is increasingly about what…what policies, and what benefit they bring to individuals or interest groups, the politics of self-interest. Almost no consideration is given to the more important question of why. When I think back to first hearing Nick talk about liberal values: about freedom, fairness and equality these fundamental principles resonated with how I live my life, they were my why.

It is all too easy to get caught up in the dogma of Left and Right, but the truth is that very few normal people fall exclusively into either camp, we agree with some things, and disagree with others to varying degrees. Our next leader must resist the conformity of defining our party in terms of left or right, as our fundamental principles of liberty and social justice cut across both sides. Already an unshackled Conservative government is talking about reducing liberty in the name of security, for employees and repealing the Human Rights Act, which is why liberals need to act, and now.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #new | 1 Comment

#NewMembersDay Why I joined the Liberal Democrats #5

By Simon Gilbert | Wed 13th May 2015 - 6:55 pm

The weekend after the election I surveyed my generous Surrey garden that I have acquired despite my Georgist Liberal views and decided that, partly in the spirit of national austerity, and mostly as the previous gardener had given up this commission, I would mow the lawn myself.

I started in the middle and mowed longitudinal strips up and down the lawn. After the first few lengths of concentrated mowing I took a step back to admire my progress and was shocked to find the expected pleasing straight lines were in fact ugly wavy wobbles.

Of course many of you will be thinking what I was thinking, that this is an obvious allegory for the Liberal Democrats in recent years. You see there is great temptation when mowing to look down at the line of the previous pass, and to follow a path with the cut lawn directly to the left and the unmown lawn directly to the right. This feels good at the time yet is ultimately unproductive. The key to a straight lawn is to ignore what is going on to the left and right of you, but to travel towards a fixed point in the distance, a strategy that will happily lead to a lawn to be proud of!

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #newmembersday #libdemfightback | 7 Comments

Opinion: If cockroaches can survive a nuclear bomb, Liberal Democrats can survive the election #NewMembersDay

By Graeme Hurst | Wed 13th May 2015 - 5:55 pm

Clegg and Cameron standing next to each other in the Downing Street Rose Garden felt like a new era in British politics. I joined soon afterwards, excited at the prospect of an economic and socially liberal government for the first time in decades. Despite the abuse it got me, I was happy to constantly defend the government, fully believing (which I still do) that the Lib Dems were reining in the worst of the Tories.

Around mid-2014, my own views started to shift from classical liberal to, as Clegg has called it, the “radical centre”, as well as a move towards intersectional feminism. While the Lib Dems still matched me ideologically, I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with politics altogether as I underwent an ideological identity crisis. I thus left the party by not renewing my membership later that year.

Fast forward to May 2015, and the polls are predicting the Lib Dems will receive around 25 seats, and potentially more due to the famed incumbency factor the Lib Dems rightfully enjoy access to. Then the exit poll came. At 4am I was beginning to run out of gin to drown my sorrows in and to make matters worse, Lynne Featherstone lost her seat. I do not live in her constituency, but the work she has done for LGBT+ rights and campaigning against FGM was being systematically erased as the electorate voted her out. I found myself on the verge of tears that such a terrific woman had been rejected, and with this, I emotionally re-joined the party I’d recently left.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #newmembersday #libdemfightback | 9 Comments

#NewMembersDay Why I joined the Liberal Democrats #4

By The Voice | Wed 13th May 2015 - 4:55 pm

Here are some more new members who responded to our request on Twitter to tell us why they are one of the 10,000 people who have joined the Liberal Democrats in the past few days.

Here’s what Thomas Liebers told us:

I was already politically minded but the Lib Dems best represent my views on equality and rights,healthcare, business, relationship with
the EU and constiutional challenges in present day UK;
I’m a professional with experience in healthcare, science and business and I believe that i can contribute my skills and knowledge to the Lib Dems policy discussions;
I want to take an active part in local politics where I live (Richmond, Surrey) and there is an active local Lib Dem party presence;
I’m serving in a voluntary capacity in the community already which gives me a degree of credibility;
I want to take part in the leadership elections for the new Leader of the Lib Dems;
and…
I want to take my part in shaping policy and politis for the entire United Kingdom!

Luke Tibbitts lives in Nick’s constituency. In a long post on his own blog (which, by the way, we hope he and others registers on Lib Dem Blogs, he explains why he was motivated to join up. Here’s a snippet:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #newmembersday #libdemfightback | Leave a comment

#NewMembersDay: The Lib Dem Lowdown – what you need to know about our party

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 13th May 2015 - 3:57 pm

Welcome to the thousands of people who have joined the Liberal Democrats since the polls closed last week. We have already heard from some of you about what inspired them to sign up and we will have more such posts throughout the day. I thought it might be useful to tell you a little bit about how it works and give you a bit of an idea of the opportunities open to you.

What do we believe?

