Mary Reid

It’s almost all over

By Mary Reid | Thu 4th July 2024 - 9:30 pm

So how has polling day been for you? I am sure I am not the only person who got sunburnt while telling at a polling station.

Talking of which, did anyone mention dogs at polling stations? I had a conversation with this beautiful Pyrenean Mountain Dog while taking numbers.

We now wait for the exit polls, which have been pretty accurate in previous elections. To keep you entertained I thought I might remind you of what happened to a previous editor of Lib Dem Voice, Stephen Tall, back in 2015.

You may have noticed that the members of the Lib Dem Voice team have been reticent to make predictions about how many seats we will win. That’s because we don’t want to follow in Stephen’s footsteps – quite literally.

He pledged to run naked down Whitehall if the party gained fewer than 20 seats in the General Election in 2015.  Here is a reminder of what happened next…

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The Voice

Go for it!

By The Voice | Thu 4th July 2024 - 8:56 am

Embed from Getty Images

Our warmest wishes go to everyone out campaigning today.

If you are a candidate realistically hoping that you will be an MP tomorrow, then go for it (and stop reading political blogs for the time being!).

If you are a candidate with little chance of winning, then keep cheerful – we owe you a huge thank you for giving so much to this campaign and keeping the Lib Dem diamonds bright.

If you are an activist or supporter who will be spending the day door knocking, delivering, telling or doing those all vital back room tasks, then you are the real heroes of this campaign. Enjoy the day, and be pleased that you have participated in an election that we will be talking about for many years to come.

You won’t be hearing much from the Lib Dem Voice team during the day today – we are all a bit busy. But we will be offering news and commentary throughout the night so do check in after 10pm and maybe share stories with us at [email protected].

We should also remember the many council by-elections taking place today as well. The news about those contests may get buried under the national news, but please let us know and we will highlight what we can.

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The Voice

It’s Eve of Poll. How are you going to help Lib Dems win tomorrow?

By The Voice | Wed 3rd July 2024 - 1:21 pm

It’s hard to believe that it’s 6 weeks since Rishi Sunak stood in the rain in Downing Street to fire the starting gun to the General Election campaign.

Since then, there hasn’t been much movement in the polls, apart from a few points up for us, sparked by the brilliant, positive, incredible images and messages coming from our leader. What a time to come in to the form of your life, Ed Davey!

This party has fought our best campaign for years at every possible level. Our media spokespeople have been amazing. Ed has shown in the debates, Question Times and interviews that there is a huge amount of substance behind the style. He has tackled tough questions head on, with honesty and humility.

It’s all getting real now. Tomorrow, people in our target seats will have to clear a path through their Lib Dem leaflets to their door and go out to vote. Some will still be wrestling with their choice even as they stand in the voting booth with the pencil in hand. We need to be in their heads with our positive messages at that point. That is why it is so important that we get our eve of polls and good mornings out and knock on as many doors and make as many phone calls as possible.

And it’s why it is really really important that every single ounce of our efforts goes into seats where we are in the running.

If you need convincing of this, here’s the North East Fife result from 2017:

Stephen Gethins Scottish National Party 13,743 32.9% -8.1%
Elizabeth Riches Liberal Democrat 13,741 32.9% 1.5%
Tony Miklinski Conservative 10,088 24.1% 7.8%
Rosalind Garton Labour 4,026 9.6% 1.9%
Mike Scott-Hayward Independent 224 0.5% 0.5%

Two votes in it. Don’t let that happen again.

And even this May 97 more votes could have given us control of 3 more Councils.

What you do and where you do it on Polling day really matters. If you can’t travel, please think about making calls from home – or from holiday.

The messages that the Tories are putting out might seem bizarre to us. Their “letter from July 2044” aimed at bringing Reform voters back on board is probably the weirdest bit of literature we’ve ever seen, but we are not their target audience.

Mel Stride’s extraordinary comments this morning that you need enough Tories around to scrutinise Labour are very strange indeed. The only thing that the Tories will be capable of scrutinising over the next five years will be each other, with menaces. They are a party riven with irreconcilable differences and they will make a load of ferrets in a sack seem like the best of friends.

If you want a really good opposition to Labour, you will need a coherent, confident, capable party to keep their feet to the fire. So you obviously need lots of Liberal Democrats.

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The Voice

Campaigners hold memorial for loved ones outside Conservative HQ

By The Voice | Wed 3rd July 2024 - 11:48 am

Yesterday, campaigners, including friend of this site Mathew Hulbert, held a vigil outside Conservative HQ to remember their loved ones who had died while waiting for emergency treatment.

You may remember that Mathew’s mum Jackie died in July 2022 after an 11 hour wait for an ambulance.  Mathew’s courage in speaking out about their ordeal since then has been incredible.

Yesterday,  he took part in this video explaining why they were there.

They also spoke to The Mirror:

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Les Tarr

Does AI really pose a risk to democracy?

