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Tag Archives: politics

A Federal Britain: 2. Devolving power and redesigning the Constitution

By Iain Donaldson | Fri 5th June 2026 - 8:57 am

Fair votes are essential, but they are only the first pillar of constitutional renewal. The second pillar is federalism: the redistribution of power away from Westminster and towards the nations and regions where people actually experience the consequences of government decisions.

The United Kingdom is one of the most centralised democracies in the developed world. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and London possess varying degrees of devolution, yet most of England remains governed through Westminster departments, Whitehall ministries, arm’s-length agencies, and overlapping administrative bodies. Decisions affecting transport, housing, infrastructure, skills, economic development, and public services are often taken hundreds of miles away from the communities they affect.

The result is confusion, duplication, and weak accountability. When services fail, it is frequently unclear whether responsibility lies with ministers, local authorities, regulators, agencies, or quasi-independent bodies. Democracy becomes less meaningful when citizens cannot identify who is responsible.

Federalism addresses this by clearly defining where power sits.

Westminster would become a genuine federal parliament responsible for defence, foreign affairs, national security, macroeconomic stability, currency, and constitutional matters. Rather than simultaneously acting as both a UK parliament and, in practice, England’s legislature, it would focus on genuinely federal responsibilities.

Below it would sit state-level governments: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, London, and a series of English regional states.

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Posted in News | Also tagged decentralisation, democracy and federalism | 18 Comments

A Federal Britain: 1. Renewing democracy through fair representation

By Iain Donaldson | Thu 4th June 2026 - 10:25 am

The United Kingdom is undergoing a quiet constitutional breakdown. Not in the dramatic sense of institutional collapse, but in a slower and more corrosive way: voters increasingly feel unrepresented, power remains concentrated in Westminster to a degree unusual among modern democracies, and the link between democratic choice and real-world decision-making has weakened.

These are not separate problems. They form a single constitutional question: how can a modern, diverse, multi-national state remain democratic, fair, and stable when many of its institutions were designed for a different era?

The answer lies in three connected pillars: fair representation, decentralised power, and fiscal accountability. Each alone is insufficient. Together, they form a democratic redesign of the United Kingdom. The first pillar is electoral reform.

A functioning democracy depends on a simple principle: votes should translate into representation. In the United Kingdom, that principle is routinely broken by First Past the Post.

The 2024 General Election once again demonstrated the scale of the distortion. Parties receiving millions of votes secured only minimal representation, while others translated relatively modest vote shares into overwhelming parliamentary majorities. This is not merely a technical flaw. It is a structural weakness that undermines confidence in democratic legitimacy.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged democracy, electoral reform and federalism | 12 Comments

The Mandelson debacle – Implications, Part 2 (remedies)

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 29th April 2026 - 8:55 am

On 25th April 2026 I wrote in LDV about the longer-term political background to the Mandelson debacle, referencing his time on Lambeth Council and the rise of the anti-left in the Labour Party, alongside the formation of the SDP, which partially sprung from there (see yesterday’s Guardian article).

The main conclusion of the LDV article was that Mandelson’s political orientation was shaped by opposition to the far-left in the Labour Party, (reinforced by the militant left’s control of Lambeth Council in the 1970s and 1980s). Mandelson’s close colleagues then, such as the subsequently ennobled Roger Liddle, Matthew Oakeshott, and the late George Thomson (associated with BBC and ITV governance), not only opposed the far left, they also objected to Thatcherism. They particularly opposed those of the left and right who were sceptical of internationalism and EU cooperation, especially dissenters from the quasi-corporatist European ‘social democratic consensus’. Mandelson stayed in the Labour party to fight the left, but Oakeshott and Liddle joined the SDP, the latter, being close to Mandelson, rejoining Labour after 6 years.

This group, and many Labour colleagues, believed that the Labour Party would never regain power again if it remained under far left control, hostile to ‘right-wing’ mainstream media and the big business and finance organisations behind them. Being cosy with international business helped get PM Blair elected in 1997, and softened media scepticism towards PM Starmer in early 2024. However, in cosying up to big business and finance, attitudes to economic elites and oligarchs began to border on adulation.

But there is a serious policy problem. The last 19 years has seen a transformation of the world economy, since the 2007-8 financial crisis. The rise of the Chinese economy has occurred alongside the rise of ‘financialisation’ and concomitant authoritarian bureaucratisation in the West; leading to increasing economic concentration and ‘stealthy monopolisation’. Asset prices rise in a bubble, as long term economic performance in the ‘real sector’ declines, and Western governments ignore the fiscal & debt sustainability tsunami.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged economy and liberal democracy | 5 Comments

Whatever happened to political leadership?

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 25th June 2025 - 11:25 am

The style of political campaigning today has become infinitely more professional than when I first became involved in politics. In the 1960s the news cycle was far slower and gentler; TV and radio interviewers treated politicians with respect, and would allow them to offer long answers without interruption. Now we have ‘breaking news’, daily opinion polls, multiple staff to advise and aggressive interviewers. Political leaders are far better equipped to follow the headlines and shifting public moods. But do they still dare to lead?

