Tag Archives: brexit

Brake urges Corbyn to back single market membership

By The Voice | Sun 25th February 2018 - 10:50 am

We know from the Observer that Jeremy Corbyn is now coming under public pressure from 80 senior figures to back participation on the single market to save public services.

Our Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake said:

Jeremy Corbyn has been weak on Brexit, and his continuing failure to back Britain’s place in the single market and customs union is economic self-immolation. I am pleased to see that there are progressives in the Labour party willing to call him out on this. Liberal Democrats believe Britain is stronger in the European Union, and avoiding Brexit and the damage it will do to our economy is crucial in building the world class public services the public deserve.

Posted in News | Also tagged tom brake | 64 Comments

LibLink: Dick Taverne: The MP who beat Eurosceptics to hang on to his seat

By NewsHound | Sun 25th February 2018 - 8:54 am

A passionately pro European MP faces deselection by an anti-European local party. What happens then?

You could imagine this scenario unfolding for a fair few MPs today, but one person actually had this happen to him and he survived. In 1972, Dick Taverne’s local Labour Party in Lincoln deselected him or voting for us to join the then Common Market.

It wasn’t the end of the world for him. He resigned as an MP and fought the subsequent by-election as an Independent and won.

He writes about his experience in this week’s New European to give moral support to any MPs in a similar situation today.

What also swayed a lot of votes was my appeal that politicians should put country first, constituency second and party third.

Burke proved popular. Indeed Roy Jenkins, not a natural populist, temporarily became a popular hero and told me that taxi drivers would wind down their windows if they passed him and shout: “You stick to your guns, mate.”

Are circumstances less favourable for a deselected dissident today? They are probably more favourable. At that time, party loyalties were much stronger than now. When I announced I would stand as an independent, the general view in the media was that I had committed political suicide.

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged dick taverne, europe and The New European | 7 Comments

The Bus Oxford tried to ban comes to Edinburgh

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 24th February 2018 - 2:23 pm

It was freezing cold in Edinburgh this morning but that didn’t stop a crowd of people gathering to welcome the Is it Worth it? bus. Remember when Boris traversed the land with a bus with a big fat lie on the side of it during the EU referendum? Well, anti Brexit campaigners have funded a bus tour with the truth, as outlined in the UK Government’s own analysis, emblazoned on the side.

The bus spent an hour parked in the historic Royal Mile. In fact, it was parked right outside the City of Edinburgh Council’s City Chambers. This is a very different attitude than Oxfordshire’s Conservative Council which has decided to stop the bus parking in the centre of the city on Monday. Apparently they can’t have political messages on the highway. Does that mean that anyone having political posters in their cars will be banned from parking in the city centre during elections? I suspect not. Layla Moran spoke out against this ban. From the BBC:

Oxford West and Abingdon MP, Layla Moran, said the bus should be allowed and the ban “can only be seen as a politically motivated move”.

She added that both Conservative and Lib Dem buses had visited the county during the election.

The SNP’s Edinburgh South West MP Joanna Cherry said that she personally saw the arguments in favour of a “second referendum.” However, we should not assume that the party would vote for such a measure in Parliament as there’s a catch. She said that the party would be seeking a guarantee that if Scotland voted to remain in the EU, that the wishes of its citizens would be respected. As a federalist party, some might argue that we should have sympathy with that argument. After all, in the US federal system, Rhode Island has the same sway on issues like this as California. We want to bring the country together, though, not pursue yet more divisions. On the other hand, of course, all the arguments about the Irish border would be duplicated about the Scottish border. It is clearly to the advantage of the whole UK to stop Brexit.

If the SNP insists on this condition, it’s effectively a wrecking one because it is unlikely to get the support of otherwise sympathetic MPs from other parties. We need to get a majority of MPs to vote for a referendum on the deal in the Commons. It would be pretty outrageous if the SNP deprived the whole country of a parachute from this Brexit disaster.

Posted in News | Also tagged vince cable | 5 Comments

How Brexit could strengthen us

By John King | Thu 22nd February 2018 - 4:37 pm

Amid all the bad news about Brexit – the lies on the bus, the shrinking economy, the paralysed opposition, we are prone to forget the benefits it is bringing us. I am talking about our understanding of the European Union. Politicians who have for years loftily ignored it are at last being forced to find out a bit about how it works. Large numbers of the population who had hardly heard of the EU before the referendum are gaining some glimmer of what it’s all about.

