Tag Archives: featured

Caron Lindsay

That went pretty well

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 5th July 2024 - 10:15 am

Anticappointment is a concept coined by Toby Hadoke, a prominent Doctor Who commentator, to describe how Doctor Who fans approach a new series. They worry that they are not going to like it, even though they probably will. As a Liberal Democrat it fits well with how we approach elections.

Over forty years of disappointing election results has made me very cautious about predicting how many MPs we will end up with. I eventually decided to predict 32 MPs, pretty much our main target list. By the time polling day arrived, I knew that even though I was trying to limit my expectations, I’d be devastated if that was all we won.

But it wasn’t. We have 71 MPs. 71. SEVENTY ONE.  By the time I’ve finished writing this, it could be 72. Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire, in essence much of Charles Kennedy’s old seat, is recounting and I hear our folks our chipper.

Here’s Ed Davey exuberantly dad dancing and loads of Lib Dems singing Sweet Caroline. I always loved that song, but this has written it on my heart forever.

It’s a brilliant night for us. The best we have known in the history of our party by some margin.

Since Mary’s last update, we have added Chesham and Amersham to our list of technical gains. Sarah Green won it in a by-election in 2021, and few expected her to hang on to it. But she did. With a majority of around 5,500.  We also held on to our other three by-election gains. Helen Morgan’s vote in North Shropshire practically had to be weighed as she romped to a 15,300 majority. Incredible to think that in 2019 and forever before this was a rock solid Tory seat.  The one people were really worried about was Honiton and Sidmouth, the re-boundaried half of Tiverton and Honiton, won by Richard Foord in June 2o22. But Richard smashed it, beating Tory Simon Jupp by around 7000 votes. As an added bonus, the Tiverton part of the by-election seat was won by our Rachel Gilmour.  Sarah Dyke also held onto Glastonbury and Somerton by 6,500 votes. The icing on that cake was Anna Sabine winning the other half of that by-election seat for us.

We also held on to all the MPs we won in 2017.

There’s always one result that breaks your heart, though. Poor Paul Follows had been widely anticipated to beat Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Godalming and Ash. He just fell short by 800 votes.

I am thrilled beyond measure to see Vikki Slade finally elected in Mid Dorset and North Poole. After four attempts to win the seat, she made it, with a majority of just under 1400.

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The Voice

Go for it!

By The Voice | Thu 4th July 2024 - 8:56 am

Embed from Getty Images

Our warmest wishes go to everyone out campaigning today.

If you are a candidate realistically hoping that you will be an MP tomorrow, then go for it (and stop reading political blogs for the time being!).

If you are a candidate with little chance of winning, then keep cheerful – we owe you a huge thank you for giving so much to this campaign and keeping the Lib Dem diamonds bright.

If you are an activist or supporter who will be spending the day door knocking, delivering, telling or doing those all vital back room tasks, then you are the real heroes of this campaign. Enjoy the day, and be pleased that you have participated in an election that we will be talking about for many years to come.

You won’t be hearing much from the Lib Dem Voice team during the day today – we are all a bit busy. But we will be offering news and commentary throughout the night so do check in after 10pm and maybe share stories with us at [email protected].

We should also remember the many council by-elections taking place today as well. The news about those contests may get buried under the national news, but please let us know and we will highlight what we can.

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The Voice

It’s Eve of Poll. How are you going to help Lib Dems win tomorrow?

By The Voice | Wed 3rd July 2024 - 1:21 pm

It’s hard to believe that it’s 6 weeks since Rishi Sunak stood in the rain in Downing Street to fire the starting gun to the General Election campaign.

Since then, there hasn’t been much movement in the polls, apart from a few points up for us, sparked by the brilliant, positive, incredible images and messages coming from our leader. What a time to come in to the form of your life, Ed Davey!

This party has fought our best campaign for years at every possible level. Our media spokespeople have been amazing. Ed has shown in the debates, Question Times and interviews that there is a huge amount of substance behind the style. He has tackled tough questions head on, with honesty and humility.

It’s all getting real now. Tomorrow, people in our target seats will have to clear a path through their Lib Dem leaflets to their door and go out to vote. Some will still be wrestling with their choice even as they stand in the voting booth with the pencil in hand. We need to be in their heads with our positive messages at that point. That is why it is so important that we get our eve of polls and good mornings out and knock on as many doors and make as many phone calls as possible.

And it’s why it is really really important that every single ounce of our efforts goes into seats where we are in the running.

If you need convincing of this, here’s the North East Fife result from 2017:

Stephen Gethins Scottish National Party 13,743 32.9% -8.1%
Elizabeth Riches Liberal Democrat 13,741 32.9% 1.5%
Tony Miklinski Conservative 10,088 24.1% 7.8%
Rosalind Garton Labour 4,026 9.6% 1.9%
Mike Scott-Hayward Independent 224 0.5% 0.5%

Two votes in it. Don’t let that happen again.

And even this May 97 more votes could have given us control of 3 more Councils.

What you do and where you do it on Polling day really matters. If you can’t travel, please think about making calls from home – or from holiday.