The UK’s debate on public spending represents a classic example of government and main opposition doing their utmost not to explain underlying choices to the public, while following conflicting evidence of popular preferences – lower taxes, higher public investment, resistance to cuts in health and welfare. Ever since Margaret Thatcher used the additional revenue streams from North Sea Oil and the proceeds of privatisation to fund current government spending rather than to build a sovereign wealth fund, Conservatives (like their Republican allies in the USA) have declared themselves the party of low taxation and a smaller state – without explaining to voters what cuts would be needed to reach those goals. Labour was so wary of challenging that myth that it pledged not to raise any of the largest sources of revenue if it won the 2024 election. The only party that has explicitly entered an election campaign with a pledge to increase taxes was Paddy Ashdown’s Liberal Democrats in 1997, with our ‘penny on income tax for education.’ A senior Labour adviser told me when we published our manifesto that ‘nobody will vote for a party that says it will increase taxation’ – though quite a few did.

Labour leaders knew very well before the 2024 campaign started that the rising number of pensioners is driving up the welfare and health budgets, that Tory cuts in public investment had left an urgent need to rebuild hospitals, schools, railways and roads, and that leaving the EU had damaged our economy and thus the Treasury’s revenue stream – by some £40 billion, according to think tank calculations. Facing the wrath of the right-wing media, the challenge of Reform and the Tories, they did not dare to explain the position to our uninformed electorate. On top of all that, we now face additional challenges: a downturn in the global economy and international trade, resulting from Trump’s disruptive tactics and spreading international conflicts and the unavoidable commitment to increase defence spending substantially. Keir Starmer has made very little effort, however, to explain to the British public the choices that we face: he’s not a natural political leader, more a manager.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, political leadership and uk poltics | 14 Comments

Churches and chapels, Liberalism and faith

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 14th May 2025 - 11:55 am

Liberals will have followed the papal Conclave with mixed feelings. Liberalism was forged in opposition to state power and state churches, their enforced orthodoxy and suppression of dissent. On the European continent that gave early Liberalism a strong anti-Catholic tinge, which hasn’t entirely disappeared. In England and Wales the alliance between Whigs and nonconformists became central to the 19th century Liberal Party, with campaigns to disestablish the Anglican church and to remove its control over schools and universities. The high point of nonconformist influence in the party was between the 1880s and the first world war. In recent decades, some active Liberal Democrats have become hostile to faith and religion as such – in some cases intolerant of those in the party who hold to a faith and belong to a church.

I grew up as a Protestant Anglican. I learned what I now understand as social liberalism from the sermons of Canon Marriott, preaching the ‘social gospel’ in Westminster Abbey (putting down my Biggles book, which choristers were allowed to take in to keep us quiet during sermons), I had instinctive anti-Catholic prejudices, probably from the English history I was taught and the children’s histories I read. I was shocked when, as a student, I first met an active Liberal who said he was also a Catholic. His name was Geoff Tordoff, and he later became a key player in holding the party together during the last years of Jeremy Thorpe’s leadership and the Lib-Lab pact. Then I worked throughout the 1966 election campaign for Pratap Chitnis, educated by the Jesuits and a practising Catholic, and learned to admire his intellectual as well as campaigning skills. My prejudices evaporated as I worked with a succession of liberal Catholics whose faith and values went together.

What Liberals (myself included) dislike about religion is the claim to certainty that fundamentalists assert, the hierarchical structure of the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and (often) Evangelical churches, and the corruption of authority when priests defend their institution instead of their faith. Popes 150 years ago condemned liberalism and the separation of church and state; the Church of England was a pillar of social order and Tory rule. As institutions, both have fallen a long way short of the faith they proclaim. Both these ‘establishment’ churches have struggled to adapt to open and democratic societies, and to the uncertainties of reasoned debate and honest doubt that such societies depend on. But both have adapted, to the point where right-wing media in the USA are bitterly criticising the new pope.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged faith, featured, liberalism and religion | 11 Comments

Politics must change

By Peter Wrigley | Wed 16th April 2025 - 8:32 am

Now that the United States has abdicated from its position of leader and protector of the “free world” politicians of all parties are in agreement that ”the world has changed” and we must change with it. I believe that, looking backwards for half a century or so rather than just from the accession President Trump, and forward for another fifty years rather than to the next election, we need a fundamental shift in the political debate in at least the following areas.

Physical Standard of Living

For a least a century and a half there has been an assumption that each generation should enjoy a better material standard of living their parents. In our developed economies we must abandon his idea. Yes, there will be advances in medicine and other scientific areas, in arts, music and leisure pursuits, which improve our quality of life, but we already have the capability of affording everyone a decent material standard of living, provided we share more equitably.

Climate Change

We have to take this very seriously indeed: it is not just an optional add-on but must be central to our policies. The current Labour government seems to be prepared to postpone or even ditch policies to limit damage to the environment if they impede short run physical growth and employment. We need to find other ways of “ raising all boats” to an acceptable standard. Better sharing is the obvious one.

