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Tag Archives: inequality

From national averages to local realities: inequality in our communities

By Tom Walker | Mon 8th June 2026 - 10:17 am

Economic decline, Conservative austerity and misguided government policy have all been blamed for worsening inequality in the UK, however, this fails to take a rounded view of inequality and leads to debate over economic solutions that neglect local challenges. By defining inequality solely as an economic problem, we enter further debate about inequality as an economic indicator. Critics can readily underplay the impact of inequality in our society by pointing out that relative poverty has remained constant. Inequality must be viewed through the lenses of income, wealth, health and education, all of which are rooted our local communities.

Unaffordable housing, exorbitant early-years education, a lack of GP appointments and job losses reflect a perception of overall decline in the local area. This affects local people and the opportunities they are given. Two-thirds of working-age adults in poverty live in a household where someone works, this undermines the notion that “work pays” and is just cause for the anger felt by so many. Those same communities are experiencing UK firms offshoring to cheaper labour markets and criminal gangs operating with impunity. These are local issues for local people. This perception that life is getting worse and not better has been exploited by populists across Europe and the Americas. All too often, we link this phenomenon to polarisation and a changing media landscape, this isn’t the full story. Populists in the UK are campaigning on those local issues: “Make Work Pay”, “Revitalise British Manufacturing” and “Make Law-Abiding Citizens Feel Safe”. The electorate don’t need to support the extreme policies of these parties to vote for them, they simply need to see a party that is representing solutions to their local problems.

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Posted in Op-eds | 21 Comments

Why Liberal Democrats need a principled position on Farm Inheritance Tax

By Tanya Park | Sat 27th December 2025 - 8:55 am

Labour’s capitulation this week- raising the Agricultural Property Relief threshold from £1 million to £2.5 million after fourteen months of pressure – reveals the weakness of defending arbitrary numbers rather than principles.

This should matter to Liberal Democrats. We’ve opposed Labour’s reforms without offering an alternative. “Scrap the tax” isn’t liberal – it’s opposing for opposition’s sake. We’re ceding ground to Labour’s incoherent incrementalism and Conservative privilege defence.

The opportunity Labour has created

Labour doesn’t know what problem they’re solving. The threshold they inherited was unlimited. They proposed £1 million. Now it’s £2.5 million. They claim to protect “ordinary family farms” while targeting “the wealthy” – but can’t explain why the right number changed by 150%.

This creates space for Liberal Democrats to articulate principled reform. Not “tax more” or “tax less,” but “tax the right things for the right reasons.”

What we should be arguing

The real conflict isn’t “protect farmers versus raise revenue.” It’s tax dodgers versus working farmers.

Current Agricultural Property Relief gives 100% inheritance tax exemption to all agricultural land – whether farmed or held as a tax shelter. Wealthy investors buy farmland to save 40% on inheritance tax, inflating land prices and locking out genuine farmers.

A liberal approach distinguishes between productive farming and passive wealth. Tie relief to behaviour (actual farming), not asset class (land ownership). The mechanism: link inheritance tax relief to the percentage of income from farming. Work the land, pay nothing. Use it as a tax shelter, pay tax.

This protects working farmers better than Labour’s threshold – someone earning their living from agriculture pays nothing regardless of land value. And it removes the tax shelter incentive driving unaffordable land prices.

Why this matters for Liberal Democrats

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged farm inheritance tax, taxation and wealth | 33 Comments

Government should stop using “working people” and audit income inequality and poverty

By Chris Perry | Wed 9th July 2025 - 10:25 am

When will the Government drop the phrase “working people” which excludes “retired people”, “children”, “people with long term illnesses or disabilities” and people who have had to give up work to become full time carers and adopt something more inclusive. Until they do, they will continue to shoot themselves in the foot.

Congratulations on the Lib Dem stand against cuts to disability benefit. In my experience most people who are off work due to sickness or disability would give anything within reason to be able to work. However, if Government wrongly believes that a financial incentive is required then the answer must lie in increasing their potential earnings and not the threat of increased poverty.

Widening income inequality and increasing poverty are the great social evils of our time. And unless Government addresses pay differentials within companies, chasing inward investment in search of growth will make the rich richer and create low paid jobs for the masses. It will increase income inequality and poverty: not reduce it. As did stopping the winter fuel allowance and cutting disability benefit which added to the hardship of the most vulnerable people in our society and, given the wealth of empirical evidence into the social determinates of health which have demonstrated the correlation between income and health, added to the winter pressures on the NHS at the very time Government was committed to reducing waiting times.

In 2022 / 23 there were 4.3m children in the UK being brought up in poverty – 2/3rds of whom had a parent in work. In March 2023 there were 107,317 children in the care of the local authority in the UK – the highest number ever. In December 2023, 112,660 homeless households were living in temporary accommodation in England, including 145,800 children. A record-high for both categories. Despite low detection rates the courts could not keep pace with demand and prisons were bursting at the seams. There was concern about rising knife crime amongst young people.

Two million older retired people were living in poverty in the UK in 2024. The state pension had fallen further behind average earnings (23% in 2025 from 24.5% in 2020). This was because the “triple lock” was suspended in 2022 /23 and the state pension increased by 3.1% instead of 8% had it been applied. Stopping the “winter fuel allowance” in 2024 represented a further cut of 3% in the income associated with the universal state pension having been part of older retired people’s income since 1999. It was restored for some in 2025 not, it would seem, because of the hardship it caused or because of the increased winter pressures on the NHS, but because of the opinion poll ratings and loss of votes in the local elections. Retired people got no benefit from the two pre-election cuts in National Insurance but do have to pay more income tax due to the freezing of the tax-free personal allowance and lost their free TV licence in 2022. Therefore, after ten years of catching-up due to the “triple lock”, introduced by the Coalition Government in 2010 to reverse the year-on-year erosion since the earnings link was replaced by a prices link in the 1980’s, older people were again being left behind.