By Les Tarr | Wed 3rd July 2024 - 9:46 am

On Thursday the 27th of June, Channel 4’s Dispatches programme broadcast an episode called ‘Can AI Steal Your Vote?’

The premise was that 12 undecided households were told they were going to see some social media content that parties had been working on but had not released yet. First hook being they would be told something that others did not know, instant buy-in for most people.

What they were not told was that this was an experiment to see how people could be manipulated to vote in specific way based on information they were presented with. Any experimental social scientists might question …

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NewsHound

Bungee jumping and Zumba – all in a day’s campaigning for Ed Davey

By NewsHound | Mon 1st July 2024 - 9:11 pm

In this long election campaign, we’ve had Rishi Sunak deliver a never-ending stream of negativity and misery, Keir Starmer being so nervous about screwing things up that he’s coming across as walking on eggshells and Nigel Farage being as objectionable as ever.

Ed Davey’s bright and happy photo opportunities have provided a welcome contrast and attracted lots of positive comment.

Today, he decided to throw himself off a platform from a great height by way of inviting people to vote Liberal Democrat.

Watch, courtesy of Sky News:

The rationale for this:

To get the change our country needs this week and beat the Conservatives in scores of seats, I am asking people to take a leap of faith and vote for the Liberal Democrats.

A lot of people are on the cusp of doing something they’ve never done before on Thursday and voting for the Liberal Democrats, so I decided to do something I’ve never done before too.

Every vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to fix the NHS and care, end the sewage scandal and tackle the cost of living crisis.

Ed talked to The Guardian about the rationale for the stunts:

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Mark Valladares

ALDE Party Council, Vilnius 2024 (part 2) – a masterclass in agenda planning…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 1st July 2024 - 12:50 pm

* Welcome to the second part of my report of the weekend’s ALDE Party Council. Part 1 can be found here…

Having retired relatively early, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for an early start the next morning. In truth, as I’ve noted before, Council is often a bit of a bureaucracy session, offering Council delegates an opportunity to scrutinise the work of the Bureau. I tend to the view that Council isn’t very good at that, unless something upsets them. After all, most Council delegates are there to debate ideas, not assess the value of adding €50,000 to one budget …

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 30th June 2024 - 10:25 am

United States

Unedifying train crash. That is possibly the most charitable portray of President Joe Biden’s performance in Thursday night’s debate. The 81-year-old candidate had a simple task: Don’t look old and expose Trump as the convicted felon and serial liar that he is. He failed.

The result is that Joe Biden now faces a crushing tsunami of party and public opinion to perform his final act of public service:  step aside and let a younger Democratic leader shoulder the job of preventing a dangerous demagogue from returning to the White House.

The problem is that there is no mechanism for allowing him to do so. The US constitution does not specify how presidential candidates are chosen. In fact, the founding fathers were dead set against the creation of political parties which they condemned as “factionalism.”

But human nature being what it is political parties quickly emerged and politicians hived off into camps labelled Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist, Nativists, Progressives…

From the early years of the 19th century until relatively modern times, the party machinery in each state would select delegates to attend a national convention where a presidential candidate would emerge from a series of knock-out ballots.

The first state primaries were not held until 1901 when Florida broke ranks with convention. Between 1901 and 1968 only twelve states held primaries which pledged their convention delegates to a particular candidate. Then came the chaos of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention with delegates deadlocked while anti-Vietnam War demonstrators rioted outside.

To avoid a repetition of this unedifying spectacle the Democratic Party leadership decided to extend the primary system. The Republican Party followed suit. By 1992 Democrats had primaries in 40 states and Republicans in 39 and presidential conventions had been converted from a week of back-room horse trading and multiple ballots to a coronation party.

If Biden steps aside then the Democratic Party will have to revert to the pre-1968 format at its convention in (ironically) Chicago, on 19-22 August. The problem is that there are few – if any – people alive today who attended an old style nominating convention. Old rule books will need to be pulled out or archives, dusted off and studied thoroughly.

They have just over a month to prepare, and that is if Biden decides to hand in his notice today. Presidential contenders have the same time frame to start securing delegates’ support. And then, assuming all goes well on the night in Chicago, the party has only three months to unite behind a new candidate and persuade the American electorate that their choice is better than a lying convicted felon.

France

French voters troop to the polls on Sunday for the first round of parliamentary elections that are likely to open the door to the country’s far-right.

The latest opinion polls put Marine Le Pen’s National Rally well ahead with 37 percent of the vote. Not enough for the absolute majority so it will probably need to form a coalition with the Gaullist Les Republicains (eight percent) and some of the smaller parties (five percent). President Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance Renaissance lags far behind at 19.6 percent.

But a huge fly in the French political ointment is the 29 percent who say they will vote for the far-left New Popular Front led by former Trotskyist Jean-Luc Melenchon. It appears that the unpalatable choice for French voters is between the extremes of left and right.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Putin’s War Conundrum

By Tom Arms | Sat 29th June 2024 - 9:33 am

Putin can’t afford to stop fighting. To do so would mean either crashing the economy or handing it over to the Chinese. But then the Chinese might end up controlling it anyway.

