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Tag Archives: keir starmer

Mathew on Monday: Starmer’s resignation and an increasingly ungovernable country

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 22nd June 2026 - 5:03 pm

Keir Starmer’s resignation comes as little surprise. In truth, he always appeared ill-suited to the role of Prime Minister. He entered Downing Street with no clear governing project, no driving ideology and an over reliance on advisers and political management. He often seemed more comfortable responding to events than shaping them. Yet focusing solely on Starmer risks missing the bigger picture.

When (as now seems all but inevitable) Andy Burnham walks through the door of Number 10, Britain will have had seven Prime Ministers in just ten years: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer and now, likely, Burnham. This is an …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged leadership and transport policy | 4 Comments

The UK’s political leadership deficit

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 13th May 2026 - 6:02 pm

Political leadership is about changing the public agenda. Keir Starmer has failed to sway public opinion on major issues. Nigel Farage has been a much more effective political leader, albeit for a fraudulent project. He successfully made the argument for leaving the EU against the conventional wisdom of the majority of the British political elite and political commentators.

Margaret Thatcher was in this sense also a highly effective leader. She defied the civil service, many within her own party and Cabinet, and wide sections of the public, and drove through a deliberate shrinking of the size and functions of the state, through tax cuts, privatization, curbs on local government, selling off social housing and more. Politicians today still hesitate to challenge assumptions about outsourcing of public services or pledging to lower taxes, in spite of the very different economic and demographic circumstances we face. The nationalization of British Steel and the return of the railways to unified public management are moves away from neo-liberal orthodoxy – but the water industry still seems a step too far.

Keir Starmer has proved incapable of engaging with the public. The Strategic Defence Review, published ten months ago, called for a ‘National Conversation’ on the multiple threats our country now faces and the response needed to meet them. But we have been told almost nothing since then, and the promised Defence Industrial Plan is still blocked by the Treasury’s refusal to fund it. He’s just delivered another speech on how to ‘reset’ our relations with the EU, which began with some splendid rhetoric and ended with a promise of ensuring better youth mobility, without attempting to explain the complexities of closer cooperation with our neighbours or the trade-offs between sovereignty and shared prosperity and security that we have to make. Worst of all, neither the prime minister or his chancellor have tried to engage the public on the hard choices to be made on public spending and investment in pursuit of sustainable economic growth.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, labour leadership and liberal democrat strategy | 6 Comments

11 May 2026 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Mon 11th May 2026 - 10:30 pm

Lib Dems – Starmer’s reset speech tone deaf on Wales
Cole-Hamilton responds to Swinney writing to opposition parties

Lib Dems – Starmer’s reset speech tone deaf on Wales

Commenting on Keir Starmer’s ‘reset speech’, Welsh Liberal Democrat Westminster Spokesperson David Chadwick MP said:

Keir Starmer’s speech today showed just how out of touch Labour has become with communities in Wales. Despite years of Labour failure in Cardiff Bay and last week’s election results, the Prime Minister did not even mention Wales, let alone offer the fresh thinking people are crying out for.

To make matters worse, Labour has rubbed salt in the wounds of

…

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Posted in News, Press releases, Scotland and Wales | Also tagged Alex Cole-Hamilton, david chadwick and scottish government | 1 Comment

Mathew on Monday – Ed Davey, Trump, and why legitimate criticism being blamed for violence is nonsense

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 27th April 2026 - 6:05 pm

Early this morning on GB News I debated a former Tory MP (and the presenter) on why there’s no connection between our leader’s criticism of the present occupant of the White House and the alleged political violence that took place this past weekend -the argument simply doesn’t stand up to even the most basic scrutiny.

Let’s start with first principles. All political violence is wrong. Full stop. Whether it’s an alleged incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this weekend, or the well documented events of January 6th, 2021 – when a mob of angry supporters of Donald Trump (arguably at his direct instigation) stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn a democratic election result – it is always indefensible. But what is both intellectually lazy and politically dangerous is the attempt to draw a straight line between robust democratic criticism and acts of violence. That’s not analysis – it’s deflection.

Because let’s be absolutely clear: Ed Davey criticising Donald Trump is not the problem here. It is, in fact, part of the solution.

We live in democracies. That means leaders – whether in Washington or Westminster – must be open to scrutiny, challenge, and yes, criticism. If a British political leader cannot express concerns about the rhetoric, behaviour, and record of this U.S. President without being accused by some of somehow “inciting” events thousands of miles away, then we are in very troubling territory indeed. Especially as, at the same time, I was being told that no one in the States has heard of the Lib Dem leader and that he has ‘no impact’ across the Atlantic.

Even as presented, the argument collapses under its own weight. Because it implicitly suggests that the real issue is not an act of alleged violence itself, but the existence of criticism that may have proceeded it. That is a profound inversion of responsibility.
And it also ignores the wider context. The United States has, in recent years, experienced a worrying increase in political tension and high-profile violent incidents, with experts pointing to the corrosive impact of genuinely inflammatory rhetoric and polarisation. To pretend that a British leader from the mainstream political centre is somehow the catalyst for that, or, indeed, plays any part in it whatsoever, is frankly absurd.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged birmingham, ed davey and political accountability | 7 Comments

With one bound….? Starmer’s Houdini act

By David Vigar | Fri 24th April 2026 - 11:00 am

What just happened at Westminster? Does anyone else think Keir Starmer played MPs and the media like a violin this week?

On Monday, I thought at least one MP would ask the simple and obvious question. “Why did the PM appoint Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to Washington nine days after receiving a briefing that informed him that: ‘Mandelson reportedly stayed in Epstein’s house while he was in jail in 2009.’”

Surely that explosive sentence should have been enough, if not to block the appointment, at least to postpone it pending investigation.

The sentence, from a report by JP Morgan, speaks volumes. It indicates that Mandelson not only knew Epstein, but knew him well enough to stay in his house. It shows that Mandelson stayed there when the owner was in prison for soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18 – and when he was the UK Business Secretary. That suggests a close and unethical relationship. It also suggests Mandelson remained willing to take huge risks, not learning from his two previous dismissals from Cabinet.