The messages that the Tories are putting out might seem bizarre to us. Their “letter from July 2044” aimed at bringing Reform voters back on board is probably the weirdest bit of literature we’ve ever seen, but we are not their target audience.

Mel Stride’s extraordinary comments this morning that you need enough Tories around to scrutinise Labour are very strange indeed. The only thing that the Tories will be capable of scrutinising over the next five years will be each other, with menaces. They are a party riven with irreconcilable differences and they will make a load of ferrets in a sack seem like the best of friends.

If you want a really good opposition to Labour, you will need a coherent, confident, capable party to keep their feet to the fire. So you obviously need lots of Liberal Democrats.

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The Voice

This is why you need to help Lib Dem target seat candidates win

By The Voice | Wed 26th June 2024 - 9:19 am

With just 8 days to go before the election, our target seat candidates need the help of every single one of us between now and polling day.

They have a huge amount to do and the more people we can talk to between now and polling day, the better the chance we have of filling up those green benches and once again being the third party in the House of Commons. That will guarantee us more media coverage and Ed will get two questions to the Prime Minister every week.

Our target seat candidates have been campaigning at high intensity for years. Some of them have completely given up other work this year to concentrate full time on their campaigns. That is a huge personal sacrifice. But it’s what we need to do to win.

The last thing we need to wake up to on 5th July  is a string of near misses. Remember in the local elections, a handful more votes would have given us control of another 3 councils.

We know that the Conservatives are going to pull out all the stops in the last few days of the campaign to stop us winning. They are very worried about the scale of the losses we can inflict. On the For the Many Podcast last Friday, broadcaster Iain Dale said:

I hear on the grapevine that Conservative candidates in Conservative seats with a majority of, say 5000 or 6000,  they are all being re-deployed to seats which have a majority of say 15,000 or 20,000.

He confirmed to co-host Jacqui Smith that this included candidates who are defending their seats.

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The Voice

Cole-Hamilton and Chamberlain launch Scottish Manifesto with focus on carers, warm homes and agriculture

By The Voice | Mon 17th June 2024 - 1:27 pm

 

Alex Cole-Hamilton and Wendy Chamberlain have launched the Scottish version of our manifesto.  

At a farm inAlex’s Edinburgh constituency (photo of Alex driving a tractor to follow), they set out plans to fix the broken care system, invest in Scottish agriculture and ensure everyone has a warm home.

At the heart of the proposals is a £500 million rescue package for care, enabling people to be released from hospital, relieving pressure on the NHS and giving a fair deal to family carers. It will:

  • Create a new Carer’s Minimum Wage, boosting the minimum wage for care workers by £2 an hour;
  • Give unpaid carers a fair deal, lifting Carer’s Allowance/Carer Support Payment by £1,040 a year and removing the earnings cliff-edge.

Other key proposals include:

  • Establish the world-class mental health services Scotland needs, meaning every school pupil has fast access to a mental health counsellor, new mental health staff working alongside GPs and A&Es, and extra help for businesses, backed by £150m from taxing social media companies;
  • Deliver £170m more for Scottish agriculture;
  • Generate an extra £1 billion in capital funding for Scotland which  could be used to build new local health facilities, tackle the housing emergency, end the scandal of crumbling concrete in public buildings, and stop sewage dumping.
  • Make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with a ten-year emergency upgrade programme, starting with free insulation and heat pumps for those on low incomes.

At the launch, Alex said:

Every vote for the Liberal Democrats at this election is a vote to elect a strong local champion focused on getting you fast access to GPs and dentists, and giving our nation’s carers a fair deal.

We will stop sewage being dumped in our rivers, lift up Scottish education, and deliver warm homes that insulate you from the cost of living crisis.

Our vision is of a better Britain where we work in partnership, restoring your faith in politics and fixing our broken relationship with Europe.

Just like they Conservatives, the SNP have got to go. Only the Scottish Liberal Democrats can beat the nationalists in huge swathes of Scotland.

Hope and change are just around the corner, you only need to vote for them. Back the Liberal Democrats for a fair deal for you, your family, and for Scotland.

On the plans to fix care and the NHS, Alex added:

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George Cunningham

The Overseas Vote: Please encourage your British family and friends abroad this weekend to register!

By George Cunningham | Fri 14th June 2024 - 1:00 pm

An additional 2.1 million Brits abroad will be eligible to vote at the General Election on 4th July, but many still don’t know about their new rights. There’s just five days left to get the word out and have them register, as registration closes on Tuesday at 23.59hrs UK time, whether at home or abroad.

The abolition of the 15-year rule – which had previously stopped the right to vote for any Brit who has been out of the country for longer than that – means that all British citizens abroad of voting age who have ever lived in the UK have their right to vote restored since January this year for general elections and some referendums.

This has more than doubled the number of eligible British voters abroad from approximately 1.4 million to about 3.5 million, a sizeable increase!

Please take action – send your family and friends abroad an email straight away or give them a call. They should go online this weekend and register at https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote if they have not done so already. They will be registered to vote at their last constituency address they lived in.

