Tag Archives: social liberal forum conference 2022

UK and Europe: Offshore island or part of the main

By Iain Brodie Browne | Mon 30th May 2022 - 12:37 pm

It is back! The Social Liberal Forum Conference will be held in London after a two year gap. It will be held at Resource for London, 356 Holloway Rd, London N7 6PA and online on 25th June 2022.

We are delighted to be able to give you a first glimpse of the programme. An impressive list of speakers will lead off our discussions on Britain’s role in Europe. We are concentrating on three key areas

Environment
Economy
Security

Although Brexit has allegedly happened and Boris Johnson pretends the UK’s focus is on the “Indo-Pacific”, wherever that may be, and the government sees trading with Australia and the USA as the future, we remain part of the continent of Europe and must not throw away the history of peace, prosperity and environmental protection built by the European Union. This conference asks the question, how are we to continue to co-operate with our close friends and allies in Europe and who are those friends?

Speakers include former Liberal Democrat MEPs Phil Bennion, Jane Brophy and Rebecca Taylor, leaders of our Social Liberal Dutch colleagues D66, Sophie in ‘t Veld MEP and Gijs de Vries – who formerly was State Secretary of the Interior in the government of The Netherlands and the EU’s first Counter Terrorism Co-ordinator.

The economy session speakers are Professor Chris Grey (author of the ‘must read’ Brexit & Beyond blog) and Will Hutton of the Observer and the author of “The State We’re in” – the biggest selling politico-economic work since the Second World War.

In addition we will be joined by our own Duncan Brack, Wendy Taylor, Denali Boisot, Gordon Lishman, Louise Harris and Baroness Julie Smith.