Tag Archives: reform

Tanya Park

The new Gilded Age: A liberal case for radical reform

By Tanya Park | Tue 17th February 2026 - 11:55 am

In 1900, the wealthiest one per cent of people in Britain controlled an estimated 70 per cent of all personal wealth. By 1990, that share had fallen to under 20 per cent. It was the most sustained redistribution of wealth in British history, and it was not inevitable. It was the product of deliberate policy choices: progressive taxation, labour rights, universal public services, and democratic reform.

That settlement is now being unmade. The wealthiest one per cent of UK households again hold the same share of wealth as the entire bottom half combined. The 50 wealthiest families hold more combined wealth than 34 million people. UK billionaire wealth has grown roughly four times faster than median household wealth since 2008. We are living in a new Gilded Age, and it should trouble liberals deeply, because concentrated wealth is concentrated power, and concentrated power is the enemy of individual freedom.

This is the point that gets lost when inequality is treated as a concern only for the left. The liberal tradition, at its best, has always understood that freedom without material security is hollow, and that unchecked economic power threatens political liberty just as surely as unchecked state power. Lloyd George understood this when he introduced the People’s Budget of 1909. Beveridge understood it when he identified Want as one of the five giants to be slain. The question is whether today’s liberals are willing to apply that same logic to the new concentrations of wealth and power that define our era.

At A Just Society, we argue that they should, and we have set out a detailed programme for how. Our proposals operate across the same three domains that ended the first Gilded Age: taxation, universal provision, and democratic reform.

Limitarianism would introduce a progressive annual levy on extreme wealth: 1 per cent on fortunes between £5 and £10 million, 2 per cent up to £1 billion, and 3 per cent above that. The revenues would be earmarked for opportunity-enhancing investment: ending child poverty, a £10,000 citizens’ inheritance for young adults, care provision, and the green transition. This is not punitive redistribution. It is the principle that extreme fortunes built on shared foundations should sustain those foundations.

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Kamran Hussain

Labour has lost its moral and political compass

By Kamran Hussain | Wed 19th November 2025 - 11:55 am

I have been a Liberal Democrat for many years, and I never imagined a time when a major party on the centre-left would be celebrating its immigration policy alongside the very architects of anti-immigrant sentiment. Yet here we are. As Shabana Mahmood unveils her new asylum and immigration plans, the loudest endorsements are not coming from progressive voices, the NHS, or the communities dependent on migration, but from figures like Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage—men who have built careers on demonising and scapegoating newcomers.

​This applause is a siren call that should terrify the Labour movement, but for the Liberal Democrats, it is a clarifying moment.

​When people like Robinson and Farage applaud Labour’s direction, it sends a crystal-clear signal: Shabana Mahmood is moving the Labour Party so far to the right that the far-right ecosystem now views her as an active ally. For those of us who believe in the core Liberal values of fairness, compassion, and evidence-based policy, this is profoundly alarming.

​The very people keeping our social fabric intact—the hard-working individuals in the care sector—are the ones being betrayed. Under the previous, more humane system, many care workers were on a clear, five-year route to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). This gave them stability, dignity, and a predictable future.

​Mahmood’s proposal to stretch that pathway to twenty years is not a policy; it is a punishment. It translates to twenty years of insecurity, twenty  years of anxiety, telling dedicated workers, “Even though you care for our elderly, our grandparents, and our disabled loved ones, you still haven’t earned the right to call this country home.”

​And who cheered this punitive shift? Tommy Robinson, calling it a step in the right direction. Nigel Farage, claiming she was suitable to join Reform.

If they believe Labour has become their champion, then Labour has utterly lost its moral and political compass.

The tragedy is that Labour believes it is playing a clever political game. Mahmood thinks that by mirroring Conservative and Reform UK rhetoric, she can win over disillusioned voters who are looking for someone to blame.

But politics abhors a vacuum, and voters will always choose the authentic voice of the far-right over its pale imitation. Labour will never ‘out-Reform’ Reform.

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Jack Meredith

Why the Welsh Lib Dems must confront Reform on Ukraine

By Jack Meredith | Wed 15th October 2025 - 8:55 am

Wales has shown the world what solidarity looks like. We became a Nation of Sanctuary, opened our homes to thousands of Ukrainian refugees, and stood firmly on the side of democracy and the rule of law. Yet at the same time, Reform UK, the party now desperate to present itself as the Voice of Wales, was long represented by Nathan Gill, a former Brexit Party and Reform UK politician who pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery payments in return for pro-Russian statements.