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Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes.. .Tax Cuts versus Public Investment and Services

By Lord William Wallace | Fri 14th June 2024 - 9:38 am

The Conservative Manifesto confirms that they have dug in on tax cuts as their core offer to the voting public.  They know that this is an illusion, on which they would not be able to deliver if they won.  Opinion polls show that most of the public don’t think it’s realistic.  An IPSOS poll in early June found 68% of the public describing public services as ‘underfunded’ – confirming similar responses in multiple polls over the past year. 

Labour have been so frightened of the Daily Mail that they have committed themselves to holding almost all major sources of revenue to current levels.  They promise instead to fund increased spending out of future growth – a dubious prospect when UK growth is currently minimal and the global economy is being hit by wars in Ukraine and Israel and by the threat of a China/US trade war.  This has made the campaign so far surreal, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies (and the Institute of Government, and BBC Verify) pointing out the widening gap between promise and necessity, and with both major parties refusing to engage on where future cuts must fall.  Happily our manifesto has focussed on fair tax rather than low tax, and received compliments from the business pages for daring to do so.

Any of you who may be going to meetings with Tory candidates in the next three weeks can have a field day over the gap between rhetoric and reality.   Sunak’s party have promised to raise defence spending by 0.5% of GDP, and attacked Labour for its more cautious half promise.  Given the re-emergence of Russian threats to Europe and the current weakness of UK armed forces, such an increase is irresistible. So ask the Tory candidate what other budgets they will cut to fund this significant increase?  Education, when teachers are leaving in increasing numbers, universities in danger of bankruptcy, and apprenticeships less than half of what our economy needs?  Justice and prisons, which are already buckling from court delays, prison overcrowding, and probation understaffing?  Local government, where budgets have been squeezed to the point where key services are disappearing?  Or maybe the NHS, of all things?

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The Voice

WATCH: Our new Party Election Broadcast featuring health and carers

By The Voice | Wed 12th June 2024 - 10:24 pm

A “Young Carer’s Premium” to help young carers in school is just one of the measures the Lib Dems would implement to help and support carers. In the latest video he talks to a young woman, in the middle of her A levels, who cares for her autistic brother.

Ed said:

When I speak to young carers and listen to their experiences, it’s clear they have so many skills and so much to offer. But many just aren’t getting the support they need to balance their education with caring for loved ones.

“We need to support those who give so much of their time to caring. No young carer should fall behind the rest of their class.

“Our plans for a Young Carers Pupil Premium would help these fantastic young people fulfil their potential. I am proud that the Liberal Democrats are putting a fair deal for young carers at the heart of our plans.

Here’s the broadcast in which he talks to people across the UK with experience of caring and cancer services.

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Victor Chamberlain

This is the Liberal blueprint we desperately need to solve our housing crises

By Victor Chamberlain | Tue 11th June 2024 - 10:02 am

The preamble to the Liberal Democrat constitution states the party exists to ensure “no-one shall be enslaved by poverty”. The many housing crises we currently face are plunging millions into poverty, substandard homes and an unfair and unaffordable housing market. People suffer worse health, children don’t receive the opportunities they deserve and our economy is less productive because our housing sector is broken. Fixing the housing crisis is central to creating the more equal and fair society our party believes in. I was delighted to read the Liberal Democrat manifesto for the 2024 General Election. It offers a clear, comprehensive, and pragmatic roadmap to addressing the housing crises that have long plagued our country.

The commitment to building 380,000 new homes annually, including 150,000 social homes, is particularly significant for cities like London where in a councillor. Every day I see how the lack of good quality homes residents can afford is leading to worse health outcomes, forcing families into temporary accommodation and schools to close and leaving swathes of young people living with parents or in poor quality shared housing. The chronic shortage of genuinely affordable housing has driven up costs and poverty and made home ownership a distant dream for many. By advocating for new garden cities and community-led developments, the manifesto promises to inject much-needed diversity and sustainability into urban planning, ensuring that growth benefits all residents. Liberal Democrats should be proud to be a YIMBY (yes in my back yard) party – we need a lot more homes and a lot more variety of homes to solve the many different housing challenges we face. It’s great to see the party committing to being the party of home building – that’s the liberal approach to the housing crisis.

The manifesto’s focus on renters’ rights is another critical area. In my borough (Southwark) we have tens of thousands of social renters who are ignored by the Council and housing associations, so I’m especially delighted to see greater protections proposed for social renters. We need better enforcement of standards, quicker repairs and greater transparency and accountability. The proposed ban on no-fault evictions and the establishment of three-year tenancies as the norm will provide much-needed stability for renters. Many of our residents live in constant fear of sudden evictions, disrupting their lives and communities. Creating a national register of licensed landlords will further enhance accountability and improve living conditions across the rental sector.

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The Voice

WATCH: Lib Dem manifesto launch

By The Voice | Mon 10th June 2024 - 2:54 pm

In case you missed it, here is all the fun of the manifesto launch.  The text of Ed’s highly personal speech about his experience of caring for both his mum and his son is below.

