Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 487th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (27 August – 2 September, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

1. Thin pickings for the Lib Dems in this week’s Council by-elections by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
Although it does help if we do actually field a candidate.

2. If Brexit goes badly wrong, how can the Tories survive? by Mark Valladares on Liberal Bureaucracy.
This is not an optimistic piece. Mark presents a scenario we should prepare for.

3. Co-founder, Labour against Brexit, joins the Lib Dems by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
He can’t stay while Corbyn advocates “hard Tory Brexit.”

4. Brexiteers think Australia is moored off the Kent coast by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
But their trade minister is focused on bigger fish than us.

5. Neal Ascherson on Heligoland by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
An example of how the brexiteers distort history.

And now to the seven blog-posts that come highly recommended, regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. To nominate a Lib Dem blog article published in the past seven days – your own, or someone else’s, all you have to do is drop a line to [email protected]. You can also contact us via Twitter, where we’re @libdemvoice

6. How did Princess Diana manage to stay sane with all that misogynistic vitriol? by Jane Chelliah on Feminist Mama.
20 years on, a reminder of how she was treated by the media.

7.  We must fight to keep students coming to the UK and to Liverpool by Richard Kemp on But what does Richard Kemp think?
They bring vital money and boost research and jobs.

8. The case for disregarding the Brexit vote by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal.
No good can come of it, argues Peter.

9. Is Theresa May staying on as PM for the next two years a good or bad thing for the Conservative Party? by Nick Tyrone on NickTyrone.com.
Nick says she’s not doing them any favours.

10. Big Ben and the triviality of UK Politics by Peter Black on Peter Black.
The ridiculous scenes from Peter Bone et al a few weeks ago were not the first time Big Ben was the feature of a political storm.

11. The most important Brexit negotiation will be among the British people by Matthew Green on Thinking Liberal.
We still need to make up our minds what sort of a country we want to be.

12. Norman Lamb done in acrylic and hanging in Central London by Iain Brodie Browne on Birkdale Focus.
An interesting view of our health spokesperson

And that’s it for another week. Happy blogging ‘n’ reading ‘n’ nominating.

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* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social