Tag Archives: featured

Arthur Wu

Sharpening the Liberal edge: How European exchange can strengthen our democracy

By Arthur Wu | Mon 25th August 2025 - 8:55 am

Participants in Studio Europe group photoAs a long-standing campaigner within the Liberal Democrats and someone who has represented the Young Liberals internationally, I’ve often said that liberalism is not just about policy. It’s about practice. That principle was reaffirmed at Studio Europe 2025, a gathering of young Liberal leaders from across the continent. It offered a valuable opportunity to reflect, collaborate, and sharpen the political tools we need to defend and renew democracy.

For our Party, the program also highlighted something more profound: that meaningful European exchange is not just a cultural or diplomatic nicety. It is essential to rebuild the liberal centre ground and inspire a new generation of democratic leaders.

Among the sessions, two stood out in particular: one on coalition negotiation, and the other on political integrity. These are issues we in the UK are familiar with. While we’ve excelled at campaign innovation and digital messaging, our internal development programmes often overlook the strategic demands of political leadership, particularly what it means to govern without losing sight of our values.

The coalition negotiation workshop was especially timely. Having worked at both local and international levels of liberal organising, I’ve long understood the tension between compromise and principle. The session helped formalise that understanding: how to identify red lines, assess risk, and build alliances that accommodate ideological difference without losing your core identity.

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Nick da Costa

Making sure local government has a real voice at Conference

By Nick da Costa | Sun 24th August 2025 - 11:08 am

Following a letter from Joe Harris, Leader of the Lib Dem Group on the LGA, and Heather Kidd, chair of ALDC, to myself and Party President Mark Pack, we have had a very constructive series of discussions. We all agreed on the need to ensure the brilliant work of our local authority groups is properly recognised at Conference.

Some of the steps we discussed will require agreement also from others, but following the discussions this is the plan:

For this year’s Conference:

Rally: HQ have confirmed there will be a strong local government focus.

Conference Showcase: The programme includes the ReformWatch panel in the auditorium, led by local government voices.

Looking ahead to future Conferences:

Keynote Speaker: FCC would welcome a keynote speaker from local government; proposals (with supporting reasons) need to reach me/FCC Chair by late May for Autumn Conference.

Conference Directory: I’ve suggested an advertorial double-page feature where ALDC/LGA can highlight local government achievements.

Civic Opening: I’d like to reintroduce a full civic opening of Conference, led by the local authority or council group leader, rather than opening by the President. As our Bournemouth Conference has both a local Lib Dem council leader and a local Lib Dem MP, Mark has offered anyway to step aside this time to give more time to the council leader We will work also with the Media Team around coordinating local / regional media.

Auditorium Sessions: I’ve encouraged ALDC/LGA to pitch further auditorium sessions (panels, presentations, etc.). Not all can be guaranteed – but we need good options to consider.

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David Chalmers

Reflections on Ukraine’s Independence Day

By David Chalmers | Sun 24th August 2025 - 8:54 am

People gather in Mykolav to support caputred soldiers

Today, the Ukrainians celebrate their Independence Day.  How fitting that it comes just over a week after that  meeting in Alaska between Trump and Putin and the subsequent meeting at the White House between Trump and European Leaders – where the independence of this heroic nation was the main topic for discussion. 

I am sure that many Lib Dems will have  joined in the celebrations this weekend – a reflection of the strong friendships that  have been formed with the Ukrainians living in the UK. As liberals we  recognised early on that the Ukrainians were fighting our war against the forces seeking to destroy the very basis of  our liberal democracies – forces also determined to undermine our liberal values.  That bond is  also reflected in the strong relationship that the Liberal Democrats have formed in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe ALDE and Liberal International with  our Ukrainian sister parties  – President Zelensky’s Servant of the People Party and the opposition party Golos, led by our dear friend Kira Rudik.   Many personal friendships have developed, with Kira a well known face and frequent visitor to our party Conferences and Yevheniia Kravchuk,  the Vice President of ALDE,  attending last year’s Autumn Conference in Brighton.  The Lib Dems have stood steadfastly behind our Ukrainian partners during this time of war, but also in helping  to rebuild their country and society when they at last enjoy peace.

But not peace at any cost.  The Ukrainians have fought and lost too many of their people –  soldiers on the battlefield and civilians in  the attacks on their homes – to just give it all up,  as if those that have given their lives were worth nothing.   

I was invited to visit Ukraine at  the end of May to attend the Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa, and I was in the country when Ukraine carried out one its most daring acts of the war – Operation Spiders Web – involving  multiple drone attacks from within side Russia on its military airfields, which saw a third of its bomber fleet destroyed.  A truly historic day for Ukraine.

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NewsHound

Alistair Carmichael LibLink: Palestine Action ban reveals Labour’s dangerously authoritarian instincts

By NewsHound | Wed 20th August 2025 - 10:28 am

Alistair Carmichael has criticised the Labour Government for its proscription of Palestine Action. In a recent column for the Scotsman he talked about why he was never able to join the Labour Party:

For all the similarities between Liberal Democrats and Labour, the differences matter too.

Labour has centralising instincts that will always be anathema to liberals who champion community empowerment. Then there is the freedom thing.

Scratch any Labour government and you will find a deep authoritarian streak. It is increasingly apparent that this is every bit as true of Yvette Cooper’s Home Office as it was of those headed by David Blunkett, John Reid and Jack Straw.

He sums up the differences between us and Labour pretty neatly:

For liberals, protecting freedoms of speech, assembly and protest is a given. It runs to the heart of how we see the relationship between the citizen and the state. For Labour, these freedoms are rarely more than ‘nice to have’ when circumstances allow.

He said very much out loud that the Labour decision to proscribe Palestine Action was a mistake:

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George Cunningham

UK/Europe Must Now Learn To Say “No”: Starmer must address the nation

By George Cunningham | Mon 18th August 2025 - 10:38 am

The time has come for the liberal world to say “no” to President Trump.

Europe’s leaders are heading for Washington today to support President Zelensky and Ukraine’s sovereign integrity in the face of Trump’s impatience that he cannot bring about a peace that will pave the way for him securing a big business deal with Putin – and his much coveted Nobel Peace Prize. 

Until now, at every turn, UK and European leaders have (sometimes embarrassingly) been acting, as if Trump and his acolytes can be both flattered and persuaded to act rationally according to our liberal worldview. However, Trump is acting rationally according to his own worldview, not ours. And he views Russia under Putin as having the potential to be his foremost business partner in the world. For Trump, Ukraine is just a nuisance that is getting in his way.