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The Voice

“You can get through if you’ve got love” – a Party Election Broadcast with a difference

By The Voice | Wed 5th June 2024 - 3:53 pm

Love and tenderness are not words you generally associate with Party Election Broadcasts.

Our one, to be broadcast tonight is the exception. Ed Davey tells his story of life as a carer for his mum and his son. He talks about the millions in similar situations, keeping going with love. That, he says, is who I will fight for every day. It’s just incredible.

From The Guardian

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The Voice

Ed Davey opens up about juggling the LibDem leadership and caring for his teenage son

By The Voice | Tue 4th June 2024 - 9:38 am

Ed Davey has given an extremely moving interview about caring for his teenage son, while leading the Liberal Democrats.

Click below for some clips. You can find a full article and more clips on the ITV News website.

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Caron Lindsay

The problem the Tory “National Service” idea is trying to solve

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 26th May 2024 - 9:22 am

Most people who read this site are well used to being sickened to their stomachs by not just Conservative policy ideas but what they have done in practice.  In the past few months alone, we’ve seen them pick on disabled people, sick people, vulnerable people seeking safety in this country, people coming to this country to share their skills in the workplace and pay taxes,  trans people and anyone over 50 who isn’t working full time.

Today their big idea insults a generation of young people who have been failed by the Conservatives in spectacular style. A generation who, for the first time in a long time, is less well off than their parents.  According to the Conservatives, the way to fix this generation is national service, forcing them into either a year of military service, or 12 weekends of volunteering.  At a cost of £2.5 billion.

It doesn’t take long to think of better uses for that sum. Perhaps more housing so that young people don’t have to live with their parents into their 30s, perhaps by removing the discrimination in the minimum wage, perhaps by increasing social security to help the 1 in 4 children growing up in poverty, perhaps by making sure young people in distress can access mental health treatment quickly, perhaps by rebuilding youth services so young people can get the support they need in their communities. Perhaps by doing more to save the planet for future generations.

And then you come to the practicalities of all of this. Many young people are stuck in low quality, minimum wage jobs where they are treated badly – and which require them to work at weekends. And will they get expenses for travel to and from their volunteer placement? What if they are carers, or parents, or disabled?

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Caron Lindsay

And we’re off: Lib Dems welcome the 4th July General Election!

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 22nd May 2024 - 6:39 pm

Who would have known when I booked my dentist appointment for 5:30 tonight that the Prime Minister would choose 5pm on a wet Wednesday in May to make the most farcical General Election launch announcement I have ever known.

It could have come straight from The Thick of It. The Prime Minister standing in the pouring rain, his suit getting shinier by the second, his words drowned out by anti Brexit campaigner Steve Bray blasting “Things can only get better” by D:Ream, Labour’s campaign anthem from 1997.

Our Press Office tweeted: “Things can only get wetter.”

Ed Davey welcomed the General Election as a chance to kick out the Tories and deliver the change the country needs. He said:

This General Election is a chance to kick Rishi Sunak’s appalling Conservative government out of office and deliver the change the public is crying out for.

For years the Conservative Party has taken voters for granted and lurched from crisis to crisis while the problems facing the country are getting so much worse.

The NHS has been brought to its knees, people’s mortgages and rents have soared by hundreds of pounds a month, and water companies have got away with pumping filthy sewage into our rivers and beaches. All because this Conservative Government is more interested in fighting between themselves than standing up for the needs of the country.

Every vote for the Liberal Democrats at this election is a vote for a strong local champion who will stand up for your community and health services. It’s clear that in many seats across the country, the best way to beat the Conservatives is to vote for the Liberal Democrats.

Scottish Lib Dem Leader Alex Cole-Hamilton highlighted his ambition to see liberals replace nationalists as the third party in the House of Commons.

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Caron Lindsay

Autumn Conference: What did Federal Board decide?

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 21st May 2024 - 8:32 pm

We have known for some months that the Federal Board was going to decide at its May meeting what to do with Federal Conference in Brighton this Autumn. Last night they discussed the matter looking at feedback from party committees and staff as well as a consultation exercise carried out in March.

They had a lot to consider. What if Rishi Sunak called the General Election and we ended up having our Conference in the short campaign? What opportunities were there from having Conference just before the General Election if he didn’t? And what damage could it inflict on our campaign if we did not take the opportunity to set out our stall when the other parties would at their own events? What impact would two major events in quick succession, a conference and a General Election, have on staff?

So what did they decide?  Well, Conference is going to happen – sort of. It’s going to be shorter. It will now only run from Saturday 14 to Monday 16th September and technically will be a special Conference.

Party President Mark Pack explained on the party website:

After extensive feedback from members, the Federal Board has agreed a plan for our Autumn Federal Conference.

We agreed that it would be in the best interests of the party to hold such an event if possible, and that due to the unusually close proximity between the event and the next Westminster general election, the maximum benefit would come from amending our normal conference plans so that it can be tailored to the requirements, opportunities and risks of an event so close to a general election.

