Tag Archives: brexit

Mark Argent

Lessons (and warning) from Trump

By Mark Argent | Wed 21st December 2016 - 11:55 am

The day after the US electoral college chose Donald Trump to be their new president, Huffington Post ran an article on his use of digital campaigning, where Brad Parscale, the digital director of the campaign explains:

We never fought for the popular vote. There was no economic reason, and there was no reason based off the system of our constitution to do so. We needed to win 270 , and to do so we needed to win in certain states, and we needed to target registered voters that had a low propensity to vote and a propensity to vote for Donald Trump if they come.

This was done by highly-targeted and personalised messages to key voters in key states.

Questionable behaviour by the FBI over Hilary Clinton’s emails, and whatever it is the Russians actually did may have contributed, but Parscale’s point is that very effective targeting gets results.

Part of me is wincing. The targeting is entirely legal, but also strains the definition of democracy — not least because Hilary Clinton had 2.8 million more votes than Trump (and roughly the same number of votes as Barack Obama had in 2012): the problem is that she had the votes in the wrong places. Most worryingly, this means that the voters-who-matter end up being a small number in a few places: marginalising the vast majority.

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Richard Robinson

Another Article 50 court case (and Article 127): why we should take notice

By Richard Robinson | Mon 19th December 2016 - 11:10 am

Just as the Supreme Court Article 50 hearings finished, another two potential cases appeared which could affect the government’s Brexit negotiating strategy, both of which address significant legal uncertainties remaining.

The first is a case developed by Jolyon Maugham QC that was crowdfunded in 48 hours last weekend. It seeks to resolve two legal uncertainties, i) whether Article 50 is indeed irrevocable (something that was not an issue in the recent Supreme Court case), and ii) whether the UK would automatically withdraw from the single market or European Economic Area (EEA) when Article 50 is triggered. The separate EEA Agreement was ratified by the UK in the EEA Act 1993. The case is being filed in the Irish courts, asking them to refer it directly to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), a process of at least 9 months.

Article 50 does not indicate whether or not its application is irrevocable, so it may be revocable following customary international law. Not surprisingly, David Davis sounded unsure when asked by the Brexit Select Committee! Only the ECJ can decide as the final arbiter of the EU treaties. If Article 50 is found to be revocable then we have a unilateral legal basis for implementing any second referendum decision to remain in the EU after the deal is agreed.

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Richard Robinson

Article 50 in the Supreme Court: what we should do next?

By Richard Robinson | Sat 17th December 2016 - 11:30 am

It is just over a week since the Supreme Court Article 50 hearings finished and all the excitement that went with it. For those of you who were fighting a by-election, the case was not a rerun of the High Court hearings as interventions were heard from all parts of the United Kingdom. The decision could have fundamental ramifications on the relationship between Westminster and the devolved administrations on top of the decision on Article 50 and the extent of the Royal Prerogative.

No one can realistically predict the result and I, as a non-lawyer, will not even try. But we must decide how we should respond to it. I list some of the possible outcomes below. How we challenge the government will vary dramatically in each case and needs careful thinking through now before the Supreme Court announces its decision before the government moves quickly to meet its March 2017 deadline if we are to respond quickly.

  1. The UK Government wins and no legislation is needed to trigger Article 50, i.e. a reversal of the High Court decision.
  2. A very short bill to trigger Article 50 has to go through parliament, drafted so as to reduce the chances of amendment (and probably already prepared).
  3. Substantive legislation is required to trigger Article 50 modifying existing legislation – this could more easily be amended to bind the government’s negotiating mandate.
  4. On top of either 2 or 3, the government is also required to consult the devolved assemblies (the Sewel Convention) to agree legislative consequences on the devolved administrations. How should we respond if no agreement is forthcoming?
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Caron Lindsay

What’s the sensible thing to do when you are at the top of a cliff?

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 16th December 2016 - 12:58 pm

Every day, we learn something else which proves that the Remain campaign was right all along. The Leavers brushed off any concerns as scaremongering but, in fact, the hit our economy will take if Brexit goes ahead is huge. We see from the Autumn Statement that we’ll be about £200 billion worse off by 2021. This week, a report highlighted that inward investment from US companies will drop like a stone. From the Independent:

Nearly 40 per cent of US businesses with a base in the UK say they are considering moving elsewhere in the EU because of Brexit, according to a report, warning that the vote to leave could also hit trade relations between Britain and America.

