Tag Archives: featured

The Windrush Learned Lessons Review

The Windrush Learned Lessons Review has been published and the issues raised highlight the fact that The Windrush Scandal was and is a true scandal.

Wendy Williams – the Independent Adviser conducting the review – was tasked with providing an independent assessment of the events leading up to the Windrush Scandal and to identify the key lessons for the Home Office.

This is what she had to say:

Members of the Windrush generation and their children have been poorly served by this country. They had every right to be here and should never have been caught in the immigration net. The many stories of injustice and hardship are heartbreaking, with jobs lost, lives uprooted and untold damage done to so many individuals and families. However, despite the scandal taking the Home Office by surprise, my report sets out that what happened to those affected by the Windrush scandal was foreseeable and avoidable.

Over time those in power forgot about them and their circumstances, which meant that when successive governments wanted to demonstrate that they were being tough on immigration by tightening immigration control and passing laws creating, and then expanding the hostile environment, this was done with a complete disregard for the Windrush generation.

A range of warning signs from inside and outside the Home Office were simply not heeded by officials and ministers. Even when stories of members of the Windrush generation being affected by immigration control started to emerge in the media from 2017 onwards, the department was too slow to react.

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 2 Comments

Ed Davey converts party campaigning into community helping

Ed Davey, our Co-Leader, has written tonight to members asking them to convert their campaigning zeal towards helping their local community in this time of crisis:

We can all make a difference – each and every one of us.

One of the many things that unites Liberal Democrats is our campaigning zeal for our communities. Our drive to change things for the better. A way of working that engages local people in our campaigns.

Today, I’m asking you to turn your campaigning zeal wholeheartedly towards helping your community during this Coronavirus crisis.

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 13 Comments

Act quickly – you might be able to transfer your York hotel booking to next year

No-one was more disappointed than we were that our Spring Conference was cancelled – although that it was undoubtedly the right thing to do. The reasons in full are here

The Conference Office has today sent a message out to everyone who registered setting out their options for their registration fee. The choices are:

1. Donate your fee to the Conference Fund for the Liberal Democrats. Please note that the event insurance that we had does not cover any of our costs for conference – contagious diseases are now a standard exemption from all event policies,
2. Obtain a complimentary four day (week pass) to Autumn Conference: 26-29 September 2020 in Brighton,
3. Obtain a full refund.

We have negotiated with LNER to secure refunds on train bookings for those who booked direct.

Importantly, we have also accelerated our contractual negotiations with regard to Spring 2021. That means that we can now announce that we will be in York again next March. The dates are 19th-21st March. We hope that announcing that now will allow people to transfer hotel bookings with minimal or no cost.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 1 Comment

Breaking: Spring Conference cancelled

The Party’s Federal Board has tonight decided to cancel the Spring Conference due to take place this weekend.

In a joint statement, Party President Mark Pack, Chief Executive Mike Dixon and Federal Conference Committee Chair Geoff Payne said:

Following careful consideration of the latest health advice and risks, the Federal Board has tonight decided to cancel our federal conference this weekend.

It’s not a decision that was taken lightly as conference plays a key role in our democratic party as well as being an important training and information exchange event. However, the health of our members and supporters, the staff who work on conference and the wider public is far more important.

We have noted today’s announcement from the WHO, treating this as a pandemic and calling for “urgent and aggressive action”, and also how other organisations have started cancelling events, such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists stopping all meetings with over 100 people. We have also paid close attention to the public health advice from the NHS, and note that some of the advice, such as around keeping distant from people who are ill, is in practice very hard to follow given the format of our conference involves large numbers of strangers sitting close to each other for extended periods of time.

We are aware that many people, particularly those in high-risk groups, have said in the last few days that they are not coming to conference. Conference operates on the principle of ‘one member, one vote’. We very much want to avoid a situation where people feel unable to particulate in our democratic decision-making because of fears over their health.

It’s a matter of regret that for many people coming to the conference it will not be possible to cancel travel and accommodation arrangements and recover the costs. The party itself will also have to incur significant costs and refunds. We hope though people will understand the priority being given to people’s health.

We will offer refunds on conference registration, though we hope that given the costs the party will have to pay anyway that members who can afford it will be willing to waive the refund and make it a donation to the party instead. Details of how to reclaim registration fees will follow in the next few days.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 21 Comments

Budget reveals weakness of the UK economy – the Lib Dem reaction to the budget


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Responding to the Budget, Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey said:

This Budget reveals the UK economy was alarmingly weak even before Coronavirus. The Government is desperate to blame anyone or anything but the reality is that it’s the Conservatives’ Brexit which is costing Britain’s economy dearly.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 35 Comments

Shaun Roberts stands down as Lib Dem director of campaigns & elections

Writing in a public Facebook post, Shaun Roberts has announced his departure as the party’s Director of Campaigns & Elections:

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged and | 4 Comments

Fascinating stuff at York!