Inequality

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Posted in News | Also tagged political strategy | 29 Comments

The dangers of country before party

By Geoff Reid | Wed 10th July 2024 - 9:25 am

It’s just as well that Labour reduced the election slogans on the placards to one word. I hope that Keir Starmer’s verbal repetition of the “country before party” slogan is quickly forgotten. It comes with its own dangers. Patriotism is fine, provided you and your hearers understand what you mean by that word. Unfortunately it is easily confused with nationalism.

The sleaze, cronyism and breaking of rules by government ministers and MPs over the past decade were offences committed by people, elected as Conservatives who put themselves before the country and indeed before their party. If only these miscreants could have been reprimanded in the style of an old-style school head by someone saying “You have let Parliament down, you have let your constituents down, you have let your country down and you have let yourself down.”

We should add “You have let politics down.” Sometimes as political activists we are tempted to despair when we hear a growing number of residents in some areas proclaiming that they are not going to vote because “they are all the same”. Some of those who tarred everyone else with the same Tory brush voted for Farage and his nativist/populists, which is one reason why Starmer’s vacuous slogan should trigger flashing warning lights. Vote switching Conservatives worked wonders for the Lib Dems but I have a certain grudging respect for those lifelong Tories who really did despair, understood that they had no party to vote for and therefore stayed at home.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged country before party | 7 Comments

When it feels like we are all at sea…

By Lorenzo Cherin | Tue 27th September 2022 - 10:55 am

I am struggling to contain my feelings about the new government and its first budget. Coming as it does after a mandate so limited in their numbers, from an electorate so isolated in their awareness, it is hard to take. Coming as it does, after the loss of the Queen, a great figure of real stability and decency at home, and amidst more threats from an appalling tyrant of mental instability and indecency abroad, I am personally and politically angry and worried. My natural tendency to see the best in people and situations is being tested. I cannot see two sides to this, and accept them easily as viable and explainable. I am being one sided and openly so. This is, in my opinion the worst government and budget I have ever seen and heard, in forty years of personal interest and or involvement in politics.

The school boy in his early teens joining a political party, who became the politics and history graduate able to understand the issues in depth, all throughout the era of Thatcherism, never felt the personal anger as much mingled with political despair, I feel today.

Now we feel all at sea! Thatcher had a mandate. Where is that for Truss?! I said it before, to those who yearned for the early demise of Boris Johnson, he was and is personally a man unfit to be Prime Minister, but he was and is politically a moderate fitted to politics. He sought a popular mandate and by fair means or foul, got it, and sustained it, because he is a populist who understands people he needs to target. The new government seemingly understands only its own ideology and vested interests. If It is to be described accurately as a result of its first budget, this government are in my view, fiscally irresponsible and morally reprehensible.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged budget 2022 | 15 Comments

What next for UK politics?

By Michal Siewniak | Fri 14th May 2021 - 2:26 pm

Oh boy, there is a never dull day in British politics!

It is very true that a week in politics can be actually quite long and eventful. The dust hasn’t settled yet and so much has already happened since last week’s elections. It was incredibly interesting to see how people across the country voted last week and how the election result might impact the future of the UK.

I am not a famous political strategist, however it is true that the political landscape in the UK is changing, that’s for sure. The “Red Wall” collapsed. The by-elections in Hartlepool showed that the Labour Party can’t automatically count on votes from the working class people. Would it be fair to say that it is now the middle-class in bigger cities, which “saved” the Labour Party from a total disaster (London, Liverpool, Manchester). Is it also true that the Labour Party has lost its “political identity”?

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Posted in Op-eds | 14 Comments

What a peaceful transition of power should look like

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 10th January 2021 - 4:48 pm

I might have known that after I had written about Obama’s inauguration speech earlier, how I would fall down the rabbit hole of the Obama White House You Tube Channel.

I came across the unveilings of the official portraits of George W and Laura Bush. Now, I am not a fan of him or his presidency at all. It is, however, very difficult not to love Laura.

Despite all that, when you watch all the speeches from the Obamas and the Bushes, you pick up a real warmth between them.

There was not a lot of common ground between them when Obama took office, but he went to great pains to point out how helpful Bush had been to him, then and since, and how there was quite a rapport between all the living occupants of the Oval Office. It is enjoyable to watch.

I think back to 1992, when Bill Clinton won after a pretty fraught election campaign with not a lot of love on either side. The first President Bush was similarly helpful and graceful to his successor and they struck up an enduring friendship as a result.

Obviously, this is not going to happen this time round, but Donald Trump, as in so many other ways, is very much the aberration here.

We need to see more examples of people with totally opposing views can behave with grace towards one another without compromising their principles. We need to follow the example of our own Charles Kennedy, whose friendship with Labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell had been so important to both of them, as we found out after he died. Charles had been subjected to the most appalling abuse for his opposition to the Iraq War, yet away from the heat, those two had a close personal friendship.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged Parliament, political culture and US politics | 14 Comments

Forty years in the making

By Rob Parsons | Sun 22nd November 2020 - 8:55 am

Liberal democracy is in crisis, particularly in the UK and the USA. In the UK we are perhaps bemused at how we could have come to elect such a corrupt, cronyistic and incompetent government, and in the USA there is much debate over how the Trump lump has not gone away despite four years of Trump’s Twitter tantrums.