This is not some abstract Westminster scandal, but one too close to home, in Wales. It strikes at the heart of our national security and our values. If Reform UK cannot even keep Russian influence out of its own ranks, why should the people of Wales trust them with our future?

And speaking of Reform UK, let’s take a look at its leader, Nigel Farage, a man who has been consistent with his defence of Putin’s illegal expansionist war in Ukraine. In a BBC Panorama interview, Mr Farage claimed that the West provoked Russia to attack Ukraine with “the ever-eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union“, despite these two institutions operating on a democratic basis; countries only join because they want to, not because they’re forced.

Mr Farage has also previously called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to seek a peace deal with Russia, despite most of the democratic world, Ukraine included, calling on Russia to end its illegal expansionist war, respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and pull all of its troops out immediately.

While Reform UK flirts with Kremlin narratives, the Liberal Democrats have been absolutely clear: Ukraine’s fight is our fight. It is a fight for democracy, international law and the security of Europe.

From the outset, the Liberal Democrats have consistently:

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems need to be less nice, more radical says Politics Home article

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 27th July 2025 - 4:44 pm

An article on Politics Home suggests that some activists want to see us using similar tactics to Reform UK to get noticed.

Based on snippets from the Social Liberal Forum conference last weekend, and an interview with Bobby Dean, the article provides some useful insight into discussions happening not just in St Albans but across the party.

I’m repeatedly hearing people who want us to stop hand-wringing and actually stand up for our values. Abstentions in Parliament on issues where we should take a stance come in for particular disapproval.

I’m still seething from our response to Keir Starmer’s disgraceful speech on immigration, which even he admits he regrets, which basically amounted to “we need to train British people to do jobs.”  We should have been much more robust, as I said at the time:

We should ride a coach and horses through Labour’s plans and we should be bold. We should not give a damn about what the Daily Mail says or thinks.

We should shout about the benefits of being an open, liberal, generous-spirited country and we should not put up with yet another Government failing to meet the needs of our communities by investing enough in public services and housing and then using people who choose this country to live as scapegoats for their failure.  We need big picture emotional language that reflects our values as Liberal Democrats. It’s time to challenge the language of prejudice with good, solid practical ideas that will improve the quality of our lives.

At last week’s Social Liberal Forum conference in Daisy Cooper’s St Albans constituency, our treasury spokesperson heard similar views according to Politics Home.

A Lib Dem councillor later told PoliticsHome: “What are we actually known for? People know what Reform stands for… I don’t think we would consider ourselves to be wishy-washy or centrist, but that is where lots of people have us.”

We are too nice, said one member:

“We’re too nice,” one party member exclaimed during the conference. “Nick Clegg  was unbelievably nice in the coalition, and we got screwed. It is time we start saying it how it is. We can politely say, look, that is an absolute load of bullshit.”

SLF Chair John Shreeve is quoted as saying:

Why is it that Nigel Farage, with barely any policy detail, is dictating the traffic?” he asked.

He’s doing it from a vision perspective, and we are not doing enough to promote our vision.

I think he’s getting away with it because he is not being challenged. While Labour and Conservatives pander to him, there is clear space to call him out on his nonsense. We are perfectly placed to do this and in fact have a responsibility to do so. If nobody comes out with a clear anti populist narrative, there will be a continued rightward drift in policy and government which will harm people.

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David Vigar

How do we deal with Reform?

By David Vigar | Thu 8th May 2025 - 9:30 am

Canvassing last month in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, we came across a middle-aged woman in her garden. “I’ve had enough of all of you. I’m voting Reform”, she said.

Our candidate, Julie, calmly explained that it was a local election and a chance to vote for someone who would work hard for residents on planning, potholes, housing and other issues. Reform didn’t have much to say about those things. And Julie also observed that while she was out meeting people, the Reform candidate was nowhere to be seen.       

A week or so later, when we were visiting postal voters, I knocked on the same woman’s door, inevitably with some trepidation. But it was good news. She’d thought about what we had said. She hadn’t been canvassed by Reform. And she voted for Julie because she’d met her and liked her.

