When I joined the Liberal Democrats in 2015, immediately following the General Election, I was working in military resettlement, supporting service leavers into employment. If you had told me that within 5 years, I would be a Member of Parliament for the party, I would have laughed very loudly.
When I decided to enter the selection for North East Fife in 2018 (at that time the most marginal seat in the UK with only 2 votes separating the SNP from the Liberal Democrats) it was clear that I needed to take some of my own job-seeking advice on board.
If you are serious about becoming a PPC in a Liberal Democrat target seat, here are some top tips on how to approach the selection. I’m assuming here that you are already an approved candidate.
By NewsHound | Published Sat 17th July 2021 - 5:00 pm
In an interview with the I, Ed Davey has announced that the Lib Dems are picking candidates in “blue wall” seats like Chesham and Amersham with the aim of taking seats off the Tories at the next General Election.
Speaking in Guildford, a former Lib Dem seat held by the Tories since 2005, Sir Ed said: “We’re selecting our candidate, do it early and get them on the doorstep.”
He added: “If we get through these selections, which are now going well apace, we’ll have campaigns, we’ll have people who are going out there and knocking on doors, week in week out, listening to people, and the Tory MPs are going to find them getting worried. They’ll start feeling that at the local level but it will feed through to the national level.”
He talked about his experience of knocking on doors in Chesham and Amersham:
By NewsHound | Published Sun 11th July 2021 - 11:05 am
Speaking in a House of Commons debate on fuel poverty on Thursday, Wera Hobhouse, Lib Dem MP for Bath, said no one should have to make the choice between feeding their family or heating their home. The pandemic has made things even worse. People working from home faced an extra £16 a month on energy costs, adding up to £195 a year for those on poor value tariffs. She said the clearest example of the Government’s failure was the scrapping of the green homes grant only five months after it was introduced with only 6% of the budget spent.
By Tom Arms | Published Sun 20th June 2021 - 9:55 am
In today’s briefing from our foreign affairs correspondent, Tom Arms look at congestion, vaccination and schooling in Israel. The NATO summit allowed Joe Biden to stress that the Trump Era was over and “America is back”. And Biden is prepared to retaliate for any cyber attacks from Russia. Elections are due in Ethiopia on Monday – they are “worthless”. Finally, Tom talks of Donald Trump’s new book. Move over the Bible and the Koran, this will be “the greatest book ever.” Should this “great” book be called “Trump Through the Looking Glass”? Suggestions on a title are welcome.
By Caron Lindsay | Published Thu 17th June 2021 - 11:04 pm
Every so often a by-election campaign comes along that will be remembered for generations. Orpington in the 60s, Edge Hill in the 70s, Hillhead in the 80s, Littleborough and Saddleworth in the 90s, Dunfermline in the 2000s, Eastleigh in the 2010s. Many of them came at critical moments for the party, maybe at times when we were a bit down in the dumps. And at those times the party comes together and runs a spirited and joyful campaign that everyone talks about for years afterwards.
Chesham and Amersham comes on top of, to be honest, unspectacular elections in Scotland, Wales and English Councils in May. It would be a massive ask to win it. This is true blue territory, after all. A year and a half ago, we got less than half the Tory vote, finishing in second place. In 2017, just 4 years ago, we got 13%. We need the sorts of swings we were getting in the 90s to win.
But we’ve given it our best efforts. We’ve run a good old fashioned Liberal Democrat by-election campaign at full pelt in the middle of a pandemic. I’ve seen so many comments about how the warmth of the welcome was matched by the efficiency of despatch with leaflets or canvassing pack.
I have loved every minute of this campaign.
From the doorstep conversations to the warm welcomes visiting local businesses and community groups.
Whatever happens tonight, people in Chesham and Amersham know they will no longer be taken for granted.
From as far apart as Edinburgh and Cornwall, activists flocked in their thousands to help Sarah Green’s campaign. It was clear that this was a campaign everybody wanted to be a part of. My tiny contribution was to help host the nightly maraphones, where people from Orkney to Cornwall made thousands of calls.
I was very touched that Simon Foster from Southampton dedicated 50% of his sterling contribution putting up stakeboards to me as I couldn’t get there. But the loveliest gesture was friends of Erlend Watson, our campaigning legend who has been a key and beloved presence at so many by-elections, taking his place in this campaign. Natasha Chapman and Olly Craven from Lincoln were Team Erlend. Erlend himself is recovering well from major surgery and we hope to see him back at a by-election or Conference before too long.
The positive feedback from voters was incredible. Phoning voters and asking them to put up stakeboards is far from my favourite sort of campaigning activity, yet I couldn’t believe how easy a sell it was.
The Tories have been doing all sorts of expectation management.
"They are shitting bricks" – a Tory local govt source on the mood in CCHQ over the Chesham and Amersham by-election today. Lib Dems quietly confident of scoring an upset in the safe seat.