The survey by international law firm Gowling WLG also found that two-thirds of the 533 US firms polled said the UK’s vote to the leave the EU was already impacting investments choices in the country.

It’s not just the economic uncertainty. Elections in France and Germany could dramatically change the outcome of our negotiations with the EU and it would be prudent to wait until they are over before invoking Article 50. There really is no rush. After all, Governments don’t enact everything in their manifestos in their first year in power. That would be impossible.

All we have in terms of a Brexit from the Government, six months on, is that Brexit is both brexit and red, white and blue. You get clearer vision if you go out in the fog wearing sunglasses.

Despite all of this, Theresa May is determined to invoke Article 50 by 31st March regardless. This has more to do with keeping her own brexiteers quiet than what is safe and responsible for the country. She wants to get in there before the actual consequences start to hit and people get nervous – and change their minds.

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The Voice

Clegg to launch Brexit security paper

By The Voice | Wed 14th December 2016 - 10:30 pm

Tomorrow morning, Nick Clegg will launch the latest in his series of papers looking at the main issues around Brexit.

He will be covering the issue of security and will look at things like the loss of the European Arrest Warrant and the impact on things like child custody cases and criminal record checks.

This is the fifth paper he has put together as part of his Brexit Challenge to the Government since his appointment as Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union in the Summer. The first three can be found here.

He started off in July with a paper that looked at the issues around access to the single market.

Then he looked at what Brexit means for the UK’s trading relationships. 

In October, he outlined what Brexit would mean for the food and drinks sector.

Then last month he tackled the big issue of freedom of movement, saying:

Few people understand the complexities of our relationship with the EU as Nick. He has seen it from inside the European Commission when he worked for the UK’s Trade Commissioner and negotiated trade deals on behalf of the EU with places like China. Then he was an MEP and his five years as Deputy PM gives him an unrivalled experience of how these things work.

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Joe Bourke

UK-Irish post Brexit relations

By Joe Bourke | Wed 14th December 2016 - 5:18 pm

Malta assumes the presidency of the EU at the start of 2017. Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, in setting out his priorities, has said the ‘Irish Border’ Issue must be settled before Brexit talks can begin in earnest, injecting some urgency given that talks are expected  to get underway in April next year.

Helpfully, the House of Lords EU select committee published a report this week titled Brexit: UK-Irish Relations. The report notes the special ties between the UK and Ireland and the friendship that has developed as the Northern Ireland peace process has advanced. Also noting that Ireland’s common membership of the EU has been one of the foundations of this close relationship.

The report draws attention to: the serious economic implications of Brexit for Ireland, North and South; the consequences for the Irish land border of potential restrictions to the free movement of goods and people; the
implications for the Common Travel Area (CTA) and for the special status of UK and Irish citizens in each other’s countries, including the right of people born in Northern Ireland to Irish (and therefore EU) citizenship; the potential impact on political stability in Northern Ireland; and the challenge to the
institutional structure for North-South cooperation on the island of Ireland, and East-West relations between the UK and Ireland, established under the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Roger Roberts: The future of our European citizenship

By NewsHound | Wed 14th December 2016 - 1:25 pm

Roger Roberts is pressing the government on the future of European citizenship this afternoon in a question in the House of Lords.

In an article for Politics Home, he sets out the issues at stake:

Our citizenship as members of the EU, is totally dependent upon the United Kingdom remaining a member of the EU. Once that is lost we, also, are denied that citizenship. There is a move in the EU Parliament to make citizenship available on an individual basis. We apply, pay our fee, and are granted a form of EU citizenship. The problem is that there can be few advantages – how does one person enjoy EU laws on Climate change and his neighbour not? How does one member of the family enjoy freedom of travel whilst the rest are left standing at the airport?

Over half the UK’s population were born after the UK joined the Union in January 1973. They were born as citizens of the EU – a birth right. The rest of us, already born, acquired that citizenship. Now that status risks being torn away from us. That is why I am raising this with the Government today. There is much that is still unclear about the Government’s plans for Brexit but they should clarify the position of the millions of people born 1973 that have always been European.