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Posted in News | Also tagged poverty | 10 Comments

Beating Reform will require a new economic settlement for the working class

By Tom Reeve | Sun 4th May 2025 - 12:30 pm

Reform is on the rise. Led by the garrulous Farage, it is hoovering up votes across the country by doing one simple thing: articulating the grievances of the working classes.

While it is generally recognised that populism rarely leads to stable government, there is a growing realisation that Reform has a point. It’s not easy, but if we look beyond their abhorrent views on race, religion and equality, they are articulating an economic critique.

Okay, characterising it as a ‘critique’ is a bit of a stretch – it lacks intellectual rigour or depth – but Farage’s economic cri de coeur resonates with the working classes because it speaks to their lived experience.

Reform can make the running on this because they are the only ones singing the song.

Although GDP in Western countries has grown hugely since the 1990s, median wages have remained largely static. That’s the kind of dry economic statistic that is almost guaranteed to put half your audience to sleep while inciting the other half to argue vehemently over its causes. However, the reality of what that means is clear to see. The rich have got richer – much richer – while the poor squeak by.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see that this leads to political unrest, but some people try to dismiss this as the politics of envy. After all, the reasoning goes, many people may be poor in relative terms, but in absolute terms, they are much richer than previous generations. So what are they complaining about?

We also live in an unprecedented era of social mobility, in which numerous people have ascended the economic ladder, with some of them becoming fabulously wealthy. It’s self-evident, is it not, that people who don’t get ahead only have themselves to blame.

Where the politics of envy narrative fails is in ignoring a fundamental facet of human nature, the sense of fairness. Fairness is intrinsic to human psychology – it even appears to be inherent to the psychology of other social animals such as wolves and other animals. We ignore this primal instinct at our peril.

Is it fair that some people can afford to own several nice homes when many others cannot afford to own even one basic one? If the purpose of an economy is to allocate resources to the members of society, is it fair that some people spend lavishly on luxuries while many others watch every penny? Can we say that we live in a fair society when the poorest among us struggle to put food on the table for their families, or – that awful phrase – have to choose between eating and heating?

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged economy, fairness and reform uk | 68 Comments

Lib Dems must get tougher on wealth inequality

By Chris Whiting | Wed 14th August 2024 - 10:25 am

It’s beyond infuriating.

We’ve waited 14 long years for a so-called centre-left Chancellor, only to find ourselves on the brink of more belt-tightening when we desperately need bold, transformative action. After the havoc of a global pandemic, a bruising cost of living crisis, and a recession that destroyed the livelihoods of millions, Rachel Reeves is already sounding the alarm for further austerity. Instead of rallying for the public investment we so desperately need, she’s searching for corners to cut and taxes to squeeze from the working and middle classes. But let’s be clear: the money to fund our public services is out there. The only thing missing is the political will to seize it.

We’re teetering on the edge of an inequality crisis so severe, it threatens to tear the very fabric of our society apart. The problem is not those on six figure salaries, it’s not even really the millionaires—it’s about the billionaires at the summit, whose wealth allows them to wield power and privilege in ways that are as undemocratic as they are dangerous.

If we don’t embrace radical wealth redistribution, we’re condemning ourselves to a future where the super-rich rule over the rest, unchecked and unchallenged.

In the last few years alone, UK-based billionaires have seen their fortunes soar by 1000%, concentrating economic power in the hands of a microscopic elite. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is the poster child for this grotesque disparity. When Musk bought Twitter, he acquired a global loudspeaker to broadcast his toxic, transphobic race-war baiting rhetoric. This is not benign accumulation of wealth; it’s a direct assault on democracy itself. In a country like the UK, where social tensions are simmering at best, Musk’s actions are a recipe for disaster.

And let’s not forget J K Rowling. Her wealth has given her a platform to dismiss the rights of trans people—a group she neither belongs to nor understands.

The influence of billionaires isn’t just a moral abomination. It’s a fundamental threat to the economy. Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of billionaires in the UK rose by 20%, while the rest of us were plunged in to a cost-of-living crisis and the highest tax burden in a generation.

When a handful of individuals control more wealth than millions of citizens combined, they can bend politics and policy to their will, sidelining the needs of the many. This isn’t just wrong – it’s a betrayal of the social contract, a breach of the promise that every person should have a fair shot at success.

The billionaire class doesn’t just hoard wealth, they weaponise it. They use their riches to lobby for tax breaks, deregulation, and policies that entrench their power and rig the system even further in their favour. This isn’t simply an economic issue, it’s a moral crisis. A society that allows such staggering inequality to flourish is one where the social fabric is ripping at the seams, where the chance for upward mobility is little more than a cruel joke.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged wealth inequality | 21 Comments

William Wallace writes…Promises of tax cuts deny reality

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 6th October 2021 - 11:55 am

Rishi Sunak reassured the Conservative Party conference on Monday: ‘Yes, I want tax cuts,’ though not until public finances have been ‘put back on a sustainable footing.’ That’s code for cutting public expenditure and public investment. The substantial proportion of Conservative MPs who believe in a small state repeatedly call for tax cuts without saying where they would cut spending. IN committing to balancing the budget Sunak is committing himself to cutting spending as well – or breaking the manifesto pledge not to raise taxes again. He will be well aware that Republican Administrations in the USA have repeatedly run rising deficits as they cut taxes but failed to cut spending.

Liberal Democrats should resist any temptation to criticise the Conservatives for raising taxes. We should condemn them vigorously for raising taxes unfairly – for hitting lower-paid workers through raising National Insurance while sparing higher earners. Fair taxation has to be progressive taxation, oriented to take more from those who have more. The UK is more sharply unequal in terms of both income and wealth than almost all other developed democracies except the USA. Repeating ‘give us tax cuts and a smaller state’ sweeps aside the social and economic challenges that the UK faces.