So that’s one way to win over a potential Reform voter. And there are others. For some, a reminder that the Lib Dems are the party of carers, with a leader who is himself a carer, provides a positive alternative. For others, pointing out that Farage thinks Putin is the most admirable world leader prompts a rethink. 

So the rise of Reform creates both an opportunity and a challenge. As Ed Davey has pointed out, we’re seeing a surge in people joining the party because they are worried by Reform and believe we stand for true British values – compassion, tolerance, environmentalism and internationalism. That’s the opportunity.

But it should not stop there. We need to step up to the challenge of stemming the rise of Reform. As we found on the doorsteps, not all Reform voters are nasty people. There are some outright racists out there, and some very angry characters, but also a lot of decent folk who feel left behind, don’t know much about politics and are attracted by simple but misleading messages. I’m sure others met voters who were choosing between Reform and us. The risk is that more of this group will fall for the Farage narrative. Our task is to figure out what will appeal just as powerfully to the positive side of their nature. As the examples above show, it can be done. It works. Julie is now a County Councillor.

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Gordon Lishman

Risk, Strategy and Reform UK

By Gordon Lishman | Thu 1st May 2025 - 12:50 pm

Our Party is working on strategy for the next Parliament and, I hope, beyond.

A key part of business strategy is assessment of risk.  A major element in risk is competition – what will competitors do and what risks does that create for us?  Strategy must understand context, including the competitive environment.  Our market-place is politics, including the structure and future of the party political structure in Britain.  There are differences in Scotland, but the broad analysis holds true.

The biggest changes in the political environment are:

  • The demise of the two-party system. Both traditional leading parties have lost their sense of identity, which is based on a twentieth-century division between capital and labour. A sentence which had most resonance in my Council Chamber is quoting a Labour member that “this isn’t the party I joined and even less that my parents joined”; some Conservatives accept that it also applies to them.  Voters have more important things on their minds than outdated stereotypes.
  • First Past the Post, where 30% of the vote can now mean victory.
  • The challenges: the lost credibility of underlying economic analysis of the last 45 years; unwillingness to set out the Liberal case and the facts on immigration; the breakdown of consensus about the state and welfare; climate change; the global threat of nationalist populism.

These factors are playing out throughout the democratic world.

What are the risks of a strategy based on the assumption of Reform and Conservatives continuing to fight each other with more or less equal shares of the vote, so allowing Liberal Democrats to come through the middle?

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Geoff Reid

Our responsibility – Reform can and must be defeated

By Geoff Reid | Tue 24th December 2024 - 12:55 pm
While a cautious Labour government is worrying about former Labour voters who moved to Reform UK at the General Election and Conservatives are split between those who see the Faragists as friends and those who see them as enemies., Liberal Democrats have a clear moral  responsibility to fight them hard and defeat them.
Much has been written about the exploitation of grievances fuelling far right advances on both sides of the Atlantic and within the EU. While we have to take seriously the hurts many are experiencing and the sense of lostness in the face of collapsing public services which threatens civil society, we have to overcome the divisive hate-mongers. Labour say this is their mission but they have strange ways of showing it. So it’s up to us.
In the pre-Christmas weeks the Yorkshire and the Humber Region explicitly encouraged members and supporters to get stuck into a run of local by-elections saying “Reform is spreading divisive rhetoric and we’re working hard to offer a better vision for our communities”.
There was an interesting sequence of results.
  • On 28th November we had a shock gain in Woodhouse, Sheffield with a 10 vote margin over Reform and Labour pushed into third place.
  • Also on 28th a strong Lib Dem defence in York gave us three times the vote of the Tory in second place. Reform came third with Labour fourth.
  • On 12th December Reform took a seat from Labour in Merseyside (with no Lib Dem candidate). Meanwhile in West and South Yorkshire Reform failed to take seats in Featherstone, Wakefield and Dodworth, Barnsley. Labour held Featherstone but a large increase in the Lib Dem vote pushed Reform into third place. In Dodworth a strong Lib Dem hold secured twice as many votes as Reform with Labour in third place.
In some respects we have been here before. In 2006 the BNP came within a hundred votes of taking the Eccleshill, Bradford seat, which a few years later I was to represent on the City Council. We were determined to push them back. In 2007 it was not difficult to persuade voters that the Lib Dems were best placed to defeat the far right and we had a good track record to show that we could offer something much, much better. With people who usually voted for other parties coalescing around the Lib Dem candidate we had our biggest ever margin of victory. We secured nearly twice as many votes as the BNP in second place with Labour third.
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Adam Robertson