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Stuart Bonar

EU citizenship post-Brexit: one step closer?

By Stuart Bonar | Mon 12th December 2016 - 1:05 pm

 

Guy Verhofstadt is a hero in our unheroic age. Whilst confusion and fear over Brexit stalk the lives of many, Theresa May hides behind the camouflage of providing “no running commentary” – helpful cover for a government with no plan and no idea – and European Commission chief negotiator Michel Barnier understandably asserts that he cannot negotiate a British exit from the EU until Britain confirms it actually wants to exit the EU.

Into this vacuum steps Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian MEP and former prime minister who heads the Liberal group in the European Parliament. Relatively quietly, it is Guy who has put the first concrete proposal onto the exit talks agenda: opt-in EU citizenship post-Brexit for Brits who want it. It is something I have been making a pitch for here and elsewhere for the last couple of months, including two articles (here and here) in The New European newspaper.

In the last few days, Guy has made this commitment: “I, as Brexit negotiator for the Parliament, will ensure that it is included in the Parliament’s negotiating mandate.” With a single, decisive act, he has done more to include Britain’s pro-Europeans in the Brexit process than our own government has attempted in six months.

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Caron Lindsay

Latest Brexit poll shows that Liberal Democrats are on the right side of the argument

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 11th December 2016 - 10:25 am

Back in August, I said that I couldn’t support the Open Britain organisation (the evolution of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign) because it was too enthusiastic about restrictions on free movement of people and because it wasn’t calling for a referendum on any Brexit deal.

I still can’t sign up to them for the same reasons. However, I do accept that there are areas of common ground between our organisations. This weekend they have conducted some very useful research which shows that half of Leave voters are not prepared to be a penny worse off as a result of leaving the EU.

That YouGov poll, conducted this week, also obliterates the Leave majority. When asked how they would vote if the referendum took place tomorrow, 44% said Leave and 44% said Remain. That is a dramatic reversal of fortune.

Ed Miliband writes about this in today’s Observer:

This chimes with the experience in my constituency, where seven in 10 voted to leave. Many of them were desperate for a new beginning for themselves and their families. The government will rightly be subject to an almighty backlash from Leave voters if it makes decisions that make them far poorer and leaves less money for public services. Having voted for a better future, for them this would be the ultimate betrayal.

The evidence is already there that people will be worse off after Brexit. And this isn’t just Europhile hyperbole. It’s actual government fact as we saw in the Autumn Statement.   This is where Miliband’s article is so depressing. What on earth is the problem with giving the people the chance to determine for themselves whether the final deal on offer is in line with their expectations? What could possibly be more democratic?

Let’s look at it this way. If you decide you are going to buy a house, you state your intention to do so by putting in an offer. If it is accepted, you can still pull out if you don’t like the terms of the sale. The same thing applies to Brexit. If people realise the true extent of the cost, and that the stuff they were told was “Project Fear” was actually an underestimation, then they may well choose to reconsider their decision. The You Gov research proves that.

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The Voice

A longer read for the weekend: Baroness Kate Parminter’s Burntwood Lecture on Brexit and the Environment

By The Voice | Sun 11th December 2016 - 8:55 am

This week Liberal Democrat peer Kate Parminter became only the third woman (after Sara Parkin (1997) and Professor Julia Slingo (2013) to deliver the prestigious Burntwood Lecture to the Institution of Environmental Sciences.. She spoke of the challenges facing the environment from Brexit in a 45 minute lecture entitled “Separation Anxiety.” Read her full lecture below:

It’s an honour to have been asked to present the Burntwood Lecture this year, and to follow in the footsteps of such an illustrious parade of former speakers. Many of your previous guests have been eminent scientists or fearless campaigners; I stand here tonight to deliver this lecture (pause) as a politician. That’s not inappropriate, however: Lord Burntwood, the IES’ first Chairman, whose name the lecture commemorates, was himself a member of parliament and a minister in Clement Attlee’s Labour government. But more importantly, it’s not inappropriate because the great challenge of our time, the subject on which I’ve been asked to speak, is itself primarily political: Brexit.