These include making it a 2.5 day event (14-16 September 2024 in Brighton), providing the best trade-off between a shorter conference lowering costs and staff time while also preserving enough time to maximise the benefits of conference, including commercial income. The Tuesday rather than the Saturday would be dropped in order to maximise the chances for members to participate.

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Ed Davey’s speech to Scottish Conference – Bring on the General Election

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 20th May 2024 - 4:45 pm

The text is below,

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Caron Lindsay

All the fun of Scottish Conference!

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 20th May 2024 - 3:05 pm

Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference in Hamilton was upbeat this weekend.  The party sees progress in its sights at the next Westminster, Holyrood and local authority elections.

From the moment the event was opened by West Lothian’s Cllr Sally Pattle, there were serious debates,  keynote speeches, anniversaries celebrated and a lot of fun and laughter.

The most emotional moments of Conference came during the debate on Christine Jardine MP’s motion on supporting bereaved children and young people. The motion called on the Scottish Government to create a protocol for the “collation and dissemination of information to bereaved children about relevant support services” alongside a new duty to inform which would apply to people like health professionals and teachers. Mandatory training would also be given to all those who would have a duty to inform. Contributors shared sometimes shocking but always incredibly sad experiences of loss.

Amanda Clark, our PPC for Perth and Kinross, rightly won the award for the best speech of Conference for her summation, which was heartfelt, inclusive and showed everyone who spoke that they had been heard.

Conference also voted for a national strategy to improve literacy, to bin the National Care Service that the SNP Government is blowing a billion on and which has little  prospect of actually improving care for vulnerable people, to increase access to sport, for a housing strategy that secures affordable housing for key workers and on support for Scotland’s flood-hit communities.

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Stephen Harte

Why Eurovision gives me hope

By Stephen Harte | Sat 11th May 2024 - 12:55 pm

 Happy Eurovision!

Today is the highest and holiest days of the camp calendar – the grand final of the 68th Eurovision Song Contest from Malmo, Sweden.

Growing up in Thatcher’s dismal 1980s in West Lothian (immediately to the west of Edinburgh but with none of the cosmopolitan colour of Scotland’s capital and getting all of the bust and none of the boom of those Tory years), I never travelled abroad until I left school. Eurovision was a glimpse into another exotic world. Eurovision wasn’t cool in the 1980s (and ABBA were yet to be reborn in Gold) and I often thought I was the only person I knew who was drawn into the spectacle. It never occurred to me that I was one of many queer people for whom Eurovision gave life.

Camp theory teaches that we can often find the most profound truth in the silly and irreverent. Eurovision has been that to my liberal, European heart. Our shared European home has been a place of war and division – and remains so today, with war in Gaza and Ukraine and the spectre of the far right stalking virtually every country (not least this ugly Tory Brexiteer government in the UK). The fact that something as camp and outrageous as my beloved Eurovision Song Contest unites us speaks to me and gives me hope in the way that a speech from Macron never could.

For example, in the 1993 contest in Millstreet in rural Ireland, at the height of the Bosnian war, the Bosnian act had to be flown out, under fire, in a UN helicopter. We had a jury in Sarajevo under siege calmly give their votes over a crackly UN line. The Irish compère thanked Sarajevo and simply told them to take care. Not a dry eye in the house!

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The Voice

Lib Dems up ⬆️ Conservatives down ⬇️

By The Voice | Tue 7th May 2024 - 6:19 pm

The party has sent out this excellent May 2nd election result summary to members:

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Caron Lindsay

The Scottish Parliament Election – 25 years on

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 6th May 2024 - 9:30 am

Election night 1997. The tv room at the count in Chesterfield. Two people in the room – me and Tony Benn who was eating a white chocolate magnum and ignoring me. He might have been ignoring me because I was blubbing a bit because I was so happy that we were finally, after years of campaigning, going to have a Scottish Parliament.

The cross-party co-operation that had built the case for that Parliament across political and civil society was a great model. The Conservatives opposed the idea but even the SNP were eventually persuaded to come on board.

Fast forward two years to 6 May 1999 when the first elections to the new Parliament took place, with a nice shiny new proportional electoral system. 129 MSPs, 73 representing constituencies and 56 on regional lists were elected. The campaign had seen Alex Salmond and the SNP get into disfavour for not backing the NATO airstrikes on Kosovo aimed at stopping the humanitarian disaster and ethnic cleaning.  Paddy Ashdown and the Lib Dems were strongly in favour of this action.

Our big issue was tuition fees – we opposed Labour’s plans to introduce them and were very clear about our position on that. And we honoured that.

I couldn’t vote in this election because I lived in England. In fact, on election day, I was, at 37 weeks pregnant,  running a committee room in Chesterfield whee we boosted our Councillor numbers from 9 to 19.  Those were very happy times.

However, I was very invested in what was happening back home. I was up at the crack of dawn watching the final results come in the next day.

The Scottish people had elected 56 Labour MSPs, 35 SNP, 18 Conservative, 17 Liberal Democrats, 2 Greens and a Socialist. The whole system was meant to encourage co-operation and no party was meant to have a majority.