So a nation for years isolated …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged eu, referendum on the deal and remain voters | 18 Comments

Cable on Davis speech: Brexit Secretary Secretary makes strong case for staying in the EU

By NewsHound | Mon 19th February 2018 - 10:30 pm

In a speech tomorrow, Brexit Secretary David Davis will demand that the UK’s regulatory standards are accepted across the EU post-Brexit. He will ask for “mutual recognition” and “close, even-handed co-operation”.

Responding, Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said:

David Davis might as well be making the case for staying in the EU. He appears to be acknowledging the great achievements of the Single Market – a British idea introduced by a British government – yet the Conservatives want to leave that and the Customs Union.

Posted in News | Also tagged david davis and vince cable | 2 Comments

What more do we need to try to do to persuade the British people to vote to stay in the EU?

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Mon 19th February 2018 - 1:10 pm

It seems to me that our position on Remaining in the EU is that people will see that we will be worse off outside the EU than in it. When they see the deal which is negotiated, they will have their ‘Road to Damascus’ moment and a significant proportion of the British will want to reject the deal and vote to stay in the EU.

I don’t think that will be happen. The 2016 referendum was fought on a campaign which stated we would be much poorer outside the EU than by Remaining in it. That campaign failed to get a majority of the British people to vote to stay in the EU. I can see no reason why, if there was a referendum in late 2018 or early 2019, the result would be different. We would be doing the same thing as in 2016 and expecting a different result.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged european union | 54 Comments

Campbell: May’s speech shows that staying in the EU is best for Britain’s security

By The Voice | Sat 17th February 2018 - 12:30 pm

Lord Menzies Campbell gave the Lib Dem reaction to Theresa May’s speech on post-Brexit security:

Everything Theresa May said in this speech illustrated that being in the EU is the best way of securing our security objectives.

This was an opportunity for her to show some pragmatism. She could have shown willingness to compromise on the European Court of Justice so as to break the logjam on the European Arrest Warrant and to make sure we have access to Europol’s information.

The problem she has is that to decide is to divide – Conservative Brexiteers inside and outside her Cabinet will be up

…

Posted in News | Also tagged menzies campbell and security | 17 Comments

No love lost on the road to Brexit

By NewsHound | Fri 16th February 2018 - 11:55 am

Vince’s Valentine’s Day column for Times Red Box contrasted the consistency of the Liberal Democrats on Brexit with the split Labour and Conservative parties. He said that our party was “open to refugees.”

For some MPs, I do anticipate that the myopia of the Labour and Conservative parties could drive them away from their folds. Liberal Democrats, unsurprisingly, have a liberal policy on refugees and will welcome with open arms and an open mind anyone from a different political tradition who wants to join our party. However, many aghast rebels will retain old tribal loyalties but nonetheless choose to vote with the Liberal Democrats on Brexit issues. I welcome that too.

Beyond Westminster, we need an effort in the country to mobilise public opinion on three key points: firstly, that Brexit is not inevitable; secondly, that the best and only democratic way to stop Brexit is through a vote on the final deal; and finally, that the Government’s deal will not be better than staying in the EU. It is in this respect that Liberal Democrats are critical. None of the many groupings springing up to take on the pro-European mantle have what we can bring to the table: a young, enthused membership of 100,000 troops to campaign on the ground.

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged times red box and vince cable | 10 Comments

“A back of a fag packet speech” – Tom Brake on today’s Boris speech

By Paul Walter | Wed 14th February 2018 - 2:05 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Lib Dem Brexit spokesperson, Tom Brake has responded pithily to Boris Johnson’s speech on Brexit:

Boris Johnson is completely deluded about Brexit. This speech wasn’t about the most important issue facing our country right now, this was about Boris’ ambitions to become the next Prime Minister, and it probably wasn’t much help on that front either.