How the United Kingdom manages its withdrawal from the European Union will shape this country’s future for decades. In the absence of any clarity from the government over what it sees as the final destination of this process, I hope I can enlist everyone here in helping me to draw up the broad approach the UK should adopt in dealing with environmental policy post-Brexit. I’m going to tell you what I think, and I hope you’ll respond at the end with thoughts of your own.

There are two competing visions for the future of the UK outside the EU. One – hinted at by some of the supporters of the Leave side during the referendum, but never fully articulated – is of a country free of the kind of burdensome regulations they liked to pretend emanated from Brussels; a fleet-footed, buccaneering, free-trading nation spotting openings in the global marketplace and exploiting them ruthlessly. This vision implies a deregulated low-cost low-tax low-value economy – with clear implications for environmental policy. In May this year, for example, George Eustice, the farming minister, attacked – quotes – ‘spirit-crushing’ EU directives, including, explicitly, the birds and habitats directives – and went on to criticise the use of the precautionary principle as the basis of EU legislation, a criticism echoed by many of his colleagues. You may remember that this kind of approach echoes Conservative ministers’ attempts, during the coalition government, to water down or scrap environmental regulations through such initiatives as the Red Tape Challenge and the balance of competences review – attempts which, happily, Liberal Democrat ministers ensured came to nothing.

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Scott Craig

Parliament needs to stand up to the Government on Article 50

By Scott Craig | Wed 7th December 2016 - 2:30 pm

Are there any Parliamentarians left in Parliament?  That was the question that kept occurring to me as I watched the submissions to the Supreme Court in the Article 50 case this week.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy an interesting court case as much as the next person. The Supreme Court will do an excellent job determining the law, and it has every right to do so. The problem is that it should not have been necessary for the court to consider the matter in the first place.

Parliament alone has the right to determine what the division of power between itself and the executive should be. As it has not acted to overrule the government’s claim that triggering Article 50 is an executive power, Parliament has implicitly accepted that the power is a prerogative. 

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems to vote against Article 50 “stitch up”

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 7th December 2016 - 1:30 pm

Unsurprisingly, the Liberal Democrats have confirmed that the party’s MPs will vote against any motion which backs the unconditional invocation of Article 50. Tonight’s vote will be a test for the SNP, too. Will they back the Liberal Democrat amendment calling for:

 the Prime Minister commit to a referendum on the final deal following the negotiations and prior to the UK departing the EU.

Tim Farron said:

We cannot support a parliamentary stitch up that would deny the people a vote on the final deal.

An amended motion would fail to include any meaningful commitment from the Conservative Brexit government to produce the equivalent of a White or Green Paper setting out its position on such fundamental questions as to whether it wants Britain to remain in the Single Market.

I call on the Labour Party to remember it calls itself the Official Opposition. It should not cave in to Conservative attempts to deny the public a final say on the most important question facing the country in a generation. It is appalling that a so-called opposition could allow itself to be muzzled by the Government on an issue that will face this country for years to come.

It is now clear that the Liberal Democrats are the real opposition to the Conservative Brexit government, striving to keep Britain open, tolerant and united.

At the moment, the SNP seems to be revelling in the constitutional mayhem. Willie Rennie called on them to back a referendum on the deal:

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Ashley Cartman

There are issues more important than Europe

By Ashley Cartman | Wed 7th December 2016 - 10:25 am

David Cameron famously told his party to ‘stop banging on about Europe’, are we in the Liberal Democrats in danger of doing the same? I fear we are.

With our seemingly exclusive focus on Europe we are missing a more fundamental concern for British voters, to paraphrase Bill Clinton’s campaign message ‘it’s the economy stupid!’

An Ashcroft poll conducted in September this year showed that although most voters agreed that negotiating the best Brexit deal possible was the top priority for the country as a whole when it came to issues facing themselves and their families it came fourth behind tackling the cost of living, improving the NHS and getting the economy moving. This doesn’t surprise me.

Like many I was dumbfounded by the result in June. For the first time I felt there were huge sections of our society that I neither knew nor understood. It would be easy to write off the 17,410,742 who voted to leave as xenophobic, racist, ignorant or just conned by an anti EU media establishment. That would be a mistake.