The briefing, titled Advice to the Prime Minister, is dated 11 December 2024 and is available among the documents released by the government.

It repeated JP Morgan’s comment that Epstein had a “particularly close relationship” with Mandelson. And it contained a copy of an email from Mandelson to Tony Blair’s office in 2002 where he calls Epstein his friend and says he is “young and vibrant” … and “safe”.

Red flags waving. Alarm bells ringing. Massive issue. All ignored.

So how did Starmer dodge that smoking gun this week? First, he brushed over it. Second he found a smokescreen.

In his statement, he covered the briefing thus: “A due diligence exercise was conducted by the Cabinet Office into Peter Mandelson’s suitability, including questions put to him by my staff in No. 10. Peter Mandelson answered those questions on 10 December, and I received final advice on the due diligence process on 11 December. I made the decision to appoint him on 18 December. The appointment was announced on 20 December.”

Hang on … So Mandelson answered questions the day before Starmer received the brief? So what did he say? The briefing is silent.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged peter mandelson | 9 Comments

Mathew on Monday: is Keir Starmer the most incurious Prime Minister in British history?

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 20th April 2026 - 5:45 pm

There is something increasingly puzzling – and politically dangerous – about the way that Keir Starmer governs. It is not simply that things go wrong on his watch; every Prime Minister faces crisis, missteps, and the odd unforced error. It is that, time and again, Starmer appears oddly detached from the very events shaping his premiership. As if politics and government are things that happen to him, rather than things he actively directs.

That sense of detachment is beginning to harden into something more troubling: a complete lack of curiosity.

Effective leadership demands an almost relentless inquisitiveness – a desire to know what is happening, why it is happening, and what might be coming next. It requires a Prime Minister to probe, to challenge, to test assumptions, and, crucially, to anticipate problems before they spiral. Starmer, by contrast, too often looks like a man content to sail above the fray – until, inevitably, he is dragged under by a storm he neither saw coming nor seems prepared to confront.

We have seen this pattern repeat itself. Controversies emerge, decisions. Unravel, narratives take hold – and Downing Street appears on the back foot. The sense is not of a government firmly in control, but of one constantly scrambling to catch up with events. That is not simply a communications failure; it speaks to something deeper about how power is being exercised.

Of course, there will be those who argue that this is a deliberate style, that Starmer is seeking to rise above the noise, to avoid the hyperactive, personality-driven politics of recent years. That he is, in effect, trying to de-dramatise the office of Prime Minister. If so, it isn’t working.

Because the vacuum created by that approach does not remain empty for long. It is filled by speculation, by confusion, and by opponents who are only too happy to define the narrative in his absence. Leadership is not about constant noise-but it is about presence. And increasingly, that presence feels lacking. More fundamentally, there is a difference between calm authority and passive drift. The former reassures; the latter unnerves. At present, Starmer is very much in the second category.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged kezia dugdale, polling and stonewall | 14 Comments

The rise and fall of Captain Hindsight

By Iain Donaldson | Thu 19th February 2026 - 2:47 pm

For many of us growing up in the 1970’s the TV superhero Hong Kong Phooey was a regular fix on our televisions, despite only running for one series of 16 episodes. Mild mannered janitor, Penry Pooch by day, and superhero by night, ably ‘assisted’ by his sidekick Spot the Cat.

Oddly this bumbling character seems an early metaphor for the Starmer government with its bumbling mild mannered Prime Minister and his trusty sidekick Morgan McSweeney, constantly making U-Turns and never really being seen for who he really is by the people around him.

A former bumbling Prime minister coined the phrase “Captain Hindsight” which does sum up his record with a massive seven U-turns before he even got to 10 Downing Street and a further 15 (and counting) since. Perhaps the opening titles to Hong Kong Phooey could be changed for the modern era to:

Captain Hindsight
Who is this super hero?
McSweeney? No.
Angela, the brash northern Deputy? No.
Keith, the mild-mannered PM? Could be!

As of February 2026, the Keir Starmer government has made 15 major U-turns costing the British Economy over £8 billion (est) since taking office in July 2024. These reversals, often following backbench rebellions or legal challenges, include significant shifts on taxation, welfare, and civil liberties.

The problem for Labour is not only the number of U-Turns, but the fact that 15 of them have been on major front line policies, from tax to social care, from workers rights to human rights, and the feeling that it creates in the country is that you really cannot rely on Labour to have your back.

What’s more they have impacted on the economy, and at a time when Brexit is depressing out exports to our largest trading block, causing major financial distress for our exporters, and the Trump government is playing Hokey-Cokey with international tariffs, all this does nothing to bolster the investment markets and generate the much-needed growth.

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Posted in Op-eds | 4 Comments

House of Commons pays tribute to Ming

By The Voice | Wed 15th October 2025 - 7:08 pm

Yesterday the House of Commons paid tribute to our former leader Ming Campbell. It was very clear how highly he was regarded by people from across the political spectrum. We’ll highlight the cross-party contributions here and publish the Lib Dem contributions in full over the next few day.

The Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, kicked off the proceedings:

Ming was universally liked and respected across the House, regardless of people’s party allegiance. Unflappable, kind, principled, incredibly active and held in great esteem by all parties, Ming achieved success as an Olympian, as a lawyer and as a formidable politician in both Houses of Parliament, as well as leadership of the Liberal Democrats. He was one of Westminster’s most authoritative voices on foreign affairs, particularly in articulating his party’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

On a personal level, Ming was a loyal friend to me and to my family. He served with my father on the Trade and Industry Committee, where they conducted many inquiries, most notably into the Iraq supergun affair. The two often vented their frustration about the thwarting of their efforts to get Ministers, officials or even fellow Members to appear before their Committee, but despite that, they pursued the inquiry fearlessly in order to get to the truth. Some things have never changed.