No credence can be given to Trump enacting further “economically severe, yes … very severe” sanctions against Russia as this would weaken what MAGA can eventually gain from Russia economically.

Trump was convinced by Putin at their summit in Alaska that we should dispense with a ceasefire in Ukraine and go directly to a peace agreement. It no doubt appeals to him because he thinks he can get a speedier solution that way. Yet it pushes the war to continue without respite while peace negotiations take place, with the danger it may lead to the collapse of Ukrainian morale on the frontline, achieving the very territorial concessions Putin is trying to gain. 

Putin knows very well that a major Ukrainian concession such as ceding the whole of Donbas will cause great discontent in Ukraine and further destabilise the current Ukrainian government. A peace agreement will lead to elections in Ukraine. Trump wants Zelensky out while Russia will try to push its supporters into power, using the same influence tactics that have been successful in former Soviet Union republics such as Georgia and are being used in Moldova. Putin may not need to fight any more to gain all of Ukraine later.

We do not yet know the details of the “game-changing” security guarantees announced by Trump’s business partner Witkoff to end the war in Ukraine.  They are suspect because they have already been so readily accepted by Putin, not least because Trump has reiterated that he will block Ukraine entering NATO. Recent history has shown written guarantees are worthless in Ukraine’s case, whether they are enshrined in legislation or not. 

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Palestine Action – a lawyer writes

By Neil Hickman | Wed 13th August 2025 - 2:30 pm

Chambers’ Dictionary defines terrorism as “an organized system of violence and intimidation, especially for political ends, and the state of fear and submission caused by this”. The Terrorism Act 2000 has a rather wider definition. Section 1 includes action designed to influence the government, and includes serious damage to property.

That means that Yvette Cooper was almost certainly within her powers in asking Parliament to proscribe Palestine Action; but the actions of that group are not within the everyday understanding of the concept of terrorism. When I learned of the events at Brize Norton, my reaction was not “I am terrified” but “Whatever was the RAF playing at, that a group of peaceniks could hop over the perimeter fence, walk up to several million pounds’ worth of warplane, and trash it?”

And while proscribing the organisation was probably lawful, it doesn’t seem to have been remotely sensible. Proscription has led to some entirely predictable over-reach, exemplified by Jon Farley’s arrest for holding up a copy of a Private Eye cartoon, and Roger Cauthery being refused admission to the Royal Albert Hall for wearing a small lapel pin bearing the Palestinian flag. And it has also led to an entirely predictable embarrassment for the Metropolitan Police as hundreds of eminently respectable people very publicly hold up placards proclaiming “I OPPOSE GENOCIDE…” The dilemma is that either you arrest all these people and look ridiculous, or you don’t and acknowledge that the law is a meaningless nonsense.

The Terrorism Act 2000 was another in a long line of badly thought out pieces of legislation seeking to address terrorist threats. The first of them, of course, was the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974, the first achievement of which was the framing of the Guildford Four. The 2000 Act hasn’t caused too much difficulty up to now because it has generally been applied with good sense. What appears to have been an angry reaction to what was admittedly a serious and reprehensible piece of criminality did not involve good sense.

Interviewing Jonathan Porritt on Newsnight, Victoria Derbyshire rather sententiously suggested that you can’t pick and choose what laws to obey. It’s understandable that history, and the BBC, appears to have forgotten the post-war saga of identity cards. These were introduced as an emergency measure at the outbreak of World War 2. The post-war Labour Government “omitted” to repeal the relevant legislation, and the practice grew up of the Police routinely demanding the production of identity cards whenever they stopped someone. One Harry Willcock, an unrepentant Liberal member of the Awkward Squad, was stopped for speeding and refused “on principle” to produce his identity card. On his appeal from the inevitable conviction before the Magistrates, Lord Goddard, no wet liberal (and indeed, in my book, possibly one of the worst Chief Justices of all time) said:

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Ex Pat – The Vote

By Tom Arms | Sat 9th August 2025 - 8:30 am

The right to vote is at the very heart of every democratic government. Running alongside that is the right to make that vote count; to provide at least the hope that people can change their political representation through the ballot box.

Without that hope the voters will lose faith in their political system and – ultimately—the government loses credibility and democratic values and the country as a whole faces serious decline.

Gerrymandering is a political tool that denies representation to certain sections of the electorate. It has been a part of the American political scene almost since the country’s foundation. It is practiced by both political parties. Neither of those facts make it anything less than what it is—political corruption.

Politicians have been devising methods of manipulating the vote almost since the votes were cast. The Romans devised a system whereby votes were weighted in accordance with the voter’s wealth. In the nominally republican city states of Renaissance Italy, citizens seeking public office were pre-vetted by the wealthy oligarchs before the people voted on them.

Then, of course, there were the pocket—or “rotten”—boroughs of Britain where centuries-old constituency boundaries meant that a handful of voters could elect one MP while a bustling city of tens of thousands went unrepresented.

The drawing of constituency—or electoral—boundaries was at the heart of Britain’s rotten boroughs. And the way in which those boundaries are drawn which became the biggest political bone of contention. Up until 1885 they continued to be organised in such a way to give more MPs to rural areas.

After the 1885 Redistribution of Seats Act, urban areas were given more seats but political parties were given a bigger say in boundary redistribution. The two biggest parties—the Liberals and Conservatives—ensured their hold on power by splitting up working class areas to dilute support for the nascent Labour Party. They gerrymandered.

It was not until 1948-50 that Britain established an independent boundary commission that took constituency boundaries out of party political control. Gradually over the post-war years, other countries followed suit. In 2025, the United States is the only major outlier, standing alongside countries such as Zimbabwe.

The United States is a federal system and each state determines the electoral boundaries for every elected office from congressman to dog catcher. In a handful of states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan and Washington—an independent electoral commission draws the lines. New York also has a nominally independent commission, but the state legislature has reserved the right to override its decisions. In all the other 44 states the electoral boundaries are drawn by politicians in the state legislatures. In the US, drawing electoral boundaries is called “redistricting.”

The result has been truly astonishing efforts at gerrymandering. In Louisiana, for instance, a third of the population is African-American but only one of the state’s six congressmen is Black.

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Joe Harris

Does the party care about its councillors?

By Joe Harris | Fri 8th August 2025 - 3:47 pm

I and 46 Council Leaders and Deputy Leaders have just written (see text of letter below) to Federal Conference Committee Char, Nick Da Costa and Party President, Mark Pack to raise our concerns about the lack of a main speaking slot for a local government representative at this year’s Federal Conference.