There is a tendency to view this as a short term phenomenon – what went wrong four years ago, six years ago, even ten years ago. In my view this has been coming for forty years. It has not been inevitable but, during the neoliberal period (roughly from the 80s till today), social forces and personal decision making have moved us steadily towards the situation we now find ourselves in.

In a nutshell, the elevation to power of Thatcher and Reagan marked the start of what was seen to be a move towards freedom, opening up societies all over the world to the liberating forces of the market. This had two sides, globalisation, an ineluctable social force beyond the power of individuals to affect, and the strategy of global elites both old and new, to use globalisation to create new wealth and power for themselves. They have been very successful. So it turned out to be a move towards freedom for some, but by no means all. The elites used liberalism as their watchword, while ignoring the principle of liberalism that their freedom is only valid in so far as it does not compromise other people’s freedom.

At the same time there has been a steady corrosion of community and democratic values, partly because the new markets require it (they don’t work without precarious labour) and partly because of media elites who found that telling lies worked, and political elites who did not care to confront them. People sold on consumer capitalism found easy answers to all the ills in their lives in the lies told them by the media. Rupert Murdoch and Hugh Dacre, among others, spent decades preparing the British public for the Brexit lie. They have succeeded in making many people’s lives precarious and hoodwinking them into blaming others for that.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brexit, liberal democracy, populism and trump | 29 Comments

All is not well in the SNP

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 23rd August 2020 - 11:06 am

Next year, the Scottish Parliament elections take place. Nicola Sturgeon’s minority SNP Government’s record will be up for the judgement of the electorate. The SNP has been in power now for 13 years. The children who were done over by the exams fiasco up here have had their entire education with the SNP in charge. And, as 16 year olds have the vote in Scottish Parliament elections, they will have the chance to make their voices known.

Scotland’s public services are failing, local government is being undermined and underfunded and it’s hard to think of anything major that the SNP has done that has been as positively transformative as free personal care, land reform, free eye and dental checks and STV for local government introduced by the Liberal Democrat/Labour coalition which governed for the first 8 years of devolution. And it’s the Liberal Democrats who were the driving force behind those reforms.

Nicola Sturgeon is getting a lot of credit for the way she has handled the Coronavirus crisis. Certainly her communications have been a lot clearer than the UK Government’s but she has faced the same issues in care homes. Willie Rennie highlighted lack of testing for new care home residents early on and, eventually, she had to change course. We have had a more cautious approach to the easing of lockdown up here, but I get the sense that people don’t really understand what they are and aren’t allowed to do. Conversations with parents of school age children set alarm bells ringing for me. Our schools have been back for two weeks. I’ve heard several accounts of there being a few kids off with coughs at several schools. Their families didn’t seem to be self-isolating or getting tested, though…. You would think that one would be a no-brainer, but the message that the whole household should self isolate for 14 days unless there is a negative test result does not seem to be getting through.

Aside from the challenges of defending its record and managing the pandemic, the SNP has its own internal problems and divisions. They used to be, at least in public, suspiciously united. Any disagreements were kept private. Now there are fault lines between those who favour a more gradualist approach to independence and those who basically want to do a Catalonia, between those who favour a more progressive and equalities centred agenda and those who think feminism has gone too far and those who think that Alex Salmond’s behaviour towards women has been unacceptable and those who think that he is the innocent victim of a feminist conspiracy theory. The party’s internal civil war on transgender rights is a symptom of a much wider schism.

Two programmes this week are well worth your attention. Kirsty Wark’s BBC documentary on the trial of Alex Salmond is shocking and infuriating. The outcome of the trial did not really get the attention it deserved as it ended on the day that lockdown was announced. While no guilty verdicts were recorded on any of the charges, the evidence highlighted behaviour towards women in a professional environment that was at the very least questionable. On Tuesday journalist Dani Garavelli took a look at the history of the deepening divisions within the SNP in a programme for Radio 4, Scotland’s Uncivil War

Unsurprisingly, both women have been subject to abuse on social media for daring to investigate. And the abuse they have taken is nothing compared to what the women who actually complained about Salmond’s behaviour are getting. Garavelli mentions within her programme how some nationalists called for her to face criminal proceedings. Politicians calling for journalists to be prosecuted is not a good look. On Twitter, a couple of days after her programme was broadcast Garavelli spoke out about some of the criticism she had received:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged Scotland and snp | 18 Comments

10 July 2020 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Fri 10th July 2020 - 10:30 pm

Cross-party group urge BBC to save Politics Live
Homeless covid deaths should act as a wake up call
Government unwillingness to work with EU is unforgivable

Cross-party group urge BBC to save Politics Live

A cross-party group of MPs have called on the BBC to adhere to its obligations as a public service broadcaster and make a “firm commitment” to the future of Politics Live amidst reports the show could be axed.