Posted in News | Also tagged boris johnson and tom brake | 18 Comments

On BBC Newsnight, Vince explains why hard Brexit is anything but liberal

By Paul Walter | Wed 14th February 2018 - 9:25 am

On BBC 2’s Newsnight last night, Vince made a very good job of laying out why a hard Brexit is far from liberal:

“It’s either a deliberate misuse of language or intellectual confusion” – @VinceCable on Boris Johnson’s vision of a ‘liberal Brexit’ #newsnight pic.twitter.com/WoOh9LQM6h

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) February 13, 2018

Posted in News | Also tagged vince cable | 11 Comments

John Stuart Mill would have supported hard Brexit, says Boris

By Paul Walter | Tue 13th February 2018 - 12:40 pm

From the Guardian:

The foreign secretary called (the EU) a “teleological construction” that was “ends driven”. He said the founding fathers of the common market decided to create a “new sense of political identity by legal means” – but claimed this went against liberal thinking. “(John Stuart) Mill would say that the national group, the group that most associate with each other, govern each other. But this was a new idea to try to transcend that.”

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged boris johnson and john stuart mill | 41 Comments

The final deal: what would we say?

By Rob Parsons | Mon 12th February 2018 - 4:09 pm

If there is a referendum on the final deal about leaving the European Union, what would we say? Here is my starter:

Background

We recognise that the vote to leave the EU was fuelled (in part) by dissatisfaction with growing levels of inequality, and felt pressure on cultural values and identity. So we need to address a) the reasons why staying in the EU is better than leaving, as well as b) how we are going to address inequality in the UK and the identity issues tied up with some of our suspicion of foreigners. I think it is also important to make the point that staying in the EU is not the goal. It is a step towards our goal of ensuring that this country works for everyone, and not just the élite.

This is not just about the EU, it is about how we run this country, and about the fact that we can run this country better for the benefit of everybody in the EU rather than out of the EU.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged eu | 12 Comments

Vince on the Government’s “Road to Brexit” plans

By The Voice | Sun 11th February 2018 - 1:00 pm

Vince summed up in a tweet what many people are thinking about the Government’s Brexit plans and yet another attempt to show that they actually know what they are doing.

Ministers to set out “road to Brexit” in series of speeches. Probably a series of different roads to different Brexits. Hammond doesn’t want to leave his driveway. Boris will have too many pints with Nigel before setting out. Theresa May’s sat nav has broken down. #ExitfromBrexit https://t.co/5yxHGsGBlS

— Vince Cable (@vincecable) February 11, 2018

Please someone make that a cartoon.

He also had this to say on the comments by Anna Soubry and Chukka Umunna on the Andrew Marr Show that MPs could vote down a Brexit deal that wasn’t good for the country.

Posted in News | Also tagged anna soubry, chuka umunna and vince cable | 9 Comments

Brexit starts to look very, very scary

By The Voice | Wed 7th February 2018 - 9:56 pm

Leave voting areas of the UK are amongst the worst hit in the Government’s own analysis of the impact of Brexit.

Staying in the single market, which the Government refuses to do, would see a 3% fall in GDP in the North East. That is best case scenario. If we crash out with no deal, that hard-hit area of the country stands to lose 16% of GDP.

Similarly in the West Midlands, no deal amounts to a 13% fall in GDP.

Here’s the full analysis:

Tom Brake said:

This is a damning outlook for Britain. The Tories are putting everything on the line because they do not care about the lives and livelihoods of the people of the UK.

The government need to start being clear what they are fighting for. They are still keeping no deal on the table despite how crippling it would be to the regional economy.

People did not vote to make themselves poorer. They should be allowed a vote on the final deal and a chance to exit from Brexit.

Willie Rennie looked at the impact on Scotland and across the UK and accused the Conservatives of putting the public in the firing line;

Posted in News | Also tagged tom brake and willie rennie | 26 Comments

Clever question from Vince shows Brexit threat to NHS

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 7th February 2018 - 8:03 pm

Theresa May’s non-answer to Vince Cable’s question at PMQs today about whether a future trade deal with the US will safeguard the NHS could end up as being one of the turning points of the Brexit debate.

One of the huge advantages of the EU is that you have a lot more clout if you approach a protectionist like Trump with 27 of your mates rather than if you show up on your own.

Watch the exchange here:

The text is below:

Sir Vince Cable

The Prime Minister knows that one of the key objectives of American trade negotiators in any future deal after Brexit is to secure access for American companies to do business in the NHS. Will she give an absolute guarantee that the NHS will be excluded from the scope of those negotiations? Will she also confirm that she has made it absolutely clear to President Trump in her conversations with him that the NHS is not for sale?