Like other developed democracies, we have a rising number of elderly people drawing pensions and using health and other public services. We have cut public spending on education and training well below comparable countries, with results that are apparent in our shortage of skills. We have invested too little in housing and public infrastructure for decades. Transition to a more sustainable economy, including moving toward net zero carbon emissions, will require major public as well as private investment. The UK has also invested much less in scientific research and development than other leading states. Boris Johnson has promised to make us ‘a scientific superpower’, but has not yet explained how that will be funded.

And then there is ‘Levelling Up’, which is becoming the defining measure of Johnsonian government – and the likeliest source of public disillusion at the gap between easy promises and poor delivery. Long-term reduction of regional inequalities cannot be achieved without higher investment in education, local as well as long-distance transport, the revival of local government and public services, housing and local enterprise. That’s a huge agenda, reversing decades of neglect by successive government, and requires a sustained increase in public spending.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged tax | 11 Comments

Let’s tackle entrenched inequality with a Universal Basic Income

By Anton Georgiou | Wed 9th September 2020 - 10:45 am

As a local Councillor in one of the most diverse wards in London, I am acutely aware of the entrenched inequality that exists within certain sections of the country. This has been further tragically exposed by the current coronavirus crisis. My ward, Alperton, is amongst the hardest hit in Brent, with one of the highest death rates in the borough.

Government studies which show the disproportionate way that this virus is impacting certain ethnic groups and also a Brent commissioned poverty report published in August, seek to shed a light on why my borough was so gravely impacted. In some respects, it was a perfect storm – high levels of poverty, exploited front line workers, many of whom are from ethnic minority backgrounds and overcrowded, poor housing that allowed the virus to rip a hole right through our community; one that will take a lot to heal and recover from.

It is clear that the only way to recover and ensure that the most vulnerable groups are safeguarded into the future is to seek to address the inequalities that exist in our country. That is why I wholeheartedly support the introduction of a Universal Basic Income. A guaranteed annual income for every citizen provided by the Government.

As a party, the Liberal Democrats have always been at the forefront in calling for major social change to tackle the big issues we face. It is absolutely right we do so again now.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged universal basic income | 26 Comments

“It’s a matter of life and death” LDCRE Chair Roderick Lynch on Black Lives Matter protests

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 7th June 2020 - 12:47 pm

The chair of Liberal Democrats for Racial Equality Roderick Lynch was on Politics England today talking about the Black Lives Matter protests taking part around England. Why are people taking to the streets in the middle of a pandemic?

He talked about how inequality in housing and health and higher rates of poverty are a matter of life and death every day for black people.

When you think about it like that, you can understand their need to highlight how tough life is and how much of the burden of the inequalities in our society they are being forced to bear.

An article in today’s Observer shows how BAME people and single parents are taking the hardest financial hit from the pandemic. And when they were already struggling long before Covid-19 took over our lives.

Approaching half – 44% – of non-BAME individuals whose working hours have declined during the crisis have been furloughed, while 7% have found themselves unemployed.

By contrast, only 31% of BAME workers who have experienced a drop in the hours they are working have been furloughed, while more than 20% have lost their jobs.

BAME household earnings have fallen from an average £441 a week to £404 over the course of the crisis. Non-BAME groups saw their average weekly earnings fall from £547 to £503.

And single parents have faced an eye-watering fall in their weekly incomes:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged bbc politics england, black lives matter uk, liberal democrat campaign for racial equality and roderick lynch | 1 Comment

5 June 2020 – today’s press releases (part 1)

By Mark Valladares | Fri 5th June 2020 - 11:10 pm

Lib Dems: Ministers must commit now to any recommendations from inequalities inquiry
ONS figures highlight the devastating COVID-19 care home crisis
Lib Dems call for legally binding targets to restore natural world
Lib Dems: Extend Brexit transition now

Lib Dems: Ministers must commit now to any recommendations from inequalities inquiry

Responding to the announcement that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission will lead an inquiry into the racial inequalities exposed by the coronavirus outbreak, Liberal Democrat Equalities Spokesperson Christine Jardine said:

The consequences of the coronavirus crisis are exacerbated for some communities by the existing inequalities in our society. The announcement that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission will investigate the disproportionate impact the virus has had on people from different ethnic minorities is particularly welcome considering Public Health England’s report earlier this week offered no proposed Government action.

The EHRC’s Inquiry will set out clear recommendations and Ministers must commit now to following them. The Liberal Democrats want to see a government-wide plan to tackle BAME inequalities, with a review by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to determine whether its funding is adequate. Once the Inquiry has been carried out, the Government should set this in motion with their recommendations.

Too many individuals have lost their lives to coronavirus, and we know that a disproportionate number of those we have tragically lost are from BAME communities. It is clear that not only does the Government need to do more to tackle the spread of the virus, but it also needs to do more to tackle the injustice and inequality in our society.

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Posted in News and Press releases | Also tagged brexit transition period, care homes, christine jardine, climate emergency, corinavirus, ed davey and wera hobhouse | 2 Comments

2 June 2020 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Tue 2nd June 2020 - 10:45 pm

Govt must review exports of security equipment to US
Lib Dems: PHE report fails to properly address inequalities in our society
Govt must extend transition given NI Assembly vote

Govt must review exports of security equipment to US

Responding to news that President Donald Trump has threatened to use military force to quell protests in the United States following the murder of George Floyd, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said:

Today the US President threatened to use force against his own citizens. As things stand, our Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister have stood silent. Their silence is shameful.