Liberal Democrat MP Daisy Cooper, who coordinated the cross-party group, warned the BBC that dropping the show would “seriously harm the ability of the BBC to scrutinise and explain the consequences of …

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Posted in News and Press releases | Also tagged bbc, daisy cooper, eu vaccine scheme, homelessness, layla moran and munira wilson | Leave a comment

When politics really does take a back seat

By John Marriott | Sat 28th March 2020 - 1:00 pm

Professor David Runciman, writing in the Guardian this week, may be right about a layer of politics being stripped away in this current crisis and, as he describes it, there being “a trade off between personal liberty and collective choice”. Speaking to his nation on the Edison phonograph at the start of World War One, Kaiser Wilhelm II ended his address with the words; “I recognise no parties any more, only Germans”.

Whether we like it or not, what we are now in the middle of is a war; but, as Mr Spock might have said to Captain James Kirk; “not as we know it”. Wilhelm was the head, despite the trappings of democracy, of a basically autocratic regime, which sought to shore up its power by enlisting patriotism, and it worked for a while as it did also in Tsarist Russia, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey.

I know that there are many people, who suspect the motives of many of those advocating obedience rather than debate; but these are extraordinary times for mankind. As Dr Liam Fox, not someone whose views I generally share, wrote last weekend, we, who have only been around as a species some 200,000 years, are facing an ‘enemy’ that has survived for millions.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged coronavirus and professor david runciman | 32 Comments

Contagion

By Flo Clucas | Thu 3rd October 2019 - 1:54 pm

Canvassing is one of those things that many of us take for granted. It is part of what we do. Occasionally a meeting on a doorstep will echo down the years, coming back into the mind and setting a scene.

Such a meeting happened to me some years ago. It was in a Labour Ward in Liverpool, at the height of the Militant Tendancy regime. I knocked at a door in a Council estate and asked the gentleman who came to the door if he would vote for us. As I anticipated, he said no, he wouldn’t. So I asked who he would be supporting, expecting him to say, ‘Labour’.

But no. He looked at me and said: ‘ I’m voting Conservative.’ I couldn’t resist and asked him why.

‘Well, they’re born to rule, aren’t they’.

It is a picture that has stayed with me ever since. An old man, probably without two pennies to his name, supporting Mrs Thatcher. It has been a puzzle that has come back to me time and time again.

And here we are, in 2019, with the Brexit party soaking up Tory supporters and members, appealing to working class voters and the Tories through Boris Johnson, an old Etonian for Heaven’s sake, trying to capture Labour seats.

Selling the vision that Britain won the war so can ‘get Brexit done’ is an advertising slogan that has been bought in to. If it was an advertisement, the ASA would soon smack those responsible down! But, in politics, there is no standards authority.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged exploitation, fascism and populism | 18 Comments

Narcissm – Democracy’s Nemesis?

By Hilton Marlton | Tue 1st October 2019 - 12:55 pm

Jacinda Ardern’s empathic response to the bombing of a mosque in New Zealand in March this year made international headlines. The press went into a frenzy over her sensitive and visibly moved reactions to those affected by the tragedy.

It’s really telling of our age, that Ardern herself became the subject of the news when she was doing what any decent leader should be doing. We elect politicians to represent us, so surely the ability to sympathise and to imagine who we, the electorate are, what our needs, aspirations and vulnerabilities are, is a basic requirement of the job?

Why are we putting up with Johnson and Trump when we could have Ardern? We are living through an epidemic of manipulation on a global scale and there is a pattern to how we got to this point. It didn’t happen over night.

While some of my Brexit-weary friends are turning to G&T, baking or prayer, my pick me up has been Ramani Durvasala. Durvasala has been studying Trump’s seemingly erratic behaviour and is finding that it follows a set pattern. Each time Trump gets away with something outrageous, he goes one step further and the next unthinkable thing happens. Liberals are in a permanent state of shock and disbelief.

Trump, like his friends Johnston and Farage are narcissists. We hear the word bandied about quite a lot at the moment and while each of us has some degree of narcissism, at their most extreme, sociopathic narcissist have key behaviours in common. They:-

• lack empathy and compassion.
• are manipulative and will distort the truth to suit themselves
• think the law and rules are for others, not them
• are highly critical of others but don’t take criticism well themselves • are entitled and often pompous
• are quick to anger, rage and outbursts
• are superficial and shallow

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Posted in News | Also tagged democracy and narcissm | 3 Comments

If you were PM….

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 13th December 2018 - 3:24 pm

An interesting quiz popped into my inbox from those nice people at Unlock Democracy. You have to imagine that you are PM – after all, that job may well be up for grabs in the near future.

You are presented with a series of policy dilemmas – would you rather do x or y? Actually, in some cases, I was a bit “NEITHER” or “NOT QUITE LIKE THAT” or “BOTH” but that is part of the fun.