The coalition that eventually emerged after a few twists and turns between us and Labour did some amazing things in its 8 years – abolition of tuition fees, free personal care, free eye and dental checks, land reform, STV for local Government among them. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a functional partnership that was prepared to wring the neck of the powers we had to get stuff done. Our Jim Wallace was Deputy First Minister and Ross Finnie became Rural Affairs Minister.

Alex Cole-Hamilton reflected on the anniversary:

I am proud of the part Scottish Liberal Democrats played in delivering a Scottish Parliament and in the successes we have delivered through it.

In government, the Scottish Liberal Democrats delivered pioneering legislation like the abolition of upfront tuition fees, the introduction of free personal care and the smoking ban. We also legislated for the building of the Borders Railway, gave communities the right to buy land, made dental and eye tests free, introduced free bus passes, and opened up the business of government to proper scrutiny through Freedom of Information law.

These are Lib Dem successes delivered because of devolution, and without which we would never have achieved them.

So what do I want to see our powerful Parliament do next?

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems gain a seat in Salford Quays – and most Council seats in past 5 years

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 5th May 2024 - 8:38 pm

The final results of the 2024 local elections are in and we had a fantastic result on ALDC’s doorstep in Salford. Cllr Jonathan Moore took a seat in Salford Quays. The result was:

Jonathan Moore: 39.2% (+13.1)

Lab: 37.4% (-9.8)

Green: 15.4% (-3.1)

Conservative: 8.0% (-0.3)

We finally have a brilliant piece of media coverage that I suspect we will be sharing far and wide between  now and the General Election. Someone at HQ has crunched a lot of numbers and discovered that we have gained more Councillors than anyone else over the past five years. From the Guardian:

The Lib Dems have added more council seats than any other party over the last parliament, gaining more than 750 in the last five years, largely in the south-west and south of England.

As Ed Davey’s party won more seats than the Conservatives in the local elections last week, the Lib Dems said Tories would be “looking over their shoulder terrified” as the general election approached.

Data analysis by the party shows that the Lib Dems have gained 768 seats, Labour 545 and the Greens 480, while the Conservatives have lost 1,783.

That is pretty impressive given that Labour and the Conservatives are much better resourced than we are.

Whitehall Editor Rowena Mason writes:

The party’s strong gains in local elections suggests its strategy of focusing on building up votes in key strongholds could help deliver seats at the election

.

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Mary Reid

Great achievement in SW London

By Mary Reid | Sat 4th May 2024 - 4:48 pm

The BBC has shamefully ignored the London Assembly during this election. Nearly 9 million people live in Greater London – more than the populations of Scotland and Wales combined.  And London does not have a Metro Mayor who is accountable to the local authorities that make up the Metro area. Instead it has a full blown Assembly with 25 Assembly Members.  So it is inexcusable that the BBC is not reporting on it in its election coverage.

Rant over, because we do have some very good news to report. We have won our first constituency member ever for the Assembly for the SW London seat (which cover 5 Westminster constituencies). Gareth Roberts won decisively with 66,675 votes against Labour with 50,656 and Conservative with 49,981. This has been a Tory seat from the start.

Congratulations all round!

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Posted in News | 5 Comments
Mary Reid

It’s Polling Day

By Mary Reid | Thu 2nd May 2024 - 9:50 am

I don’t need to remind our readers to vote today. But I thought you might like to know when the results are likely to be declared.

It is a rag bag of an election with 10 Metro mayors (including the Mayor of London) on the ballot paper along with Police and Crime Commissioners, London Assembly members and local councillors where they are elected by thirds. On top of that there is a Westminster by-election in Blackpool South.

Most of the counts are taking place on Friday – and Saturday as well in the case of London, amongst others.

Overnight we can expect results from a number of local councils. We should keep an eye out for Portsmouth, where we run a minority administration, which should be declaring at around 2.30pm. The Blackpool South by-election result is also expected in the early hours.

Then tomorrow Lib Dems should be watching West Oxfordshire, Brentwood, Wokingham, Tunbridge Wells, Elmbridge and Gloucester.

Do tell us in the comments if you have any useful local knowledge.

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Posted in News | 17 Comments
The Voice

Tributes paid to Andrew Stunell

By The Voice | Tue 30th April 2024 - 4:02 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Tributes have been paid to Andrew Stunell, whose death was announced today.

Ed Davey has put up this statement:

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Posted in Obituaries | Also tagged | 11 Comments
Vince Cable

Made in Britain

By Vince Cable | Mon 29th April 2024 - 12:30 pm

In a factory in rural Durham, the government’s commitment to ‘levelling up’ and to manufacturing industry is being tested to destruction. The Hitachi railway manufacturing plant, employing 700 and thousands more in the supply chain, is threatened with closure. Procrastination over HS2, lack of joined up planning for the railway industry and Covid’s negative effect on travel have, together, led to a three-year gap in the company’s order book. The Japanese owners cannot realistically be expected to mothball the plant for three years and so it will most likely close.