The Prime Minister

We are starting the discussions with the American Administration, first of all looking at what we can already do to increase trade between the US and the United Kingdom—even before the possibility of any free trade agreement. The right hon. Gentleman does not know what the American Administration are going to say about their requirements for that free trade agreement. We will go into those negotiations to get the best possible deal for the United Kingdom.

The BBC’s Norman Smith felt that this would not be the end of the matter.

Posted in News | Also tagged featured, NHS and vince cable | 9 Comments

Vince: Dear Jeremy, Stop supporting Tory Brexit and give the people a say

By The Voice | Sun 4th February 2018 - 1:25 pm

Vince Cable has written to Jeremy Corbyn to ask him to put the Labour party in line with its own supporters and support a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

Here is the text n full:

Jeremy Corbyn
Leader of HM Opposition
House of Commons
London, SW1A 0AA

2nd February 2018

Dear Jeremy,

I am writing to you about Brexit, because I was dismayed by your interview with Andrew Marr last Sunday, when you reiterated your personal objection to letting the British people have their say on the Conservatives’ Brexit deal.

There is now significant momentum behind demands for the people to have the final say. Repeated polls show a substantial majority of people are in favour of a public vote. The most recent ICM survey showed a 16-point lead in favour.

Moreover, the vast majority of your own supporters want this referendum – 78% according to an authoritative study by Queen Mary University, London. We know most of your Parliamentary party feel similarly. Surely it is time for Labour to join the campaign rather than continue to support Theresa May’s pursuit of a damaging hard Brexit.

As the leak of the Department for Exiting the European Union’s impact assessment shows, there is no form of Brexit that will see British workers and their families better off than if we remain within the EU.

You will have noted that Yanis Varoufakis – among many others from your own democratic socialist tradition – endorsing a similar conclusion this week, with strong support for the Single Market.

You have energised young people to get engaged in politics, which is a significant achievement. But with three quarters of young people under the age of 25 opposed to leaving the EU, they will be left disillusioned if you do not help the fight to secure them the option of an exit from Brexit.

Posted in News | Also tagged jeremy corbyn and vince cable | 23 Comments

LibLink: Layla Moran: There are no winners from Brexit’s nuclear option

By NewsHound | Sun 4th February 2018 - 11:55 am

Layla Moran has been writing for the New European on the problems that exiting Euratom, the organisation founded in 1957 to create a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe.

She said:

The government has said it wants a “close association” with the Euratom Research and Training Programme and will seek open trade arrangements for nuclear goods. Both laudable ambitions – but this could all be best resolved by remaining in Euratom instead of creating uncertainty and seeking to negotiate what will certainly be a second rate option. In the meantime, the brilliant nuclear scientists from the EU, working together with their UK colleagues at places like Culham in Oxfordshire, on vital nuclear fusion research, are left in limbo. Some of these people, taking their precious skills with them, have already begun to drift away from the UK.

Then there is the issue of medical radioisotopes. As Mike Galsworthy explained in theNew European last week, these nuclear materials are used in cancer treatments and have very short half-lives, so any delays at borders would diminish the number of doses available. Those in the medical industry are deeply concerned.

What could be more pressing than making sure cancer patients still get treated? Well, it seems that, once again, keeping the fractious Tory party together through insistence on delivering a hard Brexit trumps the national interest.

The Government is keen to play this down, and accuses those who raise it as scaremongers, but the industry needs more than just assurances from the Government that a ‘close relationship’ will be achievable. Industry experts suggest it could take up to seven years to negotiate a treaty as wide-ranging as Euratom so I fail to see how we are going to get this finished in time.

Posted in LibLink and News | Also tagged euratom, layla moran and The New European | Leave a comment

Vince on Marr: Corbyn under “tremendous pressure” to support Lib Dems on referendum on Brexit deal

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 4th February 2018 - 10:21 am

Vince was on Andrew Marr this morning. He talked about how public opinion was turning in favour of a referendum on the Brexit deal and that Jeremy Corbyn would come under “tremendous pressure” to stop colluding with the Tories and back a referendum on the Brexit deal. He made the point that most Labour MPs and Labour supporters opposed the Tories’ hard Brexit position.

Jeremy Corbyn will come under “enormous pressure” to back second #Brexit referendum, Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable predicts #Marr https://t.co/9Voepf4vh3 pic.twitter.com/22BUTanJih

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) February 4, 2018

He spoke about how the political upheaval in wake of Brexit presents opportunities for the Party. He highlighted how the. Lib Dems expanding and was attracting a higher proportion of young members than Labour and doing well in Council by-elections. We were in a good place:

I am leading a party that is fundamentally right, united and clear on the critical issue of the day and we are winning the public argument that have a vote on the final deal.