It has a serious point:

Every day decisions affecting millions are made by a handful of ministers, while the rest of us struggle to have a voice. By taking the quiz and sharing it afterwards, we can spread the word about the need to bring power closer to the people.

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Posted in News | Also tagged democracy, dilemmas and policy decisions | 11 Comments

A masterclass for young people interested in politics

By The Voice | Sat 1st December 2018 - 8:52 am

This caught our eye on Twitter. It looks like a fabulous opportunity for young people who are interested in politics to learn about political leadership skills.

1 WEEK TO GO! APPLY NOW FOR OUR 2019 MASTERCLASS PROGRAMME Have the opportunity to learn from political experts (inc senior civil servants, Secretaries of State, political journalists and more) Apply here: https://t.co/vz6H8V4NBK Deadline 7th December#GetInvolved pic.twitter.com/cYi4RfEVQF

— Patchwork Foundation (@UKPatchwork) November 30, 2018

There’s more information on the Patchwork website.

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Posted in News | Also tagged opportunities, Patchwork Foundation and young people | Leave a comment

Tribal politics and liberalism – the fight to the death

By John Pugh | Fri 26th October 2018 - 12:30 pm

I have a slightly irrational aversion to holding up diamonds, wearing rosettes and beginning sentences with the phrase “Only the Liberal Democrats”. In fact I canvass now with a badge I had made which says on it against a yellow background “Bloody Politicians”.

I really,really do get the importance of branding etc but I do think that the future of Liberalism depends on the death of tribal politics.

We are living in strange times where political discourse is often reduced to the exchange of insults, declaration of tribal belief and parodying of alternative perspectives. As Nick Robinson tweeted<

Thought for the day : Those you disagree with aren’t enemies or traitors. They don’t deserve to be “knifed or lynched or hanged”. They are just people you disagree with. Those who report news you don’t like aren’t fake or frauds or enemies of the people. They are just reporters.

— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) October 24, 2018

Much but not all of this is done through social media. Political debate ,as opposed to the political exchange of fire, is harder now to engage in. Voters are increasingly endorsing populist-right and left- politicians who offer simple solutions, ignore complexity and play successfully on emotions and fears.

Polarised politics though has certain key definable features we need to understand and as importantly worry about emulating.

It characterises political opposition in terms of a moral gulf. Those who back a different position are knaves, fools or both. They are not just people who have arrived at a different opinion. There can be no dalliance with the enemy not just because they are wrong but because they are necessarily evil. So we have the coarsening of political discourse, mindless abuse of opponents etc

A second key characteristic is to deny or minimise the possibility of shared truths between political opponents. One side has to have got all the facts right and the other side all the facts wrong.Intelligence is only ever used by opponents to mislead and confound.

These two key characteristics act to reinforce each other. It cannot possibly be the case that one’s political opponents have looked at the same facts one sees and arrived at different conclusions, possibly sharing some similar core values to oneself. That’s a liberal mirage.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged debate, john pugh, nick robinson and tribalism | 20 Comments

Trump could be a good thing

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 22nd January 2017 - 9:30 pm

What were you doing when Donald J Trump became the 45th President of the United States?

I was walking my dog. I couldn’t bring myself to watch it live. I just don’t know enough swear words.

Tim Farron wasn’t watching it either.

Apparently there’s something on telly, but I found something better to do instead… pic.twitter.com/5wdN7YJxv7

— Tim Farron (@timfarron) January 20, 2017

He made a video, though. And it was pretty uplifting.

.@TimFarron: Trump’s #inauguration today should serve as a chilling reminder keep fighting for an open, tolerant and united Britain. pic.twitter.com/LvNJG3tiO7

— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) January 20, 2017

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged donald trump, iain dale and nationalism | 25 Comments

If – that awkward little notion

By James Vincent | Wed 21st December 2016 - 2:41 pm

If Britain does undergo ‘hard Brexit’, what do we do next? If said ‘hard Brexit’ results in a consistent and high-reaching economic growth, what do we say? “Unlikely”, “highly implausible”, “outright impossible” might be the instinctive or well-thought through response of an expert (of the armchair or academic variety). But humour me. If something happens contrary to our expectations, how do we respond?

It’s a relevant topic, given the year we’ve had. The idea that the referendum would result in Brexit was surprising (though, for me personally, not shocking). The idea that Donald Trump would be elected President of the US really was shocking. In both cases, the presumption of many was that they could not lose; that a variety of factors and self-evident prepositions resulted in an inevitable conclusion. I do not want to raise here why your or my presumptions were right or wrong, but how we should respond when we are mistaken.

It seems to me that the underlying condition that arose in 2016 was how headstrong everyone became. Every political hue became convinced that everything they asserted was undeniable, unless you were a blithering idiot (or deplorable). Facts became relative, and forecasts became cast-iron; unless of course, I disagreed with them. When did we lose the respect for our rivals, saying “this is what I propose, but I accept you have an alternative”?

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

Book review: Made in Spain, by Miriam Gonzalez Durantez

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 6th August 2016 - 10:45 am

I was delighted to get Miriam’s part memoir part cookbook for my birthday last week.