Sometimes you can do every single thing right in a campaign and not get the result you deserve. Sarah Green and her campaign team richly deserve a victory. Let’s hope that they get it. She’s been a fantastic candidate – impressing voters on the doorsteps and motivating her army of helpers. One activist, bitten by a dog the other day, was very surprised that she took time out of her day to phone them and make sure they were ok.
In an email to members tonight, Ed Davey expressed his pride in the campaign we ran:
By The Voice | Published Mon 24th May 2021 - 9:25 am
The 41st ALDE Party Congress, will take place from 11-12 June 2021 online.
Preliminary information about the programme, political deadlines, venues and logistics is available on the ALDE Party website.
The UK Liberal Democrats are currently the second largest voting bloc in the ALDE Party. The Congress is the largest event of the year for ALDE and it is a policy-making event, with policy motions submitted by member parties for debate and voted on during the Congress. The ALDE Party Congress is the biggest annual event gathering Liberals across Europe with;
Over 650 members of Liberal parties from around the continent,
Top politicians including Prime Ministers, European Commissioners, Ministers, Members of the European and national Parliaments, Members of the Committee of the Regions, and many other delegates,
European visibility, acknowledging the role of the supporting party within a European and not only a national political context,
Topical debates, high level speeches and policy discussions,
By Tom Arms | Published Sat 8th May 2021 - 9:55 am
One of this week’s lesser-reported clashes was over water rights between the two impoverished Central Asian republics of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It deserved more attention. Central Asia lies at the heart of the Eurasian land mass. The headwaters of its rivers provide water to half of the world’s population. But climate change and the consequences of the break-up of the Soviet Union are destabilising this strategic, and too often ignored part of the world.
or centuries the five stans (as they are often called) were a prosperous key trading link in the Silk Road connecting China and Europe. The ancient city of Merv in Turkmenistan was the world’s largest in the 12th century. It is now an abandoned ruin. Between 1861 and 1885 the five stans were absorbed by the Russian Empire. They tried to break away after the collapse of the Tsar, but were reconquered by the Bolsheviks in 1925 and fell behind the Iron Curtain and out of international politics for the next 66 years.
There were good and bad elements to Soviet rule. One of the good ones was that the Soviets stablished a trans-stan barter system that prevented the five states from squabbling over water. Eighty percent of the region’s waters originate in in the mountainous regions of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The other countries are mostly desert and rely on water from the Syr Darya and Amu Darya Rivers to maintain their agricultural industries.
The desert countries, however, are rich in gas and oil. So, Moscow devised a system whereby the water-rich mountainous stans provided the desert stans with water during the spring and summer and the desert stans provided cheap fossil fuel energy to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to prevent them from freezing in the winter.
The barter system lasted for a few years after 1991 and then fell apart as the energy rich stans discovered that they could earn more money selling their gas and oil to foreign buyers. The water-rich stans were forced to resort to hydro-electricity to replace energy supplies from their neighbours. This reduced the flow of water to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan with the inevitable impact on their farming communities.
By Geoff Payne | Published Sat 1st May 2021 - 8:55 am
Federal Conference Committee met on 28th April 2021 to make some preliminary decisions about the format of Autumn Conference 2021.
We have decided that Autumn Conference will take place from 17th to 20th September. It will be held online. That was a very difficult decision to take and we had a very lengthy discussion about it.
We recognise that a lot of people would like to meet again in person – believe me, so we would we – but the question is whether, at this time, we can absolutely guarantee that conference could go ahead in the format that we know and love. Having consulted a range of others, FCC considered, with some reluctance, that it was not possible at this time to give such a guarantee. Although things are now a lot better in terms of the pandemic, we do not know if there are any final bumps in the road still to come. Medical experts say they expect a third wave in the Autumn but the extent is not yet clear. Of course, things seemed better in the early Autumn of 2020 but then took a marked turn for the worst a few months later. We do not, at this stage, know what social distancing requirements there will be or how many people will be able to attend the venue. We therefore cannot make meaningful plans and set any meaningful budget for the event. The risk of going ahead in person but having to cancel or heavily restrict the event such that it is not inclusive, is just too great. In the same way, we take any risk to the personal safety of party members very seriously. That is why we cancelled Spring 2020. We would not want to expose anyone to any unnecessary risk of catching this dreadful virus in a close setting.
By Danny Chambers | Published Sun 18th April 2021 - 10:55 am
Many Conservative MPs have been triumphantly crowing on social media that the government is planning to reduce our foreign aid budget.
Make no mistake, not only will this impact on some of the world’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable people during a pandemic, but it will also impact negatively on scientific jobs and research funding right here in the UK. Decades of research will be affected.
If these Tory MPs, who claim we cannot afford to meet our foriegn aid commitments, were genuinely wanting to save taxpayer’s money, they would call out the corruption and cronyism from their own government ministers.