I have spent the last few months thinking about why, when to me the arguments for remain were clear, we as a nation voted to leave.  My belief is that confused by a torrent of dubious facts from both sides a significant proportion of the electorate assessed the ‘state of nation’ and concluded that it simply wasn’t good enough. With nothing to lose they voted accordingly.

Should we really be so surprised by this? Faced with falling real wages, declining social mobility, greater financial insecurity and government policy that rescued the banks but let the steel industry wither it really isn’t that shocking that so many voted as they did.

As Liberal Democrats we are certainly doing a great job articulating the publics concerns about Brexit. Since June we have become the rallying point for those deeply worried about the implications of a hard Brexit and a recent YouGov poll  showed that we could gain significant electoral advantage in the event of a snap general election. 

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Paul Sagar

Brexit and the denial of democracy

By Paul Sagar | Mon 5th December 2016 - 7:01 pm

 

No sooner had Sarah Olney swept to her dramatic victory in Richmond Park, than some panicking Brexiteers began peddling a ‘clever’ rhetorical question on social media. It went roughly like this:  “With a candidate that didn’t win the popular vote on only a 53% turnout, shouldn’t Tim Farron be calling for a second by-election?!” The ‘joke’, of course, is an attempt to claim that Lib Dem attitudes towards the referendum are hypocritical, or self-undermining.

A moment’s thought, however, brings home that any alleged comparison between Richmond Park and the Brexit result is really rather silly. More interestingly, however, seeing why it is silly points us towards a striking fact about a now prominent wing of the Brexit position: how deeply undemocratic it has become.

We can see this by first stating a blindingly obvious truth: that there will be a second vote in the Richmond Park constituency. It will happen when the next general election is called. (And then after that, and after that, and after that again, whenever there is a parliamentary poll.) The Liberal Democrats are entirely prepared to have their victory contested, and potentially overturned. That’s just in the DNA of parliamentary democracy. No Lib Dem thinks of denying it.

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Richard Morris

Please stop saying people don’t vote against their economic interests. They do it quite deliberately, all the time.

By Richard Morris | Sun 4th December 2016 - 10:39 am

I’m hearing the same argument uttered over and over again  – ironically by both sides  – in the Brexit debate.

Remain supporters keep saying ‘no-one in Britain voted to be worse off in the referendum campaign’, on the presumption that folk don’t vote against what they believe is in their economic interest.

Leavers, for the same reason, believe that they’ll get a great deal in their Brexit negotiations because ‘it’s in the remaining EU member countries’ economic interests to do so’

Both sides are of course wrong. People make quite deliberate decisions against their economic interest every day. The reason why political folk don’t realise this is because they are brought up in a culture of Fiscal and Monetary economics. The real world works rather more like Behavioural Economics.

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Caron Lindsay

How Brexit will harm our NHS and social care

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 30th November 2016 - 10:15 am

So, I’m drifting back to LDV slowly and gradually. My husband is now recovering from his heart surgery at home. It’s still quite incredible to think that only 10 weeks ago, he was enjoying his best health in years. All that changed with what we thought was Flu but turned out to be an infection in his heart which damaged one of his heart valves – a pretty complex one, too. My gratitude to the surgical team who sorted this out is unrivalled.

I have been more scared during this time than I have ever been in my life. That late-night phone call from Intensive Care when they said they needed to take him back into theatre was the point that I thought I really was going to crumble. The election of Donald Trump, terrifying as it is, 24 hours later was far from the most stressful thing I had to face that week.

The frenetic running about to and from the hospital and the intrinsic terror of the situation have now been replaced with a much less stressful but still very busy routine of drugging people, feeding people, cleaning, washing and other elements of domesticity which are a bit of a learning curve for me. My slovenly ways have been replaced by scrubbing everything in sight with anti-bacterial potions.

I tell Bob that I am basing my nursing style on Kathy Bates in Misery. He wasn’t really meant to agree that I was doing that well, but never mind.  Yesterday was a bit of a milestone when he had his first wee walk outside in 9 weeks.

I’m clearly going to be pre-occupied with looking after him for a while yet. The likelihood is that I’m still going to be a bit slow to get back to people  and not really engaged full time in the site until the New Year, so please continue to be patient with me.

My thanks go to the team who have had to do well more than they ever signed up for over the last nine weeks. Without them, there would have been no LDV at all. They have been absolutely brilliant.