Russia is now a war economy. Six percent of GDP and 40 percent of the government budget is spent on “special operations” In Ukraine. Millions are employed at top dollar jobs in armaments factories that have sprung up over the past two years.

The lives of Russian soldiers have been commoditised. Families with a dead son receive $53,800. An injured son costs Putin’s Treasury $32,280. It is estimated that so far the war has cost $18 billion in compensation alone.

War is the most financially unproductive activity known to mankind. With what it costs to build a missile you can construct a building which can be used as a school to educate future generations or a factory to produce goods for export. When the missile blow up it is gone. And so is the building which it blew up and the people who can rebuild it.

But in the short-term war can be good for the economy. That is the case in Russia today. Putin was recently able to boast that at 2.6 percent, the Russian economy was growing faster than all the other European economies combined. But that growth must be set against inflation of seven percent – and rising – and interest rates at an unsustainable 16 percent in an effort to prevent runaway inflation.

Sanctions have contributed to the boom economy by forcing Russians to develop home grown alternatives, increase imports from Asian friends and the Global South, and/or pay inflated prices for Western goods imported through third-party intermediaries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates or Hong Kong. The growth may also be helped by the imposition of financial controls that make it impossible to take money out of the country.

That may, however, be coming to an end. President Joe Biden recently tightened the sanctions screw by expanding the powers of the US Treasury to allow it to cut off any banks in third countries deemed to be helping the Russian military-industrial complex. Turkish and UAE banks have already started cutting back on their facilities for Russian clients. Chinese banks are starting to follow suit, or insisting that all deals are made in Yuan.

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Sue Garden

Why the Lib Dem Manifesto has lifelong learning at its heart

By Sue Garden | Fri 28th June 2024 - 12:17 pm

It will come to no surprise to anyone that I wholeheartedly believe in the power of education. So when our manifesto was released last week, I was delighted to see such a keen focus on policies to support our wonderful yet undervalued FE colleges. For far too long our colleges have been underfunded and unsupported and the Lib Dem manifesto seeks to change this alongside highlighting the importance of lifelong learning.

In the manifesto, we pledge to review of further education funding, including the option of exempting colleges from VAT. FE funding compares extremely unfavourably with both university and school funding, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighting that FE and skills saw the largest spending cuts across all areas of education since 2010, with college spending per student approximately 10% lower than 2010-2011 levels and adult skills spending 23% below 2009-2010 levels. Colleges also pay VAT, unlike schools and academies, and approximately £200 million could be reinvested back into the skills system and make a key difference in colleges ability to equip young people with the skills they need to succeed.

We also pledge to create new “Lifelong Skills Grants” which will give all adults £5000 to spend on education and training throughout their lives, with the aim to increase this to £10,000 in the future when public finances allow. This offers a clear differentiation from existing and promised government commitments through their Lifelong Learning Entitlement, because it is a grant, rather than a loan. We understand that for any adult deciding whether to make the plunge into learning that there is a myriad of considerations, the time to complete their studies, and the costs if they have to give up some hours at work. Additionally, most adults with families and financial responsibilities are loathe to take on more debt, even if it will lead to a better job with better pay. These grants will give adults an investment into their futures, that will lead to better success and growth for the nation.

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Mary Reid

Liberal Democrats winning here

By Mary Reid | Thu 27th June 2024 - 9:16 am

Local parties and residents have been creative in the use of posters.

This splendid display is in our target seat of Esher and Walton:

Here is a novel cantilevered approach in Ed Davey’s constituency:

I like the way the diamond points to a leaflet. Thanks to Ruth Bright for this one from a home in Eastleigh:

Got a (copyright-free) photo to share? Landscape works best. Email them to [email protected] and we will add them to the post.

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The Voice

This is why you need to help Lib Dem target seat candidates win

By The Voice | Wed 26th June 2024 - 9:19 am

With just 8 days to go before the election, our target seat candidates need the help of every single one of us between now and polling day.

They have a huge amount to do and the more people we can talk to between now and polling day, the better the chance we have of filling up those green benches and once again being the third party in the House of Commons. That will guarantee us more media coverage and Ed will get two questions to the Prime Minister every week.

Our target seat candidates have been campaigning at high intensity for years. Some of them have completely given up other work this year to concentrate full time on their campaigns. That is a huge personal sacrifice. But it’s what we need to do to win.

The last thing we need to wake up to on 5th July  is a string of near misses. Remember in the local elections, a handful more votes would have given us control of another 3 councils.

We know that the Conservatives are going to pull out all the stops in the last few days of the campaign to stop us winning. They are very worried about the scale of the losses we can inflict. On the For the Many Podcast last Friday, broadcaster Iain Dale said:

I hear on the grapevine that Conservative candidates in Conservative seats with a majority of, say 5000 or 6000,  they are all being re-deployed to seats which have a majority of say 15,000 or 20,000.