Instead, they are boasting about breaking their manifesto promises to maintain our current level of foreign aid. Conveniently, they don’t explain that our foreign aid budget helps fund polio eradication programmes, the manufacturing of prosthetic limbs for landmine victims, UN refugee camps and UK science jobs.
The most pressing challenges we face as a civilisation are truly global in nature – climate change, the growing resistance of bacteria to our antibiotics, how to manage and feed our fast-growing population and fighting pandemics.
All these issues will directly affect the UK.
None of these issues can be addressed by any country working alone.
Much of the UK foreign aid budget is focused on tackling these issues.
Some of this money funds British scientists carrying out research into infectious diseases in developing countries. Diseases such as rabies, polio and avian influenza all have the potential to affect the UK.
So when our foreign aid budget is cut, some UK scientists lose their funding and potentially their jobs. Ground breaking research projects which were awarded money some months ago have since had all funding retracted bringing them to a sudden halt. There is no doubt that this will cost lives.
The majority of our foreign aid is spent in the world’s poorest and most dangerous countries, including Syria and Afghanistan. In these conflict regions most of this research is built on years building relationships and trust to encouraging people to engage with science – all this hard work a progress is now at risk.
Some mean spirited Tory MPs have long banged on about reducing foreign aid because they are either too ignorant to understand the consequences of their actions, or they simply enjoy whipping up xenophobia by using the foreign aid budget and refugee crisis as a political football.
By NewsHound | Published Thu 15th April 2021 - 2:21 pm
Daisy Cooper, MP for St Albans, Deputy Leader and spokesperson for education has just been challenging ministers in the Commons on the problem students have been experiencing during the pandemic. She said that students felt forgotten, that their mental health had deteriorated and government funds for students facing hardship should be doubled.
By Tom Arms | Published Sat 27th March 2021 - 9:03 am
About the only time the world’s land-based public thinks about seaborne traffic and the globalised trade it underpins is when they look above the parapets of their sand castles and spy a ship on the distant horizon.
Or, when something happens, such as a war or a vital sea artery is blocked and prices creep up and super market shelves start to empty.
Those of us who remember the 80s will know that Midge Ure was the lead singer of Ultravox. Significantly he was also one of the organisers of Band Aid and Live Aid, as well as co-writer of Do they know it’s Christmas. And here he was ‘in conversation’ with the BBC’s Gavin Esler and Lib Dem peer Paul Strasburger at our own Conference.
Of course, he had an axe to grind. If you think Covid-19 has damaged the music industry – and that is certainly true – it is also reeling from the impact of Brexit. Back in January LDV highlighted the Lib Dem campaign about the huge bureaucracy that will make it difficult, if not impossible, for British musicians to tour and perform across Europe.
Gavin Esler began by stating that the creative industries in the UK are admired across the world – “they are the UK’s soft power”.
All three speakers were keen to explain that the post-Brexit issues not only affect music, across all genres, but also theatre, dance and even trade shows. Touring is the lifeblood of many of the performing arts; and for musicians it is often the best or only way to generate an income, now that streaming has substantially reduced income from recordings. And it doesn’t just impact on the performers but also on the livelihoods of all the support staff.
The difficulties seem to coalesce around two main problems. The first is trucking. Performances given in Europe by orchestras or well-established theatre companies, or by bands playing to large venues, need to move their equipment, instruments, sets, lighting and sound systems in trucks. Under the Brexit deal the trucks are only allowed to do two drops before returning to the UK. Of course, very many tours will go to more than two venues – indeed they need to do so to be profitable. On top of that a huge amount of documentation is required, listing every item carried by the trucks.
A couple of years ago I was chatting with the Transport Manager for one of the major orchestras in the UK, and was astonished (though I shouldn’t have been) at the complexity of organising a tour across several countries with 50+ musicians plus other staff. One of his aims was to reduce the stress on the artists, so they could perform well. The logistics were challenging then – now they would be almost impossible.
The second problem is obtaining the temporary work visas required by at least 10 European countries for everyone in the entourage – performers, sound engineers, roadies etc. This is a bureaucratic nightmare.
By John Shipley | Published Thu 18th March 2021 - 10:17 am
Late last year I was asked by the Federal Policy Committee to chair a working group on regional powers in England within a Federal UK. The group was charged with developing policy on powers for the level between local government and the Federal government, taking into account the broader vision set out in conference motion “The Creation of a Federal United Kingdom” (passed at Autumn Conference in 2020). The group was asked to build on existing policy as set out in policy paper 117 Power to the People (2014) and policy paper 130 Power for People and Communities (2018) and consider models from other Federal States such as the Federal Republic of Germany.
A modernised Federal United Kingdom has long been a key priority for Liberal Democrats – encompassing a fair voting system for all elections, reforming the House of Lords into a Senate, and developing a written constitution.