I’ve observed much about our NHS and the stresses at its frontline. Bob had the most excellent care in hospital, but it was very clear to us how hard everyone was working and how there was so little give in the system. It’s a theme I will return to. For today, though, I want to think about the effects of Brexit on the NHS. The Leave Campaign’s jolly assertion that leaving the EU would mean £350 million a week extra for the NHS was consigned to history almost before the votes had been counted.

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Stuart Bonar

Want to stay an EU citizen? Now is the time to start lobbying for it

By Stuart Bonar | Sun 27th November 2016 - 10:28 am

It has come sooner than we might have thought. But the first crunch parliamentary vote on Brexit is about to take place. Not in Westminster, but 200 miles to the east, in Brussels. And the British press is waking up to it.

Splashed across the front page of Saturday’s edition of The Times is the news that Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian MEP who leads the Liberal group in the European Parliament, backs the idea of offering EU citizenship directly to Brits who want it post-Brexit. The Guardian and others have reported on it too (if you don’t have access through the paywall).

I first blogged about this idea last month, and wrote about it here in Lib Dem Voice earlier this month after learning that another Liberal MEP, Luxembourg’s Charles Goerens, had started to push for it.

Brexit might not yet happen, but on 8 December MEPs on the Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee will cast the first votes on whether Brits might be able to opt back in to the EU as individuals in the event that it does.

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Bernard Aris

The “Ambassador Farage” episode: Brexiteers, be careful what you wish for!

By Bernard Aris | Fri 25th November 2016 - 2:51 pm

The episode where president-elect Donald Trump twittered that he’d like to get his goodpal Nigel Farage as British ambassador to the US, was a stern lesson to the pro-Brexit-camp in British politics – be careful what you wish for; if you get it, it may turn out to be a nightmare.

The following summary of this episode and the start of Trump’s Transition is mainly based on Dutch newspaper articles: Telegraaf, Financieel Dagblad, Volkskrant, of the past two weeks.

It all started with Mr Farage, being the undisputed first foreign politician to be invited to Trump’s Transition HQ.

Shortly afterwards, in a talkshow on Londons LBC Radio, Mr. Farage said that what president Trump needed was “a good eurosceptic ambassador” in Brussels for the EU and European NATO partners, and he would like to get that job. Another guest on the show, Labour MP Chuka Ummuna, expressed his horror at that idea, to which Farage replied “anything that will diminish or destroy the EU; I don’t care how we do it.”

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Paul Walter

Even George Osborne’s Brexit black hole warning wasn’t high enough

By Paul Walter | Thu 24th November 2016 - 7:15 pm

George Osborne got a lot of stick back in June, when he warned that a Brexit vote would leave a “£30 billion black hole in (the) public finances”. Indeed, his warning resulted in his entire career being shunted into a siding. Crestfallen, he went off to Vietnam to let off steam with an M60 machine gun.

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Arnold Kiel

Opportunities? Brexiteers, please specify

By Arnold Kiel | Wed 23rd November 2016 - 12:39 pm

The motives and backgrounds of leave-voters are by now sufficiently understood to conclude that many of them cannot afford to and would not have voted for becoming substantially and permanently poorer. Some may, but had it been widely understood that Brexit comes at a high economic price for everybody, the result would have been a different one.

Apparently, most leavers dismissed the economic arguments of remain, and instead of asking for better arguments from leave bought the “scaremongering”-claim (admittedly, leave was much better at creating slogans). And this continues: leave already claims victory on the economy after 6 months in which nothing (apart from a 15% devaluation of the country) has happened. Luckily, consumers so far remain complacent and keep spending.

I know the typical response I can expect from Brexiteers: unsubstantiated claims (“see the opportunities”, “champions of free trade”…), denial (“Q3 was good”), fluffy sovereignty-talk (“Brussels”), and pressure (“how dare you not respecting the will of the people?”). Is that all you have got?

May I challenge you to think a little harder? Specify trading opportunities the UK currently misses because of EU membership, which outweigh the losses from leaving the single market. In other words: How and when will you have replaced the benefits of preferential access to 27 EU member states and the EUs’ 53 third-country agreements with higher yielding UK-deals? How and when will you recover the transitional losses? Will the current generation of young people recover from the damage within their professionally active lifetime? No leave-campaigner has ever presented any such case. Can you?