He confirmed to co-host Jacqui Smith that this included candidates who are defending their seats.

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Lord William Wallace

Look after your candidate

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 25th June 2024 - 10:50 am

This is a long campaign, with more than another week to go. We’re no doubt all getting a bit tired, but keyed up by the feeling that things are going very well in our target seats, and that Ed Davey is coming across as the most human and likeable of the contending leaders. But don’t forget the strain that an election places on parliamentary candidates. All of us need to care for our candidates, make sure that they eat regularly and sleep enough, are supported by others when campaigning – and thanked and cherished when the campaign ends.

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Mark Valladares

ALDE Party Council, Vilnius 2024 (part 1) – greetings from a galaxy not far away…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 24th June 2024 - 7:33 pm

Readers, please note that this is not an official report of the Council meeting last weekend, but represents my report back.

One of the things that I observed from my two years as consort to the Party President was that, if you’re chairing a potentially fractious group, especially a political one, it really helps to be able to spot potential disagreements beforehand, allowing you to have those critical conversations prior to the meeting, and to consider how best to manage the debate.

The ALDE Party isn’t entirely like that, as was demonstrated on Saturday morning.

But, having gathered in Lithuania’s charming capital, we did have more than a Council meeting to attend. My weekend started with a session sponsored by the European Liberal Forum, discussing what a liberal narrative for the next five years might look like, including our own Sal Brinton. Sal talked about our current campaign, noting that it had liberal values at its heart, offering concrete proposals to improve our public services and the environment.

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Clare Smalley

We need to be ready to take on Labour

By Clare Smalley | Mon 24th June 2024 - 2:08 pm

As we likely approach an incoming Labour Government, Liberal Democrats must not waste any time before turning our campaigning firepower on Labour.

The helpful zeitgeist in this General Election has been the self-destruction of the Conservatives. However, the quiet non-aggression between ourselves and the Labour Party needs to end at 10pm on 4th July.

At times it has felt extremely lonely fighting Labour in the last decade. As the party races to win the Blue Wall, Red Wall communities are abandoned in too many areas between an awful Labour/Conservative/Reform dog fight. Liberal community politics in Labour-held cities and towns is absent except …

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 24 June 2024 – it would take a heart of stone, wouldn’t it?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 24th June 2024 - 11:31 am

Greetings from Lithuania, where your Day Editor is currently located following a rather enjoyable weekend away on Party business. Think of it as one of the side effects of a snap General Election…

Having spent much of the weekend surrounded by European liberal colleagues asking optimistically after our prospects, I’ve been talking them down a bit. After all, I’ve been around a long time and I know that the evil Tories always have something up their sleeves to unleash upon us at the moment of greatest vulnerability, usually courtesy of their mates in the right-wing press.

And yet, and yet, I fret that something beyond our control might harm our prospects. However, despite my vague disquiet, our campaign still appears to be running as smoothly as you could reasonably ask, and our key messages continue to resonate.

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Danny Brainin

Stolen Signs

By Danny Brainin | Sun 23rd June 2024 - 11:30 am

When I was canvassing for Charlie Maynard, the Lib Dem candidate in Witney and West Oxfordshire, I asked a lady who has traditionally voted Conservative but is voting Lib Dem if she’d put a sign in front of her house.

“I’d rather not,” she said. “There’s a man across the street who takes down signs he doesn’t like, and I don’t want to get into a fight with him.”

“How about a small sign that you can stick to the inside of your front window?” I asked. “Surely he wouldn’t put a rock through it?”

She declined, looking like she thought he just might. A couple of days later, the Lib Dem sign in front of my house disappeared. Her neighbour is getting ambitious! I thought, and What’sApped the canvassing group to request two replacement signs to make a point. It’s happened at my house and all over, the newly elected Lib Dem local councillor replied, and brought two signs right away. He showed me CCTV footage of a person in a white shirt on a bike pulling away from his house with his sign. Does that lady’s neighbour ride a bike? I thought. Does he have a white shirt?

But who the person in a white shirt on the bike is, and if he or she is acting alone – based on the number of signs disappearing, she or he would have to have a very fast bike – isn’t really what matters, although it would of course be good if she or he or they are caught for attacking the right to express one’s views.

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The Voice

Doctor Who actor endorses Lib Dem candidates and compliments Ed Davey

By The Voice | Sun 23rd June 2024 - 9:17 am

There were some bleary eyes in many campaign headquarters yesterday after many of our campaigners had stayed up beyond midnight to see the finale of this year’s all too short series of Doctor Who. There are a lot of Doctor Who fans in this party.

They will be interested to know that actor, writer and director Nicholas Pegg, who has spent much of the past 20 years as a dalek operator on the series, has endorsed two Lib Dem candidates in Devon, where he lives. He also had some very positive things to say on Twitter about Ed Davey’s performance on Question Time this week.