Ed Davey should lead a ‘Cordon Sanitaire’ towards Nigel Farage and Reform

By Adam Robertson | Fri 23rd August 2024 - 10:36 am

The recent rioting in England and Belfast, has seen Nigel Farage and Reform trying to use the riots for political purposes to fuel people’s prejudices regarding immigration and racial tension within local communities where tensions are already high. Farage is not responsible for the primary causes of the riot as has been suggested, but he should be condemned for using the riots for political purposes and trying to polarize and stigmatize different parts of our community. It could be that Nigel Farage, is trying to emulate Enoch Powell, as has been suggested in Jason Cowley’s Reaching for Utopia. I will leave that for others to judge whether that this is the case or not.

How should Ed Davey respond to Nigel Farage trying to use the riots for political purposes? Firstly, I want to commend Layla Moran’s performance on various media outlets, by being constructive and offering support to the Government and the Police through the difficult days of the riots, which we hope to have now passed us. Sadly, it will not bring the three young girls killed in Southport back, or the untold damage done to communities throughout England and Belfast.

However, Ed Davey should lead calls for a ‘cordon sanitaire’ around Nigel Farage and Reform. A ‘cordon sanitaire’ is the refusal of one or more political parties to cooperate with other political parties considered radical or extreme. It can be argued that Reform falls into the ‘radical right’ and other parties should not join in a Coalition with them or have an electoral pact with Reform. With our politics becoming more European, despite Labour winning a landslide, these things must be thought through.

Therefore, Ed should call on other parties to join the Liberal Democrats in a ‘cordon sanitaire’ against working with Nigel Farage and Reform. I can see Labour and the Green Party willingly prepared to join a ‘cordon sanitaire’ against Reform. The Conservatives will have a dilemma on whether to be part of a ‘cordon sanitaire’ against Reform, which I will touch on at the end, although all six leadership candidates have refused to allow Nigel Farage into the Conservative Party. I think also morally it will be correct for Ed to lead calls for a ‘cordon sanitaire’ because as Liberals, we believe in an open, cosmopolitan society.

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Callum Robertson

Do not walk away from accountability, reform OFSTED, do not abolish it.

By Callum Robertson | Sun 23rd April 2023 - 3:30 pm

OFSTED, the schools inspectorate has received flack for its inspection methods in the aftermath of the tragic death of Ruth Perry earlier this year. Following a period of silence, OFSTED Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman appeared on BBC Laura Kuenssberg this morning to face questions over the OFSTED’s approach to inspections.

The Liberal Democrat policy on OFSTED is to abolish it and replace it with a new body for school accountability. This is flawed for a number of reasons, not least because the hiatus period between abolition and refounding could lead to serious failures in uncovering failing establishments, hurting the life chances of the thousands of pupils in the communities that those schools serve. However, reform is a more appropriate method to secure the faith of the profession in their regulator.

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Lord William Wallace

Liberalism and Constitutional Democracy

By Lord William Wallace | Mon 10th May 2021 - 12:28 pm

The UK is sliding into a major constitutional crisis. The future of the Union itself presents the most immediate issue, with rising discontent in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. And Johnson’s casual dismissal of the conventions of constitutional behaviour, his insistence that as ‘the people’s government’ (on 43.5% of the national vote in December 2019) he and his ministers can push back parliamentary scrutiny and sweep aside reasoned criticism, is taking us down the road from liberal democracy to authoritarian rule.

Right-wing think tanks call this ‘post-liberalism’ – a kinder concept than authoritarian populism. Constitutional, deliberative democracy is at the heart of liberalism. Liberal philosophy in Britain grew out of the civil war and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, arguing for limited government, parliamentary and judicial checks on executive power, and toleration of dissenting opinions. The 19th century Liberal Party fought for home rule (devolution), elected local government and successive widening of voting rights, and education, for citizens. Minority rights, civil liberties, power spread as widely as possible rather than concentrated in Westminster and Whitehall, have been central to liberal campaigns over generations.