I got to visit the plant (along with Lib Dem candidates including Aidan King the prospective Mayor for the North East). I went the day after Keir Starmer had been on a well-publicised visit, making reassuring, if non-committal, comments about the future of the plant under Labour. For me, the visit had deeper significance. A decade ago, I had opened the plant: then, a tent in a muddy field. Attracting Hitachi to build trains in Britain was one of the successes of the Coalition’s Industrial Strategy and, until very recently, it seemed to be an inspired investment decision for Hitachi.

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Amanda Clark

Caring for carers: what next?

By Amanda Clark | Mon 29th April 2024 - 11:15 am

It’s been a pivotal month for us carers in which our dedication to our loved ones has made the headlines for various reasons,  good and bad.

The good news was that Liberal Democrat MP Wendy Chamberlain’s Carer’s Leave Act finally became law on 6th April.

This provides all carers in employment with a new statutory right to take five days of unpaid leave from work each year to fulfil their caring responsibilities. Wendy, herself, said she would have wanted this to be paid leave but the principle is now enshrined in law and at least doors have been opened. 

 It must come as some relief to many families that are balancing having to work and care in this cost-of-living crisis. 

Both my husband and I worked full time to pay the bills whilst we were bringing up our two kids in the South East. We are proud of them both: one neurotypical, artistic daughter and our son who has Autism and a Learning Disability. 

Archie, now 21, needs constant care and supervision. Even when he reached an age that most teenagers could self-administer paracetamol and have a duvet day, we would have to take it in turns to negotiate time off with our bosses to look after him.  My husband used up countless days of Annual Leave when he was sick or I had an INSET day. We also needed to pay for a childminder after school as his special needs transport would deliver him home by 4pm and neither of us could leave work by then. 

As if that wasn’t hard enough, at the age of 16 he developed Epilepsy.

The months after this crushing diagnosis were made of nightmares while the neurologist tried to balance his meds. Right in the middle of teaching a French lesson, I would get a call from his school saying he had fitted, injured himself and they had called the paramedics. Trying not to panic, I would rapidly set work for the class, inform a colleague I needed to leave immediately and try to stick to the speed limit as I drove the twenty miles down the motorway to my injured son. The worst was time when he gave himself a black eye as he collapsed, convulsing on to a urinal – poor thing!

My Head Teacher was always supportive in the various emergency scenarios that arose but there was always the expectation that I would make up the time at some point with extra cover or more duties. It also came with the guilt that my colleagues had to compensate for my absences. 

I was, though, lucky and can imagine that other employers and employees may be less sympathetic. I really hope that the Carer’s Leave Act will remove the onus on us to make up for lost work time and lead to more empathy with colleagues. Quite frankly, we carers have enough on our plates. 

This new law is hopefully a stepping stone to so much more that can be done for the 2.4 million unpaid carers in the UK who save the economy an estimated £164 billion. 

Carer’s Allowance- changing to Carer’s Support Payment in Scotland, is now a meagre £81.90 per week or £4,258.80 per annum. For those of us lucky enough to live north of the border we can add in the supplements we get in June and December and we get a grand total of £4,836. That’s an hourly rate of 49p in England and Wales and 55p in Scotland -if you consider most of us are on duty day and night.

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Rob Parsons

The paradoxes of public health

By Rob Parsons | Fri 26th April 2024 - 12:48 pm

The promotion of public health is a liberal policy. It is an effective tool in the development of fairness and equality, it contributes notably to health and happiness (thereby reducing the need for, and the expense of, medical care; and reducing the cost to businesses of time off work), it enables people to have much more effective control over their own lives, and many of the activities associated with it resist financialisation, which is one reason why it is so unpopular in right wing circles.

It is also a wide ranging field. Healthy populations need good quality, warm, dry housing; good education; good food; good opportunities for both rest and exercise. On the other hand, reduction of social housing, the obsession with reducing education to league tables, corporate control over food prices and ingredients, the selling off of parks and playing fields, all contribute to reductions in public health.

Fundamentally, good public health reduces the impact of poverty, ignorance and conformity in people’s lives.

Public health requires a community based rather than an individualistic response. This again is a liberal value. While we champion the freedom of individuals, we also champion the notion that we live together in communities, and that we affect, and must support, each other. It is an effective sphere for government to do what we cannot do so well ourselves. It utilises “the power of government to change conditions that are constraining people’s freedom”.

As a country we allow the debate to be dominated by advocacy of a freedom that takes no responsibility, by far too much misinformation, and far too little information. (A very clear example at the moment is when both government and media notice that the number of people off sick has notably increased recently, and wonder why. Without ever mentioning Covid, which we know has severe long term consequences for many who have had it.) As a party we allow ourselves too often to be trapped within those terms rather than campaigning to change them.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 19 Comments
Nick Baird

The Conservatives have just announced a big increase in defence spending – how should the Lib Dems respond?

By Nick Baird | Wed 24th April 2024 - 12:45 pm

Yesterday Rishi Sunak announced a plan to substantially increase UK defence spending, up to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. This announcement moves the Tory position from an aspiration to achieve this “when economic circumstances allow” to a firm plan with actual budget cash numbers from this year through to 2030.