The Prime Minister must make

…

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Posted in News and Press releases | Also tagged Alistair Carmichael, arms exports, brexit, coronavirus, munira wilson and transition period | 2 Comments

Discussing inequality requires precise language

By Mohammed Amin | Mon 23rd December 2019 - 12:30 pm

When mathematicians discuss categories such as groups, rings and fields, they are all agreed about exactly what they discussing. Unfortunately, much political debate today degenerates into a dialogue of the deaf, because we fail to define our terms precisely enough.

This is particularly true with the subject of inequality in society. Let me illustrate.

Country A – an unequal dystopia

In country A, the top 1% own over 6% of total wealth, and the top 10% own almost 49% of total wealth.

This contrasts dramatically with the bottom 50% of the population. They own only 1.5% of total wealth.

Indeed, the bottom 30% of the population own absolutely nothing, while the 1.5% of wealth mentioned in the previous sentence is owned by those in the population range 31% – 50%.

Who could possibly justify such an unequal society? Isn’t Country A is rigged against the poor?

Country B – an egalitarian utopia

In country B, there is no inheritance. Everyone has the same life expectancy.

Everyone attends university until the age of 21, without incurring a penny of debt, and then starts work.

Country B is so equal that every person starting work at age 22 earns exactly the same salary. Each year they get an identical pay rise.

Everyone saves exactly the same proportion of their income. They also achieve exactly the same return on their investments.

Everyone works until the age of 70 when, they die, and the state takes 100% of their assets because no inheritance is allowed.

This society is so equal that only the most extreme socialists would envisage creating imposing such equality by government edict.

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Posted in Op-eds | 20 Comments

Revoking Article 50 alone isn’t enough

By Paul Hindley | Fri 20th September 2019 - 12:30 pm

With the prospect of a general election on the horizon, we have just finished another successful Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference in Bournemouth. Jo Swinson delivered a stirring first leader’s speech and Conference backed several new policy motions, most notably the party’s new policy on Brexit. A future Liberal Democrat Majority Government would revoke Article 50 and instantly stop Brexit.

British politics now has a party that is prepared to do its utmost to put an end to Brexit, either by getting a democratic mandate to revoke Article 50 or failing that, by securing a People’s Vote with the option to Remain in the EU. Brexit has developed into the biggest peacetime political and constitutional crisis arguably since the 17th century. It is shaking British politics to its very foundations with our constitutional settlement being tested like never before.

It is not just enough to stop Brexit by revoking Article 50, we also need to heal our broken democracy. At the time of writing this, the case against the prorogation of Parliament is playing out at the Supreme Court. The Executive branch has been made to answer a case presented to the Judiciary in regard to its actions towards the Legislature. There is conflict between the three branches of government.

Britain unlike many countries does not have a single written (or codified) constitution with clearly defined checks and balances. In the absence of this, Boris Johnson’s government is able to railroad Parliament by utilising the ancient powers of the royal prerogative to enact a five-week long prorogation. The potential for an extremely authoritarian government being able to take power is very real under the current British constitutional settlement; a fact which is underlined by the majoritarian nature of the first past the post voting system.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brexit, housing and social justice | 39 Comments

The best way to answer Coalition guilt-shaming is to challenge austerity and poverty today, head-on

By Nick Rider | Wed 7th August 2019 - 1:30 pm

The election of a new Liberal Democrat leader has been followed by a predictable burst of accusations and guilt-shaming – mostly, but not only, from Labour sources – regarding the Lib Dems’ part in the Coalition, cuts and austerity. Responses on Liberal Democrat Voice and in other Lib Dem groups have often followed a familiar pattern too. A fair amount of irritated defensiveness. A lot of detailed discussion of the financial situation in 2010, deficit levels, etc. Sometimes a feel of this being a rather theoretical economic argument a bit far away, only raised to torment us.

I think this is to miss the point. The best way to get over endless guilt-shaming and raking-over of the Coalition is not to get sucked into circular arguments over just what part any Lib Dem minister played in this or that decision in 2014 but to say very clearly we’ve moved on, there are urgent matters to be dealt with, and that today, in the here and now, 2019, the Liberal Democrats see poverty as a real crisis, care about it and are prepared to tackle it.

What doesn’t leap out from current Lib Dem responses is any sense of urgency. An urgent awareness that there is an atrocious crisis of poverty in this country, and it’s getting worse. Galloping homelessness, thousands dependent on food banks, more and more people in work but so poorly paid and so insecure they barely keep going. Public health indicators that had been improving for decades now stalled or going backwards, as the United Nations’ Alston Report on Poverty in the UK highlighted.

And behind this worsening poverty are some very old ideas, like the assumption that anyone in need of support is potentially a ‘scrounger’ culpable for their own poverty who needs to be kept in check through such things as the benefit sanctions regime.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged austerity, coalition, homelessness, poverty and social mobility | 62 Comments

It’s time for us to prove our progressive credentials

By Katharine Pindar | Tue 11th June 2019 - 8:55 am

We want to hang on to the Remain voters who flocked to us in the Euro elections. We believe that our party could radically change our conflicted country for the better, while we see that the two main parties at present are, in the expressive vernacular, of as much use as a fart in a bottle.

This husk of a government continues to do harm. As if it were not enough that Chancellor Philip Hammond ignored the poorest in his March Spring Statement despite bumper tax receipts, the continuing impact of the roll-out of Universal Credit, the two-child limit on some welfare payments and the continuing benefits freeze will, according to research by experts, cause a big increase in families unable to make ends meet this year. Cover-up attempts by Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd to alleviate the effects have done little. For example, repaying the advance payments for UC will plunge one in ten low-pay households into deficit. Although UC has made 56% of households better-off by £172 a month, 40% are worse off and will lose an average of £181.

Amber Rudd’s latest wheeze to stem the flow of criticism is denial. She is to complain to the UN about the final UK report of its Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, which was published last month, apparently on the grounds that his personal fact-finding tour was only eleven days long and his conclusions on the Government’s approach to tackling poverty are ‘completely inaccurate’. The 20-page report, which upholds the statement made in November discussed here in LDV is in fact extensively referenced by many authoritative public bodies.