He was also keen to show that we have a wide-ranging policy agenda, talking about his work on homelessness over Christmas and his quest to tackle inequality.

He said that we will be launching a new report on health policy tomorrow which will present a set of proposals relating to financial needs of health service. He predicted that a lot of people will find that package very attractive.

He wasn’t giving away the details but he said that it is built around the idea that we had to have a dedicated form of taxation for the health service.

Posted in News | Also tagged andrew marr show and vince cable | 5 Comments

Why we need a vote on the deal – and include 16-year-olds

By Lord Roger Roberts | Thu 1st February 2018 - 3:10 pm

This is the speech Lord Robert’s gave in the Lords yesterday.

We need to confirm Brexit or otherwise, and we do that by voting. We voted in the referendum. People will say that we had one vote—that the people voted and made their voices heard—but it is unusual for people to rely on just one referendum.

In Wales, we had a referendum on Welsh devolution way back in 1979, when 20% of the people of Wales voted for devolution. Some years later, just over 50% voted for it, but people had changed substantially …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged #EURef and vote on deal | 18 Comments

LibLink: Vince Cable: With 100 Lib Dem peers, Brexiters are coming on to our turf

By NewsHound | Wed 31st January 2018 - 1:30 pm

Vince Cable has written for Politics Home about what the Lib Dem peers hope to achieve with the EU Withdrawal Bill:

He summarises where we are. As public opinion turns against Brexit, Labour just wants to make it more extreme:

This is why Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement this weekend that the “ship has sailed” on staying in the EU is so bizarre. At best, this shows he does not have the stomach for the fight; at worst, it reveals what many of us have long suspected given his decades of Parliamentary opposition to the EU – that he wanted out all along.

Either way,

…

Posted in News | Also tagged vince cable | 22 Comments

From our Lords Correspondent: the Government see sense, and the Brexit Bill comes…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 29th January 2018 - 8:05 am

Last week saw the fallout from the previous week’s defeat of the Government over the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill and, all credit to the Minister, Lord Ahmed of Wimbledon, he had returned with a series of amendments designed to remedy the Bill’s original flaws. At the forefront of the cross-Party collaboration were Sharon Bowles and Susan Kramer, both of whom bring vast amounts of expertise to the table. As Sharon Bowles explained;

When we started out with the Bill, there was no policy in Part 2, yet it gave sweeping powers

…

Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged house of lords, money laundering, sharon bowles and susan kramer | Leave a comment

Labour “betraying members and parliamentary base” by opposing single market membership

By The Voice | Sun 28th January 2018 - 4:56 pm

Jeremy Corbyn told the Andrew Marr Show this morning that Labour did not favour the UK staying in the single market. Will Labour members, who overwhelmingly want to do so now realise that Corbyn is not going to deliver what they want? A Queen Mary University study showed that 85% of Labour members want to stay in the single market. There is even higher support, 87% for staying in the customs union. 78% want the public to have a final say on the Brexit deal. Corbyn ruled that out too.

Vince Cable had this to say:

As has long been suspected,

…

Posted in News | Also tagged jeremy corbyn, labour and single market | 50 Comments

Ben Stoneham writes: Lib Dem Lords will hold Government to account on EU Withdrawal Bill

By Ben Stoneham | Sat 27th January 2018 - 10:00 am

The first major stage of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill will reach the House of Lords next week. I thought this would a good time to explain what the next few weeks will look like in this often ignored corner of Westminster.

Second Reading

The Second Reading of the EU Withdrawal Bill will take place early next week. This is a chance for peers to discuss the issues in the Bill and the processes that the Bill, if passed, would enable – namely, the transcribing of EU law into UK law.

The Second Reading stage is just the first of many in the Lords, and it is not where the bulk of work is done on attempting to change and improve the Bill. Unlike in the Commons the Lords do not traditionally vote on the Second Reading of a Bill.

Some have accused the Liberal Democrat leadership in the Lords, along with the Labour leadership, of guillotining debate on the Bill because we are not supporting Lord Adonis’s call to extend the Second Reading from 2 days to 4 days. To be very clear about this, I, along with my Labour counterpart, secured early starts on both days of debate next week, giving us an extra 7 hours of debate during Second Reading. This stage is not where the real work is done on scrutinising the detail of the Bill.