I know that Ming was hit especially hard by the death of his wife Elspeth; they were, of course, married for more than 50 years. Courage, wisdom and integrity were Ming’s hallmarks. We have lost a dear colleague and, for many of us, a wonderful friend. Our thoughts are with Ming’s family, his friends, and his allies across the political parties.

The Prime Minister continued:

Ming Campbell was authoritative on the subjects that he was passionate about, so it was no wonder that he had the respect and admiration of colleagues across the House, who recognised his wisdom and unfailing kindness over 28 years of service as a Member of this Parliament. Today we remember his commitment to Scotland and in particular of course to Fife—championing its industries from fishing to, in his case, flying—as well as becoming chancellor of the University of St Andrews, where he spoke of his joy at meeting students and young people full of hope for the future—a future he had done so much to shape. It was a full life, well lived alongside Elspeth, his beloved wife of more than 50 years. We are all enriched by his sense of duty and commitment to this country. He stands in the finest traditions of this House, so it is a privilege, on behalf of the Labour Benches, to pay tribute to the “Flying Scotsman”. May he rest in peace.

John McDonnell remembered his contributions on the Iraq War:

I want to thank Ming for the legal advice that he provided and the way that he addressed that debate, because he did so without seeking any party advantage. He simply set out the legal principles on which he was making his decision, and he did so with compassion and with the recognition of the moral duty that we all had. Many of us agreed with him and voted with him, and many did not, but everybody respected his judgment as a result. I believe he was a model MP, always speaking and voting on the basis of his conscience and the interests of his constituency and the country overall.

ALex Shelbrooke served with Ming on the NATO Parliamentary Alliance and told how well regarded he was and had a funny story:

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Posted in News | Also tagged alex shelbrooke, house of commons, lindsay hoyle and Ming Campbell | Leave a comment

Starmer’s safety net shredded

By Jack Meredith | Thu 26th June 2025 - 9:05 am

Both highs and lows have marked Keir Starmer’s premiership.

With achievements such as beginning the process of renationalising railway services, committing more funding to securing Britain’s defence capabilities, and the slow march towards renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU, you could be forgiven for assuming Labour’s period in power has so far been a success.

That is, of course, until we consider the more harmful decisions this government has made.

The government had, for the longest time, defended cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance for millions of pensioners, until mounting backlash forced them to reverse their decision. Most recently, it has decided to make one of the most significant cuts to welfare since the 2010 Coalition government took office. The decision, as analysed by the government, will result in the removal of Personal Independent Payment (PIP) benefits for 800,000 people. This is despite numerous charities, including The Big Issue and Scope, along with Martin Lewis’ Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, calling on the government to rethink its strategy and avoid what they call “catastrophic impacts”.

And it seems it’s not only charities that oppose the government’s decision, with more than 120 Labour MPs set to rebel against the vote, and one of its whips, Vicky Foxcroft, resigning over the reforms. Despite these setbacks, Keir Starmer has vowed to press on with his plans to cut welfare, stating that the current system is “unsustainable” and that “1,000 people a day going on PIP”.

The question remains: how will Starmer get his reforms through? The answer might present itself in the form of an unlikely alliance: the Conservative Party. Speaking to Sky News, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch suggested that her party would be willing to vote in favour of the reforms if the government met three key commitments: reducing the welfare budget, increasing employment, and not raising taxes.

Will Starmer accept the support of Labour’s longtime political rivals to get his reforms through? That remains to be seen. But what is a sure bet is the possibility of rebelling Labour MPs calling for a vote of no confidence in their leader if he does.

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Posted in Op-eds | 2 Comments

Please sir, may I have no war?

By Jack Meredith | Thu 19th June 2025 - 11:31 am

The presidency of Donald Trump has, thus far, been defined by his failure to fulfil his election promise to de-escalate global conflicts.

Most recently, Trump has flirted with the idea of the US entering into the Israel-Iran conflict, commenting, “I may do it, I may not do it” when questioned. To put it simply, this is not the language of de-escalation.

But the next logical question after “Will the US get involved?” can only be “Will it call on the UK to join?”. This decision will come down to Keir Starmer, who will either have the choice of authorising the UK’s involvement or putting the decision to a parliamentary vote, the latter being the route taken by former Prime Minister Tony Blair regarding the Iraq War.

There is, however, a third option: the Wilson approach.

Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson decided to withhold the UK military’s involvement in the Vietnam War, a decision echoed by his successor, Edward Heath. While both provided support through materials and rhetorical encouragement, neither leader engaged directly.

Keir Starmer will likely face this choice in the coming weeks and months. Either he will have the UK join Trump in engaging in war, or he will withhold British military support. It is his moment to show whether Wilson or Blair inspires his leadership.

I hope that he chooses the former, for all our sakes.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged donald trump, iran and israel | 12 Comments

Dear Keir, there are other options than pandering to prejudice

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 12th May 2025 - 10:59 am

I feel absolutely sick to my stomach this morning.

I really need to get out of the habit of thinking that Labour Ministers will somehow have more sense, or that their values will align more closely with mine even if they get stuff wrong sometimes. That mindset only leads to crushing disappointment.

We have had decades of the right wing press drip-feeding prejudice against immigrants. All political parties, including ours to a certain extent, have failed to stand up against this and unashamedly make the positive case for immigration. This has been remarkably stupid given that we are living in a world that has been getting smaller. People fall in love with people from other countries. If every country pulls up the drawbridge on immigration, that has a huge impact on their freedom to live their lives as they please.

It’s been incredibly depressing to see, particularly over the last decade, politicians in parties who should know better taking on board the talking points of the far right. Rather than, you know, invest in public services so that everyone can have a decent standard of living, they blame immigration for all the country’s ills, poisoning the minds of the public.

We reached a new low this morning. I’ve heard Labour referred to as the Red Tories before. Today they are basically Red Reform. Starmer is no better than Farage. A couple of weeks ago, Farage had a go, out loud in our Parliament, about “cultures alien to ours.” This was a comment that Christine Jardine said made her blood run cold in her Scotsman column last week.

This week I heard the leader of Reform proclaim confidently in the Commons that the problem with immigration was that it was bringing people here with cultures not compatible with our own. I felt my blood run cold.