The motion passed in September 2020 represents an important foundation for the creation of an England of the Regions.
It sets out principles for the UK to become a union of its nations and regions. In relation to England, it says we believe in a truly federal United Kingdom with an equitable distribution of resources between different parts of the United Kingdom based on their respective needs. It refers to federal and state governments in which subsidiarity applies to the nations and regions of the Union and in which the exercise of public responsibilities is decentralised as much as is reasonably practicable. It says that the Upper House should become representative of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom and that there would be a federal Council of Ministers to enable the governments and parliaments of the various parts of the Union to work better, building on the work of joint ministerial committees.
The motion however says nothing about local government. It does not say how many English regions there should be, nor what exact powers they should have. It does not say anything about taxation or how resources would be redistributed. It implies each region can have ministers but not for which departments. Clearly, the detail needs to be filled in – hence the working group.
By Nick da Costa | Published Mon 15th March 2021 - 6:05 pm
On Saturday, 13th March the Federal Conference Committee met to review the amendments, late motions, emergency motions, questions to reports and appeals for this weekend’s next Spring Conference which commences on Friday.
You can still register for conference. We also have a claimants’ rate, and provide support for those who require it through the Conference Access Fund. You can also donate to the Conference Access Fund as part of your registration.
This will be our second online Conference with our partners at Hopin. As always, we would like to thank the Conference Office and wider HQ team for their support and hard work in bringing together our online conference.
By Andy Boddington | Published Sun 14th March 2021 - 10:03 am
The scenes on Clapham Common last night as the police broke up the vigil for Sarah Everard were a disgrace and undermine the fundamental principle of policing by consent. Leading Lib Dems have called on the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick to resign. It was not a protest. It was a statement of solidarity with a woman who had been abducted from the streets of London and murdered. It was a declaration that women should be safe on the streets. Lib Dem Voice editor Caron Lindsay told of her personal experiences yesterday.
The UK’s tradition of policing by consent is being replaced by policing by authority. Legislation now in parliament looks set to reinforce authority at the expense of the fundamental right of freedom to protest.
By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 28th February 2021 - 1:55 pm
Earlier this week, we reported on Liz Barker’s speech on the Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill, in which she compared the demonisation of transgender people today to the discrimination she and others faced during the 80s.
The Bill was a simple one – designed to give ministers leave when they have a baby, something that our Jo Swinson and Jenny Willott did not benefit from when they had their babies. There was a concerted effort by socially conservative peers to change the Bill’s gender neutral language. In the first of two speeches, Sal explained why it was important to be as inclusive as possible. It is good to see our peers arguing that extending rights to trans and non binary people does not diminish women’s rights.
My Lords, I too support this Bill, even though it does not go far enough in giving Ministers who are parents the same rights that other workers have now come to expect. As others have already said, these include adoption leave, sick leave and shared parental leave. The last is particularly important and affects any Minister who becomes a parent and who is still missing out on the rights to share in the care of their new baby with their partner. I hope the Minister will remedy this urgently.
There is one other parental benefit that has not yet been mentioned—statutory parental bereavement pay and leave. I worked with the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, for a number of years to win this right for parents, but it is omitted from this legislation for Ministers. I urge the Minister to ensure that it is added to the other forms of parental allowance and leave for future discussion. One hopes that it is never needed but it is vital to have it in place to cover such awful circumstances.
My former colleagues, Jo Swinson and Jenny Willott, both had their first babies while they were Ministers. No arrangements were made for them. They had to cover for each other without maternity pay at exactly the time when they were working in government for better rights for women and parents in the workplace.
I agree with my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece about the lack of equality impact assessments. We need to remedy this and to reflect on why, as a society, we have moved over the years to gender-neutral language. The gender-neutral language in this Bill is inclusive. Changing it, as many speakers have asked, would make it exclusive—perhaps not to many, but to some people for whom it matters a great deal. No one is trying to erase women but rather to accept that, over recent years, there have been advances in medicine. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for referring to trans men in Brighton. We also have to remember that non-binary and intersex people who were born women would be excluded. Both equality law and clinical care have kept pace with them and their circumstances. Medical care, in particular, has adapted in order to provide the best possible care for them in rare and difficult circumstances. That is why I would gently correct the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in her reporting of the Brighton hospital trust introducing “chestfeeding” and “pregnant people” and removing “breastfeeding” and “women” from its documentation. It is not. Snopes, that excellent debunker of myths, explains this carefully:
“A maternity department at a U.K. hospital announced in February 2021 that it was expanding terms it used in maternity care to include, for example, ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘pregnant people’, in order to be more inclusive of trans and nonbinary patients … To be clear, the NHS said that such language—like referencing ‘pregnant women’ and ‘breastfeed’—will not change for those who identify as such … Adding terms like ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘birthing parent’ was not intended to take away from women-oriented language already in use. Rather, the move was meant to be additional support that offers more inclusion for trans and nonbinary individuals.”