Local government is the only part of the party currently in power and we felt it was essential to speak up on behalf of the more than 3,200 Liberal Democrat councillors across the UK who are delivering for their communities every single day.

Between us, our councils are responsible for more than £17 billion of public spending. From social care to housing, from climate action to local transport we are leading and implementing Liberal Democrat values where they matter most: in people’s day-to-day lives.

We now have 76 Liberal Democrat council leaders across the UK; that’s more than the number of Liberal Democrat MPs. And yet, this year’s conference agenda does not include a prominent platform slot for any of them. That is deeply disappointing.

We’re proud of our 72 MPs and rightly so. But we cannot forget that when the party was reduced to just 8 MPs in 2015, it was local councillors who kept the Liberal Democrats alive. We delivered services, campaigned hard and we’re the foundation of rebuilding our party from the ground up.

The fact that 35 of our current MPs have a background in local government is no coincidence.

Local government also played a vital role in last year’s General Election. Not just on the doorstep, but financially through the tithing scheme (something which seems to be optional for our Members of Parliament!). Our councillors raised over £3 million to support local and national campaigns. That funding made a real difference, and the party’s financial position would be far weaker without it.

We’ve seen the responses on social media including Nick Da Costa’s comments about some local government presence in the auditorium. While we appreciate that the brilliant Millie Earl will open conference alongside Vikki Slade MP and that there will be a session on taking on Reform involving a council leader, these moments do not carry the weight or visibility of a proper keynote speech.

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Hina Bokhari

The last thing Sadiq Khan wants in City Hall is a Disability Champion

By Hina Bokhari | Wed 6th August 2025 - 11:55 am

Sadiq Khan has said no – again.

For the third time, the Mayor of London has refused Liberal Democrat calls to appoint a dedicated Disability Champion: someone with lived experience and the authority to represent Disabled Londoners at the highest levels of City Hall decision-making.

Mayor Sadiq claims he’s already got it covered – we don’t need a dedicated role. He points to his Deputy Mayor for Communities and Social Justice, whose sprawling brief also includes race, gender, LGBTQ+ communities and faith. He also references a Deaf and Disabled People’s Forum that meets briefly just four times a year. 

Let’s be honest: this isn’t serious engagement. It’s not even remotely close to the kind of structured and systematic co-production that Disabled Londoners deserve. 

And it certainly isn’t delivering results because by any measure you care to mention, the status quo is failing. Whether it’s repeatedly missing even the most minimal targets for accessible housing, the persistent inaccessibility of most tube stations, or the continued rollout of floating bus stops despite their dangers, Disabled Londoners are being let down at every turn.

And the idea that Disabled People are being adequately consulted is laughable. Take the Mayor’s ironically named “Inclusive” Talent Strategy about breaking down the barriers to employment.

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The Voice

A Celebration of the life of David Boyle

By The Voice | Tue 29th July 2025 - 11:19 am

There will be a Celebration of the Life of David Boyle on Wednesday 10th September at the Cocktail Bar of The Bedford Balham, 77 Bedford Hill, London SW12 9HD from 7pm.

You can read a tribute to David here.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Epstein – The History

By Tom Arms | Sat 26th July 2025 - 9:40 am

Theories, threats, counter-threats and conspiracies are flying thick and thin around the name of convicted paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and the nature of his relationship with Donald Trump.

Were the two men friends? If so, how friendly? Did Trump know that Epstein was a paedophile before his conviction? If so, how much did he know? Did he, himself have sexual relations with under-age girls? Is Donald Trump part of the deep state cabal of paedophiles who have been running the country according to QAnon and others?

All questions now being hourly discussed within and without the MAGA world and Donald Trump’s political future may hang on the answers.

It is therefore worth reviewing the known historical facts.

Jeffrey Epstein was born in Brooklyn in 1953 to working class parents. He was extremely clever and graduated high school two years early and went on to study physics and mathematics at New York University. However, for some reason, which remains unclear, he dropped out after two years.

Despite not having a degree, Epstein landed a teaching job at the posh Dalton School on New York’s Upper East Side. Former pupils there said that he was known for his “inappropriate behaviour” towards under-age female students and that this may have been the reason for his being fired in 1976. The official reason was “poor performance.”

While at Dalton, Epstein became friendly with one of the parents; Alan Greenberg, CEO of Bear Stearns. He quickly hired Epstein as a junior assistant and within four years the former teacher was a limited partner. The following year he set up his own finance house and was soon attracting billionaire clients such as Adnan Khashoggi and Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner. He used his connections with Wexner to recruit models for Victoria’s Secret, many of them underage girls.

Epstein’s mathematical genius earned him a reputation as a Wall Street wizard and millions upon millions of dollars. His wealth went on a 78-acre private island in the Caribbean, a New York mansion, a West Palm Beach mansion and wild parties for the rich and famous and – under-age girls.

Exactly how many under-age girls were recruited for his parties is unclear. The Florida indictment named 26. The Miami Herald interviewed 60. One Department of Justice document said the figure could have been as high as a thousand.

The rich and famous included Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. He introduced Trump to Melania and attended their wedding. In a 2002 profile of Epstein in New York Magazine, Trump was quoted as saying: “I’ve known Jeffrey for 15 years. He is a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them on the younger side.”

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Roger Hayes

Knowing Rights from Wrongs

By Roger Hayes | Thu 24th July 2025 - 4:46 pm

As a Liberal, I think it is always important to know where we stand on matters and, just as important, to know why we stand there. After ‘do no harm’, a very basic tenet of liberalism is that all people are free to do, say and think whatever they like, when and wheresoever they like, as long as, is so doing, they do not infringe anyone else’s right to do the same. In our liberal democracy, this simple yardstick should be all that a government requires to ensure the freedoms of its citizens and to protect us from those who would seek to restrict or remove them – or to restrict or remove anyone who might hold alternative opinions.

As a result we have laws to control hate speech, inciting violence again people and property, and seeking to disrupt or overthrow democratic assemblies and institutions. In a free society we do not have a right not to be offended – I am offended by the Conservative Party and views of Nigel Farage, but both are (rightly) allowed to exist and speak their minds as long as they do not break the law by restricting or denying the rights of others.

It is in this regard that the Labour government is now sailing close to the wind.

You will have heard me say many times that language is important. I think precise language is very important when dealing with conflict and at times when emotions and tempers might be running high. Here is a bit of background and an example of what I believe separates acceptable protest from the unacceptable, legal protest from the illegal, and free protest methods from terrorism.