That sort of language used to be, and should be still, unthinkable. We cannot accept it, we cannot run from fighting for the rights of minorities. It’s time for us to stand up to be counted. Like our grandparents did.

Why does it take an opposition MP to make this point? Why did our Prime Minister not make mincemeat of Farage and his horrible agenda right there, right then?

It’s the least we could expect.

But, no, this morning, he apes it, saying we are:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured and immigration | 20 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 11th May 2025 - 8:59 am

The Vatican

What’s in a name? If you’re the Pope, quite a lot.

With 2,000-years of history, the incoming Bishop of Rome is able to choose a name from among his 266 predecessors whose career best reflects his values.

American-born Robert Prevost has chosen to be known as Pope Leo XIV. This is an important nod to Pope Leo XIII, who led the church from 1878 to 1903 and is generally regarded as the father of modern Catholic social teaching. He called for the church to address social and economic issues, and emphasized the dignity of individuals, the common good, community, and taking care of marginalized individuals.

In the midst of the Gilded Age, Leo XIII defended the rights of workers and said that the church had not just the duty to speak about justice and fairness, but also the responsibility to make sure that such equities were accomplished.

Prevost’s choice of the name Leo invokes the principles of both Leo XIII and his immediate predecessor, Pope Francis. In his own lifetime he has aligned himself with many of Francis’s social reforms, and his election appears to be a rejection of hard-line right-wing Catholics in the U.S. and elsewhere who have used their religion to support far-right politics.

Leading the American pack as a self-appointed moral arbiter of the Catholic community is Vice-President JD Vance. Shortly after taking office in January, Vance began to talk of the concept of ordo amoris, or “order of love.” He claimed it justified the MAGA emphasis on family and tribalism and the mass expulsion of migrants.

Vance told Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel, “You love your family, and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after all that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”

The Pope’s job is to be a moral arbiter and interpreter of Christian doctrine. Much more so than that of any politician, all of whose morals are generally regarded as suspect. On February 10, Pope Francis responded to Vance in a letter to American bishops. He said the vice president was wrong. “Christians,” wrote the Pope, “know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity,” he wrote. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups…. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by…meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

“Worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth,” Pope Francis wrote.

He acknowledged “the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival,” but he defended the fundamental dignity of every human being and the fundamental rights of migrants, noting that the “rightly formed conscience” would disagree with any program that “identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.” He continued: “I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”

The next day, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, who described himself as “a lifelong Catholic,” told reporters at the White House, “I’ve got harsh words for the Pope…. He ought to fix the Catholic Church, concentrate on his work and leave border enforcement to us.”

As an American-born pope in the model of Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV has the power to present himself as a moral alternative to MAGA in the same way as Polish-born Pope John Paul II countered the Soviet empire. He has already re-tweeted Pope Francis’s criticisms of Vance. This would explain the furious response to the new pope by the MAGA crowd. Laura Loomer, the far-right influencer close to the ear of Donald Trump, Pope Leo, wrote “another Marxist puppet in the Vatican.” Influencer Charlie Kirk suggested he was an “open borders globalist installed to counter Trump.” Kirk is probably right. Is that such a bad thing?

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged donald trump, germany, pope leo, the vatican and united kingdom | 7 Comments

Observations of an Expat: A British Knight in King Donald’s Court

By Tom Arms | Sat 1st March 2025 - 9:20 am

The British Foreign Office set a low bar for Sir Keir Starmer’s trip to America—Don’t fall out with King Donald. He succeeded.

That is not to say that substantive issues were not discussed. They were and included:

Tariffs – and the possibility, nay probability, of reviving the Johnson era US-UK trade deal that could exempt Britain from the crippling tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose on the EU.

The Chagos Islands – Trump is inclined to go along with the British position.

And Ukraine – On this top of the agenda item Sir Keir failed. Trump was immovable – No backstop. No security guarantees and total confidence in the honesty of fellow dissembler Vladimir Putin.

The tete a tete started with a cringe-making pantomime when in front of the world’s media the prime minister reached into his suit pocket and drew out a letter from King Charles III.

It was the expected invitation to Trump to make an historic second state visit to Buckingham Palace.

Royal Family fan Donald evinced childlike surprise and delight at the expected letter and the friendly tone was set for the private talks in the Oval Office. The first box was ticked.

An Anglo-American trade deal has long been one of Trump’s priorities. Not because of any love for the royal family or the homeland of his mother. No, Donald Trump wants a trade deal with Britain because he hates the EU. It is a threat to American trade hegemony. Trump wants to encourage its break-up and insure that Britain does not return to the European fold by pulling it closer to America.

In any upcoming trade talks the British public will be focused on chlorine-washed chicken, hormone-fed beef and higher prices for NHS drugs. The attention of Trump’s negotiators will be on coordinating regulations across a wide-range of goods and services to make it more difficult for Britain to negotiate re-entry into the European single market and/or customs union.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged donald trump and ukraine | 1 Comment

Observations of an Expat: Special Relationship

By Tom Arms | Sat 13th July 2024 - 9:48 am

It’s time for the Special Relationship to be extracted from the diplomatic cupboard and dusted off.

Britain needs it. Europe needs it. And, although they are less keen to admit that they need help from any quarter, the US needs it to become the cornerstone of a new Transatlantic Alliance.

For years the UK shared the “Special Relationship” tag with France and Germany. In fact, after Brexit, Britain probably slipped into third place in Washington’s relationship arrangements.

But French President Emmanuel Macron has politically castrated himself with the recent political elections and the dull and dreary German Chancellor Olaf Scholz fails to inspire either the Germans or the wider world community

Britain may no longer be an EU power, but Sir Keir Starmer’s landslide victory gives him latitude at home and kudos abroad.

He is helped by a foreign secretary who has the potential to go down in history as one of the best in modern times. David Lammy wasted no time in stamping his image on British foreign policy. Almost before Sir Keir had finished his acceptance speech, Lammy was on the plane for Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Kyiv. This week he was at the prime minister’s elbow for the NATO summit in Washington where Sir Keir was the only NATO leader awarded a tete a tete with President Joe Biden.