By Tom Arms | Published Sun 21st February 2021 - 11:29 am
The Republican Party is splitting. On one side you have the populists of ex-president Donald Trump and on the other you have the Grand Old Party (GOP) of Senator Mitch McConnell. Trump, of course, lost the election which he claims he won by a landslide. However, he has kept his base intact by continuing to feed them a diet of lies and conspiracy theories.
Mitch McConnell is the leader of the Senate Republicans who has proved himself a master of hunting with the hounds and running with the hare by voting to acquit Trump while at the same time branding him …
Many Lib Dems here on Lib Dem Voice and across local networks have voiced outrage on the de facto government ban on leaflet delivering. Suddenly, we are seemingly blocked from campaigning because we rely on paper.
There used to be telegrams. Faxes. Remember those? We don’t use those anymore. We have the internet.
We should ban fake newspapers and wean ourselves off our addiction to Focus pushed through doors. Until we reduce reliance on paper and become influencers on social media, we will never be a major party.
By Michal Siewniak | Published Sun 24th January 2021 - 8:44 am
Although I come originally from a city called Lublin, in the South-East part of Poland, as a child, I spent a lot time visiting my cousins and grandparents’ in relatively large village close to a city called Rzeszow. I remember Polish harvest, I remember watching my uncle, my grandmothers’ brother, who used to leave the house very early in the morning and who was coming back home very late; often tired but also happy, as the job enabled him to feel closely connected with nature.
Looking back, I think that farming has been always strongly rooted in the “working culture” of the Polish nation. Today, the situation has changed as young people move to cities to seek and enhance their life opportunities. I remember how hard everyone had to work to feed their families and earn a decent (?) living. My mum tells me that when she was a child, before going to school, she also had to support her parents with e.g. feeding the cows or cleaning the stable. I also remember visiting my auntie in Italy, who was working on the farm. It really was a hard job. I have it easy these days, don’t I?
I’ve recently come across a very interesting article published in Emerging Europe about the impact of Brexit on UK farming industry. I often wondered what will happen to some sections of the economy when the transition period ends? It is good news that the UK government has increased to 30,000 the number of visas to seasonal workers, who will be able to come to Britain for up to 6 months. Unfortunately, this is where the good news end. This new ‘visa arrangement’ comes with a heavy price. Each work permit will cost £244, which for many interested individuals might be simply too expensive. What is even more interesting is that citizens from some countries e.g. Turkey or Macedonia will pay less (£55) than seasonal workers from other countries e.g. Romania, Bulgaria or Slovenia. Reason? Some countries are not members of the Council of Europe’s Social Chapter.
By Caron Lindsay | Published Thu 14th January 2021 - 9:32 pm
Our Parliament has a reputation as being one of the oldest and best in the world. Every time I walk through the Palace of Westminster, I am reminded of who has walked these same corridors.
Shirley Wiliams, Barbara Castle, William Wilberforce talking about abolishing slavery, Lloyd George bringing forward the People’s Budget, Aneurin Bevan bringing in the legislation that set up the NHS.
All these great things, over centuries.
In 200 years time, I doubt they’ll be talking about the Day the Fish Smiled.
It was Business Questions. The SNP’s Tommy Sheppard raised the crisis in our fishing industry caused by the Government. But of course, he couldn’t just leave it there. He had to use it as a proxy to ask to have a Commons debate on Scottish independence. I mean, the industry is on its knees. One of its key players, Loch Fyne, is talking about only being able to last another week. And all because the Government first of all pursued Brexit, did so in such a cack-handed manner that the decisions were only made about how the seafood industry would operate on Christmas bloody Eve with a week to go and then didn’t get its finger out to produce the relevant paperwork. This level of incompetence is pretty much standard practice for this lot.
It’s infuriating that the SNP constantly let the Tories off the hook by turning the question to independence. Keep it on the subject. Make them own the mess that they have made. Nope.
So what should have been an exchange on a crisis of the Tories’ making ended like this.
The fishing issue was covered a moment ago by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should have tuned into that debate, rather than bringing it up at business questions, but the Government are tackling this issue and dealing with it as quickly as possible. The key is that we have our fish back: they are now British fish, and they are better and happier fish for it.
Not exactly edifying, is it?
Earlier, the grown-ups were present. Our Alistair Carmichael took the Government’s actions to pieces in an urgent question, laying bare the damage that they had done.