The report’s summary points out that one-fifth of Britain’s population, 14m.people, live in poverty, and that the policies of austerity introduced since 2010 continue largely unabated. Its final conclusion is that Brexit presents an opportunity to reimagine what the UK stands for, and that recognition of social rights and social inclusion rather than marginalization of the working poor and the unemployed should be the guiding principle of social policy. The report combines recommendations of practical steps to tackle poverty with humane proposals for restoring our social contract.

So, its fourth recommendation demands reversal of the “regressive measures” pointed out by experts and ignored by the Government (see above) – continuation of the benefits freeze, the two-child limit, the benefit cap, and the reduction of housing benefit including for under-occupied rental housing. This is already Liberal Democrat policy, and we would also support the recommendation to eliminate the five-week delay in receiving UC benefits.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged poverty and social security | 44 Comments

Reject! Reject! Reject! We Demand Better

By Katharine Pindar | Wed 22nd May 2019 - 12:30 pm

There is a lot of anger about in British politics today. But I believe we Liberal Democrats are not angry enough.

We write a whole pamphlet on Demanding Better, and pass an entire motion on what we want to Demand Better.

But we don’t condemn. We don’t say what we believe is rotten in the practice of government in Britain and the way it has allowed the decline in the state of our nation.

We won’t convince people about what we want until we say what we reject.

So what do we fiercely reject? These are what rouses most anger in me.

The leaders of both main parties allowing the threat of leaving the EU to go on for nearly three years, and still choosing to risk a no-deal Brexit rather than unambiguously giving the people the final say in a People’s Vote.
That so many top elected politicians appear to scheme for their own and their kind’s advancement instead of putting the needs of the country first.
That the Government squanders the country’s resources on preparing for Brexit while ignoring the wish of ordinary people for secure lives without fear for the future, as well as the despair of industrialists facing continued uncertainty.
The attitude of the Conservative Government in letting the weakest in society go to the wall. So ordering everybody regardless of circumstances to take any job they can find and look after themselves, and refusing adequate welfare benefits to those who struggle.
The lack of response by this Government to the evidence of there being four million children now living in poverty here, and of the increasing necessity for poor families to use food banks, a disgrace in this rich country.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged child poverty, demand better, fairer taxes, nhs funding and proportional representation | 59 Comments

On Policies, Perceptions and Potentials

By Steve Trevethan | Wed 8th May 2019 - 12:30 pm

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. (Anon.)

“Lack of social mobility” and “austerity” confront us. Perhaps much of what we might, and might not do, depends upon information, perceptions and attitudes?

In 2019 our public spending is about 38% of GDP, with the USA at about 36%, Germany at 42%, France 56% and Italy 36%.

In 2010 our national debt to GDP ratio was 53%. In 2018 it was 87%. Equivalent 2017 figures are: France – 98.5%; Germany – 64.1%; Japan – 222.3%; USA – 103.8%.

Since 2010, more than £30 billion has been cut from welfare payments, housing subsidies and social services. About 66% of “poor” children are in families with at least one parent working. Between 2012 and 2019, the number of children fed from food banks has more than tripled. Since 2010 homelessness has increased by 169%. The slowdown ln UK life expectancy is one of the highest in the G20 countries.

The above data, our own experience of people begging and living on our streets, and reliable reports that needed, skilled workers (such as nurses) use foodbanks, indicate that “austerity” has done great social harm.

Ten years on, the “deficit” is far from being removed, £billions of welfare budget cuts are planned and “austerity” has resulted in the slowest UK economic recovery in a century.

Perhaps we now need to campaign for its cessation and, if possible, its rectification? (The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that “rectification” needs expenditure of at least £12.4 bn above current budgetary projections.)

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged austerity, quantitative easing, taxation and welfare cuts | 60 Comments

You’re on free school meals – you can’t have that

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 9th April 2019 - 11:38 am

Frustrations are ten a penny in politics at the moment as Parliament blunders its way through Brexit.

Few things are as heartbreaking, though, as some of the experiences outlined in this Guardian article at the weekend.

In the fifth richest country in the world, children describe the pain and embarrassment of being poor. This should not happen.

Maddy, 16, described her embarrassment at being identified as being on FSM. “When she was like ‘You can’t get that, you’re free school meals’, like I was really embarrassed ’cos people were waiting behind me, I was kind of like “Oh my God”. And it’s like you’re really restricted to what you can eat with free school meals. So now I just get what I know I’m safe with … so a small baguette and carton of juice.”

The whole point of free school meals is that those who are poorest should be able to have a hot meal once a day.

Have you ever had the experience of there not being enough food in your house to go round everybody? How awful must that be?

Parents often go without food to ensure their children eat. Bryony, 13, said: “If there isn’t enough food, we’ll get it and sometimes mum will go hungry and starve and stuff. Even if it’s not that much food for me and , it’s enough that we’ve actually had something, whereas mum hasn’t, and it gets a bit to the point where we’ll start feeling guilty because mum hasn’t had anything and we’ve had it.”

Time and again the cruel and inhumane policy of “no recourse to public funds” comes up. This is a policy Lib Dems intend to reverse. It means that some people subject to immigration control cannot get emergency state help even when they need it. That means that if they lose their jobs, they can’t get help with the basics. Earlier this year the Scottish Parliament’s Equality and Human Rights Committee where horrified to discover from Shakti Women’s Aid’s evidence that some women were using pillowcases as nappies because they were destitute. No wonder that the Committee called for a destitution fund to stop things like that.