I love cookbooks and have a stack of them not in the kitchen but by my bed. My favourite sort have a lot of commentary and background as well as just recipes. That’s part of the reason I’m such a huge Nigella fan. She puts a lot of herself into her recipes and writing. The two women have cooked together before and Nigella’s “Gorgeous recipes” endorsement on Miriam’s front cover is a very useful thing.

The book is worth it for a mini rant on stock alone, but it has so much to offer. The food is appetising – although I might use a bit more garlic than she does – with gutsy flavours. I can see myself making a fair few of these recipes, although I’d have to figure out how to use less oil. From a vibrant gazpacho simple pasta with bacon and peas taught to her sons when she broke her elbow during the 2010 election to a delicious lamb stew to the most wonderful sounding dish with potatoes, garlic and saffron, to lemon curd muffins, to olive oil chocolate mousse, there are dishes that could make me very happy. You never know, I might just cook some and compare her photos with mine.

Her recipes are interspersed with personal anecdotes:

I was first introduced to guacamole when I helped to negotiate the EU-Mexican trade agreement.

is quite a claim to fame!

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged cookery, gossip, made in spain and miriam gonzalez durantez | 10 Comments

Listening, not just hearing

By Kirsten Johnson | Sun 3rd July 2016 - 9:15 am

I have had several requests through facebook from voters on both sides of the EU issue on how to find a healthy, positive way forward. As deeply upset as many of us still are, it is difficult to think in positive, helpful terms when there still so much anger about this referendum taking place at all.

But I have put some thought into this and wish to share some ideas. In conflict resolution and mediation, lot of weight is placed on listening. This is a deep kind of listening, not one in which words are heard and then our point of view put forward, ‘but, but, but….’ Having done a fair bit of EU speaking and hustings, I am familiar with the riposte and parry required in refuting arguments and arguing a case.

Deep listening is understanding what is behind the words a person is saying. Many have suggested that much of the ‘leave’ vote was an anti-establishment vote, not an anti-EU vote. Tim Farron has pointed out that worries over housing, lack of school places and an under-resourced NHS were salient factors in the ‘leave’ vote.

I would further suggest that fear is behind many of the views of those who voted against the referendum. We live in a global world, a shrinking world, one that is quickly changing with technological advances. Those who voted leave, among them the majority older people, I suggest would like a return to a simpler world of pen and paper, not email, where everyone knows everyone in the village and stays there their entire life. But that is not the world young people live in – we train in different cities and countries, we work around the UK and in the rest of the world, we fall in love and have relationships which transcend borders. Younger people understand and embrace a fluid, global world. Many older people are frightened by it.

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Posted in News | Also tagged eu referendum and listening | 17 Comments

Seeking an antidote to poisonous politics

By Jim Williams | Sun 26th June 2016 - 8:40 am

Why does poisonous politics keep winning in Britain? A glance down your newsfeed will tell you that, for many, it’s because people are stupid. Let me put this plainly: it’s not.

We all vote with our hearts, however much we may protest otherwise. Brains too rarely come into it, clever or otherwise.

The voters who take solace in the myth of us vs them are just people who feel afraid. People who feel disenfranchised, powerless, ignored. And until we can offer them anything that speaks to their concerns, nothing is going to change.

I believe liberalism is the answer. But saying liberal things in our little liberal bubble will only serve to unite us against them in disbelief. Instead we have to engage: we have to try to understand.

Liberalism is about trusting people. So if you trust people, what are you forced to conclude? That politics has failed us. That society has failed us.

Don’t hate the people that Vote Leave manipulated: find a way of bringing them back into the fold.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged eu referendum | 15 Comments

Three ways our democracy is being undermined

By Toby MacDonnell | Fri 27th May 2016 - 4:15 pm

The articles that have appeared after the BBC’s referendum debate in Glasgow have given a lot of prominence to that one man who blamed the state of political discourse for his confusion as to how to vote.

This was too interesting not to comment on.

The audience was divided into leavers, remainers, and undecideds.

Leave and Remain both have their own ‘Project Fear’. Leavers tout a cultural crisis in the form of mass migration. Remainers raise the spectre of economic catastrophe.

Fear Projects, whereever they come from, are a concerted attempt to sway the public with threats dangerous enough to repeat frequently in scarce media time.

On the face of it my generation ought to be the most engaged generation there has ever been. Social media has turned every one of us into campaigners and journalists: we auto-report our lives and volunteer our opinions publicly. We are also happy to parrot or share anything we agree with.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged debate and media | 4 Comments

Faith values in politics can be a force for good?

By Shoaib Bajwa | Fri 11th March 2016 - 2:55 pm

You don’t need to be a church going person to learn and practice positive faith values in the society. The separation of church and state is a phrase that’s often used in reference to politics in the context of religious faith. In the US, the distinction between religion and politics is often blurred – you only have to listen to Donald Trump, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio addressing party loyalists to see just how intertwined the two are. But here in the UK there’s something of a taboo about conflating the two. In fact faith values in politics can be an immense force for good, just as they can outside politics.