He said:

I continue to be impressed by Ed Davey. He’s not a sensation-seeking populist quote machine. He’s not rising to the bait thrown by a patently partisan presenter, and he’s dealing superbly with her pugnacious interruptions. He’s a grown-up. He’s a proper politician.

His own vote in this election is going to Lib Dem Paul Arnott in order to beat the Conservative in Exmouth and Exeter East:

In the new constituency of Exmouth & Exeter East, I shall be voting for the Lib Dem candidate @paularnottLd, a well-known and well-liked Devon councillor with years of local experience. The Electoral Calculus website predicts a close run, but only Paul Arnott can beat the Tory.

He is also supporting our by-election winner Richard Foord to win in the new constituency of Honiton and Sidmouth:

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The Voice

Access our manifesto

By The Voice | Fri 21st June 2024 - 9:15 am

The BSL version of our manifesto has now been launched.

The web based manifesto can be read here.

You can also download other versions from this page (scroll down to the bottom), including Braille, clear print, plain text and easy read versions and as a normal pdf.

The costings of our manifesto can be examined here.

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Mary Reid

So what has Ed Davey been up to today?

By Mary Reid | Thu 20th June 2024 - 6:53 pm

He has been building bug houses! Not as eye-catching as falling into water, but still a good ploy to talk about housing.

Over in The Guardian he is seen wearing a halo. Martin Kettle writes: “The Tories are fixating on Reform. They should be focused on a far bigger threat” – meaning the Lib Dems.

If wartime analogies are your thing, you could say that the Conservatives have a Singapore problem. Before the second world war, the British empire armed Singapore to fight naval battles against Japan. Famously, most of Singapore’s heavy artillery faced out to sea. But in 1942, the Japanese army overran Singapore from the rear, coming in from the Malayan mainland.

Today, the Tory high command and many supporters, especially in the media, look fixedly out to sea at the advance of Reform. As a result, they have all underestimated the threat from the Lib Dems at their rear. Even now, the Conservatives have not understood that Ed Davey is a far bigger danger to their majority than Nigel Farage.

Yesterday he met trainees who were making chilli jam at the Nickel Support community interest company in Carshalton, which works with adults with learning disabilities.  Interestingly different …

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Richard Wood

First Past the Post failed English local democracy this year

By Richard Wood | Thu 20th June 2024 - 4:53 pm

This May the Liberal Democrats made remarkable gains in local elections across England. From winning the second highest number of seats in councils up for election (pushing the Conservatives into third place) to returning to third place in the London mayoral election and winning our first ever London Assembly constituency seat, the Liberal Democrats are on the cusp of regaining our place as Westminster’s third largest party come 4 July.

That rise is a major story of the 2024 local elections, one deserving more media attention. But the story of how the elections were skewed by First Past the Post must also be heard.

Once again our archaic voting system distorted the link between citizens and their representatives, an outcome that will be seen again in July. Take a look at Fareham council where the Conservatives secured a majority of seats on just 41% of votes cast. Then there’s Plymouth where Labour won a majority of seats up for election on 44% of the vote. Lib Dem-run councils aren’t immune from this either. That’s not to take away from the hard work of local campaigns across the country (if anything we often have to work harder under the current voting system and two-party system to win seats!), but to recognise we operate within a flawed system. First Past the Post consistently warps the link between seats and their votes just as much at the local level as at Westminster.

Furthermore, this May we also saw the consequences of the government’s Elections Act, which abolished the Supplementary Vote for mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner elections. The Supplementary Vote was far from perfect – preferential voting would be preferable for single-member executive positions if we are to have them at all – but it gave mayors and PCCs a broader mandate than they otherwise would have. In the first ever York and North Yorkshire election this year, Labour’s David Skaith became mayor on just 35% of the vote – on a turnout of less than 30%. If we are to have directly elected executive mayors, it is vital they have a broad mandate to represent their region effectively. The status-quo isn’t delivering but there are alternatives to our failing First Past the Post system.

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Ben Wood

The Liberal Democrat Manifesto: Politics for the Common Good

By Ben Wood | Thu 20th June 2024 - 12:47 pm

In 1912 Britain was a surprisingly shabby place. Despite the country’s immense foreign possessions and vast export trade, the UK was suffering the enfeebling effects of a drastic readjustment of global trade. In the decades to come, these economic tides would cause the British Empire to recede into the history books. But for the Edwardians, these future chimes of doom were felt first as industrial sluggishness and mass hardship. The grand Imperial centre was witnessing an explosion of poverty, malnutrition, and ill-health, decaying infrastructure and insecure work.