Committee Stage

This is where we will start to consider a whole raft of amendments to the Bill. We will have many cross-party amendments and we have many Liberal Democrat amendments on issues including on the Single Market and Customs Union, getting people a final say on the deal and clearing up the attempted Tory power grab through Henry VIII powers. There will be at least 10 days of Committee Stage on the Bill – this is about 70 hours – and the Liberal Democrats will be fighting for more days if more are required.

Posted in News | Also tagged house of lords | 6 Comments

WATCH: Wera Hobhouse on why Brexit is a bad idea

By The Voice | Wed 24th January 2018 - 1:25 pm

This week, Bath MP Wera Hobhouse spoke in a parliamentary debate on a petition calling on the Government to walk away from the Brexit talks with no deal. As ever, she did so with passion and wit.

Enjoy.

Posted in News | Also tagged wera hobhouse | 7 Comments

Tom Brake: CBI pours cold water on Govenrment’s Brexit plans

By The Voice | Sun 21st January 2018 - 1:58 pm

After Carolyn Fairbairn, the Director General of the CBI, called for the UK to remain in a customs union with the EU, our Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake said that this poured cold water on the Government’s plans:

This is an important intervention from the CBI, and pours yet more cold water on the government’s idea that they can rustle up a trade deal that in anyway compares to the economic benefits of being in the EU and maintain the red lines they have set.

The Conservatives are making a monumental mess of Brexit. The approach Theresa May has adopted so far is creating mass uncertainty for

…

Posted in News | Also tagged tom brake | 11 Comments

Responding to Labour Remain

By Mark Argent | Thu 18th January 2018 - 5:01 pm

Recently a friend and Liberal Democrat activist showed me an email from Labour Remain — formed in the last few weeks and claiming significant support. This comes on the back of a survey showing that 78% of Labour members disagree with Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition to a referendum on the terms of Brexit. How should we respond?

Brexit is a profound threat to British values, the economy and the very integrity of the United Kingdom. In that sense it needs us all to pull together.

The country is in a crisis. We have been so intertwined with the rest of Europe, for so long, that the referendum result has had a deeply destructive effect on public life. Parliament seems paralised. Andrew Adonis has written of a Brexit-induced “nervous breakdown” in Whitehall. The Conservatives and Labour seem massively dysfunctional. There are stories of moderate councillors in both parties being de-selected. Most of the pro-Remain majority in the Commons is silent or vanquished. My excitement over the formation of Labour Remain is more than a little tempered by the lurch to the Left in their recent National Executive Committee elections and stories of MPs being threatened with de-selection. Faced with Brexit, this has all the wisdom of re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We need to think differently.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged eu referendum, labour and remain voters | 38 Comments

William Wallace writes: Stopping Brexit isn’t enough – we have to help the left behind

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 17th January 2018 - 11:57 am

Larry Elliott in the Guardian the other day declared that the Remainers don’t have any answers to the problems of the Left Behind in Britain. He didn’t bother to claim that the Leavers had any answer either. Their commitment to deregulation (with abolition of the Working Time Directive one of their first targets) will hit marginal workers in insecure jobs; their hopes of cutting public spending will increase the gap between rich and poor and starve education and health of resources.

But what do those of us who support Remain offer the Left Behind? Remember that the highest votes for the Leave campaign came in England’s declining industrial towns, and in the county and seaside towns that have also lost out from economic and social transformation. Middlesborough, Skegness, Canvey Island and Wisbech all returned over 80% of votes to leave. It was easy for the Leave campaign to encourage them to blame the globalised ‘liberal elite’ for their woes; they have lost out from globalization, and feel patronised and neglected. Some of their grievances are justified; others are not. The selling off of social housing and the incursion of private landlords into what were once Council housing estates is not a consequence of European rules or of immigration. But the loss of the stable employment that their parents and grandparents had IS a consequence of open frontiers and technological change, and successive governments of all parties have failed to invest enough – in education and training, in housing, in infrastructure, in supporting the growth of new local entrepreneurs – to spread the prosperity of the South-East and the metropolitan cities across the rest of the country.