For the example I am going to give it might help to know that I have Jewish heritage, and I am intensely proud of that as I am of my Irish, Cornish, Italian and Yorkshire heritage. I am an atheist and have not ever been religiously Jewish and neither, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone in my family for generations. My paternal grandmother had Polish Jewish antecedence and we have traced her Jewish roots back from Krakow in the 19th Century, to Austria in the late 18th Century, and from there back to Russia before that.

I am strongly opposed to antisemitism, as I am to any form of ethnic prejudice based on generic hate. In the current conflict in Gaza, and across the wider region, I try always to be careful how I describe what I think the problems are and where (if any) the blame might lie.

For example, it would certainly be antisemitic to suggest that Jews are in anyway guilty of anything that is happening in Gaza now, or has ever happened there. I do not believe, however, that it is in anyway antisemitic or anti-Israeli to full-throatedly condemn Netanyahu, and the right-wing henchmen in his government, for the atrocities being inflicted on innocent Palestinians. Genocide may well be what is happening, but personally I do not find that language helpful in the circumstances as it deflects from the war crimes that are most certainly being committed in Israel’s name.

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Caron Lindsay

The Afghan data breach shows up poor law and appalling Tory Government actions

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 17th July 2025 - 8:04 am

“There are some things that you just can’t polish.”

So I said when i spoke against the Government’s plans to bring secret courts into the area of civil law back in 2013. For some inexplicable reason, Nick Clegg had decided to agree to this dreadful proposal. The party, pretty universally, was livid. That’s one reasons why factions don’t usually work in this party. At the time, the Social Liberal Forum and Liberal Reform were at each other’s throats on economic policy but we were united in standing up for civil liberties.  You can read some of the background to that here.

We’ve learned a lot about how secret courts operate in the past couple of days thanks to Lewis Goodall from the News Agents. He found himself subject to a super-injunction back in August 2023 when he learned about the leaking of a data set containing the contact details of everyone who had applied to come to this country under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy. These were people, 18000 of them, who had worked for the UK Government while we were in Afghanistan and who had targets on their back when the Taliban took over.

Anyway, Goodall is a serious, responsible journalist. When he discovered this story, he went to the Ministry of Defence, making it clear that he had no plans to publish. That didn’t matter. The resulting super injunction was in force  until this Tuesday at noon. The second it was lifted, Goodall got out all the stress of the previous 23 months out in a blistering podcast which revealed:

  • Secret courts and secret courts within secret courts
  • How many of the 18000 people and their families the Tory Government actually planned to help. Spoiler, it’s less than you think, despite this being the main legal rationale for the super-injunction
  • How Tory ministers avoided pushing this forward, silencing scrutiny
  • How much this cost the public purse
  • How the first judge to hear the case actually suggested to the Government that they go for a super-injunction

If you listen to nothing else today, listen to this now because it shows a chilling use of government power which, the Judge openly remarked, stopped democracy. Judge Martin Chamberlain said it was:

fundamentally objectionable for decisions that affect the lives and safety of thousands of human beings, and involve the commitment of billions of pounds of public money, to be taken in circumstances where they are completely insulated from public debate.

So what have Liberal Democrats had to say about all of this:

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Jamie Dalzell

Game, Set, Match: Why Liberal Democrats Must Prepare for Labour’s Autumn Tax Squeeze

By Jamie Dalzell | Mon 7th July 2025 - 5:37 pm

Rachel Reeves has just painted herself into a corner, and Liberal Democrats must be ready to offer the escape route Britain needs.

As Wimbledon reaches its climax, there’s a lesson for Liberal Democrat strategy: the greatest players don’t just react to their opponent’s shots, they anticipate them. With Labour’s recent U-turn on disability benefit cuts, their retention of the two-child benefit cap, and their “triple tax lock” commitment, an autumn tax squeeze is now inevitable. The question isn’t whether it’s coming, but whether we’ll be ready with better alternatives.

Reading the Court

Labour have served themselves into a corner. Having pledged not to raise income tax, National Insurance, or VAT rates. the three taxes that generate £520bn annually, two-thirds of all government revenue, while facing mounting spending pressures, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is rapidly running out of options. The disability benefit U-turn alone adds £3bn to her fiscal gap, while winter fuel payment cuts save just £1.5bn.

This isn’t speculation. The Treasury Select Committee’s 2021 report “Tax after coronavirus” mapped out exactly this scenario, warning that the Conservative “triple tax lock” would come under severe pressure and force governments toward regressive alternatives.

The Treasury Committee’s Prophetic Warnings

What they predicted in 2021:

✅ “Triple tax lock” would become unsustainable
✅ Governments would resort to fiscal drag through frozen thresholds
✅ Capital taxes would be targeted for “quick wins”
✅ Pension tax relief would face restrictions
✅ National Insurance increases would damage employment (Sunak ignored this, and later reversed)

Every warning is now Labour’s reality.

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Lord William Wallace

Whatever happened to political leadership?

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 25th June 2025 - 11:25 am

The style of political campaigning today has become infinitely more professional than when I first became involved in politics.   In the 1960s the news cycle was far slower and gentler; TV and radio interviewers treated politicians with respect, and would allow them to offer long answers without interruption.  Now we have ‘breaking news’, daily opinion polls, multiple staff to advise and aggressive interviewers.  Political leaders are far better equipped to follow the headlines and shifting public moods.  But do they still dare to lead?

The UK’s debate on public spending represents a classic example of government and main opposition doing their utmost not to explain underlying choices to the public, while following conflicting evidence of popular preferences – lower taxes, higher public investment, resistance to cuts in health and welfare.  Ever since Margaret Thatcher used the additional revenue streams from North Sea Oil and the proceeds of privatisation to fund current government spending rather than to build a sovereign wealth fund, Conservatives (like their Republican allies in the USA) have declared themselves the party of low taxation and a smaller state – without explaining to voters what cuts would be needed to reach those goals.  Labour was so wary of challenging that myth that it pledged not to raise any of the largest sources of revenue if it won the 2024 election.   The only party that has explicitly entered an election campaign with a pledge to increase taxes was Paddy Ashdown’s Liberal Democrats in 1997, with our ‘penny on income tax for education.’  A senior Labour adviser told me when we published our manifesto that ‘nobody will vote for a party that says it will increase taxation’ – though quite a few did.