E.M. Forster memorably dramatized this national condition in his 1913 novel Maurice through the metaphor of the tumbled down country house of Penge. This once-grand seat of the genteel Durham family is now beset by staff-shortages, leaky roofs and pathologically complacent owners. And to compound the estate’s troubles, the working-classes over whom the Durham’s bestow their parasitic patronage no-longer see the point of their old masters. The aristocrats grumble that the scullery maids have become unreliable while the game-keepers have gone socialist. As Forster puts it wryly: ‘ people had the air of settling something; they either just had arranged or soon would arrange England. Yet, the gate posts, the roads…were in bad repair, and the timber wasn’t kept properly, the windows stuck, the boards creaked.’ Plutocratic pretentions were finally hitting the cold and unforgiving buffers of economic reality. It is impossible to read Forster’s description of this sad and decaying estate without seeing something of ourselves.

Since the 2008 Financial Crisis the UK economy has stuttered along, struggling with low productivity, stagnant wages and a rising tide of social need. But if we find ourselves resolutely within the walls of Forster’s dilapidated Penge, the avoidable shabbiness of the Edwardians points us towards something like a remedy. Forster knew (and in time would become part of) a new circle of intellectuals, often dubbed ‘the New Liberals’. In the face of an ‘individualism which ignores the social factor in wealth’, that depletes ‘the national resources’ and deprives ‘the community of its just share in the fruits of industry’ (L.T. Hobhouse), New Liberals sought to establish a new set of political principles:

  • Wealth is produced by a dynamic partnership between personal initiative and social organisation
  • Society possesses common goods which must be met collectively
  • Government (on behalf of society) has a right to demand a reasonable portion of private wealth in recognition of the social dimension of all personal initiative

As Hobhouse summarised this posture: ‘The prosperous businessman who thinks that he has made his fortune entirely by self-help does not pause to consider what single step he could have taken on the road to his success but for the ordered tranquillity which has made commercial development possible, the security by road, and rail, and sea, the masses of skilled labour, and the sum of intelligence which civilization has placed at his disposal …If he dug to the foundations of his fortune he would recognize that, as it is society that maintains and guarantees his possessions, so also it is society which is an indispensable partner in its original creation’.

And yet an atmosphere of structural individualism pervades our lives. Common needs are repeatedly neglected and common sources of prosperity are frittered away. The country is ailing, with an extractive economy, characterised by high rents, low savings and even lower investment. The jaded house-maids and socialist gamekeepers have morphed into precarious renters who yearn for a humane collectivism to rescue them from what Forster called the rootless ‘civilisation of luggage’.  This was once the grand mission of our public services, but they are looking increasingly threadbare and dysfunctional, with their maintenance falling on shoulders that simply cannot bare them.

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NewsHound

Guardian features Lib Dem Calum Miller in article on Lib Dem blue wall strategy

By NewsHound | Wed 19th June 2024 - 7:27 pm

An article in today’s Guardian features Lib Dem candidate in Bicester and Woodstock and also has a wider look at the other seats where we are competitive.

Knocking on doors in the community on the fringes of Bicester, just north of Oxford, the Liberal Democrat candidate spoke to locals with all manner of political backstories and motivations, some who had previously voted Tory, Labour or neither, as well as those who had either backed Brexit or wished to remain.

All, however, had arrived at a common conclusion: this time they would vote for him, to try to defeat the Conservatives.

And this is not a unique feature of this constituency:

While the Lib Dems are cautious in their predictions and finite in their campaign resources, with a fair electoral wind a swathe of nearby ultra-true blue seats could also turn yellow.

Calum talks about the conversations he is having on the doorsteps:

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The Voice

A “herbivorous showpony” – behind the scenes of the Scottish Manifesto launch

By The Voice | Tue 18th June 2024 - 9:38 pm

As we reported yesterday, the Scottish Lib Dems launched their manifesto at the beautiful Craigie’s Farm near South Queensferry. If you are in the area, do pop in for a visit, pick some fruit, enjoy the gorgeous views and buy some lovely food and drink from the shop and cafe. You can even order online.

The event looked great. There were a couple of hiccups though.

Frankly, Wendy Chamberlain should get danger money for appearing with leaders. In 2021, Willie Rennie accidentally hit her with a shinty ball during a photo opportunity for the Holyrrod Elections.

Yesterday, they let Alex Cole-Hamilton loose with a tractor. When Ed Davey did similar for the local elections last year, he demolished a mock up of a blue wall. Alex nearly demolished his deputy leader, not once, but twice.

The BBC have a video here.

Thankfully Wendy survived and she was much more forgiving than we would have been. Later she and Alex recorded a video about the event:

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Mark Valladares

ALDE Party Council preview – consequences, consequences…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 17th June 2024 - 4:30 pm

There’s always something to distract you during a General Election campaign. And, in my case, that’s the ALDE Party Council meeting that will take place on Saturday in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital. Yes, we’ll be sending a full delegation, albeit with an element of substitution, including a guest Baroness, but flights have been rearranged to keep absences as short as possible.

