Tag Archives: scottish autumn conference 2023

Scottish Lib Dem Autumn Conference in Edinburgh yesterday was an absolute blast and showed the party at its best. I love going to Conference and catching up with old friends, but this time there were so many new people to get to know as well.

One of them, Lauren Buchanan-Quigley from Dunfermline, criticised the UK Government for trying to force disabled people back into work without ensuring that workplaces were accessible. She talked also about the scandal of people with assistance dogs being denied access to hospitals.

Scottish Liberal Democrats have led the way on pressing the Scottish Government to do more to help Councils deal with the problems associated with Reinforced Autoclaved Aereated Concrete. Conference passed a motion, proposed by West Lothian’s Lib Dem Councillor  Sally Pattle, calling on the Government to provide funding to local authorities to deal with this and to compensate those, like West Lothian, who have already spent millions on it.

The Leader

Alex Cole-Hamilton was confident of Lib Dem gains come the election in places like Mid Dunbartonshire where Susan Murray hopes to take the seat once held by Jo Swinson and the new version of Charles Kennedy’s old seat where Angus MacDonald is  in a very good position.

His leader’s speech had two big new ideas – using the Barnett Consequentials from our trebling of the Digital Services Tax, paid by social media companies, to pay for better mental health support for young people, and a Clean Water Act to protect our waterways from pollution.

And I know many people reading this will be delighted by what he had to say on Europe:

Conference the European project represents the most important plan for peace in the whole of human history. It ended centuries of war.

And while, by slim majority, the citizens of these islands chose to turn their backs on that, we, the Liberal Democrats, will never turn away from it.

We will never let go of the inescapable reality that our country was simply better off as a full member of the European Union.

The Tories have set fire to all the goodwill and understanding that existed with our European neighbours. They have made our road back to Europe all the longer, all the harder.

But it is a road we have already started out upon.

Conference, be in no doubt of our commitment to that aim. Realistic, pragmatic, remorseless.

We are already building bridges, re-establishing connections amid the seeds of common understanding in the British people of the hideous calamity of Brexit.

Mark my words, it may not be this coming General Election, but one day an election will come where a chance to reclaim our European membership is on the ballot paper. We will be at the heart of that.

My commitment to you is this. I have spent the vast majority of my life a citizen of both the United Kingdom and of the European Union. It is my intention to leave this life a citizen of both as well.

I reckon the sky would not fall in if Ed said something like that.

Alex was introduced on to the stage by Gloria Adebo, our brilliant candidate in the recent Rutherglen and Hamilton South by-election.

Nazanin and Richard

One of the most moving sessions was an interview, hosted by Christine Jardine, with Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe and Richard Ratcliffe. Christine said she still has the blue flower Richard gave her when she went to visit him outside the Iranian Embassy when he was on hunger strike during Nazanin’s six year imprisonment in Iran.

Nazanin and Richard want British citizens to have a right to consular protection after the Foreign Office was so slow to help her. At the moment, the commitment is dependent on ministerial whim, and, if ministers are reshuffled, you have to build the relationship up all over again.

The Guardian has reported on Nazanin’s comments about how difficult it was for her to readjust to freedom and of her worries for her family and friends back in Iran.