Lammy also has extensive American connections. The new foreign secretary has worked, studied and lived in the US. He has family in America and his father is buried in Texas.

But what if Donald Trump returns to the White House? A prospect which appears increasingly likely as Joe Biden ages with every passing day. Lammy is on record as labelling Trump a “woman-hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” and a “profound threat to international order” as well as a racist and a fascist.

But both Sir Keir and Lammy have said that the transAtlantic relationship remains the “bedrock” of British foreign policy. And in a recent speech at the conservative US think tank the Hudson Institute, Lammy said that Trump’s comments on European security had been “misunderstood.” He has also gone out of his way recently to meet senior Trump foreign policy advisers.

Unfortunately, Trump’s negative policy towards Europe is based on good, sound politics. It is a reflection of a growing US isolationism which in turn is a reaction to series of foreign policy reversals. That feeling of being hard done by the rest of the world (especially its European allies) will continue regardless of whomever win the November election.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged david lammy, joe biden, NATO and United states of America | 7 Comments

Blair-era veterans given ministerial roles – Starmer does what we should have done in coalition

By Paul Walter | Tue 9th July 2024 - 9:05 am

Embed from Getty Images
Keir Starmer is bringing a few Blair era veterans back into government:

-Jacqui Smith as Higher Education Minister, first elected 27 years ago
-Douglas Alexander as Business Minister, also first elected 27 years ago and now re-elected at the recent election
-Pat McFadden as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, first elected 19 years ago
-Alan Milburn assisting the new Health Secretary, first elected 32 years ago

Between them, those four individuals have a total of 105 years experience in the British parliament/government/public life between them.

Compare that with our first batch of coalition cabinet members (figures as of 2010 when the coalition government was set up):

-Nick Clegg, first elected to the British parliament 5 years previously
-Danny Alexander, first elected to the British parliament 5 years previously
-David Laws, first elected for Yeovil 9 years previously
-Andrew Stunell (OK, I’ll give you that Andrew was a “grey haired” veteran at the time), first elected to the British parliament 13 years previously
-Chris Huhne, first elected to the British parliament 5 years previously.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged coalition | 17 Comments

“When they go low, we go high”

By Mary Reid | Fri 7th June 2024 - 3:24 pm

The Leader’s Debate on Wednesday was a miserable affair. In fact, I couldn’t bring myself to watch the whole hour.

It wasn’t so much what they said, which was pretty predictable, but how they said it. The tone was one of bad tempered school boys itching for a fight. Insults were exchanged – sometimes quite subtly, but they still landed. In fact Sunak and Starmer lived up to everyone’s stereotype of opposing politicians, substituting personal attacks for carefully argued criticism. It wasn’t helped by the chairing which seemed to egg on the sparring.

One response that we hear on the doorstep to this way of doing politics is “Why don’t they all work together to solve the problems?”. Of course that is possible, as the work of many unsung Parliamentary committees demonstrate, but for major policy areas and budget setting the scrutiny role of the opposition is absolutely essential. Indeed, the presence of an effective opposition is a benchmark for democracy. But effective opposition does not have to include personal animosity.

The layout of the House of Commons doesn’t help. It is designed for adversarial debate, with the opponents only kept apart by the statutory two sword lengths between them. The architecture encourages personal attacks on the people sitting opposite, and indeed the structure of PMQs is designed to work in that very space.

Last week I attended the funeral for a former Labour councillor. In fact I had chosen her to be my Deputy when I was Mayor, and we had developed a good friendship. At the reception afterwards I met up with former Labour councillors and activists, and a former Tory Mayor, and we all greeted each other warmly. It is perfectly possible to have respect for members of other parties and to recognise that we share some fundamental values about community and democracy. This can, and did, translate into lively debates in the Council Chamber, but conducted in a courteous manner. Passion and compassion are not incompatible.

And then we come to election campaigning. When parties are pitching themselves to gain the support of their voters it is important that they address policies held by other parties. That, of course, is very different from having a go at the candidates themselves.

Some of you will recognise an LDV theme here. We ask commenters to “Play the ball, not the (wo)man”.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged 2024 general election and rishi sunak | 20 Comments

Coalition with Starmer’s Labour?

By Samuel Jackson | Tue 21st May 2024 - 10:03 am

In principle, it should not take the Conservatives’ disastrous record in government for the past fourteen years for Labour under Keir Starmer, which does not seem to stand for anything other than vaguely promising change, to win by a landslide. Labour’s double-digit lead unfortunately begs to differ.

However, after the recent local elections in England, as well as the Blackpool South by-election, Starmer did not rule out entering coalition with our party if Labour failed to win an outright parliamentary majority at the next general election. In contrast, he categorically ruled out doing so with the Scottish Nationalist Party owing to a ‘fundamental disagreement’ on Scottish independence.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged coalition, plaid cymru, senedd and supply and confidence | 32 Comments

Labour’s turmoil presents the LibDems as the home for those with centre-left progressive values

By Andrew Chandler | Tue 14th May 2024 - 10:36 am

Embed from Getty Images
Quoting Labour’s Harold Wilson might stir some feathers to our LibDem audience, but amidst the political whirlwind, it’s fitting to recall our famous working man’s pipe-smoking ex-Prime Minister who seemed to be born into a trench-coat, rather than a birthday suit. His famous quip was “a week is a long time in politics.” And my goodness, what a week it has been.