Here in the UK, unlike our cousins across the Atlantic, we have an established church and our head of state is also the head of this church. This dual rule has been much reduced since the days of Henry VIII. There was once a time when the UK politics was presided over by a monarch who was both president and pope. Gradually their role faded, and religion was replaced by political philosophy as the driving force behind British political ideology. It has led to something of an institutional silence by our political leaders to use the language of faith in political discourse. Think of the reaction that Prime Minister David Cameron received when he stated that he was prepared to ‘do God’ and take his faith into account when carrying out his duties. He was lauded and criticised in almost equal measure. But ‘doing God’ – or allowing your religious beliefs to impact upon your political outlook – does not need to be a negative thing. In fact, faith can be an immensely positive in politics and the society as long you interpret it correctly and of course you don’t try to force it on others.

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

Opinion: Politics? It’s child’s play

By Ruth Bright | Thu 30th April 2015 - 12:23 pm

Pity, poor Tristram Hunt. On the campaign trail the other day he made the classic mistake of asking a young child how he was going to vote.

Child: “UKIP”

Hunt: “Oh why is that then?

Child: “Because they’ll get all the foreigners out of the country”

To adapt the old adage: Never do politics with children and animals!

For a candidate kids are a minefield but as a parent I’ve been struck by how interested my kids (one pre- teen and one mid primary) have been in this their “first” General Election. They even staged their own election debate with toys which of course I enjoyed as much as they did!

There isn’t much help for parents attempting to introduce their kids to politics and political history.

Even really young American children have reading books about the Founding Fathers, Lincoln and the Roosevelts. Imagine the laughing stock a British parent would be if she went into a bookshop and asked for: “Gladstone and Disraeli for toddlers” or “Learn to read with the Tolpuddle Martyrs”

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

Two Lib Dems standing down: Ming on competitiveness, Iraq and backing Clegg, Teather on “political self harm”

By NewsHound | Sun 26th April 2015 - 2:55 pm

The Observer is interviewing some MPs who have stood down from Parliament. Ming Campbell and Sarah Teather are featured today.

Ming says his proudest moment in his 28 years in Parliament was deciding not to support the war in Iraq:

The second Gulf war, that’s the most significant political thing I’ve been engaged with. We took the decision – not an easy decision – that we were going to thoroughly oppose it, and there were some sleepless nights for me and for Charles . All it needed was a company of American marines to discover two tanks of anthrax – our position would have been wholly undermined. So it was a big risk, but we thought it was right and we thought wasn’t legal.

Ming comes from a different place politically than Nick Clegg, and he hasn’t had a government job. What does he make of our leader?

I’m a great admirer of Clegg, he was my pick and he’s astonishingly resilient when you consider some of the stuff that’s written about him. Forming the coalition was a very brave thing to do – it’s no secret I had some reservations – but if you’re in the ex-leaders club your duty is to follow your leader. If you’ve been through the fire and brimstone yourself, then you really have a duty to ensure that your successor is not subject to that.

Sarah had some pretty astute observations about modern politics which should make us all think about why it’s so deeply unsatisfying. She had been asked if we should worry about the number of women standing down:

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Posted in News | Also tagged Ming Campbell, observer, Parliament and sarah teather | 11 Comments

Charles Kennedy MP writes…Our challenge for 2015 is to make positive case for UK political reform

By Charles Kennedy | Fri 2nd January 2015 - 11:59 am

View image | gettyimages.com

As the BBC Radio Scotland self-promotional message has been reminding us at regular intervals throughout the holiday period 2014 certainly was “Scotland’s Year.” The best of times, the worst of times. From the sporting triumphs of the outstandingly successful Commonwealth Games and the hosting of the victorious Ryder Cup through to the referendum and ending on the tragedy of the Glasgow bin lorry crash we have never been out of the news.

The ever-perceptive journalist and commentator Iain MacWhirter (like myself, essentially, a federalist – unlike myself a Yes voter) reckons that the referendum represented the moment at which Scotland became “psychologically independent.” It is an interesting reflection and one which will be further tested as soon as May in the looming Westminster general election.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, general election 2015, political reform, Scotland and uk | 5 Comments

What does Alex Salmond think he’s playing at?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 21st December 2014 - 4:16 pm

View image | gettyimages.com

When he saw the writing on the wall and was desperate to get people to vote Yes, Alex Salmond made a last ditch appeal on the Andrew Marr Show the Sunday before the independence referendum. He said that people had a once in a generation or even a lifetime chance to vote for independence and they should take it.

Now, it was fairly clear to me and I expect most other people that he absolutely didn’t mean what he was saying. There was no way that the entire nationalist movement was just going to give up and take up crochet if they lost. Of course they were not. They sincerely believe that independence is the best option for Scotland in the same way that I believe that a liberal approach to our problems is the best way to run a society. I’ll never give up my quest to see a truly liberal world.

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Posted in News | Also tagged alex salmond, christine jardine, featured, gordon, independence and Scotland | 31 Comments