The main topic of conversation is going to be the fallout from the European Parliament elections last week, and the impact on Europe’s direction in the coming years. Whilst Renew Europe might not …

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The Voice

Cole-Hamilton and Chamberlain launch Scottish Manifesto with focus on carers, warm homes and agriculture

By The Voice | Mon 17th June 2024 - 1:27 pm

 

Alex Cole-Hamilton and Wendy Chamberlain have launched the Scottish version of our manifesto.  

At a farm inAlex’s Edinburgh constituency (photo of Alex driving a tractor to follow), they set out plans to fix the broken care system, invest in Scottish agriculture and ensure everyone has a warm home.

At the heart of the proposals is a £500 million rescue package for care, enabling people to be released from hospital, relieving pressure on the NHS and giving a fair deal to family carers. It will:

  • Create a new Carer’s Minimum Wage, boosting the minimum wage for care workers by £2 an hour;
  • Give unpaid carers a fair deal, lifting Carer’s Allowance/Carer Support Payment by £1,040 a year and removing the earnings cliff-edge.

Other key proposals include:

  • Establish the world-class mental health services Scotland needs, meaning every school pupil has fast access to a mental health counsellor, new mental health staff working alongside GPs and A&Es, and extra help for businesses, backed by £150m from taxing social media companies;
  • Deliver £170m more for Scottish agriculture;
  • Generate an extra £1 billion in capital funding for Scotland which  could be used to build new local health facilities, tackle the housing emergency, end the scandal of crumbling concrete in public buildings, and stop sewage dumping.
  • Make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with a ten-year emergency upgrade programme, starting with free insulation and heat pumps for those on low incomes.

At the launch, Alex said:

Every vote for the Liberal Democrats at this election is a vote to elect a strong local champion focused on getting you fast access to GPs and dentists, and giving our nation’s carers a fair deal.

We will stop sewage being dumped in our rivers, lift up Scottish education, and deliver warm homes that insulate you from the cost of living crisis.

Our vision is of a better Britain where we work in partnership, restoring your faith in politics and fixing our broken relationship with Europe.

Just like they Conservatives, the SNP have got to go. Only the Scottish Liberal Democrats can beat the nationalists in huge swathes of Scotland.

Hope and change are just around the corner, you only need to vote for them. Back the Liberal Democrats for a fair deal for you, your family, and for Scotland.

On the plans to fix care and the NHS, Alex added:

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Michal Siewniak

EU nationals and the Lib Dem manifesto

By Michal Siewniak | Mon 17th June 2024 - 11:26 am

I wonder how often any of us actually read political parties’ manifestos. I agree; we have much better things to do. I also know that so many of us are simply fed up with reading stuff that promises lots and delivers very little.

However, I do believe that it is our democratic responsibility to ensure that we educate ourselves and vote in any elections in line with our moral, social and political conscience. This can be achieved by being well informed and not only by voting with our gut feeling.

Although this issue will not entertain a lot of people and it will not win many seats across the Parliament, I feel that for many of us it is hugely important. I am delighted that the Lib Dem Manifesto makes so many concrete pledges in relation to the lives of many European nationals living in Britain.

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 17 June 2024 – and we have liftoff?…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 17th June 2024 - 8:55 am

It’s been an unexpected campaign in many ways. And whilst, as a member of the Party’s Federal Council, I’ve been fortunate to be in receipt of briefings from the centre about campaign strategy for some time, my expectations were not high. It was feeling like a bit of a grim slog to pry loose a bunch of limpet Tory MPs for, the most part, somewhere far from my corner of East Anglia. Certainly worthwhile, and certainly necessary, but not necessarily designed to make spirits soar. Discipline was, and still is, the watchword.

But, there was the consolation that we were going to be on the front foot this time. There was a sense that, even if we weren’t going to reach the heights of the turn of the century, we were going to improve our position significantly in terms of seats at least.

So, colour me surprised to find that this campaign has been far more fun than I could have dreamed of. Yes, a degree of grim determination is still in order – leaflets and canvassing don’t do themselves – but there is a certain joie de vivre that I don’t think many of us could have anticipated. Ed is seemingly living his best life which, compared to the crabbed, cautious approach of Keir and Rishi, our modern day political Chuckle Brothers, does at the very least give the impression of self-confidence and a sense of fun. And campaigns should be enjoyed. Did you have Jason Donovan describing Ed as sexy on your “bingo card” for the campaign.

Much kudos must go to the Campaigns Team who, with our social media team, have entertained and engaged us, the media and, somewhat unexpectedly, the public.

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The Voice

Ed Davey on Kuenssberg: Lib Dems could make real gains at this election

By The Voice | Sun 16th June 2024 - 11:54 am

It was Ed Davey’s turn to be interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg this morning.

Her first question was from a sub post master who actually compared Ed to Boris Johnson because of the various attention grabbing stunts. How can this encourage trust?

Ed replied that all these stunts have engaged people.

We’re talking about social care and cost of living and the environment. I am determined in all the seats we can win that people hear about what the Lib Dems stand for from our local champions. We could make real gains at this election.