Labour leaders knew very well before the 2024 campaign started that the rising number of pensioners is driving up the welfare and health budgets, that Tory cuts in public investment had left an urgent need to rebuild hospitals, schools, railways and roads, and that leaving the EU had damaged our economy and thus the Treasury’s revenue stream – by some £40 billion, according to think tank calculations.  Facing the wrath of the right-wing media, the challenge of Reform and the Tories, they did not dare to explain the position to our uninformed electorate.  On top of all that, we now face additional challenges: a downturn in the global economy and international trade, resulting from Trump’s disruptive tactics and spreading international conflicts and the unavoidable commitment to increase defence spending substantially.  Keir Starmer has made very little effort, however, to explain to the British public the choices that we face: he’s not a natural political leader, more a manager.

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Caron Lindsay

Happy 80th birthday, Mary Reid

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 23rd June 2025 - 7:30 am

Today is an incredibly special day.

Our wonderful Thursday and Friday editor Mary Reid celebrates her Ruby Jubilee.

We are sure that everyone she ever taught, anyone who has been on the receiving end of her patient and generous help with their articles for this site, anyone whose campaign she has helped, anyone whose problem she solved as a councillor, anyone who has benefitted from the Conference access fund she pushed for, anyone who has benefitted from her wise advice, anyone who has enjoyed her incredible hospitality, will wish her the most fantastic of celebrations. The above, by the way, is a lot of people.

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Ed Fordham

David Boyle (1958-2025) – the nicest of reluctant philosophers

By Ed Fordham | Sun 22nd June 2025 - 8:57 am

When the histories of modern UK liberalism are written – and the tally of inspirations, ideas and motivations are drawn up… then the name of David Boyle (1958-2025) should feature.

It was lunch with Cllr Lord Greaves of Pendle, I think, when we agreed that local government and the Liberal Democrats needed an injection of energy. Tony’s reply was without hesitation: David Boyle. Cllr Richard Kemp had seen David speak at a conference on mutuality and ecology-led economies and had recently become leader of the Lib Dem Group at the Local Government Association (LGA): he also wanted to mobilise David’s talents.  In no time at all I had the privilege of offering David a contract to write an account of Liberal Democrat councils who were in control and positions of power: Power Actually.

And so began an LGA funded programme with David as he surveyed, met, interviewed and researched what Liberal Democrats were doing locally when they were in positions of power. Power Actually: a study of Liberal Democrat localism in action (2007) was followed by Greening Actually: environmental action through the local perspective (2009).

What David had enabled as a manifesto of achievements and with it a transformation in our approach to local government. Saying what we did, why we did it and what difference it made. That work and its legacy will stand the test of time and it is there for all to read. David was rightly pleased with both publications.

When ‘Power Actually’ came out David was immensely proud at the reaction – it was his compilation and collation of ‘our’ story. I recall at the launch Council Leader, the late Cllr Serge Lourie paying tribute to David – “David not only heard what we said, but he listened to what we were trying to say.”

David was not new to the Liberal Democrats – a longstanding activist and indeed former Young Liberal – he knew our political landscape.  When the Editor of Liberal News, Mike Harskin, died suddenly in 1992 David was asked by Chris Rennard to take over as Editor. David rose to the moment and was to be there for six years, editing a weekly paper that was driven by its diverse readership and reflecting both geography and quirkiness that it entailed.

And after he served as editor he served four years on the Federal Policy Committee where he was a calm, genial and inspiring source of ideas and wisdom.

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The Voice

Ed and Emily Davey talk to This Morning about caring for their son

By The Voice | Wed 11th June 2025 - 9:55 am

Yesterday Ed Davey and his wife Emily, who is also the Housing Portfolio holder at Kingston Council, went on This Morning to talk about Ed’s book, Why I care and why care matters. which you can buy from the publishers Harper Collins or from other bookstores.

They talked about their own experience of caring for their disabled son John and about why supporting family carers is so important. Without them, the NHS and social care would literally fall apart.

You can see the whole interview on ITVx or STV Player or watch this clip:

Wales online reports:

Their son remains without an official diagnosis, with Ed explaining that John finds walking and communicating difficult, adding: “Because he’s undiagnosed, you’re on a journey both with the people in the health service, and other carers.”

“He’s our wonderful boy and we’ve tried to help him become as independent as possible,” Ed, who also shares daughter Ellie with his wife, said.

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Caron Lindsay

What are Liberal Democrats looking for from the spending review?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 11th June 2025 - 8:15 am

Today Rachel Reeves announces her spending review. What are Liberal Democrats looking for from it?

It will surprise nobody to hear that social care is top of the agenda, alongside a closer relationship with Europe. Without the latter, Treasury Spokesperson Daisy Cooper says, Labour will be trying to drive the economy forward with the handbrake on. And anyone who has tried to do that in a car will know how impossible that feels and how much of an idiot you feel when you realise that you have forgotten to take the handbrake off.

Daisy said:

People have been left desperately disappointed in the Government’s failure to break clean from years of Conservative neglect and finally start delivering the change that people were promised.

Today’s spending review must deliver progress on social care. The Government’s bid to start reforms has barely progressed since it was announced six-months ago. Yet we all know the simple truth: without solving the social care challenge, putting money into the NHS today will be like pouring water into a leaky bucket.

Ministers should also be slashing the reams of red tape that are holding local businesses back and negotiate a bespoke UK-EU customs union, rather than pursuing painful cuts to already stretched budgets. Until they do, the Chancellor will still be trying to drive the economy forward with the handbrake on.

Here she is speaking about the key issues:

The Party has also commissioned House of Commons library research into the impact of possible cuts.  The Independent reports;

However, the analysis, carried out by researchers at the House of Commons library commissioned by the Lib Dems, found that unprotected departments — which excludes NHS England, the core schools budget and defence — could see real-terms cuts worth nearly £5 billion in total by 2028/29.

The calculation, based on Reeves’ promise that will not hike taxes, was made before the chancellor committed a further £1.25bn a year to reversing cuts of winter fuel payments to pensioners, a U-turn which was confirmed on Monday. It also does not take into account another potential U-turn on ending the two child benefit cap, which could cost a further £3bn.

The Home Office budget is forecast to take a huge hit, being almost half a billion quid short. The Independent report forecasts dire outcomes for social care and education. These would be incredibly short-sighted. It is so obvious that fixing social care is vital to sorting out the whole NHS, and why would you cut back on skills development when you are also hell bent on cutting social security and putting even greater holes in the safety net than the Conservatives’ best efforts managed?