We witnessed Natalie Elphicke, one of three former Conservatives who have recently joined Labour. Whilst the previous two defections might have surprised some and been welcomed by all within Labour, Elphicke’s departure was one that surprised everyone and was not welcomed by some from within Labour. Honestly, if you had asked me personally, I would have put better bets on her throwing herself into the coast in her constituency in Dover, to help toe a boat of Refugees onto British shores, than this. We are still yet to see the full political fallout of this choice accepted by Labour, given her right-wing views on immigration, culture wars, and, not too long ago, unflattering remarks she made about the Labour leadership. And this is only scratching the surface, given the comments she made about her husband’s victims that got caught up in his sexual misconduct trial and her attempts to influence it.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged Harold Wilson, natalie elphicke and roy jenkins | 32 Comments

Strong Parliament is better than strong Government

By Neville Farmer | Thu 9th May 2024 - 9:35 am

Kier Starmer’s invitation for Natalie Elphicke to join him on the Labour benches is a dreadful piece of political opportunism. At a time when public trust in politicians is at an all-time low, welcoming an MP who was a member of the ERG and whose views have long placed her to the far right of Ghengis Khan is a staggering shot in the foot. The backlash the following morning runs from the Guardian to the Express. Few see this as the move of a statesman.

So, why has he scored this own goal? He doesn’t need her to improve Labour’s polling, and he will soon discover what a thorn in the flesh she is to any party. But he just couldn’t resist sticking the knife into Rishi Sunak and twisting it a little further. It’s pathetic. Such naiveté is troubling for anyone viewing him as a viable Prime Minister, especially for many Labour MPs and members. It will undoubtedly lose him more votes than it gains.

For the Liberal Democrats and other progressive parties, he has created an opportunity. Many centre-left voters will baulk at the idea of someone with such poor statecraft having an overwhelming majority in Parliament. For decades, the pushback against electoral reform was that proportional representation promised coalitions and ‘weak’ government. But since 2015 we have seen unassailable majority parliaments wielded like wrecking balls by a slew of dreadful Prime Ministers. Boris Johnson alone proved how dangerous unfettered majority government can be in the hands of a maniac.

Of course, the LibDems are still hampered by the residual disdain for coalition that both Labour and the Tories disseminated throughout the electorate. But it is residual and Rishi Sunak’s inept steering of Johnson’s legacy majority is much more in-your-face vote influencer.

The path the LibDems must surely follow now is one of vision, maturity and common sense. Whatever the Jenricks, Bravermans, Andersons, Tices and Farages, or even the Corbyns may think, the majority of British people are centrist – that’s why it’s called the centre. They want change, indeed they may be desperate for it, but they don’t want more ideology forced upon them.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged natalie elphicke | 79 Comments

William Wallace writes: Making the case for Constitutional Reform

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 12th October 2023 - 9:44 am

Rishi Sunak has told the Conservative Party conference that British politics are ‘broken.’ That will make it more difficult for his party to resist changes in the way we do politics – constitutional reform, as we nerds put it.

It was the Conservatives that broke British politics, of course – or rather, populists inside and outside the party, cheered on by right-wing media (and American and Russian encouragement and funding) that swept aside established conventions on political behaviour and governmental restraint. A major new report on political reform, jointly published by the Institute for Government and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy in Cambridge, notes the breakdown of constraints on executive behaviour, attacks on judges and the rule of law, attempts to bypass parliamentary scrutiny and the steady erosion of local government that has characterised the past eight years.

Four prime ministers since 2015, seven chancellors of the exchequer, nine secretaries of state for education – constant ministerial churn, changes in policy announced without much preparation or consultation and then reversed by the minister’s successor. This single-party government has given Britain an object lesson in incompetent government.

The Conservative conference demonstrated how ungovernable the Conservative Party has become. Liz Truss peddled her free market nonsense to a packed fringe meeting. Ministers attacked policies that no-one had yet put forward. Danny Kruger, representing the American-influenced evangelical right wing, channelled conspiracy theories about the threat that climate change efforts were intended to bring ‘world government’. Nigel Farage swanned round the conference, wearing his GB News pass: not a delegate, but a highly visible presence, benefitting like other right-wing populists from generous GB News funding.

Keir Starmer in his Labour conference speech almost echoed the prime minister. ‘Our politics feels broken’, he declared; ‘we must win the war against the hoarders in Westminster, give power back and put communities in control.’ But beyond a reference to strengthening local government, he has said nothing specific about political reform beyond making it clear that he is opposed to changing the voting system. He gives every impression that he intends to govern within the same centralised, executive-dominated structure the Conservatives have used and abused, with only minor adjustments to improve relations with the UK’s three devolved governments.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged constitutional reform, featured and rishi sunak | 9 Comments

Unity or compromise – the dilemma of tactical voting

By Jack Meredith | Fri 28th July 2023 - 10:21 am

Labour leader Keir Starmer confirmed in an interview with Nicky Campbell that he believes a woman is an “adult female”, a commonly used transphobic dogwhistle which undermines the legitimate identity of trans women.

This statement follows a long-standing public back-and-forth between the Westminster Labour Party and the Scottish Labour Party on whether to support self-ID, allowing trans people to identify as their rightful gender rather than the gender forced upon them at birth.

How far the Labour Party have fallen; once a party that championed individual liberty, now echoing right-wing populist nonsense, fearful they’ll lose their ever-growing lead over a failing Conservative government.

I imagine the late, great Roy Jenkins rolling in his grave. The man that decriminalised homosexuality, legalised abortion, liberalised divorce and theatre censorship laws, and played a significant role in the abolition of capital punishment would be an outsider in the same party that gave him his start in politics.

What is the justification for this decision from Labour? Human rights are supposed to be at the heart of their politics. This stance is a betrayal of liberal democracy and progressivism. While I agree hyper-progressivism can lead to more harm than good, acknowledging and upholding a people’s rights is basic decency.

Labour’s abject failure to do the right thing by trans people makes the argument for “tactical voting” all the more disagreeable.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged labour | 12 Comments

What on earth is Keir Starmer playing at by refusing to remove two child limit?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 19th July 2023 - 8:43 pm

One of the cruellest things that the Conservatives introduced was limiting benefits claims to two children.

Just last week, the Child Poverty Action Group and other children’s charities wrote to all party leaders highlighting the impact of this dreadful measure and calling for its removal. They said:

The two-child limit is a discriminatory policy which is a clear breach of children’s human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The two-child limit robs children of the basic joys of childhood. It forces parents to take out a loan to buy a school uniform. Children give up hobbies because of the costs associated, and they miss out on birthday parties as they cannot afford to bring a gift for a friend.