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Tony Harms

Towards a Referendum Programme for Remain

By Tony Harms | Mon 21st January 2019 - 11:00 am

The original remain campaign was negative and defensive. Nigel Farage, in his debate with Nick Clegg, has been described as “pushing on an open door”. Is all we can offer negatives – there is no European Army – there is no federal state – Turkey is not going to become a member – when all of these things are partly untrue?

Our opponents will say that “remain in the EU as we were before” would be to ignore the previous result; to betray the people’s vote, to disillusion the country and cast doubt on democracy itself.

The Remain …

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Paul Reynolds

Reform the Reformers – Part 2, Challenges in Updating Liberal Democracy

By Paul Reynolds | Mon 23rd July 2018 - 4:45 pm

There are two types of people in this world. Those who divide the world into two types of people, and those who don’t.

The rise of left and right wing populism points reformers towards updating liberal democracy.

The remedies that left and right populists peddle are remarkably similar; one-party regimes, state control of the economy, dismantling the ‘separation of powers’, nationalism, and a rapid increase in state spending.

Less attention, however, is paid to the parallel rise of liberal, pro-democracy parties in government; Canada, Netherlands, South Korea, Malaysia, Ireland and elsewhere.

There are many lessons to be learned from liberal-democratic parties in these countries, …

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Amy Finch

The Independent View: Incentives matter in our education system

By Amy Finch | Fri 27th March 2015 - 3:50 pm

Incentives matter in our education system. The right ones encourage our schools and teachers to deliver the very best education the system has to offer.

Yet in the run up to the general election, politicians would have us think otherwise. Rather than creating the incentives for excellence to spread, they seek to drive performance from the centre. Cross-party support for a new college of teaching illustrates this shift in rhetoric, with politicians trying to magic more high quality teachers without thinking about the underlying incentives. The so-called “Cinderella” teaching profession really has found its fairy godmother.

The academy school programme is all about incentives. By freeing schools from local authority control and management, the aim is to allow innovation to drive better education for pupils.

Yet better incentives are needed if academies are to drive large scale transformation across the country. According to a survey of academy schools Reform published last year, many academies are inhibited from using their freedom to innovate. Two thirds of the 654 academies surveyed had yet to make changes to the curriculum, staff terms and conditions or the school day, despite having the freedom to do so.

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Amy Finch

The Independent View: Keep academy freedoms – and extend them to all schools

By Amy Finch | Tue 18th March 2014 - 3:31 pm

schoolsignThe question whether to curtail or extend academy freedoms to state-funded schools was resurrected last October in a speech by Nick Clegg. The answer he put forward was to extend academy freedoms to all schools, albeit in a limited form. Clegg would like to claw-back the freedoms academies have over unqualified teachers and the curriculum, but to extend the remaining freedoms to all state-funded schools.

 Clegg’s new-found middle way is based on a belief that guaranteeing high standards in education is best achieved by curtailing autonomy. In October 2013, he said: “There is nothing…inconsistent in believing that greater school autonomy can be married to certain core standards for all.”

 Yet high levels of autonomy and accountability are conducive to high pupil attainment. The Deputy Director for Education and Skills at the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, has said that England’s multiple measures of accountability, along with a “high level of autonomy and discretion at the front line”, are key to success in education.

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Steve Shaw

Independent View: why we should all campaign for full recall

By Steve Shaw | Mon 27th June 2011 - 3:27 pm

For over six years now I have worked on Parliamentary campaigns such as the Sustainable Communities Act and the Climate Change Act. I have done this as an independent freelance, unaffiliated to any political party and always seeking cross party support.

This experience has given me a deep insight into our system of governance from the Ministers and senior civil servants at the top, whom I meet in Westminster and Whitehall, to communities at the bottom, whom I meet at campaign public meetings that I speak at across the country.

Our democratic system desperately needs reform. People increasingly feel disconnected …

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Matt Wood

Opinion: Don’t reform the House of Lords; scrap it

By Matt Wood | Mon 9th May 2011 - 2:45 pm

After the humiliating defeat of the AV referendum, a system to which no party aspired to before the General Election, and the disastrous rout of elected Lib Dems in Scotland and England, serious questions must be asked about the future direction of the party and its place in the coalition government.

In order to reclaim the trust of the British electorate, we need to be bold and radical, and we must speak up for the aspirations of the British people, particularly the disillusioned young; the Facebook generation, who are the future of our democracy. Despite Nick Clegg’s promise of a ‘New …

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