Tag Archives: jenni lang

Jenni Lang replies to the Toast to the Lassies

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 1st February 2026 - 10:30 am

Yesterday, we brought you Charles Dundas’ Toast to the Lassies from the Edinburgh South Burns Supper.

The reply below comes from Scottish Party Convener Jenni Lang.

She mentions the “Naughty Table” which is a bit of a tradition started by me and a few friends about 15 years ago. We even brought our own sign to show where the most fun was to be had. Jim Wallace was doing the Immortal Memory that year and he started off saying “Ladies, gentleman, and, pretending to look at us disapprovingly, “the Table there.”

Jenni makes a lovely tribute to Jim, the man on all our minds last night. He was exactly the sort of person the world needs in abundance right now.

Enjoy:

Good Evening, and firstly, thank you so much to Charles for his kind words, and thank you to the SELD organisers and Faith for inviting me to make the reply on behalf of the lassies tonight, unexpectedly for the second year in a row! Here’s me thinking I was off the hook and allowed on the naughty table…but no!

It’s been quite the year since I last joined you, and frankly, the world feels significantly more fragile.

You look around at the carnage, at the chaos. And then you look at the global picture and wonder…..what’s missing?

The Women. The women are missing.

Remember the ‘Before Times’? The era of Angela Merkel, the world’s governess, who could stare down a dictator with nothing but a sensible blazer and a look of profound disappointment. She treated the G7 like a difficult parents’ evening.

Or Sanna Marin, a woman who could successfully navigate a Finnish winter, join NATO, and still find time to go to a party without the world ending. She proved that you can run a country with one hand and hold a glow-stick in the other, which is still infinitely more dignified than anything most male leaders do with an X account.

Or Jacinda Ardern, who managed to run a country, raise a child, and show basic human empathy all at the same time.

Since the women have stepped down, it’s like the adult supervision has left the building. We’ve traded ‘steady hands’ for ‘shaky egos,’ and ‘global stability’ for ‘whatever happens when a billionaire gets bored at 3:00 AM.’

Now, for those of you who were here last year, you may remember my fond reflections on the different species of Liberal Men I’ve encountered in the party over the last 25 years. The Liberal Gentlemen, like the wonderful Charles; the Policy Geeks; and the Super-Campaigners who can’t look at a letterbox without feeling an uncontrollable urge to shove a leaflet through it.

But let’s be honest….those are the ‘domesticated’ varieties.

It feels only right that we widen our scope this year to the Alpha Males currently roaming the global stage.

Over the years, I’ve realised that these male world leaders fall into a few distinct archetypes. Much like whisky regions, each has its own distinct aroma, its own fiery finish, and, in most cases, a very high probability of giving you a massive headache the next morning.

So I decided to highlight a few of note……let me know if any sound familiar…..
First, we have the Narcissist Billionaire…..the only man on earth who can look in a mirror and see a victim of radical leftist conspiracy looking back.

He is a man who has never met a ‘Fact’ that couldn’t be improved with a gold-leaf border and a bit of imagination.

This leader operates on the principle that success is measured entirely by the size of your skyscraper, the height of your hair, and the sheer, aggressive boldness of your font.

He runs a country the way he runs a golf course: loudly, expensively, and with the firm belief that ‘par’ is whatever he says it is. To him, ‘cheating’ is just another word for ‘winning,’ and ‘the Truth’ is something that happened to other, less successful people.

He believes diplomacy is best conducted via capital letters on social media, preferably at 3:00 AM, in a fever dream of AI-generated images showing him as a Roman Emperor or a muscle-bound Rambo.

In his world, Facts are optional extras, like the sunroof on a car. Advisors are purely decorative…like the salad that comes with a steak. And if something goes wrong, it is never his fault. It is the fault of the media, the judges, the deep state, or….as we know all too well in Scotland……. windfarms that are ‘killing all the birds’ making us poor, and ruining the view from his 9th hole.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the European Technocrat.

This leader does not ‘rule’…..he administers. He doesn’t have a ‘base’; he has a ‘stakeholder group.’ And he doesn’t give speeches so much as he issues software updates for society.

He believes deeply in three things:

Committees.

Sub-committees to monitor those committees.

And a Bold Vision for 2047, pending consultation.

He will never shout, he will never boast, and he wouldn’t dream of threatening you. Instead, he will ‘express grave concern,’ commission a three-year feasibility study, and ‘harmonise a framework’ until everyone in the room falls asleep.

He has the unique ability to make a declaration of peace sound like instructions for assembling IKEA flatpack furniture. He doesn’t ‘seize power’; he ‘coordinates a multi-level, transitional regulatory alignment.’

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged burns supper and reply to toast to the lassies | Leave a comment

Celebrating our Lib Dem men

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 5th February 2025 - 8:52 pm

One of the social highlights of Lib Demmery in Edinburgh is the Edinburgh South Burns Supper, an annual evening of mirth celebrating Scotland’s national Bard Robert Burns.

Previous highlights include, and I kid you not, Alex Cole-Hamilton, dressed as a mouse acting out the part as To a Mouse was read out.