Liberal Democrat peers tackled these issues in a working party over the past year, the report of which is attached here. We have submitted a resolution for the Spring conference to take the debate within the party further. Our analysis, and our proposals, cut across several policy areas. Greater investment in education and training, from pre-school to further education, is central. Long-term finance for local start-ups, of the sort that the British Business Bank was intended to provide but which also needs nurturing at regional and local level, is essential. A revival of social housing is urgent. Most difficult of all, we have to find a way of rebuilding political trust: a revival of local democracy within communities that feel abandoned by all parties and agencies of government, and that see politics as a game conducted by well-off and well-educated people in London.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, inequality and the left behind | 33 Comments

Two cheers for Liberalism: Thoughts from Torbay

By Lee Howgate | Wed 17th January 2018 - 10:25 am

What will 2018 bring for my party? That’s a question every local party Chair has probably asked themselves already, as we paused to reflect on the turbulence and mayhem (no pun intended) of 2017. Local elections will be on many party officers’ minds, as it is in my neck of the woods, where work on finalising our pool of candidates for 2019 is already underway. The prospect of another General Election- seen by the bookies as more likely in 2019 than 2018- will never be far away. And Brexit will muddle on while the contradictions of the process become ever plainer to see.

In my Christmas stocking was Nick Clegg’s “How to Stop Brexit”- a gift from someone who truly knows me well. No sooner had I read it then a new hero emerged to back the Lib Dem call for a referendum on the Brexit deal – in the unlikely form of Nigel Farage.

If ever you wanted proof that the wheels are wobbling on the Brexit bandwagon, look no further.

Farage, (somehow overlooked in the New Year’s Honours…) has spotted something that most Brexiteers have yet to grasp: the need to prepare for Parliament rejecting the government’s Brexit plans on the deal. He sees, quite rightly, that there is every prospect of Parliament taking back control and refusing a deal that would leave Britain bound by rules it could no longer influence, with reduced trade and uncertain co-operation on everything from nuclear safety to counter-terrorism.

And we know his simple solution- no deal and the disaster of rupturing access to our biggest export market overnight.

That’s why 2018 has to be the year we fight Brexit. As David Davis said “A democracy that cannot change its mind ceases to be a democracy”. Plenty of folk thought that taking back control of our fishing grounds, ending payments to Brussels and having an extra £350m a week sounded like a good deal. As these turn out to be delusions, we should be brave enough to say let’s let the nation think again.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged liberal democrats | 26 Comments

The Expiry Date of a Referendum Result

By Wera Hobhouse MP | Mon 15th January 2018 - 4:45 pm

There are two democratic principles that, taken together, demand a referendum on the deal. The first is that a democratic decision should be enforced, and the second is that no democratic decision has an indefinite mandate.

The first principle, taken alone, is being used by the Conservatives and Labour to oppose a referendum on the deal. This is the argument:

In 2015 the Conservatives won the general election promising a referendum. The 2015 parliament voted to hold this referendum. In 2016 a referendum was held. In 2017 the same parliament voted to trigger Article 50.

The process has constitutional legitimacy at every stage.

What …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged eu referendum | 62 Comments

Fighting Brexit: public opinion and cross-party co-operation

By Nick Hopkinson | Mon 15th January 2018 - 12:44 pm

In the previous two posts in this series, I examined the legislative process and prospects for the EU negotiations. Our challenge is how to shape public opinion and move parliamentarians from other political parties to build an overwhelming national will to stop this Brexit madness, and in so doing attract more support for ourselves.

We can still stop Brexit. We can withdraw unilaterally our intention to leave the EU before 29 March 2019. Lord John Kerr, former head of the Diplomatic Service, has said as much, whilst Professor Sir Alan Ashwood has argued it “takes two to tango.”. UKlegalfuture …

Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Also tagged campaign strategy and labour party | 14 Comments

Op-eds

Vince Cable writes…Labour and Fiscal Rules (Vince Cable)
Josh Babarinde writes…The Lib Dem Summer of Strategy (Josh Babarinde)
Mathew on Monday: “We need to be bold” (Mathew Hulbert)
As a party we must be better defined for the 2029 general election (Chris Bowers)
From national averages to local realities: inequality in our communities (Tom Walker)

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Josh Babarinde writes…The Lib Dem Summer of Strategy

Alison Suttie writes: Thank you to our volunteers

What’s going on with party strategy?

A strange but welcome feeling

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