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Paul Carroll

The heart weighs far more than the head

By Paul Carroll | Mon 21st November 2016 - 12:30 pm

please-dont-goIn David Thorpe’s recent post his opening sentence asked: “Ever lost a lover and then spent hours replaying the whole of the time you had together back in your mind?”

This sentence resonated with me and little did I think on the announcement of the referendum result that I would end up doing exactly this.  Being a bit of a news addict I think my initial reaction to the referendum was to find the whole thing quite exciting.  During the campaign it was a standard joke in our house to come home and say ‘I’m an inner today’, followed by the next day of ‘I’m an outer today’.  I researched and thought about the likely economic impact of Brexit.  Researched and tried to distil fact from fiction on immigration and budget contributions.  Still I was undecided. Why, when all the hard evidence pointed to remain?

Then one day I caught a glimpse of the cover article of Der Spiegel with ‘Please Don’t Go’ blazoned across a Union Jack.  Bang! My mind was made up and fixed. The EU is really made of people who wanted us to stay, our neighbours, friends and colleagues.  Europe is in our DNA, literally, even Boris Johnson’s family tree is testament to that.  Yes, we have arguments and sometimes we don’t treat each other particularly well but we are still a family. What were we thinking about? It took that headline to give me that emotional connection to the remain side of the EU debate.

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Scott Craig

Can Parliament vote against Brexit?

By Scott Craig | Wed 16th November 2016 - 5:05 pm

Regardless of the cries of the Brexiteers, the answer is simple. It can, if it wants to. Here’s why;

First and foremost Members of Parliament are representatives, they are not delegates. As representatives, they are free to, and it is their duty to, exercise their own judgement. Members cannot be and should never be prevented from exercising their conscience in casting their votes.

This duty applies in even greater measure to Peers. As (self-proclaimed) trustees of the nation, they must be willing to take decisions counter to the public mood when they consider it to be in the national interest. I cannot …

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“Liberal” means “radical” now. Embrace it.

By Doctor North | Wed 16th November 2016 - 10:04 am

I am a Millennial and I am a Liberal. The former just happened to me, like my skin colour, place of birth and shoe size; I take no pride in it, nor do I feel shame. The latter fact is something I chose for myself, and I am immensely proud of it. I reject hatred and violence as political tools. Why, then, am I writing anonymously?

I teach in a university. In the past few years I have seen more and more of my colleagues deliver lectures in which “liberalism” (not neoliberalism) is used as shorthand for exploitation and racism. Fewer …

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Arnold Kiel

A populist Parliament

By Arnold Kiel | Mon 14th November 2016 - 4:31 pm

 

I am a German citizen and UK resident. I am also a fan, but not a member of the Liberal Democrats.

I appreciate your party’s stance on Brexit, but I urge you to go further:

Stop expressing misguided respect for a misguided referendum result. People want and deserve a better life, and you know Brexit will give them the opposite: Brexit impoverishes, endangers, brutalizes, and kills.

An MP voting with the Government on triggering Article 50 against his or her conscience is worse than Johnson or Farage, because he or she will not only be a populist, but will irreversibly go down in history as a legislating populist. MPs must protect the country and its people from harm, also and especially if self-inflicted.

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Posted in Op-eds | 62 Comments
Michael Berwick-Gooding

According to Article 50, once it has been triggered there is no way back

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Sat 12th November 2016 - 3:00 pm

treatyIt is Liberal Democrat policy to hold a referendum on the terms of Brexit, but I think it is clear from reading Article 50 and the High Court judgment that once we have notified the European Council that we are leaving there is no method to stop us leaving.

Article 50 of the Treaty reads:

  1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
  2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
  3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 42 Comments
Stephen Maxwell

Brexit, Trump, this will keep happening again and again until we realise our own failings as Liberals

By Stephen Maxwell | Fri 11th November 2016 - 5:05 pm

I love being a Liberal. Liberals are smart, we embrace logic and reason and apply it to our everyday lives. Our Liberalism is an international brand, with our liberal friends in many nations, all striving to promote liberty and human rights. We also have a sense of civic duty, which compels us to get involved with politics and seek to try and change the world around us. These are all good things, things that led us to get involved in the first place, however they can also lead us into a self-indulging arrogance that results in an opaque view of the world.