The cost of living crisis has made the impact of the policy even more acute. The number of affected families struggling to pay for gas, electricity and food has risen sharply in the last 12 months.

The two-child limit has a devastating effect on families like Joanna’s. Joanna works full-time and lives with her partner and three children. Her partner is too unwell to work at the moment. They lose out on £270 a month due to the two-child limit. Joanna has struggled to keep up with rent payments and, in June 2023, her landlord was granted an outright possession order to evict the family. They have just 14 days to leave their home.

Scrapping the two-child limit is the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty. It would lift 250,000 children out of poverty and mean 850,000 children are in less deep poverty. This single policy change would transform the life chances of 1.5 million children across the UK, children like Joanna’s, who are currently facing homelessness.

Children deserve the chance to thrive, but continued inaction will permit a cohort of children to grow up in poverty, to miss out on play, to be held back at school and denied a better future. If nothing is done, over half of children in larger families will be growing up in poverty by 2027/28.

So I was genuinely shocked to see Keir Starmer tell Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that Labour would retain this regressive, poverty increasing measure.

Of all the bad things the Tories have done, surely to goodness this would be one of the first to go?

For the avoidance of doubt, Liberal Democrats would get rid of it. We opposed it when the Tories brought it in and continue to do so.

UPDATE 20 July 9 am

In fact here is Ed telling Kay Burley exactly that yesterday.

Would Lib Dems scrap the two child benefit cap?

Here's party leader @EdwardJDavey #KayBurley FC pic.twitter.com/HP5IuUjO7X

— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) July 18, 2023

As well as being the wrong thing to do morally, Starmer has now put himself in a position where he has picked an unnecessary fight with his party. Scottish Labour MSPs Monica Lennon and Pam Duncan Glancy expressed their frustration on Twitter:

Scottish Labour will always oppose the heinous two-child benefit cap and rape clause.

It’s not acceptable in Scotland or any part of the UK, and @UKLabour party policy must always reflect this. @labpolicyforum https://t.co/i6YsiSwt2a

— Monica Lennon MSP (@MonicaLennon7) July 17, 2023

They were joined by constituency Labour Parties, MPs and other MSPs.

Monica Lennon later wrote in the Daily Record:

Knowingly plunging children and their families into hardship is heartless and with the cost-of-living crisis hitting low-income families hard, it’s never been more vital to scrap the cap.

Many of those affected are working families, who despite grafting to provide for their kids, struggle to put enough food on the table in our unequal society. Single mothers are hit the hardest.

It’s no wonder many people are feeling scared and hopeless because the choice between heating and eating is no choice at all.

I agree with every word of that.

Starmer has given himself a problem he didn’t need to have.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged child poverty, featured, labour and poverty | 69 Comments

Achieving electoral reform – the common good comes before personal ambition

By Geoff Reid | Tue 4th July 2023 - 10:49 am

Anyone who has stood as a paper candidate knows that this is a selfless task that normally has nothing to do with personal ambition. This is the basis on which I stood in three General Elections. I was regarded as a good candidate for hopeless northern seats – and endorsed as such by Richard Wainwright MP! In October 1974, when the Liberals stood in every seat for the first time, the Region told me that there was nobody else for Rother Valley. As the first candidate since 1918, I saved my deposit after we managed to address folded leaflets (by hand) to the 93,000 electors. I suppose that was the fulfilment of a very modest ambition.

I do see myself as achieving a few things in my time but that is different from fulfilling personal ambition. I still hold the percentage vote share record for Barnsley Central, where I stood in 1983, but, as Yorkshire and the Humber Region know full well, that’s nowt to boast about. My final outing in Eccles in 1992 was utterly unmemorable!

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged electoral reform, labour party and neal lawson | 22 Comments

Britain and Europe: Turning Around

By Andrew Duff | Tue 10th January 2023 - 4:18 pm

Keir Starmer promises to do no more than tinker with Britain’s EU relationship during his ‘first’ term of government. By accepting the EU’s regulations on food safety and animal welfare, Labour will ease the worst problems facing Northern Irish trade. But Starmer’s stated intention of “making Brexit work” is no different in principle to that of Rishi Sunak’s. That leaves the field wide open for the Liberal Democrats.

Many Lib Dems would like the UK to rejoin the European Union as soon as possible. That will not happen. Leaving aside the necessity of surmounting a divisive referendum campaign, unless the UK accepts the goal of political, economic and monetary union it is not eligible for full EU membership. There is really no appetite in Brussels to make a special case for the UK as a prodigal member state. On the contrary: once bitten, twice shy. In any case, EU enlargement is stalled and will remain stalled unless and until its constitutional treaties are revised in a federal direction.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged european union | 11 Comments

Labour Party constitutional reform proposals

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 7th December 2022 - 9:47 am

This week Keir Starmer launched a report for consultation entitled ‘A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and Rebuilding our Economy’. It is admirably full of attitude survey results, international comparisons, and north-south contrasts.

The report has a solid narrative and an overall theme, and in this sense can be said to have a certain amount of clarity of purpose.

The emphasis is on what some might call ‘the real economy’ – industry and commerce, and small businesses, and social deprivation resulting from declining economic activity, especially outside London and the SE.

The ‘problem’ which the report focuses on addressing is a serious collapse in trust in the UK political and administrative system; which gets worse the further people are from London. It blames this not only on accelerated regional economic decline, but also on a corrupt and over-centralised governance system, where development and infrastructure proposals from areas distant from London, sit for decades at the bottom of the pile in Whitehall. These conclusions have seemingly emerged in part from Labour mayors, and other government decentralisation processes around the UK over the last decade, where Labour leads. Rising Scottish and Welsh nationalism are also blamed in part on fiscal over-centralisation and mutual disdain with London.