The Prime Minister and Victoria Prentis set the bar pretty low yesterday but George Eustice brought it clattering down today with a performance of breath-taking complacency. Frankly insulting to industry that he is already backtracking on the PM’s offer of compensation yesterday. https://t.co/m2kH6OFFjZ
By David Gray | Published Tue 12th January 2021 - 11:45 am
The increasing polarisation of politics across the globe is concerning for many reasons. The storming of the Capitol felt like a defining moment in this trend, while our government’s hollow pleading for the nation to unite over their shoddy Brexit deal has done nothing to bring opposing sides together. One area where this polarisation is becoming increasingly worrying is over Covid-19 measures. The world is not made up of Covid-denying conspiracy theorists and authoritarian-loving lockdown fanatics, but whenever a debate crops up, the position you take on that debate will inevitably see you lumped into one of those categories.
Most people accept that the temporary suspension of some liberties is a tragic necessity. But scrutiny has never been more important. John Harris’ excellent Guardian article goes into this at some length, so I will add the dimension of my own experience to this.
By Caron Lindsay | Published Sun 10th January 2021 - 2:35 pm
As we prepare to welcome Joe Biden as US President a week on Wednesday, I thought it might be an idea to look back at previous inaugurations.
Let’s hope that we get to 20th January without any more of the scenes we saw this week. There may well be drama in Congress as the Democrats attempt a second impeachment, but the last thing anybody needs is more injury or loss of life.
I’m thinking back 12 years to Obama’s inaugural speech. I will never forget it. But that is partly because our hamster Puffball died during it, not just for its inspiring and hopeful qualities.
Then LDV co-editor Stephen Tall said that he came across as the “ultimate pragmatist CEO”:
Was this speech a mesmerising tour de force which will rank among his best? Not for me. But that’s not a bad thing at all, because what the speech did demonstrate was a sense of uncompromising purpose – and I’ll take that over highfalutin oratory from the most powerful leader in the world. For sure, there was the soaring promise:
The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
But what struck me more was the sense of the ultimate pragmatist CEO, impatient to fix what he sees as broken:
The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
I was still learning to love him. Obviously I was delighted that he had been elected, but I have always been a Hillary fan. Somewhere there’s an alternate universe where we are now at the end of Obama’s first term as 45th President with her having been the 44th. That would have been a lot better.
Obama was just starting to inspire me. His inaugural speech certainly made me warm to him more as I wrote on my own blog.
Obama’s speech still had the idealism and the confidence that we have come to expect from him, but this was tempered with sobering realism and a call to all Americans to give of their best to deal with the unprecedented challenges ahead.
You could actually see George W Bush squirming as his legacy was laid bare in a few well chosen, but very frank words. “Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet”
There were two phrases that I thought were the signs of the new age. “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” So it’s goodbye Guantanamo. The poisonous vernacular of the war on terror is replaced with “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Well, I loved it.
And if this is true, then bring it on: “To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect.” I hope Israel was listening and will be made to think about the way it consumes the resources of the middle east. It would be good if clean waters flowed in Gaza.
Another theme of the speech was personal responsibility, and embracing your duties as a citizen to help the nation succeed. “For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.”
The two things I really loved most of all about the speech was the inclusion of non-believers in the list of value systems at one point and the addition of curiosity as one of the “values on which our success depends.” I like the willingness to abandon conventions as novel solutions are sought for challenges.
By The Voice | Published Fri 8th January 2021 - 1:23 pm
The Party President, Mark Pack, has published his monthly report:
The chaotic incompetence of a government that declares schools safe on a Sunday, sends children back for a day and then closes them is the sort of thing that should be the domain of political fiction.
Sadly and tragically, it’s the government we suffer from in Westminster. It is a reminder about how important it is that we recover as a party, and a spur to our efforts to ensure we do our part in defeating the Conservatives at the ballot box.
The elections due in May across England, Scotland and Wales are an important part of that.
The May Elections
Will the elections be delayed? The simple answer is, we don’t know. But we do know that we need to campaign to do well in them whenever they happen. Other parties can gamble on trying to win an election without much time to campaign beforehand. We can’t.
That is why we need to continue with our preparations and build-up as if the May elections will happen, and treat any extra time as a bonus. Better that than be caught out thinking something wouldn’t happen and then not having time to prepare when it does.
Of course, our work should always take into account coronavirus health risks, and always carefully follow the party’s advice, which is regularly reviewed and updated when necessary.
There is a wide range of free training available to help you hone your campaigning skills and learn how to campaign best in the face of coronavirus. Do take a look at the listings on the party website and on the ALDC site.
By The Voice | Published Tue 8th December 2020 - 2:55 pm
Both Scottish and Federal Conferences will be taking place virtually in March. Often, pre-election conferences aren’t so well attended as people prioritise their local campaigns. This time, it’s easier for everyone to take part in at least some of it and not miss out on that all-important leaflet delivery and door-knocking. Here’s how you can take part:
Scotland (and members from all across the UK are welcome)
Scottish Conference Convener Paul McGarry announced the Scottish event, from 5-6 March, in an email to members:
Spring conference will be taking place on FRIDAY 5th and SATURDAY 6th MARCH 2021.