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Victor Chamberlain

URGENT: Why we need a statutory climate duty for councils

By Victor Chamberlain | Tue 10th June 2025 - 8:11 pm

As Liberal Democrats, we know the climate crisis is one of the defining challenges of our time. Councils have a crucial role in meeting it, whether it’s retrofitting homes, investing in active and public transport, supporting the green economy, or leading local partnerships to build resilience and cut emissions. But too often, we are expected to lead on climate without the tools or powers to do so.

In my role as Deputy Chair of the LGA’s Local Infrastructure and Net Zero Board, I’ve been working to change that. Last November, I called for the Board to explore how a statutory duty for councils to act on climate change could support and strengthen our leadership. But I also made clear: any new duty must be matched by the funding, resources and powers required to deliver. Legal responsibilities must enable, not constrain.

Following that work, and in partnership with organisations such as UK100, ADEPT, the Climate Change Committee and others, the LGA launched an open consultation in April to seek views on whether councils should have legal responsibilities on climate change—and if so, what they should look like.

There is strong support for change. A recent UK100 survey found that 88% of councils back the introduction of a statutory Net Zero duty—provided it comes with adequate support. Councils influence over a third of UK emissions but lack a clear, consistent legal framework to act. That must change.

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Rebecca Jones

For a lot of trans people, it’s hard to feel pride right now

By Rebecca Jones | Sun 8th June 2025 - 9:08 am

Just a few years ago it looked like our country was moving in the right direction. There was a broad consensus for trans rights, things were moving forward. Yet now, not only have trans rights not progressed,  they have actually regressed. Even for the few thousand of us that have gone through the burdensome procedure of getting a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), we still almost no legal recognition of our true gender.

In the aftermath of the UK Supreme Court ruling, trans people are experiencing a roll back of our rights at a pace not seen since Section 28.  With many companies even instituting ‘bathroom bans’ for trans people – akin to far-right Republican states in America. It’s an incredibly scary time to be trans in the UK right now, and for many of us it seems like it will only get worse. Just recently we saw Conservative politicians proposing amendments to forcibly change all trans people’s identity documents to reflect their birth sex instead of the gender they live as now.  This barely scratches the surface of the tide against us. It’s incredibly difficult to be positive about it all.

And to be honest, we’re scared. I’m scared.

As a community, we have no faith in the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to uphold our rights, with their leadership repeatedly speaking out about trans exclusionary policies. Many of us hoped things would get better after Kishwer Falkner leaves office, but the Labour Government seems determined to install someone who looks like they could be equally opposed to our rights, freedoms and equalities. For many of us, we feel little hope of the situation getting that much better as Labour continues to chase the far right at the expense of vulnerable groups in society. I speak to a lot of trans people, who really cannot see much hope right now, and I don’t have much I can tell them. 

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Caron Lindsay

It’s Pride month – protest has not been needed this much for a long time

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 1st June 2025 - 10:11 pm

In a week where Nigel Farage seems to have had the stage to himself to talk about his plans to do away with anything remotely woke and to get women, British women that is, (and we all know what he mean by that) to have lots of babies, to ruminate on curtailing access to abortion, we can see that the right are not going to stop curtailing people’s freedoms once they’ve dealt with trans people.

This year’s Pride month comes as the rights of trans people have already been rolled back as a result of over-zealous interpretation of April’s Supreme Court Judgement. The Scottish Parliament announced that trans people would have to use gender neutral toilets at Holyrood and that male and female facilities would be based on “biological sex.” That is hugely problematic as it could require staffers to out themselves. That is why if I were there, I would feel that I would need to use the gender neutral facilities in solidarity.

Alex Cole-Hamilton questioned the Parliament’s Corporate Body about this last week after he was a signatory to a cross-party open letter expressing concern about the changes:

Christine Grahame suggests that the decision was taken on the basis of the need to balance the legal responsibilities of the Parliament related to the Supreme Court judgment. However, as we heard from Patrick Harvie, the former Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption has made it clear that there are no legal responsibilities for the Parliament. He said that judges did not take a side and that the judgment does not provide an obligation to create single-sex spaces—it is a matter of choice for institutions. The EHRC has been challenged on how it will police that. We have heard about the use of birth certificates. I understand that the SPCB does not expect this to be policed, but others may. Can I ask that no parliamentary staff member will be put in the position of having to challenge a toilet user in the future?

Contrary to the view that this subject is simply a load of nonsense, many members are far more concerned about the wellbeing of those who choose to make the Parliament their workplace. We owe them dignity and respect. Given the answer to a previous question, I ask the corporate body simply to ensure that the aforementioned complaints procedure must not and will not be used as a means of prejudicing anyone in the Parliament, nor to force the disclosure of any details of their private life, including their status relative to their gender.
We have seen backlashes like this before. 21 years after Roy Jenkins as Home Secretary legalised homosexuality came Section 28 which made it impossible for LGBT young people to seek or receive support at school. The impact this had on many of my friends was profound and they have never forgotten how stigmatised they felt.
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Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes: How should we play five party politics?

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 28th May 2025 - 12:00 pm

May’s local elections confirmed what opinion polls had been indicating for several months: that England now has five political parties attracting between 10% and 30% of voters.  Nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales make six serious parties: an even more crowded field.  

Of course it’s possible that over the next four years UK politics might return to its traditional two-party model.  But that doesn’t look likely.  Neither Labour nor the Conservatives any longer command the automatic support of a large proportion of voters, nor the mass membership that used to provide local organisations throughout the country. Other divides apart from class and wealth cut across old loyalties: young versus old, graduates versus school leavers, libertarians versus socially-engaged.  The old dream that a ‘realignment of the left’ might enable us to replace Labour, and the more recent hope that we might push the Conservatives out of contention as one of the two main parties both look illusory.  The result of the 2029 election may largely depend on how effectively different parties target specific constituencies, and whether the Conservatives and Reform can construct a formal or informal electoral pact. And it might then require more than two parties to form a majoritarian government.

After our experience between 2010 and 2015, many Liberal Democrats will groan at the prospect of any form of participation in a government in which we were not the largest party.  But we can’t dictate what election outcome we would prefer, and we need to be prepared to make the best of a different pattern of politics as it emerges.  Established party systems have withered in most other democratic states, as similar social and economic changes have transformed their electorates.  Say that we double our number of MPs in 2029, to become a major player in any post-election scenario, perhaps with more MPs than one of the two ‘established’ parties: what would we do then?  We’ve just seen an opinion poll put us ahead of the Tories.  We HAVE to think ahead.