Before we get into the nitty gritty of organisation, the best statement of who we are and what we’re about can be found in the Preamble to our Constitution which underlines how we believe in freedom, opportunity, diversity, decentralisation and internationalism. Here’s a snippet:

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives.

We look forward to a world in which all people share the same basic rights, in which they live together in peace and in which their different cultures will be able to develop freely. We believe that each generation is responsible for the fate of our planet and, by safeguarding the balance of nature and the environment, for the long term continuity of life in all its forms. Upholding these values of individual and social justice, we reject allprejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, sex or sexual orientation and oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality.

We have a fierce respect for individuality, with no expectation that fellow Liberal Democrats will agree with us on every issue. We expect our views to be challenged and feel free to challenge others without rancour. We can have a robust debate and head to the pub afterwards, the very best of friends.

Your rights as a member

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured and liberal democrats #newmembersday | 21 Comments

#NewMembersDay Why I joined the Liberal Democrats #3

By The Voice | Wed 13th May 2015 - 2:56 pm

Some more new members respond to our tweet and tell us why they are part of the many thousands who have joined the party in the last few days. We asked people on Twitter to tell us why they had joined. Here are some of the responses:

Lee Wright:

In 2010 I voted for the Liberal Democrats. I believed and bought into Nick Clegg and his party’s vision. When the party became the third-largest in the House of Commons and entered the coalition I was hugely disappointed that is was the Tories they would be working with. However, I paid close attention to the party’s progress over the past five years and could see the positives that the Liberal Democrats were making. The huge loss of seats last week was nothing more than I expected. The moment Nick Clegg put one foot in the door of number 10 with David Cameron, the party was doomed to fail next time around. The public, and some supporters of the party, had had their fingers burnt. Once bitten, twice shy. Nick Clegg was never going to survive another day as leader after May 7th. He took a bullet for the party, which has taken five years to hit the target.

But anyone who thought that the Liberals were dead, should have watched Lord Ashdown on the BBC’s Question Time programme last Friday. He won me over. His passion and determination for the party to continue was all the persuading I needed to pay and become a member of the party for the first time in my life. Now Tim Farron says the party must “turn our anger into action.” Nothing truer has ever been said. With Labour at sea, and a majority Tory government steering the ship, anyone in the country who values a fair, free and open society will need a Liberal to fight their corner. And I’m up for it.

Chris Buckett

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #newmembersday #libdemfightback | 1 Comment

#NewMembersDay: A Liberal Democrat Reading List

By Jennie Rigg | Wed 13th May 2015 - 1:55 pm

I, famously, don’t write for Lib Dem Voice. But on a day like today, how could I not? Apparently, there are like ten thousand of you guys now. Welcome! Genuinely, really, welcome. In order to help you acclimatise to the culture of the party there’s a few things you ought to be reading. A version of this was originally posted on my blog, and this one has been amended to reflect the comments there as well as my original post. YAY crowdsourcing!

The back of your membership card* is the first and most important thing for you to read as a new Lib Dem. The front will have some sort of pretty picture on it, and your name, and your membership number. The back will say on it:

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.

which is an extract from our Constitution and is something that is graven on most of our hearts. Regardless of the fact that I have recently called for a constitutional convention, and I genuinely think that we should rebuild from the ground up (hopefully with your help), the idea that the words “no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance, or conformity” won’t be a part of whatever comes out of that process is unconscionable.

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. You can read this online, but my favourite version** is this 1912 edition which also contains two more of Mill’s essays – on running the government and on feminism – and an Introduction by Millicent Garrett Fawcett. You might be a bit put off the idea of reading a dry work of Victorian philosophy, but I promise you, it’s worth it. If you really can’t bear all that beautiful Victorian verbiage, though, there is a Spark Notes for On Liberty*** too.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #newmembersday #libdemfightback and featured | 69 Comments

#NewMembersDay New member Anna out on the Tower Hamlets campaign trail already – and how you can help

By Elaine Bagshaw | Wed 13th May 2015 - 1:25 pm

The #libdemfightback has been incredible since last Thursday. As well as being astounded at over 100 people joining Tower Hamlets Liberal Democrats in less than a week, we’ve been straight back out on the doorsteps talking to people as part of my campaign to become Mayor on 11 June. We’re finding that we’re getting a great reception, as Thursday’s result has driven people to realise that we share so many of our core values. Our new members are joining us at each event as well – full of enthusiasm, energy, and new ideas that will help reinvigorate our party. The photo shows us out with new member Anna Ovsyanikova, who is holding the clipboard.

Tower Hamlets has always been a borough full of contradictions. We live in the shadows of the City and Canary Wharf yet we have the second highest unemployment rate in London and 49% of our children are living in poverty. With a Tory government now in power preparing to slash the pupil premium that brought over £70 million to our local schools and further cuts to welfare, it’s even more important that new ideas and liberal values are at the heart of our Town Hall.