We are taking the voters’ concerns really seriously. I don’t take my self too seriously but we don’t take ourselves too seriosly. When I came down that slide, we were talking about our policy on improving mental health for children. We want to see a qualified mental health professional in every school, paid for by rise in Digital Services Tax.

Kuenssberg asked him about the protections for whistleblowers in the Lib Dem manifesto and pressed him (again) on his actions when he was Post Office minister. Those proposals are:

Ensure justice for the victims of scandals and prevent future scandals, including
by:
• Providing full and fair compensation to all victims of the Horizon Post Office
scandal and the Infected Blood scandal as quickly as possible.
• Protecting whistleblowers by establishing a new Office of the Whistleblower,
creating new legal protections, and promoting greater public awareness of
their rights.
• Introducing the Hillsborough Law: a statutory duty of candour on police
officers and all public officials, including during all forms of public inquiry and criminal investigation.

Ed responded that it was vital to protect whistleblowers because it was the
whistleblower from Fujitsu whose evidence in 2015 provided a huge step forward for the sub-postmasters getting justice. Their revelation that the Post OFfice was lying to ministers was crucial to getting this sorted.

He said that he took Alan Bates’ issues really seriously and was the only one who put his concerns to the Post Office in any level of detail but he was lied to.

We need to change the system – we have seen it in contaminated blood and Hillsborough. You can’t run a system if people are lied to. Lib Dems have led on whistleblower protection and duty of candour.

Kuenssberg then turned to the issue of carers, and acknowledged how Ed had talked of his own caring experience.

However, she challenged him on the Coalition Government’s record. During 2010-15, social care spending had been cut in real terms. Did he regret that?

Ed could point to the Care Act of 2014 which, he said, would have improved care for people from 2015-16 as something we had contributed to that made life better for carers and those they care for. He added that we had stopped the Conservatives making the exact cuts to the social security budget that they made with indecent haste when we were out of the picture.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 16th June 2024 - 9:28 am

Gaza

 Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership share a common interest: It is to neither’s advantage at this stage to end the Gaza War. But neither is in either party’s interests to be seen as the bad guy.

In the case of the Israeli prime minister it is the fact that once the war is over he will face an overpowering clamour for a general election. It is an election which he will almost certainly lose as the Israeli electorate will hold him to account for the events that led up to the October 7th Hamas attack.

And then, once he is out of office, Netanyahu is likely to exchange the prime minister’s official residence for a prison cell via a trial on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. Fleeing the country is not an option because by then the International Criminal Court will have issued an arrest warrant for war crimes – unless he flees to America.

With Hamas the story is different. There are two wars being fought in the eastern Mediterranean. One is on the ground and in the air over a strip of land 26 miles long and 2.5 miles wide. The other is a war in the court of international public opinion. Hamas is losing the first and winning the second.

The longer the military war continues. The greater the disproportionate losses in human terms between Palestinians and Israelis and the greater the victory for Hamas. Already it has secured diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state from six EU countries—Norway, Spain, Slovenia, Cyprus, Sweden and Ireland.

Hamas has repeatedly proven that it puts political objectives before Palestinian lives. A string of historical precedents would have told them that the October 7th attack and the taking of hostages would have resulted in a highly disproportionate number of dead and injured Palestinians. It is also clear that Hamas has used hospitals, schools and Palestinian civilians, as shields.

So, where does that leave the prospects for peace and the diplomatic brokering of the US, Egypt and Qatar? At the moment US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is focused on the lack of Hamas’s enthusiasm for the latest peace proposal. Hamas say they have responded with “positivity” but Blinken says that the Hamas’s “positivity” includes “unworkable” changes.

Part of the latest problem is ownership of the plan currently on the table. It was announced by President Biden. But in his announcement he said it was an Israeli plan. However, as Hamas’ has been keen to point out, no Israeli official has publicly endorsed the plan.

In fact, official Israeli pronouncements continue to focus on continuing the war until Hamas’s “governing and military capabilities have been destroyed and the hostages returned.” There is also the political problem that Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners will withdraw from the government if the plan outlined by Biden goes ahead. This would result in an election which Netanyahu would lose.

Israeli problems and positions in turn appear to be in direct conflict with a Hamas demand that Israel commit in writing to ending the fighting before it agrees to any plan from anyone. Until this deadlock is resolved and the Americans come up with a plan that allows both sides to achieve the aims they want without fighting, then the war continues.

Ukraine

Shortly after the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the West froze $325 billion in Russian assets.

Almost immediately the call went out to hand the money over to Ukraine to finance its war against Russia. But there was a problem with this tactic which can easily be summed up with one word – hypocrisy.

Putin was being condemned for contravening international law with his naked war of aggression. But confiscating Russian assets and handing them over to Ukraine would also break international law. And respect for international law is at the root of what Ukraine and the West is fighting for. Putin wants to create a world where might is right. America and its allies want to retain a world based on respect for international law.

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