Tag Archives: london liberal democrats

The Voice

Women’s Hour phone bank on 22nd January

By The Voice | Tue 7th January 2025 - 1:00 pm

London Liberal Democrats are holding a Women’s Hour London Phone Bank with Special Guest Councillor Rachel Bentley. They’ll be calling members from around London to see how they can get more involved. All are welcome to be involved. It’s fun and a chance to speak to our members and voters.

Please RSVP here so they know how many people are coming and so that they can send you the Zoom link.

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Ruth Bright

Aylesbury – the estate that took the crown

By Ruth Bright | Wed 15th February 2023 - 11:10 am

The Netflix series “The Crown” Series 4 Episode 5. The camera pans across what appear to be desolate tower blocks and an inner-city, high-rise wasteland with little hope. It’s the home of Michael Fagan, the intruder who so famously gained entry to Buckingham Palace and sat on the Queen’s bed.

In the episode in question the Queen (Olivia Colman) gathers herself after the shock of the appearance of Fagan (Tom Brooke) in her bedroom. She rallies her famous small talk and asks: “and where do you live?” answer: “King’s Cross.” “Is it nice?” “Not really.”

But the setting is not King’s Cross. In fact, the glimpses we see of Fagan’s world are South of the river. It’s the Aylesbury estate in Walworth, Southwark. The Aylesbury, home to Wendover, the longest tower block in Europe and part of Faraday ward, at one time one of the most deprived wards in the UK.

I knew it well as one of the Lib Dem councillors for the estate in the nineties and noughties.

The Aylesbury is the edgy setting for many a TV show. The towers feature on a Madonna video and countless episodes of the Bill. As a young woman I experienced plenty of frightening times on the estate. Walking back from a meeting on Wendover late at night I was followed by two men in a car which sped off once the occupants had had the fun of seeing my terror close up.

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Caron Lindsay

London Region recruiting a Development officer to boost local campaigns

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 19th March 2019 - 9:55 am

Looking back to last May, there was much to celebrate in London’s election results. Winning back control of Kingston and Richmond was very welcome , as was retaining our control of Sutton. And then there were excellent results in Haringey – our group grew from 9 to 15 – and Merton leapt up from just a single Lib Dem councillor to 6!

Looking closely at the areas that make such great progress, we can see how beneficial it is to have full time staff – and volunteers – working on our campaigns over a long period. Their hard work and skills correlates with good results.

The other side of this particular coin is in 22 out of London’s 32 boroughs we don’t currently have any Lib Dem councillors, alongside 4 boroughs with less than a handful. In many boroughs we have keen and enthusiastic campaigners, but many people have full time jobs, family responsibilities and maybe long commutes. There may be little time in the evening to prepare for a weekend activity although actually quite amazing stuff does get done! But It’s clear that it’s very difficult to compete when our opponents have more in the way of resources than we do. We feel that if we make things a bit easier we can help those keen campaigners achieve more.

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Jonathan Fryer

London gears up for 2020

By Jonathan Fryer | Sat 24th November 2018 - 8:55 am

London may be the smallest English region geographically, but in LibDem terms it is top of the league, with around 20,000 members, many of whom joined following the 2016 EU Referendum and subsequent general election. Small wonder, then, that Brexit will figure large at the London LibDems’ regional conference tomorrow .

Tom Brake, MP for Carshalton & Wallington and the Party’s national Brexit spokesperson, will be leading a session on the impact of Brexit on the city, chaired by former MEP Baroness Ludford. And in one of a number of fringe meetings, sponsored by the Alliance of European Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), Arthur Griffin, Vice President of our Irish sister party, Fianna Faíl, will give a presentation on Winning That First Preference Vote.

LibDem Leader, Sir Vince Cable (MP for Twickenham) will provide the opening keynote address in the impressive surroundings of Canary Wharf, whose CEO, Sir George Iacobescu, will give a welcoming speech, alongside one of the party’s newest recruits, Tower Hamlets Councillor Rabina Khan.

Tower Hamlets is something of a success story in increasing diversity within the Party and given the fact that one in three Londoners were not even born in the UK, diversity is a key preoccupation of London Liberal Democrats. This is splendidly reflected in the team that has just been selected by the membership to fight the 2020 London Mayoral and GLA elections.

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Caron Lindsay

The London List results are out

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 21st November 2018 - 7:59 pm

And we have Team London. Here are the Liberal Democrat candidates for the London Assembly List in 2020. It’s great to see such a diverse team. It’s no surprise that the brilliant Caroline Pidgeon topped the poll.

New Merton Councillor Hina Bokhari, who wrote about her first 100 days here, got to second place with an energetic campaign on the ground and on social media.

Lewisham’s Lucy Salek, who got such a good result in the by-election earlier this year, is in third.

Outgoing London Regional Chair Chris Maines is fourth and Federal Board Vice Chair Joyce Onstad is …

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The Voice

London Liberal Democrats announce timetable for GLA/Assembly selections, positive action for BAME candidates

By The Voice | Mon 30th July 2018 - 8:15 am

The next known challenges for London Liberal Democrats are the Mayoral and GLA contests in May 2020. These are unique elections in British politics, with nearly nine million people electing one person to lead the City and twenty-five Greater London Assembly members (fourteen elected from constituencies, eleven from a top up list).

Being the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor is a high profile role needing a candidate of the highest calibre and we will have a rigorous process to ensure that our candidate will cope with the scrutiny that the election will bring.

The London Regional Executive places a great importance on …

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London Lib Dems to debate private hire regulations – how they should get it right

By A Liberal Reform Board Member | Wed 11th November 2015 - 10:25 am

Upon moving to London my first ‘culture-shock’ moment – so much as an Aussie can have them – was discovering that many black cabs only take cash payment. In 2015 it is hard to imagine another industry where a regulator must step in to ensure more than half of all operators provide a facility as basic as card payment.

This matters, as this weekend our London conference will debate a motion on Transport for London’s (TfL) recently released proposals to regulate the private hire car market. While many of the proposals are sound, several will sabotage successful business models and reduce competition, further breeding the kind of apathy to consumer preferences that sees many black cab drivers refuse card payment.

There are three proposals Liberal Democrats should be most concerned with. The first, a mandatory waiting period between requesting a private hire vehicle and pick-up, is hard to square with any consumer interest rationale. TfL is proposing a mandatory 5 minute wait, about 1.5 minutes more than the average time it takes for an Uber driver to arrive. Apparently this would reduce the risk of a customer getting into the wrong vehicle, a problem TfL provides no evidence to suggest actually exists. Even if it does, it appears not to have been weighed against the risk of extending the time in which people may have to wait alone on a street corner late at night. 

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