The proposed remedies reflect the definition of the problem; greater participation of regions and nations in central decision-making (including a new second chamber of regions/nations to replace the House of Lords), moving central government civil servants out of London, and limited devolution of transport, employment support, and economic development spending decisions. One has to assume that the absence of basic detail behind the remedies means that they are still being worked through, (under cover of the report being ‘for consultation’; all the relevant consultees having already been consulted, it seems).

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured and labour | 13 Comments

Labour join the Tories in trying to remove Young People’s rights

By Charley Hasted | Wed 2nd November 2022 - 3:54 pm

On Monday Keir Starmer had an interview with Mumsnet. He was asked the, by now, depressingly standard question on children and young people having access to treatment and support for gender identity issues. His incompetent response threw every under 16 in the country under the bus.

“I feel very strongly that children shouldn’t be making these very important decisions without the consent of their parents. I say that as a matter of principle. We all know what it’s like with teenage children, I feel very strongly about this. This argument that children should make decisions without the consent of their parents is one I just don’t agree with at all.” – Keir Starmer

In a few sentences Starmer committed the Labour party to undoing nearly 40 years of medico-legal practice in the name of appeasing a tiny minority of authoritarians. At a stroke stating he would deny the children and young people of this country access to everything from paracetamol to abortion, vaccination to blood transfusions, if their parents don’t agree they should have access to it.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged authoritarianism, blue labour, child health, children's rights, Gillick Competence, labour, LGBT rights and young people | 15 Comments

How to achieve Electoral Reform in the light of Keir Starmer’s obstructionism

By Samuel Jackson | Wed 28th September 2022 - 1:00 pm

On Monday, members at Labour’s Annual Conference voted in favour of a motion to replace First Past the Post with Proportional Representation in general elections. This comes after Unison, Unite, and the GMB, three of Britain’s largest trade unions, came out in support of PR in the months following the 2021 Labour Conference, where the withholding of such resulted in the failure of a similar motion despite nearly eighty per cent of Constituency delegates supporting it.

However, it seems as though Labour’s National Executive Committee will ignore the motion, preventing such a promise from becoming part of their next manifesto. With Keir Starmer saying that ‘it’s not a priority’, he plans to ignore the wishes of the majority of his party’s members, the red wall voters he needs to win back, and indeed the wider British public, and reap the rewards of disproportionate, unstable FPTP and gross Conservative mismanagement to win an unwarranted parliamentary majority.

As the next general election is likely to be upwards of two years away, the Labour leadership could yield to popular demands and adopt PR as official policy if pressure on them is maintained. Nevertheless, moving forward, we Liberal Democrats must consider our strategy for how to abolish FPTP given official opposition to such by one of the major parties against the wishes of its own supporters and its own self-interests.

Whilst FPTP is favoured by the larger parties for supposedly providing strong single party governments, recent history has proven otherwise. Seven out of the ten years of the 2010s saw the election of hung Parliaments, with the Conservatives losing their majority in 2017 despite increasing their vote share to 42.3% up from 36.8% in 2015. It may be possible that FPTP delivers unto Labour a plurality or a razor-thin majority, rather than a working majority. If we manage to poach enough blue wall seats, we would be the most palatable option for Labour as a potential coalition or confidence-and-supply agreement partner.

We should learn from our party’s previous experience with negotiating with a major party in achieving electoral reform. In 2010, we entered into coalition with the Conservatives on condition that a referendum be held over replacing FPTP with Alternative Voting. With still-majoritarian AV being a dissatisfactory substitute to both FPTP and Single Transferable Voting, our party’s preference then and now, the Conservatives and Labour alike depicted it as scary, confusing, and distracting. The defeat of AV wrongly signified for some, most notably David Cameron, the defeat of PR, stymieing momentum for years afterwards.

If we find ourselves in the same position again but with Labour, we must be more determined. If the Conservatives were the only adamantly anti-PR party in Parliament, and all others were broadly in favour of it, we could insist that electoral reform be achieved via a simple Act of Parliament without a referendum. A broadly pro-PR supermajority in Parliament would have sufficient a mandate to do so.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged proportional representation | 34 Comments

Sorting out the mess

By Kevin Langford | Wed 28th September 2022 - 10:47 am

The country already had big issues to deal with before last Friday: price increases that are severely reducing the standard of living for many, a health service which is struggling to cope, climate change which is becoming more visible, and a war in the Ukraine.

To this the government has added a completely unnecessary financial crisis. Another major unforced error following on from Brexit.

The best thing we can do to help sort out the mess is to get elected and to contribute in some form or other to a sensible and effective government. In this respect at least, the last week has moved us forward.

First, the Tories are making it easier for us to evict them (if more difficult to deal with the chaos once they have gone). They are backing policies that are both wrong and unpopular. Tax cuts for the rich. Incompetent economic management. Refusing to implement a windfall tax. Fracking. (Winchester, Wells, Lewes, Guildford and Esher are all interesting seats with fracking licences within the constituency or its hinterland)

Second, Labour is adopting reasonable political positions and has not yet messed up. It would be naïve to assume that the Tories will lose (or that we will make significant progress) in the absence of a decent showing from Labour. So it is therefore to be welcomed that hey had a largely successful conference this week on an electoral platform with many similarities to ours. There are obviously areas where policy is different, but there is a very large core we agree on. Look at the ‘pre manifesto’ prepared for our conference (Policy paper 149) and Labour’s conference road map to a ‘Fairer, Greener, Future” and ask how much difference a neutral observer would see. Conversely consider the clear water between what both parties are now saying compared to the Tories. We know where we all stand. (Labour members even voted in favour of PR – though it seems unlikely that this will be adopted by Starmer any time soon.)

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

Caption Competition: What are Davey and Starmer thinking?

By Newsmoggie | Sat 4th June 2022 - 8:26 am

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. They say that body language tells all.

At yesterday’s Service of Thanksgiving for The Queen’s reign in St Paul’s, Sir Ed Davey and Sir Keir Starmer were seated next to each other. So, what were the two men thinking?

Posted in Caption Comp | Also tagged ed davey | 35 Comments

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