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Posted in News | Also tagged poverty | 11 Comments

The Brexit Delusion

By Ken Griffin | Thu 14th March 2019 - 12:34 pm

Brexiteers say about the consequences of Brexit, “I don’t care, we voted for out and that’s what should happen”. I detect also that they know it’s the best way to annoy the establishment and all those politicians who have “messed up their lives”.

It started with picking on foreigners for taking our jobs and destroying our culture but morphed into finding a scapegoat for all our troubles. UKIP has piled up all their pet hates onto one handcart and labelled it Europe. The EU is not a perfect soul mate (it has its demons) but in the current world it’s far superior as a partner to all the rest. Our politicians should be telling us so.

Yet somehow, Vote Leave has succeeded in setting our people against each other in an unnecessary civil war. They have pulled off a mischievous stunt that has churned up anger and resentment against the EU. We are all victims now. Only our sense of good play will get us out of it.

The real culprit is a seismic shift in the world manufacturing power and our government’s inadequate solutions and poor decision making for dealing with it. Europe is in the same turmoil as the UK for the same reasons. It would be an intelligent move to work together and not fight each other. After Brexit many firms will shrink their business and return to Europe. Brexiteers will say “Good Riddance”. That is a mark of frustration, not logic. Vote Leave has exploited this frustration and pinned it on Europe.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brexit and people's vote brexit | 5 Comments

Christine Jardine: A tax on women just for being women is plain wrong

By NewsHound | Tue 5th March 2019 - 10:25 am

In her Scotsman column this week, Christine Jardine describes seeing an offer for deodorant for £1 in a pharmacy. Men could buy a full size can. Women got a travel size.

That encapsulates the problem that she is trying to sort out in a Bill aimed at tackling the so-called “Pink Tax” she is introducing today.

The women’s movement has come a long way. Parliament itself is an example. We don’t have a perfect gender balance yet, but we do have the largest number of women ever elected, and the green benches are beginning to look vaguely like the country we are there to represent. But discrimination is still there in everyday life in so many ways that often we simply don’t notice.

Next time you are shopping take a careful note of some of the prices on the shelves. You may not notice it at first but over time you may begin to see a trend.

I hadn’t really noticed that the so-called ‘Pink Tax’ was an issue until it was pointed out to me by a colleague, so I went into a high-street pharmaceutical store to see for myself.

It seems that women get hit with a double whammy: they make less for doing the same work, and then they pay more for the same product or service just because it’s ‘for’ women. Discrimination on gender grounds is illegal, and whether women are paying more for a pink razor, deodorant from the same brand, or for an identical piece of clothing, it’s time to say enough is enough. There is absolutely no reason why men and women should pay different prices for exactly the same products or services.

In an article that starts with a reference to her hero, Billie Jean King, and is crammed full of tennis metaphors, she goes on to talk about Caroline Criado Perez’s book, Invisible Women, which is being published this week. This describes the gender data gap:

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged christine jardine, Parliament and pink tax | 7 Comments

Being a PPC: what’s your motivation?

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 24th January 2019 - 8:34 am

Caron asked me to write a series a little while ago about being a PPC – and my response at the time was that a day-in-the-life blog might put people off ever applying to be a PPC!

Being a PPC is hard work – we are volunteers and unpaid, but expected to do a huge amount of work building our teams, supporting local elections, sending out press releases, attending local events, answering letters and emails, the list goes on.

However, I willingly signed up to the never-ending work. Why? In my case it was my anger at poor mental health provision coupled with my fury at the inequality in society. Those two issues pushed me over the edge from being an armchair activist to getting out and knocking on doors, trying to make a difference.

I didn’t like door-knocking the first time – I thought I was intruding on people’s privacy by interrupting whatever they happened to be doing. But I quickly found out that most people like being asked their opinion and listened to. What they don’t like about politics is the shouting of Westminster and the perceived lack of understanding about how the real world works. Someone knocking on their door, listening to stories about their world, the real world, means a huge amount to them.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged liberal democrat ppcs, mental health and Why be a Liberal Democrat | 8 Comments

Looking beyond Brexit

By Mark Argent | Thu 3rd January 2019 - 5:45 pm

The sense of things going horribly wrong is likely to get much worse as 2019 gets under way and #BrexitShambles becomes #BrexitFarce.

In the probable chaos of the coming months the country needs us to articulate our hope for the future.

Putting some flesh on those bones, in no particular order:

Improve Benefits. Universal Credit could have been a good idea, but under-funding has hit it hard and people are suffering. Improving the funding is a good place to start. We also need to go further. It is a scandal to have people needing to use food banks or losing the roof over their head because of the way the system works. I’ve spoken with people struggling to live on benefits, who voted Leave in the desperate hope that things would improve.
Wealth inequality. Back in the autumn, Vince Cable put forward a raft of tax reforms to make the system fairer, especially around inheritance and investment income and pensions. Univeral Basic Income has been on the edge of discussions for a long time. It is time to take it seriously — it can’t be done overnight, but it is time to start the conversation as a way to pick up where we are, and fears around the way in which technology is reshaping the world.
Brexit has pushed climate change from the top of the agenda. People have every reason to be worried. That means is that it is high time to turn that worry into action — around renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, zero carbon housing, improved public transport, and more.
The Blair government had some good ideas on devolution, with elected regional assemblies and pulling government offices and development to the same boundaries. The imbalances around devolution to Wales, Northern Ireland and particularly to Scotland would look very different if there was meaningful devolution in England.
It’s time to talk openly about federalism. Too often it’s a dirty word in British (or at least, English) politics. It’s time to dispatch the myth that it is about centralising power and put the case for doing centrally only what needs to be done there and pushing decisions as close as possible to the people they affect. That applies as much to devolving power from Westminster as it does devolving it from Brussels.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brexit, climate change, diversity, education, english votes for english laws, federalism and universal basic income | 8 Comments

Challenges for liberalism 1: How should liberalism respond to inequality and inequity in the UK?