The timing is interesting – it is less than two months since the Government passed its Spring Budget without any attempt to fund this aspiration, but since then two things have happened. One is that Keir Starmer moved Labour’s policy position to match the unfunded “aspiration”, and (perhaps more importantly) the Daily Mail ran a sustained campaign demanding a defence spending increase.

Beyond the spin and hyperbole of the speech and press release, the Government has also issued a supporting document with more detail, available here and the simultaneous release of this slick and glossy document indicates the Government has been working on this for a while.

In many respects, this is a sensible plan which actually aligns quite closely with the Lib Dem policy “Liberal Values in a Dangerous World” adopted at this year’s Spring Conference, including investing in people to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis within the Armed Forces and civilian MOD, providing a long term procurement pipeline to give industry confidence to invest in capacity and R&D, and reiterating the importance of alliances.

There are a couple of important things currently missing from the Government’s plans however. One is that the Government’s announcements so far do not commit to reverse the current cuts to the Armed Forces, for example in the size of the Army or the Typhoon fighter fleet. These are crucial issues, as the only way the UK could have more capacity available to fight a big war in the next 2-3 years is to reverse planned cuts now.

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Linda Chambers

Why Lib Dems should support measures to limit smoking this week

By Linda Chambers | Mon 15th April 2024 - 3:41 pm

I am writing in both a personal and professional capacity urging you to support the Tobacco and Vapes Bill due for second reading tomorrow. 

As a Liberal Democrat Councillor in Hull, I am the Portfolio Holder for Adult Services and Public Health and have responsibility for reducing smoking in a part of the country with some of the highest rates, with 500 people every year dying from smoking related illness. The impact is profound in a low-income community like Hull, and the cost to our local economy is around £390 million a year. 

I am an ex-smoker. I worked as a nurse for over 40 years; most of it in critical care in the operating theatres. There I witnessed over time the devastating effects smoking had on people’s lives. Often when going off duty I would pass patients all lined up outside, still smoking. Seeing this happening I made several attempts to quit smoking myself, but it was not easy.  My husband, Mike, did not give up smoking but supported me in my attempt.

I did not manage to quit before smoking permanently damaged my health and I now have COPD, a condition common among those of us who smoked for many years.

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Chris Northwood

The culture war of the “gender-critical” has broken the NHS

By Chris Northwood | Wed 10th April 2024 - 12:55 pm

The Cass Report, billed as an independent review into NHS provision of transgender provision for adolescents was published today. I’ve read the summary and recommendations (the whole report runs to over 300 pages), and running throughout it are the scars of the so-called “culture war”—a social movement where transphobes who hold so-called “gender critical” beliefs have been campaigning to marginalise trans people and roll-back hard won protection in equality law.

The report itself acknowledges the toxicity of debate around transgender healthcare. I’m going to try and be fair to the report here and deal with it as neutrally as I can. Transphobia does not seem to be seeping out of its pores in the same way that a recent Department for Education consultation did, which explicitly framed the discussion through the lens of the “gender critical” philosophy.

It is undeniable the harm that the culture war fuelled by transphobia has caused, and this comes through in the report.

Anti-trans campaigners are litigious and well-funded (allegedly by far-right American fundamentalists), and using these legal weapons has been effective in securing their campaign goals in places with a management culture focussed on risk management and minimisation.

The result of this atmosphere of fear created by the anti-trans movement is one the review describes as a situation where other services in healthcare are scared to do anything when gender dysphoria is present. Instead, everyone is referred to the specialist gender services for unrelated or co-existing conditions, which they might not be able to deal with. This is well-known in the trans community as “trans broken arm syndrome“. This is true in both children and adults.

There is no doubt that in part this is due to the fear within the healthcare community of being dragged into the frontline of the culture wars, which has had the chilling effect of marginalising trans people so that only the gender clinics can help.

The Cass Review strongly advocates moving away from single specialist centres to a regional model of trans healthcare, closer to primary care. This is also something many trans people and advocates (including myself) believe would be a better system of healthcare delivery, but it describes the current situation as far from that. Other recommendations in the report are fair assessments of the current situation. In the void left by the failure of NHS healthcare, private providers like GenderGP have emerged, but their standards of care fall short of best practice (trans streamer F1nn5ter recently did a video about this). The Cass Report is right to be critical of this, and this is one of the biggest indicators of how current NHS provision fails.

Much is made in the report of the lack of quality research covering transgender health. Transgender health has often been seen as at best niche, and at worst, something to be actively destroyed. During Nazi rule, the world’s first and leading research centre was ransacked and the research burnt, as well as trans people being among the identities targeted in the holocaust. Other research has overly focussed on transgender women and bears an undercurrent of the fetishisation that we’re often targets of, yet remained influential in the field for decades.

One example of this is that there has never been a longitudinal study of the impact of progesterone alongside estrogen in feminising hormones, which are routinely denied due to evidence showing no effect on breast growth, but anecdotally has an effect on mental health, which has never been evaluated. The assumption of medical researchers that trans women are only interested in breast development, and not in the mental health benefits of the hormone which is available to cis women, is one example of research being rooted in trans misogyny.

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