I suggest some themes that ought to feed into our thinking and campaigning if the current pattern of disillusion with Labour and the Tories persists.

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Janey Little and Eleanor Kelly

Stillbirth surveillance shows why we must decriminalise abortion

By Janey Little and Eleanor Kelly | Sun 25th May 2025 - 7:24 pm

 

Stillbirth surveillance is the next chapter of our dystopian and dangerous abortion laws. Our parliaments must legislate to decriminalise.

We were chilled to read about the new stillbirth surveillance guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC). This NPCC guidance on “child death investigations” includes the seizure of mobile phones and accessing data from menstrual tracking apps in order to understand people’s “intentions” with the pregnancy. You would think this was a news story in Trump’s America, not right on our doorstep.

This development is part of a wider picture: one of an incremental and dystopian attack on women’s rights, both at home and across the globe. Anti-abortion activism in the UK is on the rise, with the UK branch of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) receiving over £1.1 million in 2024 from the US parent body. Last year, Nigel Farage said that rolling back the 24-week abortion limit was “worthy of a debate in parliament”. Meanwhile, misogyny is increasingly becoming mainstream globally, while nearly a quarter of governments reported backlash on gender equality in 2024.

Reform to abortion law in England and Wales is long overdue. Currently, abortion is a criminal offence under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, unless it is carried out according to the requirements of the Abortion Act 1967. Over the last 10 years we’ve seen an increase in police suspicion with dozens of investigations and six women in England charged in the past two years alone. 

In 2021, a 15-year-old girl was investigated for a year for an unexplained stillbirth, which was dropped after they concluded that it was due to natural causes. In 2024, a case against Bethany Cox was dropped after a three-year investigation where she was charged with abortion as a teenager. A psychiatric examination found that this had a “profound” impact on Cox. Mothers have been prevented from caring for their children.

People who are already suffering from trauma relating to stillbirth, miscarriage, and the ending of a pregnancy have been subjected to lengthy invasive investigations and emotional turmoil, while stripped of their support network at a time of vulnerability. Women denied access to their premature babies, their devices seized by police, having to hand over breastmilk to hospital receptionists because they previously considered an abortion. This cannot go on.

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In service of the common good

By Graham Garvie | Wed 21st May 2025 - 12:41 pm

Retirement offers many opportunities the most important of which is time to enjoy some pursuits which employment rarely allows. Reading more books is one of these. And, in parallel with reading goes the opportunity to write. 

As you may know, I have written previously about my time working in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Recently, I have tackled a much bigger writing task – that of an autobiography. This has been a laborious but a hugely enjoyable exercise – digging out diaries, documents, photographs, press cuttings and perusing and choosing which to use.

Core to the book In Service of the Common Good is the fundamental importance to humankind of the common good, empathy and kindness especially in today’s increasingly dangerous and selfish world.  Interspersed with reflection and humour, there are naturally strong liberal themes throughout; professional advice on councillor/officer relationships and the pitfalls and opportunities of political coalitions.

The book has now been published and is on sale for £10 and £5 p and p.  All proceeds will go to that excellent charity The Samaritans which has a branch in Selkirk. 

To give you a flavour of the book which has 126 pages, the chapter headings are as follows:

Musings from the Second Top Diving Board

  1. An Edinburgh Foothold

       2.Path-Finding

  1. An Unexpected Diversion  
  2. Making Waves
  3. The World as Workplace
  • Land of the Long White Cloud
  • Democratic Aspirations
  • And Iraq
  • Not Brexit
  1. A United Kingdom
  2. Art is the Heart of Things
  3. Influence and Encounter
  4. A Royal Salute

     10. And More Besides

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Caron Lindsay

IDAHOBIT: How Lib Dem Councillors are fighting for LGBT rights

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 17th May 2025 - 3:13 pm

The recent Supreme Court judgement on the definition of a women by “biological sex”, a concept described by BMA resident doctors as “scientifically illiterate” has caused real anxiety amongst trans people whilst not making women any safer. In fact, with the current media focus on toilets and changing rooms, it’s likely to lead to all women being less safe and subject to challenge if they don’t conform to gender stereotypes.

It’s a lose-lose if ever there was one. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued interim guidance regarding the use of single sex facilities which is about as extreme as they could manage. It’s interesting to note that one of the judges who wrote the Supreme Court judgement said that these issues were beyond its scope, yet the EHRC has taken the cruellest approach that it could.

However, the Guardian reported this week that staff at the EHRC have expressed concern about the guidance and the fact that two weeks consultation was given. This is likely to be extended to six weeks.

One EHRC source said there had been significant disquiet among staff about the interim guidance and the way it was drawn up before being published on 25 April.

They said: “Most people, including some fairly senior ones, had no idea the interim guidance was coming until it was published late on the Friday evening.

“They woke up to texts from family members and friends saying: ‘What’s going on?’ Staff working on sex and gender issues hadn’t been told, and nor had the duty press staff who were meant to explain it to the media. It was completely shambolic.

“This is, understandably, a fairly inclusive workplace and quite a few staff have trans friends or even partners. They suddenly had to try and explain this guidance which made no sense.

All of this will affect Councils as they will have to look at they provide services. Lib Dem Councillors across the country will soon be able to access suggestions for their own trans-inclusive motions to submit  for debate in their areas. Lib Dem Women has been working with LGBT+ Lib Dems and ALDC to put together a draft for Councillors to use. it will be circulated to their members very soon.

In Edinburgh, Lib Dem Councillor Euan Davidson was instrumental in ensuring that the Council passed a motion recognising that trans people were anxious and re-affirming its position that LGBT people should feel welcome in the city.

Here is his speech in full, which you can watch here.

I want to start by saying that whilst we accept the Supreme Courts ruling let us be clear: trans people have been quietly and respectfully using the facilities that match their gender for over two decades. Without incident. Without uproar. Without chaos. What has changed is not their conduct—but the temperature of the national debate and the fear being sown in its wake by politicians pitting two vulnerable groups again one another.

And that fear is real. I have heard from LGBTQ+ constituents who are frightened to go about their daily lives. Who now feel they must look over their shoulders. Who feel less safe, due to the confusion and chaos left in the wake of the court’s rulng.