By Sarah Brown | Wed 31st October 2018 - 11:55 am

Editor’s Note: These posts are based on a speech given by the author at an event organised by York University Liberal Democrats.

It seems to me that inequity is a huge problem right now. We have some of the richest and poorest parts of the EU within the country, and an increasingly polarised society. That polarisation is not only writing off millions of people, but it’s also creating the conditions in which authoritarianism, intolerance and violence thrive. We need some big ideas because what is clear is that we cannot keep going on the way we have been doing. We sold the country’s family silver and lived on unsustainable debt in the 80s creating a boom that ultimately had nothing propping it up, but our addiction to economic quick fixes met the cold light of day in 2008.

Sadly it seems we as a society haven’t learned our lesson. We’re just trying to get back to what we had before, and in trying to do that we are using austerity, and that’s both promoting the spread of poverty and systematically dismantling the structures and institutions we as a society have built to mitigate poverty.

So we are in a mess.

As I said, we need big ideas. The last time we faced a crisis on this scale it was liberalism that did provide the big ideas. The NHS, workers’ rights, the trade union movement, the welfare state. Labour may try to claim ownership of these ideas but we were there at their inception.

Let’s be clear – despite our government’s committed attempt to impose economic sanctions on ourselves with Brexit we are still one of the richest countries in the world. People sleep rough on the street, or have to go hungry to feed their children because we have decided, as a country, that these are OK. Two whole generations will work their backsides off to enrich landlords their entire lives because we have decided, as a country, that that’s OK.

And quite apart from the social consequences of this, our pursuit of a model of capitalism that has clearly had its day, at all costs, is destroying the ecosystem. Not the planet, the planet will be fine. It’s just that we might not be around to enjoy it.

Now I don’t claim to have the answers. There’s a lot of talk about moving to a post scarcity economy, of universal basic income, and other ideas and maybe they will coalesce around a single ideological framework, and I hope they will. It seems to me though that we need to start valuing people, and valuing the idea that we need to structure our society so that everyone lives in safety, warmth and dignity.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged challenges for liberalism | 13 Comments

Corbyn is right about inequality

By A Liberal in Leeds | Fri 12th October 2018 - 10:25 am

Corbyn is clearly right to highlight the ‘grotesque inequality’ in our society. Wage growth has stagnated. Continued cuts are hitting the poorest hardest. And this generation is on set to be the first on living memory to be poorer than their parents.

Even if you try and ignore the unfairness, the evidence shows it harms productivity and creates the sort of ‘asset bubbles’ that caused the 2008 financial crisis.

But I have one question. Where are Labour’s answers?

At first glance the most radical is renationalisation. But this is nothing more than a recycled plan from the 1970s. It just tinkers at the edges of inequality, and carries significant risks for our future economic and energy security.

Next comes Labour’s big ticket spending item. Abolishing tuition fees. Our higher education system is far from perfect, but how many better ways could we spend £7.5 billion a year? What amounts to a tax cut for the middle classes does absolutely nothing to tackle inequality.

Most significantly, we have some Labour economic doublespeak – ‘borrowing to invest’ in public services. While the NHS, for example, clearly does needs to be better funded, ‘invest’ falsely suggests that we get an economic return on borrowing for public services. That it will all be fine.

And this, maybe even more than Brexit, is the big danger of a Labour government. The government is already, as the Prime Minister admitted last week, spending more on paying interest alone than the entire schools’ budget. Labour’s borrowing plan would mean future generations would have to pay higher taxes and spend even less on public services.

We demand better. The Liberal Democrats have a genuine, radical plan to combat inequality.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged demand better, jeremy corbyn, labour and liberal democrats | 56 Comments

Demand Better: Liberal Democrat Priorities for a Better Britain

By Duncan Brack | Thu 30th August 2018 - 12:38 pm

For as long as I’ve been active in politics people have complained they don’t know what we stand for. We may have a reasonable profile for our position on Brexit, but the fact that we’re only the fourth party in terms of MPs makes it even more difficult than usual to gain media attention.

On top of that, the party has more than doubled in size over the last two and a half years, so we have a large number of new or newish members who aren’t as familiar as many of us with the details of party policy or our key priorities for action.

So over the last six months the Federal Policy Committee has worked to produce the paper Demand Better: Liberal Democrat Priorities for a Better Britain, which is available here and will be debated at our autumn conference at Brighton.

We’ve written the paper in close cooperation with the party’s campaigns and communications committees and staff, and we’re using the party’s new slogan as the paper’s title. Demand Better summarises the Liberal Democrat approach to politics in 2018 and highlights our key policy priorities. Should a general election take place in the next year or so, it will provide the core of the Liberal Democrat election manifesto.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged education, health and social care, NHS, party policy, social mobility and taxation | 26 Comments

Inequality in society harms our mental health – how can we fix it?

By Katharine Pindar | Fri 13th July 2018 - 10:25 am

“Wealth is not a measure of worth. But low income is related to feelings of inferiority.” Across a range of countries, studies have shown, the experience of poverty leads to people believing they have failed themselves for being poor, and accepting that others feel like that about them.

This is part of the remarkable findings of professors Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, epidemiologists, whom I heard giving a talk on inequality on Wednesday night in a Keswick church.

Speaking alternately and informally, the professors reminded an attentive audience of how common it is for people to feel inadequate in social gatherings. They may feel they aren’t dressed correctly, can’t make small talk, and are scared of being judged. Sometimes people find social contact so difficult that they withdraw from social life.

“Yet social contact is crucial to health and to happiness”, the speakers said.

They explained that income inequality is linked to anxiety about social status. There has been a study across 28 European nations of social anxiety, looking at it in relation to different income levels in these societies. The study found that there is more anxiety about status in unequal societies, and the more inequality, the greater the anxiety.