It’s not too late to register for the York Spring conference, which is happening on the weekend of March 13-15th. You can register here.

We’ve already covered the main policy motions which will be debated in the main hall.

But there will be oodles of other stuff going on – both in the main hall and in rooms around and about the conference venues of the York Barbican, the Novotel York Center and the Hilton York.

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged | 19 Comments

Siobhan Benita launches her campaign to be Mayor of London

Today Siobhan Benita has launched her campaign under the slogan “Love London Better”. And what a breath of fresh air she would be in the capital.

As she said:

London dares to be different. It has so far delivered three very different Mayors who have captured Londoner’s hearts and minds in different ways. What could be more different than a Liberal Democrat female mayor? It’s time.

Posted in London and News | Also tagged , and | 4 Comments

Why didn’t remain politicians connect?

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What did the 2016 Remain campaign and the 2019 Revoke Article 50 position adopted by the Lib Dems teach us?

– That policies must engage people, not patronise them.

Let me explain.

Most analyses agree that Brexit will negatively impact the more deprived communities the hardest.

So the question being asked by so many people is this: why on earth did Cornwall, one the UK’s most deprived regions which receives so much funding from the EU, and which appears to have a lot to lose and little to gain, vote for Brexit?

The Leave message during the referendum may have been based on misinformation and lies but it was packaged as a message of hope for improvement and change. This was a stark contrast to the Remain campaign which consisted merely of warnings, hence it being dubbed ‘Project fear.’

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 60 Comments

Observations of a ex pat: Goodbye democracy?

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It has become a political fact of life that democracy on both sides of the Atlantic is under severe threat.

The latest proof of this danger is the Senate acquittal of Donald Trump in a judicial exercise that makes Stalin’s Moscow show trials look like paragons of legal transparency and justice. The Conservative British government is going in the same direction, albeit by a different route.

The root of the problem is respect —or lack of respect— for the rule of law. For democracy to work it needs clear legal parameters and elected political leaders who accept that their responsibility is to represent their constituents within a legally binding constitutional framework.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 29 Comments

Liberal Democrats should campaign to fix Brexit

What should Lib Dems do now?

Should we just be campaign to rejoin the EU? Or something else?

I suggest that we fix Brexit first.

Last year people voted Conservative because they thought Brexit was a distraction from Britain’s real problems. Over 70% of the public thought this. Most people who voted Remain thought this. They thought that the only way to get Brexit out of the way, was to push it through.

Of course this isn’t true. Brexit isn’t over. And we’ll be stuck with the problems it creates for decades.

But if we campaign to rejoin straight away, it will be counter-productive. People won’t see the problems caused by Brexit, because most of them won’t be obvious until the transition period ends.

And, just as everybody sighs in relief that Brexit is over, we’ll look like obsessives wanting to restart the argument. A bit like John Redwood in the 1990s.

The British people have given the government a chance to get Brexit right.

Lib Dems should therefore work to fix Brexit. Fixing Brexit means accepting it’s happening. For now.

That means minimising the damage. Damage done to the economy. And damage done to our friends and neighbours.

Today there are three things we can campaign on.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 42 Comments

How a Liberal pamphlet from 1980 led to the collapse of the British political system

Original cover artwork from “The Theory and Practice of Community Politics”

Over on Medium.com, Councillor Nick Barlow has written a remarkably astute retrospective on the 1980 pamphlet “The Theory And Practice of Community Politics” written by Bernard Greaves and Gordon Lishman and published by the Association of Liberal Councillors (now the ALDC).

Nick’s narrative takes us from the ideologically based idea of Community Politics in the 1970s and how it morphed into the quite different concept of Customer Service Politics, which dominates our civic arena today:

Posted in Liberal History and Online politics | Also tagged , , , and | 18 Comments

And, as we say au revoir to the European Union…

It’s an emotional moment for those of us who campaigned to remain in the European Union, the last moments during which we are part of something more than the sum of its constituent parts, a pooling of some national sovereignty in return for freedoms to live, love and work across twenty-eight nations. It is not a time to celebrate.

It isn’t a time to mourn either. If the United Kingdom is to go its own way, we need to be there, campaigning for a more liberal society, because if we don’t, nobody else is going to do it for us.

So, to …

Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged | 53 Comments

This is a shameful day in our country’s history

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Today is a horrible day and I feel overwhelmingly sad about the opportunities we are losing. We won’t notice an immediate difference because of the transition period but there is no longer anything we can do if we don’t like the changes that happen at the end of this year. We will no longer have the EU to protect our workers’ rights from the worst excesses of our government. We won’t have as easy access to the single market, so our prices will go up. The next generation’s chances to live, work and study in the EU will be severely limited and those EU citizens already here – our friends, family and neighbours face the Home Office hostile environment. Settled status doesn’t offer that much protection.