Let’s also be clear on this: trans rights are human rights. The Equality Act still protects people from discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment. The Supreme Court ruling affirms this. But in the absence of leadership from the UK Government—indeed in the presence of active confusion and hostility—too many public bodies are retreating. They are excluding. And they are, in some cases, going further than the law ever intended.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems mark IDAHOBIT 2025 – we support you, we stand with you

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 17th May 2025 - 10:34 am

The sun is shining, it’s Brussels Pride (where Lib Dem Women chair Donna Harris is today),  Doctor Who Eurovision (the Interstellar Song Contest featuring Rylan) and Actual Eurovision from Basel and it’s IDAHOBIT, the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. Could a day be any more fabulous?

The LGBT community needs a moment of respite. Life for them, particularly our trans colleagues, is fairly unremittingly awful at the moment. I don’t know a trans person who isn’t scared about doing something as fundamental as going to the loo when they are out.  The UK is sliding down the international rankings as a good place for LGBT+ people to live at an alarming rate.

It’s not long after 10 as I write this, and already there have been a fair few good things from Liberal Democrats. Way too much to fit into one post, so there will be a few throughout the day.

First up, is Ed Davey’s video message which sends an unequivocal message to the LGBT+ community: the Liberal Democrats will never stop fighting to build a country where you are truly free to be who you are.

LGBT+ Lib Dems said:

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Vince Cable

Dog whistles and panic about immigration

By Vince Cable | Thu 15th May 2025 - 8:52 am

Nigel Farage can congratulate himself. His party did well in recent local elections; but so did the Liberal Democrats and Reform’s support may not last.  What he can be especially pleased about is to have reduced the leaders of the Conservative and Labour parties to quivering jelly: terrified that their supporters will abandon them unless they are fed a diet of dog-whistle slogans and impractical but draconian-sounding immigration policies.

The Conservatives’ odd Soviet era obsession with planning targets for net immigration comfortably meets Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. They somehow fail to have noticed that the statistics on net migration are largely meaningless: massively inflated by overseas students who are wrongly counted as immigrants.

The Labour government’s proposals by contrast have some perfectly sensible bits. Who would seriously quarrel with the idea that policy should aim to maximise the contribution immigrants make to the UK? Or with the idea that employers should cease regarding immigrants as an excuse for not training their British labour force. There are no numerical targets: good. But why spoil it with demagogic dog-whistles about ‘an island of strangers’ or Brexit bromides about ‘taking back control’ or – worst – denouncing liberal immigration as ‘squalid’.

The political debate would benefit from more reflection on the history of immigration politics, survey data on public attitudes and rigorous research on the impacts of immigration.  I have tried to pull together this material in a Working Paper for ODI/Global.

Immigration panics are not new. At the turn of the 20th century, the populist Tory MP, William Evans-Gordon, led a movement to stop Jewish immigration from – mainly – Russia.  Crime, disease, stealing jobs: the usual.  The Balfour government was panicked into the 1905 Aliens Act whose institutionalised antisemitism so disgusted Winston Churchill that he left the Tories for the Liberals.

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Lord William Wallace

Churches and chapels, Liberalism and faith

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 14th May 2025 - 11:55 am

Liberals will have followed the papal Conclave with mixed feelings.  Liberalism was forged in opposition to state power and state churches, their enforced orthodoxy and suppression of dissent.  On the European continent that gave early Liberalism a strong anti-Catholic tinge, which hasn’t entirely disappeared.  In England and Wales the alliance between Whigs and nonconformists became central to the 19th century Liberal Party, with campaigns to disestablish the Anglican church and to remove its control over schools and universities.  The high point of nonconformist influence in the party was between the 1880s and the first world war. In recent decades, some active Liberal Democrats have become hostile to faith and religion as such – in some cases intolerant of those in the party who hold to a faith and belong to a church.

I grew up as a Protestant Anglican.  I learned what I now understand as social liberalism from the sermons of Canon Marriott, preaching the ‘social gospel’ in Westminster Abbey (putting down my Biggles book, which choristers were allowed to take in to keep us quiet during sermons),   I had instinctive anti-Catholic prejudices, probably from the English history I was taught and the children’s histories I read.  I was shocked when, as a student, I first met an active Liberal who said he was also a Catholic.  His name was Geoff Tordoff, and he later became a key player in holding the party together during the last years of Jeremy Thorpe’s leadership and the Lib-Lab pact.  Then I worked throughout the 1966 election campaign for Pratap Chitnis, educated by the Jesuits and a practising Catholic, and learned to admire his intellectual as well as campaigning skills.  My prejudices evaporated as I worked with a succession of liberal Catholics whose faith and values went together.

What Liberals (myself included) dislike about religion is the claim to certainty that fundamentalists assert, the hierarchical structure of the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and (often) Evangelical churches, and the corruption of authority when priests defend their institution instead of their faith.  Popes 150 years ago condemned liberalism and the separation of church and state; the Church of England was a pillar of social order and Tory rule.  As institutions, both have fallen a long way short of the faith they proclaim.  Both these ‘establishment’ churches have struggled to adapt to open and democratic societies, and to the uncertainties of reasoned debate and honest doubt that such societies depend on.  But both have adapted, to the point where right-wing media in the USA are bitterly criticising the new pope. 

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Janey Little

Championing gender equity in healthcare

By Janey Little | Wed 14th May 2025 - 8:55 am

Gender inequity is pervasive in healthcare. Between stigma, delayed and incorrect diagnoses, gender bias, not being taken seriously, under-representation in clinical trials, and insufficient funding for health issues impacting women and gender diverse people, women face numerous barriers to high-quality care and equitable outcomes in healthcare. These issues are just the tip of the iceberg, and racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia further shape women’s experiences of healthcare.

This week is Women’s Health Week, which was started by the U.S. Department of Health to help raise awareness of women’s health issues. Here are three areas we as Liberal Democrat Women would like to draw attention to for this week.

Abortion

With the Trump administration continuing to attack the right to abortion and reproductive healthcare, now more than ever we as Liberal Democrats must be firm in our support for the right to choose, and in our solidarity with those who have lost that right.

Women across the globe are impacted by the actions of the Trump administration. For example, the global gag rule was reinstated in January, which prevents NGOs who provide abortion services or advocate for abortion rights from receiving aid from the US. Billions of dollars of foreign aid are affected by this, and 690 million women of reproductive agelive in countries impacted by the global gag rule. This is denying women and gender diverse people safe access to healthcare.

In the UK, Liberal Democrat Women will continue to advocate for the decriminalisation of abortion, because nobody deserves to be criminalised for accessing healthcare and making decisions over their own body. Abortion is healthcare.

Healthcare in pregnancy and the neonatal period

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