It was apparently known ten years ago when the two professors’ important book ‘The Spirit Level’ was published that there was more mental illness in more unequal societies. But studies of social psychologists, they told us, had led them to understand how this may happen. People made to feel they are inferior will sometimes struggle against the feeling, but others will accept it, internalise a feeling of subordination and submission, and become more prone to depression.

Other psychological effects of living in a more unequal society, the speakers continued, include more wrong self-estimation. Apparently in the USA 96% of drivers think that their driving is better than the average! In Sweden it is 66%. The greater the inequality, the greater is the tendency for people to be narcissistic, so that it becomes difficult to tell the differences between self-esteem and narcissism. (And “It’s awful if narcissism gets to a position of power!” they added, to rueful laughter from the audience.)

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged inner level, kate pickett, mental health and richard wilkinson | 35 Comments

How can we be seen as relevant again?

By Katharine Pindar | Thu 29th March 2018 - 4:58 pm

We have to offer people what they need, and I don’t think we are doing that.

The Southport Conference earlier this month, besides passing many useful motions, agreed a Strategy, grandly entitled, ‘Ambitious for our party, ambitious for our country.’ We are good on noble ideas. ‘Create a political and social movement which encourages people to take and use power in their own lives and communities’ – that’s a natural extension of our famous Preamble, ‘We seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community’.

But is anybody heeding us out there, even in the less than half of the population which takes some interest in politics?

Well, let’s be fair. Even in our diminished state, 7% in the national polls, we attract many more voters in Local Government elections. Our councillors are often known as work-horses who eat up local problems. Community Politics is still a big belief for us – ‘we will empower the individual in his or her community’. A current article here by Oliver Craven emphasises the point.

But I’ve come to believe that it is not enough for us to campaign locally to make a big impact. That’s because there’s precious little ‘community’ in our deeply divided country today for us to work with.

This week is what Christians call Holy Week, leading up to Good Friday, but fewer and fewer British people go to church to find a community. In the workplaces, ever fewer people join trade unions as more people take ill-paid non-unionised jobs. So the Conservatives win elections in formerly working-class areas, and Labour penetrates prosperous south-east towns.

Who feels part of a community in Britain today? Not, certainly, working families on the minimum wage who with curtailed benefits can’t afford even the basics and have to resort to Food Banks. Not people forced out of privately-rented homes into emergency accommodation, sometimes ending up living in another city. Not those trying to make ends meet through ill-paid temporary jobs or chancy self-employment.

There’s little sense of community either for sick folk obliged to stay in hospital for want of social care, or stuck caring for family members themselves at home, or for lonely old people sitting on park benches to talk to somebody. There’s no community for the depressed or for the oppressed.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged community politics, future party strategy and lib dem policy | 76 Comments

Why the Liberal Democrats must adopt Universal Basic Income

By A Lib Dem member | Thu 1st March 2018 - 12:45 pm

To be quite blunt, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about where it’s all gone wrong for the Liberal Democrats. I’ve been a member of the party for seven years now, three-quarters of a decade no less, and in that time we have scarcely polled into the double digits.

Amongst the young, the people who you may think would be the natural supporters of an anti-Brexit, progressive party, the outlook is especially bleak. In the latest Times tracker conducted by YouGov, a mere 4% of 18-24-year-olds plan to vote Liberal Democrat at the next election. The number shoots up to a comparatively lofty 7% of 25-49-year-olds but it’s still nowhere near good enough for a party such as ours.

It’s time to face a stomach-churning truth. The Liberal Democrats are not a party that speaks to modern Britain, and we most certainly do not represent Britain’s future. Not the way things stand, anyway.

As someone who is (just about) inside that 18-24 bracket, I think I’ve got a decent idea about why the party has haemorrhaged youth support so drastically (and no, it’s not just about tuition fees – although that is a huge factor as I wrote for the New Statesman in 2015.)

In my view, it comes down to this. When my generation was growing up, we were all sold a story, the same story our parents were sold. Specifically, the story that if you work hard, apply yourself and ‘get on’, then you’ll do well. Our parents bought into that story because it was broadly true for them. But we aren’t buying into it because it’s a lie for us. Millennials are the first generation set to earn less than our parents, so I think we can be forgiven for thinking that the system has not worked.

And it is this broken system that, to me, explains my generation’s disinterest in the Liberal Democrats and our collective adoration for Jeremy Corbyn. The Liberal Democrats want to make the system fairer. But Corbyn wants to tear the system down. That is his appeal, and it’s why we are falling by the wayside.

But we can beat Jeremy Corbyn at his own game. Liberals can remake the system too, and liberalism can provide a much more empowering and inspiring future than socialism ever can.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged citizens income, economy and universal basic income | 113 Comments

The fundamentals of Brexit don’t change – so opposition to it is a matter of principle!

By Edward Robinson | Thu 1st March 2018 - 8:13 am

“If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, then you have seriously misjudged the gravity of the situation” – goes the rather silly adaptation of Kipling’s famous line.

I am not suggesting that Liberal Democrats are losing their heads. But I am suggesting that we are the only British political party that appears to have judged the gravity of the situation on Brexit. For certain, we are the only political party that is brave enough to oppose it explicitly. We know that the least privileged households will be the most harmed by Brexit.

I have …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brexit and poverty | 39 Comments

Most Read

Op-eds

Mathew on Monday: Starmer’s resignation and an increasingly ungovernable country (Mathew Hulbert)
Fairness First: Why Wealth Taxes Are a Natural Fit for the Liberal Democrats (Tom Walker)
Starmer goes, and the uncertainty returns… (Mark Valladares)
Why did the Welsh Liberal Democrats underperform? (Elsie Jones)
The next General Election Manifesto should commit to joining the EU (Nick Hopkinson)

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