The evening usually starts with the top table being piped in. Then we have the address to the Haggis. The “great chieftain of the pudding race” is piped in and, this year, Rebecca Wright gave a spirited rendition of Burns’ To a Huggis. I’m a bit of a heretic here because I much prefer white pudding to haggis, but never mind.

There are three main speeches in the traditional Burns Supper. The Immortal Memory is a personal tribute to Rabbie Burns, this year delivered by Susan Murray our new MP for Mid Dunbartonshire who had found out that she had a distant relationship to Burns.

The Toast to the Lassies at Burns Suppers used to basically be a riot of misogyny. In fact, at one time the only women allowed near a Burns Supper were the ones serving the food. In modern times, however, the Toast and its reply (now made by a woman) has become genuine comedy.

The Toast to the Lassies was made by Andy Williamson. He has said that he’ll send it over and when he does, I’ll put it up.

The reply was delivered by Scottish Party Convener Jenni Lang and it celebrated the men in our party who she had loosely divided into four general categories. She’d really like your help in identifying some more. Her speech is reproduced here with her permission.

I actually had to go before she started speaking or I’d have missed my train home so I read this for the first time on Monday and laughed so much I feared for my ribs. I found myself categorising my friends who were there. This includes Jenni’s husband Kevin, whom I am sure many of you will know.

Anyway, enjoy, and please feel free to add some more. But remember this is a celebration of our colleagues. Be as generous and funny as Jenni has been.

Good Evening, and firstly, thank you so much to Andy for his kind words, and thank you for inviting me to make the reply of behalf of the lassies tonight.

I have been giving a great deal of reflection over the past week to what I would say tonight in response to the laddies in the room. I realised that this year will be my 25th anniversary of becoming involved with the party. In that quarter of a century, I have been a member of staff, seen us be part of two different Government coalitions with varying success. I’ve sat on committees, chaired committees, and now I’m Convener of the party.

And I started thinking about the types of Liberal Democrat men I have met over the years, and I realised, that there were some distinct groupings that many of these men fall into, tribes if you like. Or if I was channelling my inner Meghan Markle right now, archetypes….

So I thought tonight I would highlight a few of my favourite Lib Dem male archetypes. Now, this isn’t an exhaustive list because I only have a few minutes. But ladies, you can feel free to add more later.

First up…..

The Liberal Gentlemen

I have a very soft spot for this group of men. The elder statesmen of the party. The ones who originally joined the Liberal Party long before the merger and who, even now, only begrudgingly accept the fact we still have those pesky Social Democrats hanging around. Always polite, unfailingly charming, deeply liberal to their core.

These gentlemen can still remember bringing more chairs into the Liberal Assemblies of yore. They have an elephantine memory of the history of the party and will happily pass on this knowledge to all who will listen.

The song ‘Lloyd George knew my father’ was not so much written for them….but more written for their children written for them, and one or two of them may have met Lloyd George themselves!

We often talk about national treasures, these gentlemen are our Party Treasures, often the Party Treasur-ers making them one of my favourite archetypes.

Next up…..

The Policy Geek

Yes, the policy geeks. They may have a niche issue they are keen to get through as party policy. Even better if it gets into the manifesto. Maybe they have personal obsession with nuclear proliferation, or decriminalising drugs, or protecting bees, or the structural funding of local authorities to tackle potholes.

These are the guys who will dedicated their time to causes which would likely result in a march and with with a mantra – “What do we want? An asymmetrical of federalism. When do we want it? – in due course!

They are the people who keep the party’s policy gears ticking over, and without some of their far out proposals, conference would just be a slew of top down edicts from the leadership. And as Liberals, none of us want that.

A sub grouping of the Policy Geek is the Party Constitutional Wonk, which is even more niche. Vitally important to the correct functioning of the party, but can be irritating when they point out that whatever you are trying to get done is constitutionally unsound.

They are the detail guys. The ones who can tell you exactly what is in Section K, paragraph 2….without even having the constitution in front of them. The ones who would put in an amendment at conference to say ‘On line 42 delete ‘ampersand’ and replace with the word ‘and’’. And yes friends, that’s a true story….

The constitutional wonks, are the next level – they are the upper class who look down on the mere policy geeks. As someone who regularly chairs conference debates, there is occasionally a heart stopping moment when one of these guys rises in their seat saying ‘Point of order chair’ before invoking a niche part of the standing orders. Irritatingly they are often right.

What I would say is that these wonks can be particularly effective in council chambers in using the standing order process to derail mad motions. So I can highly recommend you putting one or two up as council candidates, and they can really scratch that itch in a way that is helpful.

Next, the one that no local party can do without….

The Local Hero

Now, every local party has, or should have a local hero. Someone who really – perhaps showing the ultimate wisdom – has no interest in ever getting elected, but who turns out to every action day, or on canvassing sessions. Maybe they get stuck into office clerical work, printing and distributing leaflets to deliverers. They are readily identifiable by constantly smelling of riso ink. They are the backbone of our party and we could not function without them.