Like our autumn and special conferences, this conference will be taking place on the online platform HopIn.
We have decided to do conference registration a little differently this time. To register for a general early bird ticket, click here. The early bird tickets are only available until 2nd February 2021. If you would like to purchase an early bird concession or first timer ticket, you will need to fill out this form.
Key dates to note:
Deadline for feedback on motions: 15th December 2020 at noon.
Deadline for submitting motions: 8th January 2021 at noon.
That motions deadline is eye-waveringly close to the Christmas holidays so if you have an idea for a motion, get thinking about it now.
Federal Conference
Federal Conference Committee Chair Geoff Payne wrote to members to announce the details of the federal event taking place two weeks later, from 19-21 March:
Registration is open for Spring Conference 2021. Following the success of our online conference in Autumn, Spring conference will again be 100% online.
At our conference you can shape party policy, virtually meet MPs, councillors and members from across the country, hear from experts on a range of topics at our fringe events and learn new skills at our training sessions.
Tickets start from £40 until 13 January, or £10 for full-time students and those claiming benefits.
By Caron Lindsay | Published Tue 8th December 2020 - 11:55 am
“Why should we have to move everywhere and everything because of him?”
That question is on the front of Change, Justice, Fairness, a Scottish Women’s Aid community research project into homelessness caused by domestic abuse in Fife.
Too often, the trauma suffered by victims of domestic abuse is exacerbated when they are forced to leave their homes, often with their children. It is not acceptable that they should be forced into this situation.
It is unlikely that the event that led to them seeking help was the first incident. Safe Lives suggest that someone will endure 50 incidents of abuse or violence before getting effective help.
So you have very vulnerable, traumatised individuals, the vast majority of whom are women, having to declare themselves as homeless. That means that they are put in temporary accommodation, perhaps for short periods into bed and breakfast accommodation with no cooking facilities, where they don’t have the comfort of having their own things around them, the children don’t have their toys. They are perhaps in an unfamiliar area away from their support networks. They could get moved at any time to different temporary accommodation. That instability and insecurity piling even more distress on to them.
Those who aren’t married and aren’t named on the tenancy face a lengthy and complicated battle to gain occupancy rights if they wish to stay in their home.
The process of transferring a tenancy can also take time, during which the victim can be homeless. This needs to be sorted with greater speed. The Scottish Government needs to produce guidance that strengthens the rights of the victim to prevent them going down the stressful homeless route.
This is why I persuaded the Scottish Liberal Democrats to pass policy calling for better support for housing for victims of domestic abuse. In a very moving debate, members shared their own experiences.
We call on the Scottish Government to do more to ensure that they have the right to stay in their own home if they wish to do so. If they are to be moved, that should be done in a planned way. We recognise that the statutory homeless route is not appropriate for families who are suffering the effects of abuse.
I was surprised to learn that not all social housing providers have stand alone domestic abuse policies so we call on housing associations to do more to support people in this situation
The Women’s Aid research identified serious flaws in the way victims were treated. Women described how they had to talk about what had happened to them in an open plan office.
A third of the staff who dealt with disclosures of abuse said that they had not had any training.
Particularly troubling was the fact that the majority of service providers didn’t have any idea that the moment of leaving an abusive partner was the most dangerous for the victim.
By The Voice | Published Tue 1st December 2020 - 11:17 am
Over on the Cheltenham Liberal Democrats website, Young Liberal Jessica Jeffries writes to her local MP, calling on him to take action to end period poverty:
The negative impact of period poverty can affect women in many different ways. Physically, there is a high risk of infection due to the repeated use of old sanitary products, and the use of dirty rags/pieces of cloth which many have to use as an alternative. Psychologically, as a result of the stigma, many women feel embarrassment/shame when discussing menstruation and those who struggle financially will face much stress as they choose between feeding themselves and their family or buying period products.
As arguments rage over cuts in Britain’s international aid budget, Liberal Democrats could help expose some of the mechanisms which create and sustain poverty. On Tuesday December 1st, that brand household name Nestle is going the U.S. Supreme Court to argue that it should be allowed to use slavery to farm and ship raw cocoa from west Africa in order to make our chocolate.
Let me repeat that. Nestle, whose profits last year were $15 billion, insists it has a right to make money from slavery. In technical terms, it wants to be granted corporate legal immunity.
I first reported on this dreadful practice of child slavery on west African cocoa farms in 2000 for the BBC. The confectionary industry executives with their plush offices and multi-million pound executive bonuses rounded on me, with accusations that I was inventing and fabricating. I wasn’t. The BBC supported the story. I went back to the Ivory Coast, Mali and Ghana time and time again.
Despite promises from confectionary companies and the British government, the culture of slavery and poverty did not only continue, it got worse. A recent U.S. Dept of Labor report found more than two million children were now working on the west African cocoa farms from which Nestle gets its supplies. Many of the children are trafficked, held against their will with no schooling or health care. They are victims of long-standing arrangements between governments and corporations to retain cheap or free labour in favour of high profits.