The problem with being a Liberal is that I am too often part of a well-educated, middle class elite, who frequently often mistakes failures or loses with ‘people just not getting it’. We saw it with Brexit. If only the 52% understood they were being lied to – if only they could see past their parochial nationalism – if only they could be more engaged with understanding the arguments and with politics in general. We have now seen it with Trump – how can so many Americans be so stupid?

So let me put across the other side of the coin to my opening statement.

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 86 Comments
Kev Walsh

We already have a solution to the Brexit conundrum

By Kev Walsh | Fri 11th November 2016 - 2:15 pm

As a party we seem to be in a bit of a puzzled place at the moment with regards to Brexit now there’s a chance our MPs will have a vote on Article 50. Should we reject any attempts to invoke Article 50 and risk being labeled as anti-democratic – potentially putting many of our current MPs seats at risk? Should we put some red lines down in the hope of getting a decent “soft-Brexit” deal and drive away many thousands of new members? It really is a Catch 22 situation.

Or is it? Is there not an alternative that will allow us to vote against invoking Article 50 whilst allowing the Brexiters a real and fair chance of getting what they want? I believe there is. And we have been campaigning on it solidly for three decades!

Let’s be honest, referendums are the very worst form of democracy. They merely take a snapshot of a moment in time based on public feeling at a certain point and allow populism to run rough shot over evidence based, considered policy. More often than not they don’t give an answer to the actual question asked or provide solutions, they merely create more issues. This is exactly what happened in June.

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 24 Comments
Nick Hopkinson

Why oppose Brexit?

By Nick Hopkinson | Fri 11th November 2016 - 11:41 am

I was asked recently to come up with some points which might be helpful when campaigning against Brexit. I wrestle constantly with finding a compelling narrative which cuts through a mind set which seems to trap half the population. I hope nevertheless some of the following (probably familiar) wording why Brexit is bad for Britain may be of use:

To preserve and promote British prosperity: The pound’s 15% collapse since the referendum is forecast to result in 3-4% inflation next year affecting our living standards.

To preserve and promote British exports: Outside the EU, our access to our major export market will be impaired by tariff and non-tariff barriers. Foreign investment (and jobs) will gradually decline as profit margins are eroded. As part of the EU, we have the best trade deal. The Nissan ‘sweetheart deal’ must be extended to all firms. Alone the UK, now the world’s seventh largest economy with 2% of global GDP, will have less weight in international trade negotiations with our far larger partners.

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Posted in Europe / International | 36 Comments
Chris White

Tim Farron: ‘Unless the government agrees to a referendum on the final Brexit deal, the party will vote against Article 50’

By Chris White | Fri 11th November 2016 - 9:39 am

Tim farron photo by liberal democrats dave radcliffe

This morning, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has laid out a red line on Article 50 and said unless the government agrees to a referendum on the final Brexit deal, the party will vote against Article 50 in the House of Commons.

Tim Farron said:

Millions of people are deeply worried by the government’s handling of Brexit.

So my position is very clear: the Liberal Democrats believe that the people are sovereign.

They must decide whether or not they agree with the deal that the government reaches with Brussels, which means

…

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Also tagged and | 64 Comments
Matthew Campbell

Electoral reform, Donald Trump … and Theresa May

By Matthew Campbell | Thu 10th November 2016 - 5:30 pm

 

For years, it was said that there was a threat to western democracies from far-right parties with extremist or populist opinions. The BNP were, in the 2000s, supposed to be ‘our’ version of this phenomenon, before they collapsed and – arguably – their vote went elsewhere.

But, still, the possibility of a small extremist nationalist party gaining undue influence was held to be a convincing argument against electoral reform. I think it may now be possible to say with great certainty that this was either a fallacy or a lie.

Why? Because there are two countries where, this year, populist/nationalist agendas have upset the existing political order: Firstly, the USA (in the person of Mr Trump); and secondly, this country (in the shape of Brexit). That is to say, two countries with plurality voting, who have historically rejected voting reform and proportionality as alien to their political culture.

And why might this have come to pass?

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 10 Comments
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