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Posted in News | Tagged #newmembersday, elaine bagshaw and tower hamlets | 1 Comment

#NewMembersDay Why I joined the Liberal Democrats #2

By The Voice | Wed 13th May 2015 - 12:25 pm

This time a selection of new members tell us their reason for joining after we asked them on Twitter.

First up, Dagmar Mackett from Bewdley in the West Midlands

I joined because I felt the LibDems received no credit for its record in Government. Yes, mistakes had been made, but punishing the party in such a way means putting liberal Britain as a whole in jeopardy. Voters will realise this once they understand the full extent of what the Tory government will push through in forthcoming months, and a new strong LibDem “movement” will be required to try to counter balance this.

Now David Luton-Brown:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #newmembersday #libdemfightback | 10 Comments

#NewMembersDay: Why I joined the Liberal Democrats #1

By Phoebe Demster | Wed 13th May 2015 - 11:25 am

My first few elections were easy – I knew I liked the LibDems, and they were the only ones who stood a chance of beating the Tories in my hometown. A no-brainer, you might say.

It wasn’t until I moved to Scotland that I had to wrestle with tactical voting. SNP v Labour, and not a LibDem in sight. I talked it over with my partner at the time, and we both decided to vote LibDem regardless. But lo, suddenly I found myself in the polling booth, ticking a Labour box in a moment of blind, tactical terror. It is the only time I have voted out of fear rather than hope. I regretted it almost immediately. Turned out my partner had done the same.

I made a resolve never to vote tactically again and so, when the Holyrood elections rolled round a year later, I voted LibDem (to little avail).

To little avail, did I say? It’s true that my vote did not count for much, and I knew in advance that it would not. My previous Labour vote had “made a difference”, by which I mean it had picked a person and policies I disliked over those I disliked even more. My Labour vote mattered in Westminster. But it also made me feel sadder, smaller, a little more cynical.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #libdemfightback and #newmembersday | 8 Comments

The vintage image on one of those new photo membership cards – Churchill and Lloyd George as Liberal colleagues

By Paul Walter | Wed 13th May 2015 - 10:55 am

View image | gettyimages.com

There has been considerable interest in the series of new photo party membership cards. When you sign up these days, you can choose from a range of around a dozen cards featuring photos of Liberal and Liberal Democrat heroines and heroes, past and present.

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters and Photo feature | Tagged david lloyd george, liberal democrat membership and winston churchill | 24 Comments

Opinion: 10,000 reasons to be cheerful

By Gareth Epps | Wed 13th May 2015 - 9:55 am

Different people adjust to adversity in different ways. Some were unwittingly preparing for 8 May for months. Some didn’t see it coming. Others may only be starting to sense it now.

All three groups were represented at the informal catch-up I had in Yorkshire last Friday, and all were present at Liberator magazine’s post-election drink last night. The welcome set of thank-you receptions and new members’ parties will provide the opportunity for catharsis and preparing this fightback.

And it really is a positive thing. For whatever reason, we have an unprecedented and totally welcome surge in membership. Some relishing a new future; some doing what I did in 1992 and joining this great party so a shock general election result like that doesn’t happen again. And many of the rest of us who have had our grumpy moments in recent years are feeling curiously optimistic too.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged future strategy and liberal democrats | 21 Comments

Opinion: Human Rights Reform – where the nuance could be more dangerous than the headline

By Eilidh Dickson | Wed 13th May 2015 - 8:55 am

The Conservative Majority government has recently announced the Michael Gove is to be our new justice secretary, and that part of his agenda is the Conservative manifesto promise to scrap the Human Rights Act. The Conservatives claims this would

Break the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights

in order to

imit the use of human rights laws to the most serious cases,

a promise that turns the stomach of most Liberal Democrats I know committed to universal rights.

Perhaps if the plans did not, as former Attorney General Dominic Grieve described, contain “a number of howlers” the Conservatives would be less convinced by the need for reform or even the prospect of their success. I don’t claim to be more than a law student (and a procrastinating one at that) and but here I’m going to contribute some brief comments taken from a year of public law essays.

Firstly, the Human Rights Act has been fundamentally significant. It lets us in the UK rely on our rights in the European Convention on Human Rights in UK courts for the first time, increasing human rights cases significantly including detention, immigration, privacy, voting and so much more. Until the Act, these cases had to exhaust UK courts and then if UK law prevented judges from upholding these rights they could take their case to the European Court of Human Rights – a process than took about 5 years.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged human rights act | 22 Comments

SPONSORED: It’s time for Gatwick – the right decision on airport expansion

By Gatwick Obviously | Wed 13th May 2015 - 7:10 am

With the election decided, the Airports Commission – appointed by the Government to come up with a solution to the need for more runway capacity in the South East – will now be finalising its recommendation on where the UK’s next runway should be built.

Before it is a straight choice between Gatwick and Heathrow for one new runway by 2030.

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Posted in Sponsored Post | Tagged gatwick airport | 15 Comments