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

Ed Davey: We fought the good fight – now what next?

This is the text of the speech given by Ed Davey today in Manchester.

Good morning.

For the last four years, the Liberal Democrats fought to stop Brexit.

We held street stalls, town hall meetings and we marched in our millions.

Today we stand strong in the knowledge that we did everything we could.

Tens of thousands of people got involved with our campaign. People who had never campaigned before. And old hands, campaigning harder than they ever had before.

We fought with good humour and great energy. We fought because we love our country.

Our pro-Europeanism is built on our patriotism.

So I will always be proud of the

Posted in Speeches | Also tagged | 11 Comments

Bells are set to toll in the UK on Friday but a silent flame can send a gentler message


Candle flame by Shan Sheehan
This is a message for all, including those who voted for Brexit.

I live in the hope that all can agree with the following sentiments.

We have greatly different views on how they can be achieved, but can we all join in, in lighting a candle ( a safe one!) on the evening of January 31st?

Bobby McDonagh is a former Irish ambassador to London, Rome and Brussels. In an article in Monday’s Irish Times, he suggests lighting a candle in homes, churches – anywhere.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 23 Comments

Our party president and co-leader on the big challenges ahead

There are two versions of 2019 which future historians of the Liberal Democrats may write about. One is about a party that was on the road to recovery since 2015, took a big hit in December, but then continued upwards afterwards. It’s a story in which the successes of the first half of 2019 were the ones that pointed to the future. Or there is the version in which the Liberal Democrats were in continued decline after 2010, showed brief signs of life in early 2019 but where it was the disappointments of the general election that pointed to the future.

Either could yet turn out to be the one that’s written. Which one gets written is down to us here in the present.

That means getting our own house in order. It means learning the right lessons from last year – and acting on them, successfully electing a new leader and also making a success of the May elections.

Posted in Op-eds | 13 Comments

YouGov poll on Lib Dem leadership: Ed Davey is a country mile ahead (contains caveats)

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Stephen Bush has written the following on the New Statesman “The Staggers” blog:

Ed Davey is on course to win the looming Liberal Democrat leadership election, a YouGov poll for the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Party Members Project, run out of the University of Sussex and Queen Mary University has found. YouGov asked members to choose between a field of Ed Davey, Layla Moran and Daisy Cooper, the new MP for St Albans, all of whom are widely tipped to stand. In that field, Davey wins outright in the first round, with 52 per cent of the vote against Moran’s 24 per cent and Cooper’s 9 per cent.

I did a little light Googling to see if I could find the data on this poll.

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , and | 33 Comments

Nick Tyrone: “What the Lib Dems keep failing to understand about the Labour Party” ****WARNING: CONTAINS ORANGE BOOK MENTION****

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On his website, writer Nick Tyrone has written a typically astute and pithy article which cuts to the heart of the relationship of the Liberal Democrats to the Labour party:

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 81 Comments

UPDATED: The 91 seats where the Liberal Democrats came second in the general election (or The Sunday data workshop experiment continues…)

Thank you all for your excellent comments to my earlier post, pointing out the errors in my spreadsheet!

I see it as an experiment in community data creation!

My main problem is that I did not screen out seats with a large Nationalist element, mainly in Scotland.

Posted in General Election | Also tagged | 10 Comments

Christine Jardine leads MPs’ debate on assisted dying – most speakers are in favour

On Thursday Christine Jardine MP led a Westminster Hall debate of MPs on the subject of the Assisted Dying Law. This was a debate which she brought about.

You can read the debate in full on the Hansard website, and below are Christine’s opening and closing contributions, replete with interventions from other MPs.

Christine has written an article in The Times (£) on the subject and the Westminster Hall debate was covered on BBC Radio 4’s Today in Parliament programme (starts at 15:22) – which included an interview on the subject with Christine.

Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , and | 4 Comments

An update on our troll farmer in Aberdeenshire

Day 139 - Worzel Gummage at Birmingham airport - 1982 (14515725233)
Many readers have been intrigued by the post earlier this week with a message to our troll farmer in Aberdeenshire.

Posted in Site news | 7 Comments

+++Anton Georgiou wins big in Brent!


Many congratulations to Anton Georgiou and his team on a stunning by-election win in Alperton ward, Brent!

Anton achieved a stonking 29.5% swing to the Lib Dems, to grab the seat from Labour.

Siobhan Benita, our London Mayoral candidate, campaigned strongly with Anton – this is a great boost for her campaign for London.

