Tag Archives: Post Brexit

Paul Walter

Post Brexit trade – a refreshing British-Austrian perspective from an experienced UK industrialist

By Paul Walter | Wed 17th February 2021 - 11:45 am

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Last night’s Shirley Williams Lecture (SWL) was really enlightening but also quite scary.

The speaker was Juergen Maier CBE, described as follows on the SWL website:

One of the UK’s leading industrialists and business thinkers, Juergen Maier rose to prominence as the Chief Executive of Siemens UK. A regular on Question Time and a Board Member of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, Juergen has been outspoken on major issues such as Brexit, Industrial Strategy and the 4th Industrial Revolution.

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Posted in Speeches | Also tagged , and | 15 Comments
Iain Brodie Browne

Britain in a Post-Trump, Post-Brexit world

By Iain Brodie Browne | Tue 16th February 2021 - 2:15 pm

The Social Liberal Forum’s highly successful online programme continues on Monday 22nd February with Britain in a Post-Trump, Post-Brexit World. Our two guests are William Wallace-well known to Lib Dem Voice readers- and Professor Anand Menon. You can register for free by following this link to the SLF website: Britain in a Post-Trump, post-Brexit World .

Professor Anand Menon is the Director of the UK in a Changing Europe and Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at Kings College, London.

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Posted in Events | Also tagged , , , , and | 3 Comments
Wayne Chadburn

Re-joining the Party, Post-Brexit

By Wayne Chadburn | Wed 8th April 2020 - 6:30 pm

I’m sure many of you have done political quizzes online to justify your political allegiances. Every so often, I do one just to check where I stand. I know my beliefs haven’t really changed over the years, but parties do modify and fine-tune their positions. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve done it, even during the Brexit years, each time the Lib Dems came top.

I’ll let you into a secret – over the years some would consider me a political flip-flopper (I’m using a slightly more polite expression than some may) in the parties I have been active in. I joined the Labour party when I was 16 in the early ’80s. As a member of a tribally Labour family in a coal mining area of South Yorkshire, what else could I do? I was an active member of the party for about 25 years. I joined a regional party six years ago because of my belief in subsidiarity (something I am still passionate about) and under this banner stood for election for the first time and became their first elected councillor. I then ultimately gave in to what the runes were telling me and were a member of the Liberal Democrats until nearly three years ago.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 73 Comments
Michael Taylor and Ruth Coleman-Taylor

It’s April 2019, we’re out of the EU with no deal. What do Lib Dems do now?

By Michael Taylor and Ruth Coleman-Taylor | Wed 26th September 2018 - 1:30 pm

The party has, rightly, focused on campaigning for an Exit from Brexit, but it appears to have done absolutely no thinking about how to campaign if we fail.

The press and internet are awash with Brexit doomsday scenarios: planes grounded; food shortages; lack of medicines; travel restrictions: a plummeting pound; riots; even a coup. However, Project Fear is no guide to campaigning in unknown territory.

How would we campaign in the new reality, if there is no People’s Vote or the vote is lost? There will be 9000+ council seats to fight on 2 May 2019, and we want to do well in those elections. If Britain does not Exit from Brexit, it will surely not be possible to fight those seats and ignore the UK’s changed circumstances?  Can we afford to wait until Spring Conference, or later, before we consider the consequences of this outcome?

Having supported the European project since its early beginnings, we are surely not going to abandon it now? It won’t be easy to persuade people to support re-joining the EU without the opt-outs and special deals we currently enjoy when so many of them want to leave even when we have all these benefits. It could be a long haul. In the immediate future, as a matter of survival, our country will have to try  – rapidly – to create a raft of new international agreements on trade; sourcing our food and medicines; creating new supply lines for manufacturers and suppliers; the new practicalities of travel. The UK currently has almost no people trained in the necessary skills to negotiate these agreements.

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Posted in News and Op-eds | 44 Comments
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