By Sally Burnell | Published Fri 20th November 2020 - 9:34 am
This week FPC met with an unusually light-looking agenda but we still managed to talk for two and half hours! We received an excellent presentation from Mimi Turner, Director of Strategy, Messaging and Research. Mimi talked us through the scale of the task ahead of us in terms of understanding how the Party fares when voters are asked whether we share their values; whether we’ll do what we say; whether we’re perceived as wanting to help ordinary people get on in life; and whether they see us as competent and capable.
Mimi explained that by segmenting voters and targeting certain groups, we are missing the opportunity to speak to millions of voters. From a policy perspective, our role is to develop distinctive policies on the issues that matter most in terms of improving people’s lives and that resonate in our target seats. Easy, right?! Well I don’t think any of us underestimates the scale of the task head but we’re certainly up for it.
FPC work programme
FPC members found the presentation very useful as we went on to discuss our current and future work programme in the context of Mimi’s analysis and thoughts on future strategy. We have a number of pieces of work underway at the moment – a mixture of pieces looking at the bigger picture, some high profile issues that we’ve been tasked with looking at, and some specifics where we hope to bring forward some appealing policy proposals:
Nature of Public Debate – planned for Spring 2021
Making Utilities Work Better for the Public – planned for Spring 2021
Federal England – aiming for Spring 2021, with the group working fast since autumn conference
Natural Resources and the Natural Environment – planned for Autumn 2021
Liberal Democrat Principles and Values – planned for Autumn 2021
Universal Basic Income – planned for Autumn 2021
Carbon Pricing (a sub-group of the former climate change working group) – planned for Autumn 2021
Themes Paper (building on the World After Coronavirus consultation) – planned for Autumn 2021
The Anglo-Saxon version of authoritarian populism is ‘plutocratic populism’, or pluto-populism . A Princeton professor described it, in the Financial Times last week, as ‘consisting of policies that mostly benefit the top 1%, in combination with relentless culture wars which distract from economic ideas’. Trump is, of course, the model that he and others are describing. But we have faced a similar phenomenon in the UK, and we need to think carefully about how to combat it here.
Money, media and loose electoral regulation fuel pluto-populism. The US Supreme Court’s decision to free political fundraising from the constraints that Democratic Administrations had enacted has entrenched the power of money in US politics. Right-wing billionaires, benefitting from lax rules on foundations and favourable taxes, fund think tanks and lobbies. The Murdoch press has also fuelled its rise, above all through Fox News, with its relentless attacks on ‘the liberal elite’, its openness to conspiracy theories and its willingness to support ‘alternative facts.’ Trump rose to political prominence through television, and has exploited social media to consolidate his appeal.
Constraints on spending in British politics have not yet broken down, but in recent elections and in the 2016 Referendum the rules have been successfully bent. Conservative HQ sent targeted mailings and media messages to marginal seats, not accounted for under constituency expenditure. Semi-autonomous bodies mounted media campaigns to underpin Tory messages and to influence voters away from other candidates. Peter Geoghegan, in Democracy for Sale (2020, well worth reading), tells us that ‘College Green Group’, run by the son of a wealthy Tory MP, placed pro-SNP messages in Jo Swinson’s constituency and pro-Labour ones in LibDem target seats in the South-West, as well as similar negative messages in Caroline Lucas’s seat.
By Mark Pack | Published Wed 11th November 2020 - 11:30 am
I should start with a word of thanks – in fact, many words of thanks – to Kirsty Williams. She has announced that she will be standing down at the Welsh Senedd elections next May. As such a successful education minister in Wales, she is a daily demonstration of the difference that Liberal Democrats in power make. A consistently powerful voice for liberalism through all her many years of service, she has made such a big difference to so many lives. Thank you, Kirsty.
We need to get many more people like Kirsty elected in future. As the Thornhill Review …
David Allen Alex Macfie: In principle, of course you are right. However, the EU will be unlikely to give us the time of day unless we find a way to make a Yes vote effecti...
David Sparrow I agree with Jana, and after today’s KB speech to Tory conference it may be his only option too!...
Alex Macfie @David Allen: The "promises" you suggest would be worthless. The simple fact is that one parliament cannot bind any future parliament — that's how parliamenta...
Roger Billins I joined ULS at UCL in 1975 and the party at the same time. I am still a member 50 years on. My activism is circumscribed by the drugs I take to fight prostate ...
Peter Chambers > £17bn of tax cuts to Income Tax and Fuel Duty
So we are said to be proposing increased subsidy for fossil-fuels?
Instead of pushing ahead with a Green t...
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David Allen 
David Sparrow 
Alex Macfie 
Roger Billins 
Peter Chambers 