Posted in Council by-elections and Local government | Also tagged and | 19 Comments

The subjects selected and not selected for debate at the York spring conference

The new Federal Conference Committee met at LibDem HQ this Saturday to set out the agenda for York in March. The new FCC also held a meeting in November where feedback from the Autumn Conference was discussed, and officers were elected. Geoff Payne was re-elected as Chair, myself as Vice-Chair (General Purposes Sub Committee), and Jon Ball and Cara Jenkinson as Co-Vice Chairs (Conference Communications Group).

It is always difficult to sort through the motions that are submitted to the FCC for any conference. This year we did have a lower number of submissions – only 19, but there were some interesting motions that were selected. It seems that the December General Election may have had an impact on the lower submissions, so we are looking forward to more submissions for the Autumn Conference.

Timings are always tight at Spring Conference, and we have tried to maximise debating time. There are inevitably some items that must be held at Conference (leader’s speech, and Committee and Parliamentary reports.) We have also made time for two consultations, one Federal Board General Election review, and one Federal Policy Committee manifesto review. We have also allowed two slots for emergency motions, as various political changes are happening at the moment which may require motions to be submitted.

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged , and | 27 Comments

Showing her customary resilience, Jo Swinson marks the new decade with a flurry of reflective tweets

Something you may have missed: On 31st December, Jo Swinson reflected on the last decade with a Twitter thread of photos, concluding by looking forward to the new decade with the words:

Whatever the next decade holds, I look forward to meeting it head on.


Posted in Photo feature | Also tagged | 18 Comments

Greenpeace climate change petition – shouldn’t we be doing this sort of thing rather than still having “STOP BREXIT” on our home page?

The home page of the Liberal Democrat website, 10:55 22nd January 2020

This week, Greenpeace UK have collected almost 600,000 signatures for their petition to the government to act now on Climate Change.

The text of the petition gives a succinct list of initiatives which the government should be embarking on now to minimise the climate emergency:

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 16 Comments

Dorothy Thornhill will chair panel to review into both the General election and the European elections

This comes from a post by Party President and Co-leader Mark Pack, on the party’s website, explaining some output from Saturday’s Federal Board meeting:

Election Review

The (Federal) Board has commissioned a review into both the General election and the European elections.

This review will be run independently of those who ran the elections, with a panel of experts who have a broad range of skills from knowing about grassroots election campaigns through to understanding what the very best decision-making processes in organisations look like.

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged | 4 Comments

Our President and co-leader writes: How you can get involved in helping to run the party

The Liberal Democrats are about to fill nearly 50 important posts, responsible for everything from oversight of our campaigns through to improving our record on diversity and making sure our finances are in good shape.

Please do both think about going for one of these posts yourself, and also who else you might want to encourage to put their name forward.

We need the best team possible – which means people with brilliant skills, time to do the job properly and a much greater diversity than we often manage with such exercises.

If anyone would like to know more about what a particular post involves, I’m very happy for you to put them in touch with me and I can either directly help or put them in touch with someone with experience of the post.

More details of the posts are over on the party website.

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged and | 34 Comments

Goodbye Bob, the kindest of politicians

Note from the Editorial Team: This touching personal tribute to Bob Maclennan was published over the weekend on “A Scottish Liberal” – the blog of Andrew Page. We liked it so much that we asked Andrew if we could reproduce it here, and he kindly agreed.

Today I discovered that my friend, one time mentor and godfather to my daughter Xanthe has passed away at the age of 83.

Robert Maclennan, Lord Maclennan of Rogart (but always “Bob” to me) was the son of a gynaecologist (Sir Hector Maclennan) and a forward-thinking …

Posted in Obituaries | Also tagged , and | 3 Comments

Iowa field notes: 29 candidates, 2100 plus events, but who will win the first contest to be the next President of the United States?

The Liberty and Justice Celebration, Des Moines, Iowa, USA, November 1st, 2019.
This and all photos below are by Alex Paul Shantz


It’s the first Friday in November, and inside an arena in downtown Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, guests in smart clothes eat dinner around an elevated stage. Suddenly, the lights dim, artificial smoke envelopes a walkway, and the pop song ‘High Hopes’ blares out. Around one end of the arena, across three levels of tiered seating, thousands of people jump to their feet, dancing and waving three feet high letters that say “Boot Edge Edge”. Striding along a walkway towards the stage is… Pete Buttigieg, the 37 year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana?

At this point, I realise I’m at one of the most unique political events I’ve ever attended. Part fundraising gala and part political rally, but with production values that more closely resemble a pro wrestling event. It is in fact the Liberty and Justice Celebration, the final and most important multi-candidate ‘cattle call’ in the year-long campaign preceding the Iowa Democratic caucuses.

Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged , and | 2 Comments
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